When red players are killed, they should not be allowed to suicide for around 10 seconds or so, or maybe they should not be allowed to suicide at all?
This is because it's counter intuitive, where they can workaround getting jailed by just committing suicide.
Sheriffs would then become essentially useless.
Hey all,
With the recent changes to the city, each city now has a residential area in which nothing changes to the residents even when a city changes hands.
Take note that this means that when a new guild takes over an established city, the new guild may not have enough residential spots to take, and will be forced to settle elsewhere ( unless they choose to reduce their already small city size by building new housing plots, which could involve removing existing city buildings already upgraded by the previous owners ).
What this means is that essentially a new guild would be owning a city where their previous owners have a base of operations much closer to the city than they do, which is pretty weird, and not optimal at all for a game where travel time matters.
So we have two problems here that we need to address :
i) Guilds that take over a city have no place in the city to stay
ii) We don't want to have a system that forces all residents to lose everything they have in their residential plot every time a city gets taken over, this will be a huge loss to players, and is not conducive at all.
This is where our proposal system comes in, to address both of these problems.
Basically whenever a city gets taken over, the new governor can choose selected residents to evict at a cost. The residents chosen have to move out, and when they are evicted out, they will get a "refugee" status.
The Eviction System :
Governors need to pay a cost for every resident they want to evict. The cost can be higher the more resources spent to build up the plot of land that the governor is evicting the resident from. This allows new guildies to move in - but at a cost, but due to the high cost, they will not choose to evict random neutral players that were not part of the conflict, they would most likely only choose to evict the enemy guild members that they took the city from.
Governor can then have an approval system on who gets to live in the evicted plots, that last for a certain amount of time, if nobody new comes to live in the plot, than anybody can live there, even the evicted person. ( Logically if you evict someone out of the plot, it would be for a guild member to take it, if your guild members or friends dont come and apply to live there, then anyone can live there, even the previously evicted person. )
This then solves both the problems where, the conquerors have no place to live in, and also random and casual players not part of the conflict will most likely not be evicted and can continue living in the residential area as usual.
This would of course increase the cost of sieging, but that's fine, there should always be a cost to sieging anyway.
The Refugee System :
Players who get evicted out of their plots get a "refugee" status. The refugee status means that they cannot be attacked or attack other players. This means no players can cast spells/skills/attack them, and they cannot cast skills/spells/attack anyone else.
If a player wants to remove their refugee status, they can either manually choose to do so, or wait for the refugee timer status to run out.
The refugee system is there to protect players who get evicted. We don't want to run into a situation where an evicted person gets paid their compensation, and grabs all their items to move, only to get ganked by the guild who paid them in the first place.
And there you have it folks, many thanks to @spoletta and @LonelyCookie for coming up with the solution together.
TL;DR
When a guild conquers a city, it can evict existing residents for a price, evicted residents have a "refugee immunity" status for a time period to be protected so that they can move their stuff.
@GamerSeuss said in The Eviction/Refugee system ( Residential area solution for city takeovers ):
Yes, there is a good chance that many of the Residential spots will be taken up by Guildies of the first guild running the town, and their Allies, but several spots will also be taken by Solo'ists looking for a plot of their own, free from the fallout of Sieges. They are still affected, because when the new 'Owners' of a City come in, they may end up tearing down the one crafting station you mainly used the town for, necessitating you taking your goods further afield to get them finished. That's the breaks, you take that bad with the good of not having to lose your house when a Siege is decided. The Governors don't control the Residential district, period. They get a passive tax on building/upgrading, and that's it. They can't say who gets to stay or go, that was made quite clear by the Devs, and thus no amount of money should change that. The city is owned by the Governor and his Guild, the Residential plots are not, so if there aren't enough plots for a new Guild who takes over, they get to decide what City buildings stay and which ones must go to make room for residences.
The city area is much smaller now, so wanting to move a bunch of your guildies and allies in is going to severely weaken your city's productiveness.
The current system is not going to appease to new players 1-2 years after Fractured is release. A potential new guild would look at the systems in the game, realize they cant move in to a city which is already well established, and simply choose to move on to a different game where they can actually move in to a city that they essentially take over.
