Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!
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@Rife said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
I agree with most of the points said except a few like :
Jails with playtime sentences : I dont think playtime should ever be a sentence because it's similar to a soft ban. Hell, any remotely smart criminal will just always keep 6k gold in their wallet so that they don't get punished by playtime, unless those who prefer to just sit out the game and play something else or another character when they get jailed, just to save money. We should levy heavier bail instead when your karma is really low, in fact, I don't understand why there is a negative karma cap. I think if someone goes -100k karma for example, he should be ready to pay a HUGE fine if he gets caught, due to the massive amount of "evil" deeds he has been doing. ( I've talked about a system where criminals are forced to pay the bail or get friends to pay the bail instead, where they get something similar to young player status and can only remove it once they've paid their bail ).
Thanks for the feedback, Rife!
As I mentioned to you and @Harleyyelrah before here and elsewhere, while I'm open to less stringent methods to constrain griefing/ganking than playtime sentences, I'm just not persuaded that anything less will do the trick.
If, in the next test, bail is prohibitively expensive and bounty hunters are effective enough at their job that the average player need not live in abject terror of being ganked or griefed, then personally I'm fine with ditching playtime sentences.
If that doesn't work, however...
I think the problem in this game is inflation. It is just so easy to get gold, and the amount of gold in game just increases drastically that the current gold sinks won't be able to keep up with. I propose that all gold sinks i.e, bail costs, harbor teleportation costs ( which should be more expensive ), house upkeep should all adjust their prices according to inflation rates. I.e, if the amount of gold in the world increases, then the costs of all these things should increase too.
Agreed. @Bardikens and I are both staunch opponents of inflation.
I also don't agree with the tweaked bounty system, I think the proposed change here is easily abusable by taking up bounties against your own guild mates, etc. I also think there should be a sink in total gold, right now 50% gets paid to the bounty hunter and 50% goes to the city, I think it should instead be something like 25% goes to city and 25% goes to bounty hunter, and 50% is lost. I also firmly believe that criminals should be allowed to be bounty hunters too, because honestly, the best pvp'ers right now are all criminals and will remain to be criminals just for the fact that criminals are exposed to so much more pvp than Sheriffs, so Sheriffs on average will not be as skilled as the average Criminal.
I'm definitely open to mechanics that delete gold from the game as well as reward the bounty hunter and the sponsor city of the bounty contract.
Personally, I'm also happy to let criminals be bounty hunters or contract killers of some type. It's another form of content/game loop and I think it would be cool for people to hire brigands or cutthroats to assassinate their enemies.
iv) Residential plots near city should be reserved to citizens and can be lost during siege
Yeah, I meant to emphasize this point in the OP but forgot: city residents who live outside the walls should have skin in the game during sieges. The notion that residents would just sit out a siege because there is no personal consequence to them regardless of the outcome is ludicrous.
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@Rife said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
right now 50% gets paid to the bounty hunter and 50% goes to the city
Actually, Prometheus was quoted as saying 33% goes to the city, 33% to the Bounty Hunter, and 33% was 'taxed' away. He said if he had said it was a 50/50 split, he was mistaken. Don't remember the thread.
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@Alexian said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Personally, I'm open to that, but are you confident that mere health restoration and poison mitigation would be enough for folks to use inns?
Oh yes. In fact, I would be more than willing to pay a bit of gold to use an Inn to restore just health while out in the wild. Those grey ticks are murder. Our guild has an unwritten policy of three ticks down and we head home. Would sure be nice to get to stay out just a bit longer.
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One good money sink would be brining back it as a upkeep cost for cities.
This can mostly be mitigated by the cut cities get from residence upkeep costs, but still results in more gold going away.
The game could also impose a small use fee for each crafting station or market transaction. -slightly frustrating but manageable-
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Money sinks are currently fine, it's the money flow which has issues.
The player incurs into a fine amount of sinks to play. Weekly taxes on the plot, harbors, taxes to use crafting stations, taxes on the marketplace, jail bailing.
This is only from the point of view of the single player though, because a lot of that money is actually going to the city, which would be fine if having fat city coffers would have a purpose. Unfortunately it doesn't. Having gold on the player is necessary, but money in the city coffers are used only for upgrading. This is a big issue. There is no incentive for guilds/governors to try and get as much income as possible.
We saw what happened with the tech/resident system. It worked wonderfully. In the previous test the guilds would estabilish a city and then keep it for themselves. Now that having residents is beneficial, every time that someone asks in global chat for a city to join, he gets multiple offers. We are actively competing on attracting residents, and that's wonderful.
