Make it fun, make it the best

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by majoria70, Sep 20, 2018.

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  1. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    Lets have a discussion and not an arugment.

    Well recently I've begun to think on this a little differently. Perhaps at the back of my mind some thoughts were lurking. Now with current changes coming up it has given me time to pause.

    So most of the biggest complaints about this game is:

    1) it is missing the fun factor,

    2) it's confusing, I'm lost,

    3) population,

    4)very few reasons to do anything especially after you've seen it all and done it all,

    5)unrewarding unsatisfying.

    6) Pvp sucks


    Just to mention a few ;)

    Now this is not said to a new player as much unless they agree already. We have many totally cool and awesome things in our world already. This is not bashing but ideas. There are changes coming for us. I know the devs are planning lots of changes for quality of life. Now fun is a quality of life right? Now regarding the fun factor issues.

    Many players have said Decay is not fun - players have left due to decay and constant combat up's and downs. I say how about we remove decay totally.

    Chris is trying to think of another reason, well perhaps it is not the reason that is the question. What is fun? Imagine a world without decay? What if it was gone tomorrow? OMG what would we do? Would this game fall apart if decay disappeared? What if you needed to go find your body or it went to the bank? or who knows?

    I say no

    No Decay
    No Ransom
    No death penalty

    What to put in its place for reason to try to stay alive that is fun?

    In many things we keep missing the boat to fun. We keep getting punishments which of course is not fun. Again What is fun?



    Why does a character need to be held back and slowed down other than content excuses and because we continuously try to make it even or more even? Hmmm

    It's not even in any other game why is this our reason? What if its not about level as much as its about skill? How to make that happen?

    What makes pvp fun in lots of other games but not this one?

    Many opportunities to have fun challenges to not die and to do the best. Such as factions, goals, title, timers to achieve or not achieve for examples. Achievements to not die. Imagine.

    The trials could have really been a trial of raids competing against each other to secure the weigh points, complete various quests, obtain the titles for kills, hold the gauntlet. In Wow I did not know my raid players on the faction I was on, well not many of them and it did not matter. What would you do differently?

    Who needs the stinkin ransom? Is that truly what it's about? What if kills matter and count? What if this game could actually track our progress on anything?


    IMO this game has gone in a different direction. We can hang on to the past and say 'oh what about the story?, What about the promises? or we could take this game forward. The quest system is being redone in Episode 2. We will get a great story and quests. We have the best story people on this game.

    Yet we continue to miss the fun factors in many things and I do know we are not done you know.

    How to make pvp fun is a total disagreement. That's not what this is about. Just list how you would make it fun if we took out decay and everyone could just have a blast?

    Teleporting everywhere will be fun but still a timer and cost will help and it has to be figured out but a broken up world of many scenes totally needs this. The public has spoken.

    How to make skill matter more than level for pvp?

    What would you add in or would you add anything in other than cool stuff for example:

    titles

    factions

    kill points and bonuses for killing or achieving

    pvp quests

    a justice or oracle justice system ;)

    perhaps reason to get your body, timers going off to complete.

    Making the trials be a great event that is timed and happens several times throughout the day. Imagine if it was a competition between large teams (raid size) and we don't have to form groups and we can heal our faction or team.

    Imagine Players get titles and can turn red.

    Reds are player killers and then there are bounty hunters. Yes titles even for these players. Imagine being able to specialize and be a player killer or a bounty hunter? Fun, fun, fun. Choose your path.


    Ok so a few ideas from me. Lets help Chris out. What if we actually stopped arguing and instead gave ideas? We get frozen with arguments. Twisted and turned and frustrations.

    I know he wants to make it all fun. Let's help him and no arguing, just do your list.

    Lets just get some ideas out there to improve the fun by not having to be right but brainstorm ideas. We do need this guys. Truly ideas are so important right now. Lets finally get it figured out.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2018
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  2. Feeyo

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    Quote: from another game: (Maybe something like this?)

    • You start of with neutral (0) karma and as you kill monsters, you will gain karma from them.
    • When you first reach level 50 you should have full karma, which is a maximum of 300,000 Karma.
    • If you are flagged up, the first time you hit another player will result in you losing 3,000 Karma
    • If you kill a player when you have flagged up you will lose between 50,000 and 120,000 Karma, depending on how similar your gear is. You will lose more Karma if the other player is much lower gear than you, and a less Karma if they are a similar gear score.
    • Hitting or killing another player who is flagged up will result in no Karma loss.
    • You do not lose anything for dying in PVP.
    • Once you reach negative Karma, your character will turn red and can be attacked at any time. You can only defend yourself if you flag up, and you will still lose Karma for attacking or killing the person.
    • If you die with negative karma, you may experience some penalties such as: experience loss (1 – 3%), chance of gear degrade on death and breaking crystal sockets on death. Some NPCs may not talk to you and NPC guards might attack you.
    • Attacking or killing a player with negative karma (red) has no penalty.
     