The Fractured system right now is just plain weird. You can take over a city, but you may not necessarily be able to live there. That line itself has so many things wrong with it, I'm really not sure how people seem to be okay with that.
A good portion of Fractured's gameplay loop is going to be about cities. Sieges are a big part of that. Preventing people from being able to live in the cities they take over is a huge turn off to the whole mechanic. People will not want to go through such a hassle to take over a city if they cant even live in the city they've taken over without destroying your cities productivity and efficiency, while having the previous city owners all live in comfort in your city's residence. It just does not make sense period.
The system that I propose is basically the fine line that balances solo play and group play. Solo players wont be affected by city take overs still because it's costly to remove neutral players out of your residence ( you also want solo players to be in your residence to be able to rank up ), but you are able to evict enemy players from your city so that you can move in. This system is basically the "between" that @Logain mentioned.
But yes, like what @LonelyCookie mentioned, this system is hard to test, the scenarios that I describe would only come about after cities are fully developed and lived in after all.
Remove jail time. You should never "punish" people by disallowing them from playing the game.
Rather force people to pay. Balance the jail system by the bounty payments.
When people get jailed, they either :
i) Payout their bail by themselves
ii) Wait for friend to pay the bail
iii) Get out of jail and collect money to pay the bail. When they choose the 3rd option, they basically have an unremovable "Prisoner" or "Debtor" status where they cannot engage in any sorts of pvp until they collect enough money to pay their bail. Similar to young player status
Reproduction scenario :
Memorized a talent preset with blademaster and relentless.
Equip long sword
As a control, I also tested it by equipping primimitve handaxe.
There are no arctic wolves around the arctic wolf legend, which would be contradicting the statement whereby legend summon materials can be found nearby the altar.
@Farlander The point is to also make it costly to evict people. A casual player who owns a residential plot in a city is most likely not going to get evicted because the conquering guild is already going to pay a large amount of money to evict the previous guild members who stay in the city.
Also, evicting cost gets more expensive the more stuff you have built on your plot, so if the casual player has a lot of stuff on his plot, the cost will just not be worth it.
@GamerSeuss In your example, then yes, some of the solo's will get evicted to make space for the new city's guild members, but I think in certain cases like the example you put out, this just cannot be avoided to maintain a functional system.
A functional system is one where in residential plots change hands depending on who owns the city, and not a static system where residential plots are based on first come first serve.
Which system do you think promotes a better health of the game? A game where residential plots are not static - where new players have a chance to fight for spots ( even casual players who want to own a residential plot can then join a guild and then work together to fight for plots in an existing city ) And most importantly - evicted players get a safe period to safely remove their stuff so none of their items get lost.
Or a static system where once a plot gets claimed, it's claimed forever. No new players have a chance to fight for it, city takeovers dont get a chance to fight for it, nobody can fight over plots, leading well established cities to hold it's dominance forever and putting off any new players from trying to join in the gameplay loop.
Think about all the emergent gameplay systems that can arise from a healthy eviction system, versus how much restrictions are created due to a static system like the one currently.
The eviction system is not a deterrent to the solo'ist playstyle. It is only promoting the solo-ist to be more inclusive in it's gameplay loop systems. We cannot exclude anyone who lives in the residential area from entering the political system of a city take over because the residential area is so tightly coupled into the fight for the city.
And sure, in your scenario solo's have to move, but they are paid compensation, and they can move safely. In short, they lose little. But a scenario where a guild cannot move in to the residential area of their city will hurt the guild a lot more than a solo needing to leave the city to settle elsewhere safely and with little to no loss.
@GamerSeuss said in The Eviction/Refugee system ( Residential area solution for city takeovers ):
But later game, the Solo'ist, who fought to earn enough to get a plot early and claimed a spot, now may not have any spots available as a solo'ist and must join a Guild in order to own property again as all solo plots are taken. This is completely unacceptable. Nothing should force a solo'ist into joining a guild. Late game joiners may not get any plots at all, and that's true of Guild members as well as solo'ists, which only encourages the Devs to create new continents and new Residential/City areas late game during expansions periodically, which IS a good growth system. The game starts with 3 planets and 3 continents per planet, and a fixed number of cities per continent, but as new releases come out, that can be expanded upon. 'Lost Continents' and even Underground Cities can be discovered and claimed.