Problem is that we are not competing in actually making our cities rich, because there is no purpose to that. I don't know if any player has ever payed taxes for crafting, and many have had their plot gifted. Some times with multiple weeks of taxes already paid. That's because there is nothing else to do with city money, so you may as well use it to attract new residents. The marketplace or the prison techs too have no reason to exist if money isn't important for the city. Your residents shouldn't be only another piece of tech, they should be a source of income for the city. Every governor should have to strike a balance between being attractive to new residents, while profiting enough from the existing ones.
In short, we need a use for city money. Be it a tax depending on city rank or on number of citiziens. Be it donations to the temple to give buffs to the fields or to the citiziens... There are many possibilities, but what matters is that governors should be going after money with the same zeal that they are actually going after residents.
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@StormBug said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Oh yes. In fact, I would be more than willing to pay a bit of gold to use an Inn to restore just health while out in the wild. Those grey ticks are murder. Our guild has an unwritten policy of three ticks down and we head home. Would sure be nice to get to stay out just a bit longer.
Then let's try it.
Worst case scenario, if it doesn't motivate folks to use crossroads inns, we can always enhance their amenities and features.
@OlivePit said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
One good money sink would be brining back it as a upkeep cost for cities.
This can mostly be mitigated by the cut cities get from residence upkeep costs, but still results in more gold going away.
The game could also impose a small use fee for each crafting station or market transaction. -slightly frustrating but manageable-Anyone have any thoughts about this? Some intriguing possibilities there.
Albion charges fees/taxes for public crafting stations and the like.
@spoletta said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Money sinks are currently fine, it's the money flow which has issues.
The player incurs into a fine amount of sinks to play. Weekly taxes on the plot, harbors, taxes to use crafting stations, taxes on the marketplace, jail bailing.
This is only from the point of view of the single player though, because a lot of that money is actually going to the city, which would be fine if having fat city coffers would have a purpose. Unfortunately it doesn't. Having gold on the player is necessary, but money in the city coffers are used only for upgrading. This is a big issue. There is no incentive for guilds/governors to try and get as much income as possible.
We saw what happened with the tech/resident system. It worked wonderfully. In the previous test the guilds would estabilish a city and then keep it for themselves. Now that having residents is beneficial, every time that someone asks in global chat for a city to join, he gets multiple offers. We are actively competing on attracting residents, and that's wonderful.
Problem is that we are not competing in actually making our cities rich, because there is no purpose to that. I don't know if any player has ever payed taxes for crafting, and many have had their plot gifted. Some times with multiple weeks of taxes already paid. That's because there is nothing else to do with city money, so you may as well use it to attract new residents. The marketplace or the prison techs too have no reason to exist if money isn't important for the city. Your residents shouldn't be only another piece of tech, they should be a source of income for the city. Every governor should have to strike a balance between being attractive to new residents, while profiting enough from the existing ones.
In short, we need a use for city money. Be it a tax depending on city rank or on number of citiziens. Be it donations to the temple to give buffs to the fields or to the citiziens... There are many possibilities, but what matters is that governors should be going after money with the same zeal that they are actually going after residents.
Excellent point that hasn't been adequately covered. What is the point of cities/regions accruing a surplus of resources? What's the point of wealth in this game?
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Oh and something needs to change with chests and crop stacking...
A large chest has 45 slots. Grain/beans/meat stack to 100. So you can put 4500 into one chest. That is 225 bags.
Meanwhile a warehouse holds 192 bags.
So a single large chest can hold more (potential) bags of grain/beans/meat than a warehouse.
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After reflecting on the suggestions in this thread for the last 24 hours or so, I suppose my overall thesis is that Fractured really needs to devote the vast majority of its focus on making the game a kingdom builder. The meat and potatoes of the game should be on trade and politics and warfare, with the standard MMO mechanics being the salt and pepper. Idk if the world bosses, dungeons, mobs, etc. will ever be so engaging as to keep the majority of players' interest.
@OlivePit said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Oh and something needs to change with chests and crop stacking...
A large chest has 45 slots. Grain/beans/meat stack to 100. So you can put 4500 into one chest. That is 225 bags.
Meanwhile a warehouse holds 192 bags.
So a single large chest can hold more (potential) bags of grain/beans/meat than a warehouse.Damn, those are some unjustifiably ridiculous numbers. Thanks for pointing them out.
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Since I agree with some (mostly regarding directly cities like size or instant resident decay or abuses) and disagree with a lot (everything else like fast travel, prisons or food scarcity) of what Alexian wrote above but have very little time to go in detail, imma just skip it to what annoys me the most on this thread
On the disagree parts...I am simply not a fan of "second job/like real life" games. Games should be enjoyed, not suffered.@Rife said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Jails with playtime sentences : I dont think playtime should ever be a sentence because it's similar to a soft ban.
