Concerns with Selective Multiplayer

Not sure how optimizing game balance in a reasonable, non-gamebreaking way will lead to a lower population.

Unless by ''all this continuing'' you're talking about pointless doomsaying threads like this not being deleted, in which case I agree.

I think that allowing these types of threads just makes people who came here happy that RG is even making another game and wanting to support it any way they can disparaged and irate, especially when it leads to them getting marks against their account for defending themselves against multiple players here which are allowed to attack them simply for being positive and reasonable. In fact I'm a great example of that.

 

Oh I am happy that RG is doing a new game but I was happy with the game he presented during the Kickstarter campaign and not with the game it has become.
There was no focus on MMO originally and this has changed. What we have now is reducing the whole original concept and the selective multiplayer approach to absurdity. Not to speak of the "single player narrative" and the offline mode...

 

When the 40% bonus for being party was added in, I didn't see any significant outcry. People still go solo in FOO and SPO anyway. So why going on need rage mode over 25% bonus now?

Remember people still either have to wait for their turn to kill mobs or end up spending time in skirmishes with competitors in MPO, so 25% bonus of 0 xp gain is still 0 xp gain.

 

It's more of a basic issue that bugs me. It's all this shoving into the MMO-mode that is happening right now. It's as if this is THE mode SotA has to be played in. It's like all of the other modes become just afterthoughts are no longer important. Everyting revolves around the MMO-part. The quests have do be done in a way that the MMO-part doesn't suffer, the sieges, the consequences... It's all MMO-centric. Now people also get a bonus for playing on online mode... This game was supposed to be a Selective Multiplayer game and not a MMO first and foremost...

 

I just feel like @Chris tried very hard to ensure that people understood that this is an experimental change being added at 25% for testing purposes and likely will end up being 10%, which isn't enough of a boost compared to staying in SPO with top of the line gear you can't lose to make it worthwhile, and in return someone practically calls him an idiot who doesn't even remember what game he's designing. (you know, before the thread title was changed)

It's terrible and needs to stop. There really needs to be a rule against doomsaying constantly in a game that isn't even finished yet because this forum is 75% of the advertising they're doing right now.

 

They need to balance them out. The other two modes already guarantee no competition if anything they already have 400-500% resources, xp, and gold (including selling loots) compare to being in MPO with 3-4 people in the same zone. So this 25% wouldn't make Ultimate salvation path that everyone must switch to MPO.

If people want to min/max even after these changes, FPO in party at control points will still be better overall.

 

Very early in development, I wrote that I don't believe you can have one without sacrificing the other.

 

Do you mean online modes since whatever you buy from the store will persist on all of them?

 

But it doesn't seem like "balance" to me if everything is just in favor of the MMO-part. We can't have real, visible and lasting consequences because of the MMO-part, we can't have events like thieves running out of shops, dragons attacking towns or murders happening in streets because of the MMO-part, we can't have unique cities with their own style and "personality" because of the MMO/housing-part, we cannot have real sieges because of the MMO/housing-part... All of this seems not very balanced but in favor of the MMO-part.
And this was not what the Kickstarter made us believe. Back then everything looked very different...

 

*shrug* Not sure how MPO is ruining SPO by adding 25% exp though. I guess you concede that part and are fishing for some other way to feel right since you are no longer discussing the issue in the original post.

 

It is ruining the switch between modes. As I said just because sometimes I want to play alone or with friends I am punished for this by getting less EXP while those who are constantly playing in OPO get more. Just because I chose to play in another mode for some time gives me a penalty. For me this says: Do not play in SPO or FPO!

 

Currently the modes are not balanced. Try adventuring in Serpent's Spine in multiplayer, then try again in single player online. Usually you should be able to get double the XP in single player online. An XP bonus to those who play in multiplayer goes a small way towards redressing that imbalance.

(BTW I always use single player online in Serpent's Spine, so I am not arguing from self interest.)

 

I wonder what is the big deal here? Why cannot be there an incentive for playing in mutliplayer and/or pvp-mode? So what? I don't like pvp for my own reasons and still don't see anything bad about this xp-bonus. I will not go pvp just because of that bonus and it will not hurt me a bit. So why making a fuss about it?

 

No. You aren't punished.
The others are rewarded. Wording is important here. Nothing is taken away from you.

 

But they didn't do something great to get this reward. They are just playing in a different mode. So this mode is favoured and the others are not - and this in a Selective Multiplayer game in which every mode should be equal.

As for incentives to play in PvP: Why do people need them in the first place? Either you like PvP and want to fight others or you don't like it. Does a vegan need an incentive to eat meat?

 

I can confirm that you are confused. You are on the one hand saying that single-player mode has been postponed/abandoned/[place favorite adjective], but on the other hand you are seem to be worried that others will level faster than you and be better than you because of the bonuses in multiplayer.

But it begs the question, if you are in single-player mode, what does it matter what everyone else is doing? I see it like all the other MMORPG's out there: you will have people who blast to level cap in a few days of the launch of a game, and you will have this huge group of the population that will never get to cap or will take much longer to get there. In the end, what does it matter?

I could see if you wanted to be active in PvP or in the Multiplayer part of the game - but then this begs the question (if you want to participate in PvP and Multiplayer), why not just join the multiplayer and flag for PvP and get both bonuses?

Does that make any sense?

 

Your incentive is more resources and more mobs.

About the pvp part: I don't like it either.
It just gets us further away from any meaningful pvp. And it's a strong indication that meaningful pvp just got moved to the end of the devs list.

 

The argument you are making doesn't really work because the modes are already not equal. There is no resource contention in single player or friends only, so they are already imbalanced and at an advantage over multi where resources can be contested by other players. Why do you think so many people play in those modes. So if the multi player is already at a disadvantage why not provide additional incentive for the additional risk of playing in that mode?

As for the argument for incentives to play in pvp. You need them because even folks who like something need incentives to take greater risk. Why provide greater rewards in a dungeon? Why should harder content like a control point provide more exp?

 

Let me explain:
When SotA was announced I thought it would be a story-driven RPG with deep and meaningful quests with choices and real consequences - first and foremost. But we would also get the option to play together with friends cooperatively or to go into an open online mode to meet strangers.
I loved this concept. But what we have now differs from this significantly. SotA seems to have become a MMORPG first and foremost with every other mode tacked on. Everything revolves around the MMO-part. The quests are done in way so that they can work in the MMO-part which means that there can't be real and lasting consequences to the world and the NPCs. Sieges don't affect the cities, NPCs cannot die or enter/leave scenes etc. Housing is ruining the atmosphere of every single city in the game. All of this because of the MMO-part. MMO-players get a bonus, there are open-PvP-zones... everything is done to favour the MMO-part, which now stands in the middle of the game.
So instead of me adventuring in single player, watching visible and lasting consequences play out and sometimes playing together with some friends or participate in some feast in OPO mode, I now should play in MMO-mode. SP and FPO are just in the game to make farming and mining easier (unfortunately those features don't interest me). SPO doesn't offer deep quests with consequences and aside from mining why should anyone play in this mode when everything is made for the MMO-part? And now people do get a bonus for playing in this mode, too?
You see - for me - the whole game has changed 180 degrees. And I am very disappointed by this.

 

The thing is that there are game mechanics out there that would make it all possible.
This is what leaves a bad taste. At least to me.