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree with this. Early players already get loads of advantage with city, equipment, skills, etc etc. They definitely do not need a free permanent spot that can never be taken as well, this makes large guilds who come first have well established cities that people have almost 0 incentives to take over.
Creating 10-20 homes in your city by destroying existing buildings is not going to be feasible anyhow, so the argument to make homes in the buildable area of your city is a pretty bad one. Why play a game which has you taking over a city only to need to massively lose it's efficiency and productivity to have an even standing with people you've already beaten who get to freely live near your city and continue to harass you with ease, while you have to sacrifice your city buildings to be able to live there. Makes zero gameplay sense. This system is a huge detriment to the city siege gameplay loop and has to change, hence my suggestion.
@StormBug said in The Eviction/Refugee system ( Residential area solution for city takeovers ):
Or the conquering guild could bribe people to leave. Give me enough money and a day to transport goods and I would likely relocate.
This is precisely the system I am advocating for, where when a city gets taken over, the new city owners have a period in which they can evict players from the residential area, but at a cost - you would need to pay to evict people, and the payment value depends on how much well built the plot of land is.
The evicted person would then become a refugee, where he has a safe status and can't be attacked or killed for a time period so that he/she can safely move.
I think we all know that there has been controversies regarding the AMA that just happened.
I'm gonna skip voicing out my frustrations here and instead give some pointers on what needs to change :
AMA's are time limited segments which means that there will be limited number of questions being asked. This should already be declared upfront - how many questions we have time for - this sets expectations from the community.
The second point is about deciding the questions being asked. We normally post our questions on the discord channel, instead of CM's choosing, let the community decide instead - let the top voted questions by the community be asked. This helps with transparency and nobody would have any issues with the questions being asked if there was ironclad proof that it was what the community wanted to hear answered about the most.
TL;DR
i) Let us know number of questions upfront
ii) Let community vote on which questions to be asked.
Bonus - It would be nice if we can have an actual active player have discussions with the developers during the AMA, someone like Spoletta for example. This is a win win situation - CM's who dont want to be there dont have to be there, and people who actually want to hear more meaningful discussions with the devs can hear them.
Let me preface this by saying that a lot of the complaints about this system is due to the fact that this is the only pvp system out right now when in fact it should be the least used pvp system in Syndesia.
I envision that Guild Wars and Sieges would be something that people use for pvp much more than the criminal system.
Now let's deep dive into the problem. We have both evil-aligned and good-aligned players complaining about the system. On one hand it's too punishing, and on the other, it's not punishing enough.
So who is right? The answer: both.
Let's first talk about why the criminal system is too punishing. I think it's obvious that people who have 0 karma or a really low amount of negative karma shouldn't be punished too harshly, the minimum gold shouldn't be 2k, it should definitely be lower since some people have negative karma just from knocking down players without even executing them.
But while that's a definite point to fix, it's not the main crux of the issue. The issue is that we're locking people out of the game. We should never lock people out of the game for playing a certain playstyle. You only lock people out of the game when they exploit/cheat. This is basically lumping the ganking/criminal playstyle as the same as cheaters/exploiters, which is a huge no no.
Like I mentioned in previous posts, just make them farm the gold if they cant pay, this way, they can still enjoy other content while essentially being locked out of all forms of PvP content until they pay their bail. Mind you, they can already do this with the current system, we're just now making it so that they have the option to do PvE content for gold if they don't have enough to pay their current bail, instead of just locking them out so that they'd play on their alts, or quit playing the game, till the bail time is over. This way we can also easily balance how strict the system is based on the bounty price. Obviously, when inflation happens and people start to hold more gold, the bounty system's prices should be adjusted accordingly.
So that solves the "too punishing" side of things. Now let's discuss why it's not "punishing enough". I think here @LonelyCookie raised a point, whereby the system only happens when a criminal is caught after the deed. There is nothing being done for the victim. This is why good-aligned players want a stricter system, because they feel like the only way they are protected is if the criminal system has an insane punishment system. This shouldn't actually be the case.
