Suggestion: Fix some things before adding nerfs

I've read all posts rearding skill decay, slower movement, health regen, etc. Here's the suggestion:

- Don't "nerf" things without properly finishing the supporting systems. You want overland map to have different move speeds, fine, but first you make loading times reasonable and memory leaks resolved and overall performance fixed, so the game won't crash and you don't spend loads of times between waiting on a scene to load (specially CPs) and won't get a broken framerate when on overworld in multiplayer (i think characters LoD is the case here). Scenes and map switches should load almost instantly (lol, but true) for this to become less of a nuisance.

- Don't "nerf" regen rates UNTIL you have a fully funcional and balanced fooding system AND a fully balanced looting system (that is already over-nerfed) to balance out gold input -> output ingame.

- Don't apply skill decay to crafting uppon death. Apply it WHILE crafting. For instance, skill decay on crafting adds more slowly and over a week and starts to consume pooled exp to "mantain" it when you craft something or harvest something.
-> But do that ONLY AFTER you diversify nodes, making kinds of nodes that gives more EXP than others. Example: Small iron nodes, found in lv 1 caves (or first floors) - gives 500 exp/node. Ultra-large iron nodes on level 5+ mines -> gives 2k exp. (Values are merely an illustration). Same to gems. Large veins, 2k exp, small veins, 500, etc. Remember -> part of that experience is to COUNTER decay and it is deduced a fixed amount per harvest until you skill beats the decaying.

Doing otherwise is just going to kill server population each time and being already persistent and in "early access" you should take care on people getting burned out prematurely and making bad advertisement of the game outside the walls.

Also: focus and focus and FOCUS on reworking teamplay now. It was a bit acceptable with R32 and Control Points, now it is just DEAD and unnatractive. That should take top priority instead of more premature "balancing" (a.k.a.: adding more nerfs without proper supporting systems to counteract the effects).

Thanks

(Edit: my main concern here is not about the mechanics that are being added, etc. it is much more about the external advertisement those changes bring. If most $45 dollar players starts to think this game will suck regardless, this can ruin the entire project - example, Diablo 3 had high expectations, the team made some terrible mistakes uppon launch and game population never recovered ever since, no matter what they did to fix it). Many will say this is alpha, but we are already persistent... This counts too much for most people - who already feel they must play. People will forgive broken quests and lack of content, but won't forgive boredom, broken mechanics, excessive punishments with no counter-balances and lack of socialization. That is my tip. Bye bye.

 

Agree. I know folks wanted some cooking stuff but personally I'd have rather it been delayed until it was done and ready. Half the ingredients you still can't get anywhere, there's still no sustainable agriculture, growing crops is less cost effective in most cases than buying what you need from the NPC, etc. etc. As Sir Leonard said, get the support in place first. Filling up our own water buckets and seeding plants

With the current food rates there is no reason for a nerf at all, they are attractive, but slight, bonuses that should really be applied to the existing baseline regen which is already kind of crappy anyway.
If you were adding +10 and +20 regen foods, then yeah, tweak the baseline, but for +2? Not necessary.

Same deal with skill decay. When game is stable and working and you're not getting killed due to lag, getting stuck on terrain, nonfunctioning skills, imbalanced regen rates, interrupt rates, etc. etc. then consider adding a bigger death penalty.
The game as it is , is incredibly grindy. If players invest the time to grind up those skills, they shouldn't be *taken away*. Consider alternative death penalties that don't negate players' hard work but rather inconvenience them temporarily, or even an experience 'debt' system. Nobody wants to hassle going through the skill interface and finding all the affected skills and turning them back on, grinding, making decks to use said skills just to put them back where they go, then turn them all off again, its a huge hassle. Apply debt instead - skill can't be raised until debt is paid / pool can't be gained until debt is paid.

Delevelling skills is counter intuitive and illogical. Just because you are defeated in combat doesn't mean you get worse at combat, if anything you would have learned something from the experience!
Delevelling skills has no place whatsoever in crafting, and makes absolutely no sense. Crafting is already stacked heavily against the player. Once crafting is actually a viable and profitable enterprise, consider balancing. You aren't just going to 'forget' how to craft something or get worse at it by doing it more. Again, makes no sense. Maybe some sort of fatigue system would be more appropriate here.

And teamplay....yes, please. Currently it is detrimental to group unless you've got a higher level player willing to drag you around. The best xp and money are both gained solo. I'd say add more group-scaled content but the xp loss/decay issue creates concern of people actually trying more challenging content because the risk far, far outweighs any potential reward. As it is I'd consider xp bonuses/drop bonuses to groups depending on size so at least you're not operating at a loss.

 

We have been suggestion to fix what we all ready got for the last 5 releases, before adding anything else.


RAGE QUIT !!!!!!!!
ARGARGARGARG

 

Both very well said. I hope this time they take a few minutes and read this post.

 

Wise words, and constructive criticism.

Hoping the right ears won't be deaf to the voice of reason.

 

Outstanding post. I fully concur.

