Heat map interpretation

This is a personal attack. See my responses above for why.

 

I sense some agreement here! So we are agreed that if I personally discovered a scene with 7 obsidian bears and Stags in close proximity and all the cooks found out and heated up the map in that area that the solution (we hope) is that similar congregations of bears and stags should be installed across the map in various areas instead of nerfing the one area to a bear and stag?

 

hehe

No unfortunately it's not that simple. If it were that simple then we'd just clone every scene and that would be a very boring game wouldn't it? I mean if every scene had no variety, and on top of that all the scenes were equally productive, are you telling me that's the goal of a good game?

I feel as though you're fixated on the idea that Portalarium should not be changing scenes that you like, yet you're not really thinking about why the scene was changed in the first place. It wasn't so that players would be unhappy. It was so the game would achieve greater balance.

How does your solution of cloning result in a good game?

 

I say have everything be in Storms End, not OH, no particular reason (like it is my town......).

I was killed by a pig; be nice.

 

Sigh.... Please don't assume I am a simpleton. I was not the one to suggest that all scenes should be equally productive. To make it more clear: I would assess what was causing everyone to congregate in the scene. If there was nothing afoul afoot, then perhaps my first thought as a designer would be to bring other scenes up to the attractiveness of this particular scene. If this scene is drawing in Cooking people we could think about similar scene plans in other areas (sort of like your fish example). If we squash every place where people are having fun, what is left? If you want to characterize this as my desire to "clone", go right ahead.

 

I'm not assuming that, nor was it my intention to imply that. I apologize if that's now it read.

This is a very fair question, but it misses the point. Part of that is because the developers do not communicate the point, nearly at all.

I don't speak for them, I'm making my own assumptions there, but I'm very confident the following plays a very large role in what we're seeing in this game.

STEP 1:
Take a look a this game.
https://www.underworldascendant.com/the-game/index.php

How many players does it have?
Note that it's been in development for over a year! Their estimated delivery date was November 2016!

Oh no, they have no players, they're under funded, and hey I can't even find any information out about this game!

Can you imagine if we went over to their forums and started saying all that? Can you imagine how crazy that would be? I can, because I see people do that on our forums all the time. (and there's a reason I'm bringing this up)

STEP 2:

Realize that our game is VERY RARE. We're persistent, but we're not even launched yet. We're not in BETA because we're still designing and changing whole systems. We're kind of in a very mature Alpha phase. Or a very immature BETA phase, take your pick.

So this small little team of developers are trying to maintain a living world while also building it. What that means is that when they decide to do something like "nerf" your favorite hunting ground, it means that they're probably reacting to a huge imbalance in the game's economy, and they're trying to just put a band-aid on it so they can continue to develop the unfinished product. They don't have time to re-clone the whole world in the image of what makes our tiny little population happy today. They barely have time to do what they do.

So they have to make very hard choices. They have to decide how can we best patch this up as quick as possible while still moving the ship forward?

STEP 3:

In order to best use their limited resources, the developers have to make these tough choices thinking ahead. For example, sure they could make more hunting grounds that players liked. They could make more Owl's Head like locations. But they're still in the process of making uncloned scenes. They're still in the process of finishing up the main quest lines. So instead they keep most resources on pushing this new content into the game, and when it's possible they integrate the types of feedback we have given them towards those systems. But that means they have to be thinking about the new regional economy and how that might play out. It means they will have to consider the plans (that we don't have knowledge of) for more monster types and more random encounters. It goes on and on...

Meanwhile, there are people that are only looking at the trees and saying "this tree is broken, fix it" or "you changed my tree!" and they don't care about much else. They may not have the ability to see the forest we have now let alone the future forest we're in the process of building.

STEP 4:

And all of that takes a tremendous amount of patience and also a little faith. Because that other game I had you look at in STEP 1. Those guys don't share much of anything. I backed that game and I don't have any idea what they're doing day to day or month to month. I get a quarterly email from them and damned if I know what's going on. The game might come out tomorrow or it might come out 5 years from now.

But this game, Shroud, we're playing this live every day. We're seeing it updated live and in person on a monthly basis. We're having conversations about systems that exist right now. It's different, it's very different, and it's not something that frankly makes a lot of sense to do any other way than how they're doing it.

 

Exactly WHAT responses are you referring to, baron ?
Quotes are allowed here, in case you were not aware.

 

I'm in agreement for having services, recipes and resources spread around the world, instead of clumping them in one or two "uber" towns (we all know where they are), which is lazy design if left unchecked, and serves to devalue the size and purpose of a vast world and its potential regional economies etc.

Yes in the short term or without thinking deeper, this could be more inconvenient for me as a player to buy or to source for stuff, but it injects the intangibles into SotA, giving towns unique identities not just based on visuals but their vendors or services reflecting that as well. And long-term wise, I think it makes a better and more believable game, and provides a solid framework for "player" economy etc.

 

One thing I make an effort to do is every few days go to various areas in the middle of nowhere. Usually I find a clone scene, but hopefully this will change over the coming months. As for the nerfs, yes, they have to concentrate on getting the story line quests done, and for now it's easier just to nerf things down when they become too "lucrative". Even that isn't a bad thing, because I like having to find new ways to do things, even if it's a pain in the ass at first.

As for the popularity of Derp Ravenswood, one thing about it is that the Hidden Vale areas generally aren't used for clone scenes, so there isn't a clone of it. While it would be bad to simply make a dozen clones of it, the way things are, it's going to continue to be excessively popular until enough high-skull unclones get made. And now I'm tempted to drop in there just to watch the show.

 

This is exactly why permanent persistence was a horrible blow to this game. It was soooo far away from being ready for it. Most of the game issues I could forgive if they could still reset and try again when things fail, Instead it is populated by broken toons who are are way to experienced and rich to fix the game.

 

We'll either make a good game or we won't. It doesn't matter one bit if we went persistent or not. The benefit to being persistent was that we had more testers. The disadvantage was only that some people would cry about it.

Gamers play good games. There's never been a good game where players said "yeah it's really good but I don't want to play it because they went persistent too early". That's not how this works.

 

I disagree. They blew it allowing a toon to be able to GM too many skills too easy. I am almost GM of all the crafting skills. I don't believe (or at least hope) it was intended that a toon can GM all the crafting trees and also be a GM in combat skills. It is just too much. At some point I should have had to make a decision of the path I wanted to take. Now that the core players have mastered everything, they either have to take it away, in which people will scream, or try to work around it, making it a less fun game.

 

I happen to agree with you that GMing all of the skills is stupid and I don't appreciate that design. But that doesn't mean that persistence started too early, it just means that we don't enjoy the path they chose to take. There's a difference.

I'll say this too...

There's nothing that says they can't add an extra 1000 skills to this game. Nothing.

 

More skill = more balancing. Not something they want to do right now, I don't think. I would welcome it, but boy that seems a harder fix than just retooling xp and resetting everyone.

 

Try to keep up.

 

Historically, when they have added skills and such, it has been a handful, not hundreds let alone thousands.

 

Of course. And I don't suspect this will be hundreds or thousands this time either.

But over time...who knows?

 

I am sure I will keep watching. I am too financially invested to walk away, just continually be disappointed..

 

Perhaps some day that will change. I'm optimistic.

 

I think resetting characters skills would be ok and maybe resetting the gold? (dunno about the gold thing lol People have invested heavily into it as well)
But they cant reset the rare deco and such now after people have bought and sold so much of it/invested so much into it.

(now that they stated It will be permanent I don't think they can reset anything really but I personally wouldn't mind SOME things being reset once its released or closer to release)