The problem right now relies on the bounty hunter system. We call it a bounty hunter system, but people who sign up for bounty hunters are actually called sheriffs. Sheriffs are not the same as bounty hunters. One is basically hunting criminals for personal gain, while the other is actually there to protect those who need protection. What good aligned players need is a protection system. So we don't need bounty hunters, we really just need sheriffs.
Basically what we need is a new tab on Socials that allow players to find Sheriffs to protect them when they are farming. Basically a tab that lists active Sheriffs who are online, and players can message Sheriffs asking for protection in return for a percentage of the loot they make for example.
This is a win-win situation for all. Players now get protection. Sheriffs and Criminals both get to PvP and have things more exciting.
Tl;DR : Criminal system is both too punishing and not giving enough protection. Solutions :
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 ).
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.
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 also believe that all residential plots near the cities should be reserved to citizens only, and can be lost when losing a city siege, this will also help to resolve the residential abuse situation @Alexian mentioned.
Like what Alex mentioned, trade is definitely a huge problem, one way is definitely to give essential tech's free to a city, like jail, bank, shrine and marketplace, for example, banks and shrine is free when founding a hamlet, jail is free when it becomes a village and marketplace becomes free when it becomes a town. Another issue with trade was that resources now are not scarce, but I think this could be the result of low population. In a higher populated server, I'm guessing resources will definitely be more scarce, which would promote trade ( along with the scarcity change Alex is promoting ).
TL;DR -
i) Playtime jail is bad - force players to farm with Young player status ( or similar ), no cap to negative karma, increase bail prices
ii) Adjust all gold sinks in game to account inflation rates
iii) Criminals should be able to be bounty hunters too, 50% of bail gold should be a sink ( 25% to city, 25% to bounty hunter )
iv) Residential plots near city should be reserved to citizens and can be lost during siege
v) Lack of trade could be due to resources not being scarce due to underpopulation in game
vi) Banks and shrine should be free when founding a hamlet, jail is free when it becomes a village and marketplace becomes free when it becomes a town
There are two major issues with the current gear progression and economy. I'll go through them individually.
Firstly, recipes.
Recipes do nothing for the game but gives an additional time sink that in time will be useless anyway.
This means recipe is basically useful for the first couple of months before it gets completely deprecated. All it does it to lengthen the time you can first craft a stronger armor/weapon, and later on it becomes a completely redundant item.
Some suggested changes to the system is to :
i) Dramatically increase recipe drop rates, and make specific monsters drop specific recipes. Recipes can then be limited use, and there will be a market for them.
ii) Remove recipes completely and replace them with a different system, or completely negate the use of any pre-requisite besides town tech to craft equipment
The second issue is the drop rate of specific reagents and items.
The drop rate for some of these rarer reagents and materials are way too low. Some examples are like soul shard, force stones, hardened skin, etc etc.
To have a thriving economy, we need to change from taking a really long time to get an equipment that can last a really long time, to taking a moderate amount of time to get an equipment that does not last as long. We will probably need a few balance passes to make this perfect, but right now it's skewed way too much to the opposite way of being so rare to get equipment that it doesnt make sense to lose them at all.
When we make equipment relatively easier to get, it will also make more sense when we have durability punishments in PvP. ( Which imo, we should ).
Now I'd like to discuss about some gear progression that was great but was removed. Primarily, the socketing system and the upgrading system. These two systems promoted the use of materials and gold, and were pretty liked by most players. I think these two systems should have been kept, it would be great if we can have both quality AND upgraded gear, like +1, +2, +3, and depending on how much you upgraded your equipment, you can enchant it with additional properties.
The upgrading can also come with failures which might hurt the durability of the equipment you're upgrading, or make it be destroyed entirely, which could add more gear sinks that the game desperately needs.
TL;DR :
i) Recipes need to be changed
ii) Rare reagents/materials need to drop more often
iii) Bring back socketing and upgrading gear, to +1, +2, +3, etc.
Right now the neutral alignment feels almost like an additional 2 button chore to go through when you're doing legends.
As legends are only announced when they're dead, there is almost zero conflict surrounding them, as any party who isn't lazy will just rotate them.