 

Welcome to 'Early Access' ...

It isn't always going to be possible or practical to sequence changes in the friendliest way for current players and from time to time we may indeed take 2 steps backwards before we start moving ahead again.

We can and should continue to provide feedback about planned changes and often that feedback changes what goes live, but we need to keep in mind that this is not a finished, released game and we need to roll with the negative aspects of tuning and balancing as well as enjoy the positive ones.

If the reasons for some of these things are not immediately obvious then we should at least remember that the team don't change stuff just to annoy us and they will explain their reasoning when they are ready.

If that isn't going to work for you then consider a time-out and wait for release as there is likely to be plenty more of this between now and then...

 

Hakadek, the point of a Dev+ forum is to give both positive and negative feedback to the developers from the perspective of core game mechanics and fun factor of the game. I assume the Devs wanted this type of feedback else they wouldn't have created the forum for it. You're entitled to not agree but your comment is patronizing and you provided nothing constructive as a counterpoint to the OP.

 

Wow very good post
I was just going to tell him to stop being a yes man. And open your eyes.
Because yes they will change stuff to hurt you just to make a buck.
Remember this is a game to us. Its a buisniss to them and makeing money is there number 1 goal. Not makeing us happy in game.

 

You are entitled to your opinion as well of course, but when people start talking about 'nerfs' at this stage of a game it seems necessary to remind people that this is far from finished and call it 'Early Access' or 'Beta' or whatever you want, we are not yet at a point where everything is feature complete so no, it is not always going to be possible to give the players a smooth continuously improving fun experience. Sometimes things have to step back a bit before they can go forward again.

Providing feedback is important, demanding that things get finished up in a sequence to suit our needs rather than the development process isn't really 'feedback' though is it?

It is necessary to roll with some of this stuff and provide more feedback as we see how things fit together, that is part of what we accept by taking part at this stage of the development process.

If this was post release I'd probably be making the same complaints, but it isn't, so yes, by all means let them know what we like and don't like about changes as they arrive on the QA server but don't expect changes that they perceive as necessary to be delayed simply to allow other areas of the game to be fully fleshed out. These things will get finished, but other things can't always wait while that happens.

I'm not sure what counter-point there is to provide, the post effective reads as 'finish the game now please'. There is nothing wrong with wanting the food system to be complete, I agree, I want it to be complete as well, but I understand why some of these changes are needed to pull the game a little further away from the current 'easy mode' that we have become used to.

The big patches are coming along pretty quickly and there are smaller updates in between, if they step back the regen rates too far and the available food isn't sufficient they can and will tweak that. This doesn't have to wait for a fully finished food system to be ready and plenty of people have provided good feedback that suggested it has been reduced a bit too far at the moment. I don't doubt they will take that into consideration, but I suspect that the base point is that regen was too fast in the first place, so we probably shouldn't expect food to take us from the new rate straight back to the old rate...

Time will tell, but I hope when this is all finished we have a challenging game that will take time to master, not something we can race through with near instant recovery and barely enough time to catch our breath...

 

Again, you can disagree with my or any other poster's opinion on the state of whatever as far as game development goes. IMO The OP had valid points in the post and I noted my agreement. You could have said you were in favor of the current direction of development and left it at that, or said nothing at all. I don't need to be scolded and educated on what perspective I'm supposed to have.

 

Well, given that the system does evict your lot from places if you do not pay taxes and we will not have any other chance to place at the same spot again because we are persistent and now a ton of real-money transactions are done which will block any attempt for a reboot, then, yes... developers should consider what "fits" players a bit more on the process and consider things already as nerfs or buffs.

And i even not talking for me. My lots are all tax-free, thanks.

But the rest do struggle to pay for them... i hear from them frequently, specially new guildmates. Most are already frustrated they did bought that ultra-prohibitive city spot in a sale last telethon, and are getting burned out quickly.

Was the game not persistent, i wouldn't even post about this...

Anyway...

 

What i mean is: i have the "privilege" to quit for 119 days and then login to refresh my properties and just wait for things to settle down until i find the game "playable" again, but many don't... And even so i would be so behind others if i did...

And i wonder if even the developer's parents will be spared from getting bashed if they "nerf" the hell out of everybody who doesn't have this privilege and don't expect a shitstorm over the internet and steam about this project and so...

That's were they should be very carefull about. Unfortunately, when they switched the keys to persistence, fun and honeymoon with most of the comunity is over, now it is all bills and serious stuff to take care of. Hope they realize this soon.

 

I understand and agree with what you have said and plan. The only problem is the truthfulness of the Dev's. The basic ways they think are important to "FIX" things are wrong. Taking a bunch of gold out of the economy NEVER works. And more important it's not what they should be working on at this stage. The commitment to not make this game a resource grind game has also been flushed down the toilet. The tool tips are all just numbers they put up there but they play with those numbers in an effort to control production. All without informing us as they promised to do when they where asking us for money.

I am willing to accept much when it comes to developing a game except lies.