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  3. Arradin

    Arradin Avatar

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    I applaud the effort, but i dont see how this Will work

    A ton of people can throw in their ideas of What makes the game fun for them, but without discussions it isnt constructive, because it should be What the community want, not What induvidual people want.

    Discussions are the way to go forward as communitys when you compromise and Settle in the middle of all.
     
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  4. Elrond

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    The whole game is built on reward vs punishment.. this is taking the fun out of it. Even when you get rewarded for doing something you are also being punished.
    Artifacts-nice rewards that come with penalties.
    Crafting-rewarding sometime..most of the time feels very punishing.
    Fighting-rewarding until you die then you get punished with death decay.
    Its like most of the focus is on How to find ways to punish players for doing this or that.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2018
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  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    First, I'd like to say I think the game is very fun now. Combat is diverse and exciting. There's plenty to do in all walks of life. It's also soul crushing if you're just coming in and think it's going to in any way guide you.

    I don't think we need new ideas right now. I think they are on the right track polishing what exists and finishing up the placeholder systems. Every release we're getting much better and it's not because of new stuff, it's because they are finishing up systems that have been in place for ages, often placeholder systems, like fishing.

    Dungeons are an exception being a new system because they decided it would be easy to get running, but since it is coming in it needs to be polished so much it gleams.

    And polish may include removing some of the punishment that @Elrond is talking about. Crafting specializations hopefully will help with that. Every punishment should all be reconsidered, is it time to get the ax?

    Polish the crafting. Polish the fishing. Finish and Polish the PvP modes. Polish the vendor interface (I will be patient I will be patient I will be patient). Polish agriculture. Polish the combat sounds. Polish the housing interface. Polish the gust ball.

    Many of these things are 90% done. Agriculture can have a "finished for a long time" stamp on it if they get watering fixed and either put in fertilizer, or remove it so we don't keep thinking it should be there. The housing just needs people to be able to sell their lots to each other without unclaiming. The gust ball just needs to roll with physics instead of a set distance, and have charged gust kick it farther. Instruments need to play when people play them, not be hit or miss. We need to not get carpal tunnel while listing on vendors. Crafting specialization needs to happen.

    So much is almost done, make those things done. They are already on the roadmap, lets cheer them on and say "keep going!" instead of distracting them.

    (Well, gustball isn't on the road map, but if the devs want it to exist it's only two bits of polish that need to happen. Until then it's DOA.)

    And then when all that is done rip the buggy quest journal heart out while it is still beating, and sacrifice it with much chanting! Yeah that one needs a lot more than polish.
     
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  6. Elrond

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    Obsidian trials TITLES should be given based on PVP achievement system and not by BUYING THEM . You kill x amount of 'enemies '' you unlock first tier title..you reach next stage you unlock next title. Also we should have funny/special titles too unlocked this way ....for special achievements like kill 2 players in trials with one spell and get Spell Master title ..or kill 10 players with backstab and get Assasin title ...or die 50 times in trials and get The Zombie title.

    There also should be hidden achievements that unlock a title when a player does certain actions in pvp.

    I dont think anyone would have done arena or battlegrounds in WOW if all they could buy with theyre hard earned glory points was resist and shrinking potions. The PVP STORE is lacking about 50 items + listed there . PVP is fun if you are rewarded .
     
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  7. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Agree completely, @majoria70
    100%
    Decay should NEVER have been implemented , and it's the #1 thing that is holding SotA back
    #2 is Quests and NUE....
    Fix those, and we can bring some back, keep most here, and MOVE FORWARD.
    And frankly, most of us could care less what happens to PvP.....
    I'm not against it, but I sure as hell don't want to take a back seat to it............
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2018
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  8. opTi

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    The game is already wonderful and really makes a lot of fun.
    If the questlog system is completely renewed and faction wars are implemented, then I am completely satisfied.
    To create Player made dungeon and player createt quests are for me even just the cherry on the top of the cake and I would not need it to be satisfied.

    Death penalty is extremely important for the skill mechanic, realistic and not so tragic as long as you have no skills over 80. Even at Grandmaster level and above, the XP loss is fine if you specialize in one or two decks / builds. And just to keep this from getting outgrow and breeding 50xGM characters I find death penalty excellent.
    If everyone has something against death penalty, the specializations should be based on e.g. Archery have much stronger impact / improvements. Then we could hold an equilibrium about it (for example in PvP).
     