Killing PvErs and full looting them soft bans them from content they want to do just as jailing you soft bans you from content you want to do. As many PvPers love to say to complaining PvErs: "Its part of the game, deal with it". Play with fire, suffer by fire. Actually, suffer more as the perpetrator of 'evil' on neutral planet.
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@Alexian great feedback! A proper answer would take me a day to write eheh, I'll try to limit it to the most important points
- Lack of city specialization: it's going to be largely reworked in the next test. We're indeed going to allow ("force") cities to unlock all the basic buildings first, then the tree is going to split into a few branches, each featuring several nodes, to have real specialization.
- Lack of trading: we're going to give more control to cities on resource extraction, make differences on food production between territories much wider (like they used to be), and make food consumed on rank up (instead of just stored). Trading will be back!
- Immediate residential disintegration: it only takes a couple hours to farm the 1000 units of gold needed for weekly maintenance, it's fair that if you don't even play for a couple hours for 1 week you lose the claim. Sadly we had a devastating bug the first days where when you claimed a plot of land it would tick weekly from the moment the claim was created (the launch of the Spring Alpha - March 31), instead of 7 days after being claimed. This meant that, for instance, if someone claimed the plot on April 5, the maintenance was due on April 7 instead of April 12. This is what has caused the loss of so many claims
- Harbors: I know you really don't like them, but I'm afraid they're going to stay They've been a very effective money sink and they're an absolute need for players who don't have the time to spend on long gaming sessions. It's true they've been too cheap though - the fee should have grown more steeply with inventory weight / cart load. The fact ingots and planks are bugged and weight 1kg instead of 10kg and 5kg respectively surely hasn't helped...
Have a look at the roadmap to the summer alpha when it's out, we're going to explain everything more in detail
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@Prometheus said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
- Immediate residential disintegration: it only takes a couple hours to farm the 1000 units of gold needed for weekly maintenance, it's fair that if you don't even play for a couple hours for 1 week you lose the claim.
Summer/winter vacations (usually 1-2weeks?), university exam periods are usually a month at minimum, before-christmas chaos when people are going overtime at work for weeks. So many things that basically not allow people to play at all, let alone "couple hours".
Games with complete disregard for "real life" tend to be...not the most prosperous.
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@LonelyCookie
You know that you can bank money into the house in advance and pay for , like 1 month, ahead so that if you know you will be busy you can plan for it and have it all paid off.
Better to say that 5 hrs of game play pays for 5 weeks of rent.
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My sister bought her plot of land, and then we grinded out 4k to put in for upkeep right away, as we knew the Alpha would be about 1 month. It's not really that hard to pull off that much if you go after zombies, skeletons, Goblins, and Ice/Forest Trolls
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@LonelyCookie Also, and I know this is a hard one, but you have to realize that not everyone is going to be able to Alpha test every aspect of the game.
Yes, I'm a huge proponent for the Solo'ist player, the Weekender, etc... but when it comes to short term Alpha Testing, if you can't budget more than about 2 hrs a week into the Alpha Test, obviously things like managing a Residence are not going to be easily possible solo for you.
The test only lasts a month, the best you might hope for, if you don't grind to specifically cover your house upkeep, is to earn the money by week 3 or 4, and then buy your house for the short term benefit/experience.
Some people will test everything the game has to test, but those people will be the ones putting in 8-12+ hrs a day into testing. Some people will really kick the tires on 2 or 3 of the mechanical enhancements and find quite a few bugs, but it all depends on what direction they take their play experience.
Just remember that there's a big difference between the experience your going to have in an AlphaTest or BetaTest, and the experience the game will offer once full release comes about.
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@Prometheus said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
@Alexian great feedback! A proper answer would take me a day to write eheh, I'll try to limit it to the most important points
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Prometheus.
@Bardikens and the rest of Meridian, including myself, are excited about Fractured's potential and your willingness to radically rework systems to make them work better.
- Lack of city specialization: it's going to be largely reworked in the next test. We're indeed going to allow ("force") cities to unlock all the basic buildings first, then the tree is going to split into a few branches, each featuring several nodes, to have real specialization.
Sounds promising!
- Lack of trading: we're going to give more control to cities on resource extraction, make differences on food production between territories much wider (like they used to be), and make food consumed on rank up (instead of just stored). Trading will be back!
Excellent. Our Master of Trade, @idioticmaddog will be very pleased to hear that.
