Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021
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I see no mention about cities and how they worked into spring alpha...
I don't think all accepted and are agree about the resources management (free access to all).
I hope there will be a tweak about this point
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@GamerSeuss Respectfully, I think the more probable and costly risk to Dynamight and Fractured is the flipside.
In MMOs with PvE and PvP content, PvE-focused players tend to radically outnumber their PvP counterparts. History is littered with examples of dead or dying MMOs that don't meaningfully constrain griefing. Griefers can't be trusted to curb their own excesses.
To avoid that fate, Dynamight must prevent widespread griefing on Syndesia by imposing systemic constraints. For these constraints to work, the consequences for captured/jailed/defeated griefers must be meaningful. In a game where you respawn after death or can log into an alt, the only meaningful consequences I can think of are (1) restricting player time and (2) prohibitive financial cost.
Yes, captured/jailed/defeated griefers might rage!quit as a result of these consequences... but the number of people who might rage!quit if griefers aren't hemmed in is much greater IMO.
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@Hathos said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
If neutral is better than evil in almost every way, what is the incentive to be evil? The one thing we can do over neutral is kill good players, but as mentioned, they drop the least amount of gear and will probably be the least encountered in the world. I feel that you have to have pros and cons for each, making them evil as possible. The way I see it, neutral and good have mostly pros where evil is now mostly cons.
Hi Hathos
We actually don't want to make the alignments "balanced" on Syndesia. Neutral is more rewarding than Good, because it's more dangerous, and we want most of the population be one of the two. Evil is the very hard path you take if you want to be a PK, which allows you to kill random merchants trading around the world for instance, or players gathering resources. You can make a huge profit there, but the punishment is indeed equally huge, because we want as few players as possible to take that route.@grofire said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
and i think its very good you guys added the changes, but i do not think its enough, its still feel like you will not make changes in your gear frequently, nor that you would not want to work hard for getting something that will help your gear.
We'll see, it should be quite different now. Come back in the next test and let us know how it feels!
@Logain said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
Interesting update, thank you, I'm looking forward to participating in the test.
Do you think that the 'interaction limitation between evil characters and cities' is really going to be a hindrance? The only 'annoying' part I could see in that is not accessing the tavern, the rest is easily mitigated through smurf accounts.As for adding neutral to the mix, it seems like this is basically altering the 'beginner protection timer' to people being able to determine when they want to engage in 'complete gameplay'. Is there still going to be a 'beginner protection timer' and what happens if you choose to go neutral before it ran out?
Can 'evil players' not simply 'camp the vicinity of busy city hubs' instead of PoIs to get players who're returning from the 'random events'?
It's actually mitigated by creating alts, you don't need separate accounts. The purpose of the change is not to exclude Evil players from crafting etc, but to prevent them from easily banking the loot they've just stolen and such
The Young status is still around and you can't change alignment if you're in it, you need to renounce it to go Neutral.
Evil players can camp city hubs, sure, but there are a ton of cities in the world, they are easy to guard, and so on. We may even expand the protection area a little to make it hard to just "camp" exits.
@Meziljin said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
I see no mention about cities and how they worked into spring alpha...
I don't think all accepted and are agree about the resources management (free access to all).
I hope there will be a tweak about this point
There will be, but we're not sure we'll have time to implement it before the next test
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Thanks for the update Prometheus !
I understand the delay but am disappointed if just because I believe that there will be less potential activity in the fall than the summer -I for one will have less time to test in the fall-.Interesting shift with alignment, but I am concerned that by restricting 'lawful' cities -but no benefit- in comparison to 'lawless' cities the vast majority of the cities will just default to 'lawless' as they have nothing to loose, just like how most the active guilds went 'evil' as there was no real penalty. There should be a disadvantage to making a city 'lawless' or advantage to making a city 'lawful' otherwise the server will go 'evil and lawless' for near the same reasons alpha was mostly 'evil' - it's just more convienent.
All the kudos for the pve expansion and move away from camped static locations and towards dynamic events.
