Posts made by BECKFAST

Full disclaimer, I know that this game has it's core group who will defend the developers choices regardless, but as someone who wants the game to actually succeed, acceptance isn't a solution.

Now, I'm someone who has stuck with this game for a very long time, and I've noticed the same core issues recited by new (now former) players. The woes of these players cannot simply be chalked up as "But that's the developers view", or "I like it, therefore it's fine", because ignoring legitimate complaints will undoubtedly lead to a game with higher attrition than onboarding. Though most games can function with a minimal, dedicated player base, this game, with it's "player driven economy", cannot be feasible without a growing community and the changes driven by them.

The following are common complaints that I have read:

1. The time it takes to move past primitive gear, and the lack of a "how" has caused many players to leave. There is simply too much BS in the way of producing higher tiered gear than primitive when you don't know what the hell is going on, and the tedium to make work stations is a turn off.

Potential solution: allow access to all crafting stations in starter cities, but maintain the gold cost. Remove the gold cost when crafting in your own plot, or untaxed city. Remove the refining time for leather, wood, metal, etc.

1. The heavy material tedium. Is harvesting heavy materials supposed to be a full time job? There is very little incentive other than to make crafting stations, or level up your crafting (which does next to nothing), and the system itself just seems tedious and unenjoyable. This GAME should not feel like a full time job, with all it's monotony and BS.

Potential solution: remove heavy materials and replace them with normal materials which fit into your inventory space. This would make crafting, building, collecting in general, MUCH more enjoyable and less time consuming, making time for other more entertaining elements of the game.

1. PVE combat. With the latest update, PVE combat has become more prohibited to solo players. The solution of "just play with others" is not attractive to many players, who would rather play a different game entirely than be forced to work with others.

Potential solution: Decreases in either mob health, damage, or both, to produce a more entertaining game for solo players. Maintain the group requirement through difficulty for legendary creatures, pvp forts, sieges, and maybe future "raid" type instances.

1. PVP. The real issue with an abundance of red players is the lack of every other player to prevent this, thus bored players who have completed everything turn against players who have not.

Potential solution: listen to players grievances and try to make a game which will attract more than a niche audience. More blue/neutral players, or even reds from different groups, will help reduce the amount of suffering by PVE players.

1. Introduce AI merchants to sell to and buy from, ensuring a base cost of goods and a means of generating income from other sources, or sinking gold into, let's say, an "extract vendor", who sells extracts at a relatively high cost. I know this one is a potential solution to an unlisted problem, but most successful RPGs have similar elements, and I want this game to be successful.

Potential solution: read above.

1. Potions. Potions seem to be a bit off... they are relatively expensive and tedious to produce, and don't last that long.

Potential solution: make the potion effects permanent until the player enters a downed state. Increase the cost or reduce the amount of potions created to compensate. This may also dissuade red players, as they stand to lose more without extra gain.

I hope the devs give these an actual read through, as I thoroughly believe these changes would make the game more palatable for newer players, and would not effect the current player base much at all.

TL;DR

More players = better economy and game atmosphere. Some ideas for the game which are too niche should be done away with in favor or increasing the player count.

Cheers,

Beckfast

The devs need to be more flexible with community concerns, this being a prime example. +1 for hot-bar consumable slots.

@Roccandil That would also be a valid solution, but having multiple ways to solve that overflow would be ideal. Keep in mind that it isn't just crafted items, but materials which may need to get culled eventually, thus having both systems in play would be amazing!

Crafting hundreds of the previous tier item to prevent "exp waste" creates unnecessary grind.

Grinding to improve your craftsmanship on items is fine; no tradesman has ever created a masterpiece on their first attempt. Solve the issue of "item overflow" with NPCs (god forbid we add those) who buy your stuff for a base price and sell various goods, therefore setting market minimums/maximums. The current system only works with a very large and active player base, or with horribly slow progression and crafting times; take away exp from crafting and I can assure you that many players will lose purpose.

Why not introduce "legendary weapons" whose recipes only drop from legends, or certain dungeon type events? Instead of recipes for everything else, force players to max out the knowledge of certain mobs to learn the recipe. Dedicated crafter now has incentive to move from their crafting hole to explore the rest of the game.

Also introduce more crafting stations in starter towns, until players are comfortable migrating elsewhere/have a better understanding of how things work. Down side to this is that smelting, tanning, other processing times, etc. would have to be nearly instant to accommodate this, like Rune Scape, making the ore regeneration time the gating process.

No matter what they do, issues will arise... Also, nothing is truly set in stone, so why not find the best possible solution for as many people as possible and make this game successful.

Or change the smelting mechanics/tanning mechanics to "instant", to reduce tedium and promote gameplay that isn't make a billion smelters and wait simulator. Changing smelters & tanning tubs to "crafting stations" as opposed to what they are now would also solve the problem of citizen trust-worthiness and make crafting more tolerable (at least for me). Like, I really don't understand the need to be unique in this sense, when tried-and-true methods already exist whilst being incredibly less painful by lacking "heavy" materials which need to be picked up and loaded onto a bloody cart.

If gear ends up proliferating, reduce the durability of lower quality stuff and/or add major durability loss upon being downed by ANYTHING. Excellent gear (enchanted stuff) would be limited by reagents as is.

Activity logs are obviously needed for city managers, so I hope they implement this ASAP.

Another possibly crazy idea: Remove farming/food requirements for cities all together, replace growth with gold which is now supplied by taxes. Along the line of food, I'd be happy if they removed food & rest requirements altogether, as this game doesn't feel like survival mechanics suit it very well, and appear very cumbersome at best.

You spend hours farming for materials to build crafting stations and a billion smelters then have to pay to use your own crafting stations. Nice.