- Immediate residential disintegration: it only takes a couple hours to farm the 1000 units of gold needed for weekly maintenance, it's fair that if you don't even play for a couple hours for 1 week you lose the claim. Sadly we had a devastating bug the first days where when you claimed a plot of land it would tick weekly from the moment the claim was created (the launch of the Spring Alpha - March 31), instead of 7 days after being claimed. This meant that, for instance, if someone claimed the plot on April 5, the maintenance was due on April 7 instead of April 12. This is what has caused the loss of so many claims
To clarify, we don't have an issue at all with the loss of residences, we just wish there was a decay function so that a house wasn't literally zapped out of existence upon failure to pay. Maybe a 24 hour grace period as the house visibly crumbles?
- Harbors: I know you really don't like them, but I'm afraid they're going to stay They've been a very effective money sink and they're an absolute need for players who don't have the time to spend on long gaming sessions. It's true they've been too cheap though - the fee should have grown more steeply with inventory weight / cart load. The fact ingots and planks are bugged and weight 1kg instead of 10kg and 5kg respectively surely hasn't helped...
Understood, though reluctantly. Our fear doesn't really concern harbors strictly as a tool used by players looking to group up with their friends to grind mobs, but as a mechanic that can be abused for trading and sieges and warfare.
What steps is DynaMight prepared to take to make sure harbors aren't weaponized to undercut logistics for trade, sieges, and warfare?
Have a look at the roadmap to the summer alpha when it's out, we're going to explain everything more in detail
I'm excited to see it! Any ETA on the roadmap?
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@LonelyCookie said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
Killing PvErs and full looting them soft bans them from content they want to do just as jailing you soft bans you from content you want to do. As many PvPers love to say to complaining PvErs: "Its part of the game, deal with it". Play with fire, suffer by fire. Actually, suffer more as the perpetrator of 'evil' on neutral planet.
Errr....what? No you aren't. If killing someone is locking them away from PvE, then killing the criminals itself is already locking them away from PvP. You get killed by a red, you don't get locked out of PvE for the next day mate. You can call for help, or hunt in a different zone.
Locking criminals out of the game just means they either go play a different game, or go play a different character. Hardcore criminals just pay the bail anyway, so they aren't even affected by the time lock. My proposal has always been to force everyone to pay, actual coins, and not just get a free pass by afking your time off in jail.
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I know it's already been discussed but I would still like to chime in:
Resources REALLY need to be more scarce or have higher demand. I'm personally aiming to be a local merchant, and everything I have gathered, nobody is interested in buying because all resources are too easily available / uncontested. This is probably partly due to low population with it being an Alpha, but if you need food for example, it's literally everywhere, so there is never a need to "stock up". So for new players, or someone wanting to play casually, that's a whole system that isn't worth engaging with. Or if they do try to engage with it, it yields no profit.
Harbours - Personally I am totally against fast travel, as it reduces the immersion of the game and I've seen it damage the open world in many other MMO's. That said, if it's here to stay, then whatever. The only true plus side to this is the "money sink" aspect. And I honestly think it should be extremely expensive to fast travel around the world, as otherwise the value of rare/locational items because eroded. Someone on the very south of the map should have a very very hard time attaining resources from the very north of the map, which in turn increases their value. Over-accessibility = no value or sense of achievement for acquiring it.
Long story short - resources across the land need way more value.
Thanks for reading. Hope this helps
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@Kazzier said in Meridian's Spring 2021 Alpha test feedback - OPEN DISCUSSION ENCOURAGED!:
I know it's already been discussed but I would still like to chime in:
Glad you did!
Resources REALLY need to be more scarce or have higher demand. I'm personally aiming to be a local merchant, and everything I have gathered, nobody is interested in buying because all resources are too easily available / uncontested. This is probably partly due to low population with it being an Alpha, but if you need food for example, it's literally everywhere, so there is never a need to "stock up". So for new players, or someone wanting to play casually, that's a whole system that isn't worth engaging with. Or if they do try to engage with it, it yields no profit.
100% agreed and I'm glad you've publicly identified yourself as one of those niche local merchants.
Meridian will definitely want to do business with you so as to encourage you and other folks like you.
Harbours - Personally I am totally against fast travel, as it reduces the immersion of the game and I've seen it damage the open world in many other MMO's. That said, if it's here to stay, then whatever. The only true plus side to this is the "money sink" aspect. And I honestly think it should be extremely expensive to fast travel around the world, as otherwise the value of rare/locational items because eroded. Someone on the very south of the map should have a very very hard time attaining resources from the very north of the map, which in turn increases their value. Over-accessibility = no value or sense of achievement for acquiring it.
Long story short - resources across the land need way more value.Again, 100% agreed.
Long story short - resources across the land need way more value.
Thanks for reading. Hope this helpsWe appreciate your contributions and hope others like you speak up!