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  9. opTi

    opTi Avatar

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    But in order to balance the specializations (if they give stronger bonus) in turn so the lower level players still have a chance is probably impossible. So death penalty is the easiest way!
     
  10. oplek

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    Projects. The game needs to be deep enough to launch self-determined campaigns and projects to work towards.

    Once upon a time, when regional economies were a possibility, we were envisioning a courier/contract system, where you could pay for someone to move stuff around the world. Some people love doing that in Eve Online. Unfortunately, we've abandoned that potential depth with the recent changes, in favor of shallowness and instant gratification.

    Right now, SOTA was completely taken a backseat to Eve, for me, because I'm working on some complex projects that have kept my interest for literally months at a time.

    When I say, "there needs to be something to work towards", I don't mean merely leveling up a character... but something that the leveled-character would be used for.
     
  11. kaeshiva

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    For me the biggest frustration here is the RNG in all its incarnations.

    Nothing is consistent, everything is based on some sort of very low % chance of achieving what you set out to achieve, which leads to a lot of frustration.
    The content in the game that tends to appeal to me the most is the stuff that can be relied upon as being somewhat consistent. I think we need more of that, and less of the "yay, you got the 0.1% roll, good job."
    • Crafting of course is the biggest example here - honestly, I think we should just do away with the RNG completely, and let people actually get materials, and make the gear they want, subject to success rolls only - pick your bonuses. I've never understood the reasoning behind forcing players to waste thousands upon thousands of materials making junk that nobody ever wants or will wear, there's really only so many new players to give the stuff to. With crafting levels in excess of 130, I can't even recover base resource costs for completed items most of the time. This is just wrong. It is a senseless punishment that hearkens back to ye olde punishment days that does nothing whatsoever to improve gameplay. If its about consumption, then lets adjust the costs. But for crap's sake, some level of consistency so you could actually make quality items, run a shop, fill orders, etc. is sorely needed. Specialization should open up new and exciting options ,not be used as a bandaid to selectively fix a broken system.

    • Loot is the other big one. I understand that, due to the nature of the game and people repeatedly steamrolling boss content that we can't make them drop nice things every time. However something needs to be done here. In pretty much every game ever, if you see a big juicy boss with a name, you want to go kill it, because it means, you will get something nice. In Sota, if you see a boss, you avoid it (unless you're in the top tier of boss steamrollers of course). This is because they are not worth the time/durability/consumables/etc. that it takes to bring down. If you do manage to kill one, you are insulted by <50g worth of drops for sometimes 20-30 minutes effort and potentially deaths. This is beyond absurd. Either add something that limits how often these can be farmed (like, link loot to a quest flag where you can only get something nice for first kill of day, for example), or have a serious rethink about adding meaningful loot. Despite the "improvements" going in this patch, going and dispatching 12 cabalists in sieges netted me a grand total of 1 grey supply bag and 1 ward jewel and a few reagents, total. This is unacceptable. It is a motivation killer - level up, get big and strong, so you can....go be disappointed by loot. There needs to be some sort of base loot benefit for taking down difficult targets. The dragon for example, dishes out decent producer xp as a reward for skinning it and almost always drops a haunch. At the very least, you have that. Killing a cabalist (or the demon, or just about any other non-dragon boss) give you a big pile of nothing, 99% of the time. I'm not saying we need to up the drop rate of the rarer items, but that the base loot per kill needs some consistency. Otherwise you end up where we are now, where people just avoid the content. Decay plays a role in this too of course, as most boss content is seen as 'not worth the risk, however slight it may be'. The aether creatures are a fine example of this - a few of the top players farm them - everyone else isn't willing to lose millions of xp messing around with mobs that can 1 shot your 1400-hp tank and which, when killed, drop nothing whatsoever worthwhile. It makes no sense. I'd consider if nothing else, a weekly or monthly bounty on such creatures so that, even if the loot table is insulting, it is still worthwhile to do - encourages people to do the content occasionally without encouraging repeated farming.