I heartily approve of the linear scaling cost of higher quality equipment instead of the 'try your luck' approach.
The use of coins and not raw materials for the higher tiers is slightly confusing but I suppose that if you really want to make coins more valuable that is a way to do it...
It does have the potential of reducing player interactions (traveling, trading, harvesting, raiding) for specific resources only found in different areas of the map with players instead just gold coin farming zones near their 'base town'. Why go to the far end of the map to trade or hunt for, say, ectoplasm, when you can just use coins gotten near your home by the vale for better equipment?
I feel this substitution removes the excellent system of hunting for enchanting reagents all over for a much more boring, and isolate, money grind.I look forward to the alpha and seeing what works and what does not and hope there will be some more info on changes to the city mechanics and tech tree.
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The PVE / PVP dynamic is hard to get right. There are a lot of players drawn to the game who play solo, and enjoy the building/crafting PVE aspects of the game. In the last alpha a huge number of those players quit quickly as the game was unplayable due to PVP camps (also large groups).
A small penalty if a good player dies is fine, but you still have to go all the way back to your base which could be half way across the continent and start again. You lose all inventory.Being evil will still be the easier option, and lawless cities will still attract the “larger” PVP groups.
If you want to actually have people playing alpha longer than the first 2 weeks to test farming and other city things, you will have to keep them in-game so they don’t quit because of the griefers.
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Cool!!! Good news)
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Thats the info we were waiting for! Hope to see you seen in game even under NDA
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@Prometheus said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
@Hathos said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
If neutral is better than evil in almost every way, what is the incentive to be evil? The one thing we can do over neutral is kill good players, but as mentioned, they drop the least amount of gear and will probably be the least encountered in the world. I feel that you have to have pros and cons for each, making them evil as possible. The way I see it, neutral and good have mostly pros where evil is now mostly cons.
Hi Hathos
We actually don't want to make the alignments "balanced" on Syndesia. Neutral is more rewarding than Good, because it's more dangerous, and we want most of the population be one of the two. Evil is the very hard path you take if you want to be a PK, which allows you to kill random merchants trading around the world for instance, or players gathering resources. You can make a huge profit there, but the punishment is indeed equally huge, because we want as few players as possible to take that route.@grofire said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
and i think its very good you guys added the changes, but i do not think its enough, its still feel like you will not make changes in your gear frequently, nor that you would not want to work hard for getting something that will help your gear.
We'll see, it should be quite different now. Come back in the next test and let us know how it feels!
@Logain said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
Interesting update, thank you, I'm looking forward to participating in the test.
Do you think that the 'interaction limitation between evil characters and cities' is really going to be a hindrance? The only 'annoying' part I could see in that is not accessing the tavern, the rest is easily mitigated through smurf accounts.As for adding neutral to the mix, it seems like this is basically altering the 'beginner protection timer' to people being able to determine when they want to engage in 'complete gameplay'. Is there still going to be a 'beginner protection timer' and what happens if you choose to go neutral before it ran out?
Can 'evil players' not simply 'camp the vicinity of busy city hubs' instead of PoIs to get players who're returning from the 'random events'?
It's actually mitigated by creating alts, you don't need separate accounts. The purpose of the change is not to exclude Evil players from crafting etc, but to prevent them from easily banking the loot they've just stolen and such
The Young status is still around and you can't change alignment if you're in it, you need to renounce it to go Neutral.
Evil players can camp city hubs, sure, but there are a ton of cities in the world, they are easy to guard, and so on. We may even expand the protection area a little to make it hard to just "camp" exits.
@Meziljin said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
I see no mention about cities and how they worked into spring alpha...
I don't think all accepted and are agree about the resources management (free access to all).
I hope there will be a tweak about this point
There will be, but we're not sure we'll have time to implement it before the next test
There's a certain realistic aspect of this I like, but I think it needs a bit of work.
Being evil has its advantages and very huge disadvantages but the advantages sort of need to be sharpened a bitThe main advantage of being evil is of course, profit, and bypassing progression by taking it from others.