PS. make smelters more efficient, because right now those relying on metal are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to producing equipment/mastering it.

Exactly this ^

@TheBodo The fact that you have taken so much effort really shows your devotion to this game, and a desire to see it better... I'm surprised that people would even go ahead and outright shut your ideas down as if they know what the game ought to be, as that level of thinking shows a cult-like "my views are right and cannot be wrong" type of approach.

You have a lot of good points in your post, and I hope the devs keep track of both the blessings and criticisms of their game.

@spoletta I completely agree. I am not proposing such a stupid level of power change from start and finish, but a modest amount that leads to player continuation. I don't understand why people always bring strawman arguments into these sorts of things... Hell, too much water would kill you too.

@GamerSeuss Success or failure, time will tell if the system works. I am of the opinion that players need personal progression goals as well as personal feats, and I firmly believe that is the case in RPGS/life in general.

Time will tell.

@GamerSeuss It's proven to be a pretty general rule throughout human existence: If there is nothing to move forward to that benefits you directly, why bother? Having a certain amount of vertical progression (namely in crafting, as I believe combat should largely be horizontal + knowledge) would help give players an incentive to keep playing whilst providing newer players opportunities with their crafted goods.

Something too man people don't understand: Complete shakeups of previously proven systems are NOT always good, and often turn out horribly.

@GamerSeuss

1- While having the majority of the game be horizontal in nature, an ideal is balance is found with vertical progression. It allows for significant player diffusion in terms of goals/ability that otherwise wouldn't occur due to the homogenous, pure horizontal progression.

Example: Players who make swords create better swords after a long time of "mastering" the craft. Players who make Staffs master their craft... Make the progression for each one very lengthy to incentivize player specialization, and the economy would become even more trade centered.

2- What are you responding to? I numbered my responses by OPs suggestions; you are confusing me. I was only mentioning carts being a silly system as is, and a potential change to resource gathering as a change.

3- You should be able to sell property, developed and undeveloped. Because the precious trade economy would enable it and flourish because of it. See real estate IRL for examples. Hell, maybe increase the amount of plots that can be owned to 2, to allow flipping of properties should players want to.

4- Just because something is planned doesn't mean it fits well with the game. Gameplay can be tweaked to make the game more enjoyable, for us, and new players too. Games only succeed if the player base is large enough, or wealthy enough.

I can add/remove coal. but cannot remove the ingot from the smelter. The smelters are placed up against the boundary of my zone claim, facing the boundary.

2 - Yes, but a complete re-tooling should be necessary... I'd settle with a "knowledge" system for acquiring skills, but a general experience system for "leveling up" with perks and such. A separate crafting level would be nifty too!

3 - Agreed. Certain technologies/infrastructure should only be available to cities, no doubt there, but possibly change the way resource gathering works? I would suggest doing away with this cart nonsense... I get that it is "immersive", but it very much hinders what could be done with the mechanics.

Example: players may come across mining nodes and hold that metal in their own inventories, smelt it at their own property, and forge it at a city blacksmith.

Secondly here, research should be done on a personal level, not on a city level. Pushing that level of dependency scares away new players/solo players.

4 - This is obviously a yes.

5 - Yep. Also remove the stupid carting system... It feels very tedious; change carts to allow the carrying of more material instead (massively increased weight capacity).

Advanced weapons need a durability buff for sure. Just try to keep in mind that this is still and alpha, and is very subject to change.

Many quality of life improvements should be implemented, to facilitate a smoother, more enjoyable experience, and for those who quite literally have (or have yet to have) medical issues regarding the lack of QoL. Auto run for a long journey (even allow auto transit via roads by selecting a point on the map), as enemies and players will make that a hassle if you are not paying attention.

WASD, or gamepad control would be a welcome sight as well

Agreed. Also, the "increased sword and axe damage" talent doesn't work with great swords either. Game needs quite a bit of fixing, so it's a good thing this is still alpha.

I would love to see an increase in armor reduction per swing as well, as the current (-5 armor per swing) is a lot weak.

One, Concussive Strike dot should not be a thing. or if anything should only stack up to 3.

Yes

Two, the dot should be unique. If 2 people use concussive Strike on one target. the target does not take infinite amounts of damage from the dot. it should just be ticked from the single debuff. all hits add to that single debuff for a max of 3 ticks.
Tick meaning you take the damage each tick. 1 sec per tick for up to 3 secs.

Yes

Three, Concussive Strike should not be able to critical.

Yes

Four, Lower the pure damage. Are tanks meant to be the Pure damage class? with this single skill is currently makes them be it.

Or change it entirely. Remove the DoT, increase the time that the debuff lasts, and set it so that when a player has 3 (or more) stacks of it on them, they are stunned (or slowed/confused/idk think of a debuff that goes with concussions) for 'xStrength' seconds, and take pure damage based off of the opponents max health (around 10% or something, and capped for monsters of course). Hell, only allow the use of the ability with heavy armor, and blunt weapons. The swap to added utility from stupid amounts of damage would be sufficient as is, in my opinion

@boogis I don't feel like getting into an argument, but it doesn't spoil the identity if people have to travel across the entire map to farm random resource nodes which are contested by the entire server. If anything, it promotes added PvP for contest over these nodes, and exploration to find them. I see where you're coming from, but there is no reason to stick to a single method of finding resources, or relying on trade. Allowing the game to become binary ruins much of this games point, and if anything I stated that cities would still be the primary method of gaining resources, as they would have more, and faster spawning nodes.

@boogis Because a small amount of resource nodes wouldn't be able to support any level of manufacturing. Your idea would be nifty as well, so I don't see why we can't have both.