Neutrals should be the "primary" and "end game" alignment in Syndesia. Due to the fact that we now only have inventory drops, open world pvp between Neutrals should be much more encouraged, and areas of interest should be more telling.
The problem right now is that the map is really large, ( which is a good thing ), but to drive conflict and engaging content, there needs to be pvp hotspots or dynamic contested events.
One such current content that is there right now is the legends. The problem is that because legends are only announced when dead, this prevents there from being engaging PvPvE content surrounding them. This needs to change.
Legends should always be announced when they are summoned. The 10 minutes or so where it takes for them to appear gives time for other groups to marshal and fight around a summoned legend. This ensures that people know where to go to find content and fights. ( Right now it always feels like we're just roaming an empty world.)
Another point I'd like to bring up is resources. There is 100% going to be a problem in all worlds where resource nodes are going to be camped. In Syndesia where things are political, we should be able to fight over these resources. Thus, when you try to gather resources out of your territory, you should be flagged neutral.
"Your" territory is defined as the territory you have residency in. This encourages people to actually become residents in Fractured, which to be honest should be one of the first things people try to do.
Residency is incredibly important because it starts to make players get invested in the land and territory that they reside in. It also makes choosing a territory much more meaningful as well.
My final point would be about Guild Wars. There definitely needs to be a system where guilds can declare war against another, as this goes hand in hand with the political system and political war that Syndesia supposedly should have. Guild wars should enable players from opposing guilds to fight each other in the open world regardless of what flag they have.
Of course, to prevent the guild war system from being abused, we need to have clear start/end to the wars. We can use a similar system to the current one, where the guild which has the highest ratings, in the war would be declared the winner after an X amount of days. Guilds can also only have one war at a time, and after they have finished a war, they cannot declare or be declared against for X amount of days as well.
TL;DR :
i) Legends should be announced when summoned, not when dead
ii) You should need to flag neutral when gathering resources outside of the territory you own a residence in
iii) There needs to be a system where we can declare wars against guilds and fight in the open world
I think it's a good idea, instead of having recipes as an additional resource needed to be farmed for crafting, we can have it "unlocked" instead when a person reaches a certain mastery in crafting an equipment.
For example, only after getting Tier 4 mastery in swords, can you craft the higher tiered swords, or something similar. That way there really will be crafting specializations as it is a grind for each equipment piece.
In this case, we dont need recipes at all.
Having Neutrals get extra loot chance is not "taking away" anything from blue players. It's just incentivizing the neutral playstyle which is sorely needed right now.
Even New World which we all know seems to hate open world pvp has pvp flagged players getting a higher loot chance.
I dont think naked mage should be a thing at all.
It's going to be a pain to balance the fact that you can have a class which barely needs any equipment to do a good amount of damage.
I'm with Spoletta on this one - where I believe unarmed as well should have a "weapon" which can be cloth wraps or gloves or something similar.
It makes little sense where we have some classes need to farm so much more materials and reagents while another doesn't need to at all - and when we balance it in it's viability, then late game these classes which don't need as much materials would be useless if we balance them to be less viable then the classes which need equipment and farmed materials.
Let's first talk about mage abilities.
One thing to note about melee abilities is that their skills are affected by the weapon the character is using. Abilities are usually normal damage ( that is affected by weapon ) + Damage modifier multiplied by strength.
However, for mage abilities, the spell damages are usually just Damage modifier multiplied by int. This causes mages abilities to have less damage, and also have their abilities completely ignored by weapon upgrades. It's definitely weird when you have a fire staff doing same skill damage as primitive staff, which should not be the case.
The second thing we need to talk about is mage equipment. For light armor, it is insanely easy to create, there is zero processing time compared to medium armor that needs to have 16 hours for processing hides, and metal which needs 4 hours to process ingots. Light armor processing is instant. This also needs to be changed.
Tl;DR
i) Mage abilities need to take into account the weapon damage
ii) Mage equipment needs to have a longer processing time
I agree that we do need cc immunity.
Especially when people can chain lock you with different kind of ccs as well. Like stun -> Silence -> Confuse -> Stun ....
Basically make's the combat feel not engaging at all