I think the evil alignment itself is actually really well made, but the systems that apply to everyone inherently make it harder to pull off.
This is what I think should be done to fix it, these changes apply to all alignments as inherently neutral actions (or only evil if done to non-evil):
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Add the ability to size up players and gauge their general state. This includes:
- general speed description relative to your own (Similar speed, slower, faster)
- general encumbrance (carrying a lot, travelling light), possibly even general traits of the items (something metallic clanks when he walks, or there is a glimmer from his pack)
- Highest physical stats (he's faster than he is strong, he looks like he can take a hit, etc)
this allows evil players (and bounty hunters, and simps who want to be a sidekick for easier progression) to pick their targets well, and incentivises not just killing random low wealth players and noobs (who have similar power levels due to the flatter, horizontal scaling of this game and pose a risk regardless)
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PVP is faster than PVE when doing progression. This one is easy and difficult to mess up, but killing a player, taking their loot, and using it for yourself should be faster than grinding mobs and mining metals to turn into armor. Just keep this balance in mind and avoid unrealistically long fights, favour quick and decisive fights as the default to balance around.
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PKs and possibly even duels (at half benefit given to both players) give knowledge points and progress towards new abilities faster than mobbing. Not special pvp only points, but rather it should copy some of the killed player's most recent gains (or perhaps looting bodies of their crafting drops such as raw leather gives knowledge points based on what enemy drops said items?) and remove the need to pve alongside them (since evil playstyle allows less opportunities to farm in peace as many good players can attack them with no downside, their main activities will be stalking lone neutral/good players and hiding). This one I think is one of the most important since it will make tartaros less miserable and more exciting for pvp only players
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Also please address out of combat map movement and mobility! People took blink as a bandaid, simply nerfing blink is a bad choice in my opinion since it lowers opportunities to gain terrain advantages in fights, and it just re-added the problem of ledges being annoying
One of my last posts a while back had some suggestions but in short: I'm of the opinion that ledges should slow down, not act as walls. Climbing should be an option.
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@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
Interesting shift with alignment, but I am concerned that by restricting 'lawful' cities -but no benefit- in comparison to 'lawless' cities the vast majority of the cities will just default to 'lawless' as they have nothing to loose
They have a ton to lose, Olive
You can be attacked in your own city while crafting, banking, building, or just chilling... and no one will use your marketplace. We think almost no one will go lawless really.@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
I feel this substitution removes the excellent system of hunting for enchanting reagents all over for a much more boring, and isolate, money grind.
I think you've misunderstood the post
The old enchanting system has just been renamed to imbuing, with the only difference being that you need to imbue a gem first, then socket it into an item, instead of adding properties to items directly The new system to increase the power level of equipment is a replacement of the old quality system.
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I thought the game was meant to be played by each player with their type of game play. The three worlds are supposed to cater to each type. So my question is are all these PvP changes going into effect for all worlds or just the worlds that have open PvP? A PvE player should be able to do anything on the beast world without having any involvement with PvP because that is the playstyle they chose. In contrast a PvP player should be able to do anything they want in PvP on the demon world without any penalty. The only balancing act should be the human world where you have both.
I see these worlds populated with the beast world completed overcrowded. The demon world will be deserted and the human world is where all the crying will come from.
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@Farlander said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
A PvE player should be able to do anything on the beast world without having any involvement with PvP because that is the playstyle they chose. In contrast a PvP player should be able to do anything they want in PvP on the demon world without any penalty.
Indeed
It's stated multiple times in the post that these changes are for Syndesia, we haven't planned anything new for Tartaros and Arboreus.
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@RedIO The fact is, they want to deincentivize Evil on Syndesia.
They don't want to give the 'Evil' aligned players easy ways to bypass the rest of the game by just being evil, like gaining KP from victims, or being able to assess your opponents before attacking. In fact, the last is completely the wrong way to go even if you wanted Evil to thrive, because the one check and balance that has been available for anti-griefing has always been the risk involved with attacking a seemingly helpless victim only to find that victim can take you out, or attacking what appears to be a fat merchant only to waste your time on someone with no lootable gear/inventory worth the trouble.
They definitely don't want to make it so that a PvPer can solely progress in the game through PvP play. PvP play is outside of the progression system, as that is their main incentivized system to explore as much of the world(s) as possible.
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@Prometheus said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
Interesting shift with alignment, but I am concerned that by restricting 'lawful' cities -but no benefit- in comparison to 'lawless' cities the vast majority of the cities will just default to 'lawless' as they have nothing to loose
They have a ton to lose, Olive
You can be attacked in your own city while crafting, banking, building, or just chilling... and no one will use your marketplace. We think almost no one will go lawless really.I hope you are right, however I just do not see guilds with high population -like blue army, spider, oranthull, etc...- to see in town pvp as a potential loss but instead as a perk. As a lawless town they can use their population and activity to keep the area hostile enough that any enemies approaching or entering the city are simply brining them free resources, instead of being raiders. If they were lawfull cities then they would have no recourse to stop a good alt of a evil player from accessing their city market or other buildings, however if they are a lawless city then they can more effectively restrict and control their town and resources. I hope you are right, but it does not mesh with what I saw during the spring alpha.
@OlivePit said in Roadmap To Fall Alpha 2021:
I feel this substitution removes the excellent system of hunting for enchanting reagents all over for a much more boring, and isolate, money grind.
I think you've misunderstood the post
The old enchanting system has just been renamed to imbuing, with the only difference being that you need to imbue a gem first, then socket it into an item, instead of adding properties to items directly The new system to increase the power level of equipment is a replacement of the old quality system.My mistake, allow me to clarify- The system for crafting and enchanting in the spring alpha both revolved around resource costs (enchanting reagents or equipment materials) and RNG to produce desired results. At tier 3 equipment crafting you had a 20%/80% chance of getting excellent / good equipment and at tier 4 you had a 60%/40%. this meant that at max crafting level a piece of excellent equipment that might cost 5 ingots if you were lucky, could easily cost 15 if you were not, or 8 on average as the approximate value of the piece. The proposed change calls crafting enchanting and implies that instead of this RNG system for getting excellent gear (now +4) you would instead, presumably, pay the base cost of the item, say 5 ingots, and then a nominal amount of gold coins to guarantee a excellent result. If true this shifts the valuable resource away from base materials and towards gold coins. This reduces the value of the work of miners and smelters while increasing the value of activities that generate gold coins -namely mob camping and pvp-. To get the different ores and quality fuel to alloy them a player had to travel or trade between distant parts of the map (a great feature and mechanic I feel) which was an adventure in of itself and added to the value of the resulting gear and did not negatively impact the game play of other players other than by creating potential scarcity for a few hours. If the costs had stayed resources but just lost the RNG nature then the result would be similar game play quality but with craft persons more confident in their costs and resulting product. Instead the proposed system replaces the variable RNG resource cost with a gold coin cost which shifts player activity away, some amount, away from harvesting, moving, and refining and towards mob farming and pvp for coins. An increase of incentive for pvp is something others can discuss, I am more concerned with the shift away from resource management and towards mob farming. Mobs have many values - KP, skills, imbuing reagents, crafting materials (like hides), and gold coins- I argue that the gold coin value of a mob is the least important of all these values and that this new system increases the value of the coins above that of many of the other values, which -I feel- is detrimental to the player experience. If a mob or camp is being farmed exclusively for their high gold coin drop ratio which is used to feed the new enchanting (old crafting) system, which I feel is very likely, then that makes the mob inaccessible to other players who desire to hunt the mob for the other values it provides -I am thinking of new players primarily, but imbuers (enchanters) and enchanters (craft persons) also- . Thus a system that only had to deal with competition from other miners now is forced to also compete with all the different people trying to farm mobs which greatly complicates and frustrates the once simple and satisfying process. It tells players that they cannot enjoy the game safe outside of the Mob madness.
Yes my examples use the ore and fuel resources and not the hide or cloth resources which did require some Mob hunting while ore and fuel did not. I did that for the contrast and because metal armor was by far the most prevalent and popular armor used because of its stats and -I contest- because it did not require hunting hides or silk which were more trouble and less reliable than mining because of the inclusion of the Mob competition and pvp elements. I never got attacked by players when mining ore but was attacked while getting Mob resources precisely because pvp players knew that hunting mob hunters was more beneficial than hunting miners. To hunt Mobs efficiently one needs good gear and collects valuable resources, all of which a pvp player can take. To gather ore and fuel you just need a hammer, horse, and axe; all of which are cheep and easily replaced. The only thing of value to steal is the ore which is in a wagon, slow to transport, cant be taken with you when you log off (disadvantage for pvp ers), and can be relatively easily recovered by catching up to the wagon thief.
You may think that by changing the scaling resource from the base resource to gold coins you will be making the game easier for craft persons but I contest that it will be making it harder due to increased pressures on an already very competitive Mob centric game system.
Please reconsider the ramifications of your proposed change and keep the cost of quality goods in resources, not coins.There was also a similar (not same, just similar) for enchanting, which is now imbuing, and I have no preconceptions about that and look forward to it.
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@OlivePit I'm ready to wait and see the results of the changes, but like OlivePit, I do see some changes in incentives based on this new system.
Also, for me, having an RNG factor involved in crafting was a plus. I like the gamey element of having a failure chance, or a chance to craft a better item than average. This is the dice-rolling mechanic in crafting that makes it as much a game as the RNG factor in combat. Even the best Fighter/Chef/Tailor/Thief/etc... has a chance once in awhile to shine above even their excellent abilities, and also a chance to flub up their project. I (like most people out there) have a range of skills in my real life, some I'm considered very very good at (Cooking, Computers, Sales, Game Design, Dance, Swimming) and some I'm more on the average side of (Martial Arts, Electrician, Camping, Truck Driving) and yet, there are times that I can make a truly inspired electronic fix on something (only an Average skill) and there are times when I burn dinner (when cooking is an advanced skill of mine) so I see real value in inclusion of an RNG system over a pay to be better gold-based system for item quality.
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@GamerSeuss
I could be happy with RNG -=IF=- there were some associated skill or stat or what not that you could improve to reduce poor outcomes- just like real life and other games- . However there is no such thing in the game and as such I applaud the shift away from RNG.
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Exciting news! Lots of interesting, respectful discussion w a range of opinion & constructive suggestions!! Dev participation & personal replies to ideas/concerns!!
Just wanted to point out how rare & beautiful this forum is in the world of gaming.
I'm looking forward to seeing how all these changes end up feeling once I'm in-game bc reading/parsing long descriptions of game mechanics makes my eyes roll back, glaze over, & fall out. There's a reason I mostly play m3s
One personal disappointment is that I was hopeful & excited about the rumor of Beastkin being part of this test - but I grok why working out the pvp & alignment stuff takes precedence.
Thanks for the update @Prometheus! Stay well & party on
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@OlivePit I think the actual intent was for Luck to have an affect on the RNG, and I agree, things like Luck and Skill are important to mitigate RNG results. A Master Chef shouldn't burn the soup every time she makes it, and a luckless buffoon shouldn't be making Perfect crafts every time they sit down to craft.
I think there needs to be both a Luck affect on skill usage as far as an RNG goes, AND a Talent branch dedicated to focusing your luck towards certain avenues...One branch has your Luck go towards Crafting, another towards Finding more materials, and a Third towards Combat.
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Nice update
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@GamerSeuss then there's no point in being evil then other than trolling people and RPing without giving progression alongside PvE. It should be that killing an actually experienced player has good results and attacking someone helpless means next to nothing.
Make it punishing and rewarding so people actually do it for a reason, instead of making it a function purely to frustrate PvE players for the small percentage of people who want to disadvantage themselves to annoy others. Or remove it entirely, I don't care honestly.
And PvP isn't an "easy way to bypass the rest of the game", it's literally the hardest part of almost every game by far