    • Supply bags and random recipe drops. These are horrible. 99% of the time you get low tier food you'd never eat, a single vegetable, and a map you'll never click on. The entire concept of gating crafting behind 1000 hours of adventuring grind-and-bag-opening-luck was a really, really bad idea. It has caused more than a few new players who really wanted to be crafters to ragequit in despair. Perhaps if the crafting RNG were not also so punishing, the recipe system could be stomached, but as is, its just awful. Again, its about consistency. I can open 100 of these bags and get 2-3 recipes, maybe, and possibly a couple "crapifact" artifact repair kits. Or I can get nothing at all. I'd suggest adjust the supply bag drop accordingly, but make it so you're guaranteed to at least get something interesting - get rid of the whole, apple, fish, tier 1 food - etc. Have the bag at the minimum give a recipe. I'm not suggesting that we up the rate, what I'm saying is if in a normal hunting session I get 10 bags, and opening those 10 bags I get 1 good item, then reduce the bag drop rate by 90% but make the contents useful. The current system just leads to disappointment after disappointment, which is not "fun." In fact, what would be better would be just to remove recipes from these bags entirely and have them acquired by some sort of CRAFTING means - say, crafting reward bags that always contain a recipe earned via some sort of work order system.

    • Salvage is another one that is complete despair. With all the waste that goes into crafting, somehow getting 6 metal scraps out of an item that cost you 60-70 ore to make is just insulting. The chances for the components are far too low. Getting a dozen bowstrings out of a THOUSAND bows with a salvage level high enough to grandmaster it 10 times over and WITH the potion - is bad. I'd expect a grandmaster salvager to be skillfully plucking those bowstrings off more often than not. What is the reason for this? Consumption? When the laughable exceptional rate at level 120+ still means that 3 out of 4 bowstrings will be completely wasted on low-dura trash, and then the ones that are suitable are again subject to <1% chance of getting the bonuses you want (assuming you don't fail and ruin the durability)...you're literally looking at needing to farm thousands of junk loot bows to get enough bowstrings to make a bow somewhat close to what you want. I honestly can't believe people seriously think this is "ok." To make matters worse, killing the mobs that drop the bows don't even drop them consistently - half the time you get 6 gold instead.

    The net result is, especially pertaining to crafting, you rely on RNG in the harvesting/looting step, RNG in the salvage step, RNG in each step of the creation process (both from exceptional chance or not, to each masterwork, to each enchant) and in order to get something good you've have to pass that RNG check multiple times in a row, or you just start over with more materials. This is of course after relying on the RNG drop rate of a bag which has yet another RNG to actually drop a recipe and of course the RNG of getting the recipe you want out of an enormous pool of options.

    We rely on RNG for all gear creation, and all loot. Want to go try and get a particular items? Guess what, you can't! You can't work toward it, or incrementally try to reach it, you just have to keep banging your head against that wall and hope you get lucky. Or go buy it from someone - which always seems to be the better option if you're after something specific. With all things in this game, it seems like: You do it until you get what you want, or until you get bored banging your head against the wall. The entire game is built around this brute force methodology of "do it 1000 times to get the 0.1% chance" and that to me is what makes it feel so punishing. The death penalty, and the gear durability destruction rate that keep you constantly scrambling to break even in the meantime aren't helping matters.

    In the earliest days of Sota, when I decided to be a backer, it was because there was no decay as yet and we could go out and have FUN trying to kill that silly dragon (who was a lot easier to kill back then). It was a rite of passage every wipe. Can we do it yet? *dies in fire* ahhh, nope! Then...can we do it yet? Yes! When we found something new, we could wipe gloriously to it, adjust our tactics, and try again. The penalties and setback for doing so now are simply too high to enjoy the content without whiteknuckling the keyboard dreading a misstep because you'll be back to grinding trivial content to pay the price. Not fun.

    The bottom line is this. Rare stuff is fine - but the player needs to have some hope here, too. Let players work toward goals, instead of just pouring time, resources, etc. into the slot machine that may or may not spit out something good.
    If you say a cabalist hood has, I don't know, a 1% drop rate - then the expectation is if you kill 100 cabalists, statistically you should get one. The reality is, you don't. And when you're killing cabalist number 572, you start to think to yourself, crap, why do I bother? And I know the drop rates can't be upped, because people will flood the market - and I get that. I'd prefer something like, every cabalist you kill drops say, a scrap of cloth or a fragment of their weapon. And when you've got 100 of those, you can go MAKE the stupid hood/item, if your luck on the 1% drop hasn't paid off yet. This is an example of consistency, of something you can work toward, of being able to set a goal. At the moment the only goal you can set is "Get Lucky Today!" which leads to most days being, a giant disappointment.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2018
  12. Metalocalypze

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    I’d be extatic for added opt-in option to Flag PvP but without Loot or bonus Adventure XP.
     
  13. disorder

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    I personally really dislike the idea of removing any kind of death penalty, it is already not harsh enough in my honest opinion. I played for 5 months before I knew it existed, but as an ex Diablo Hardcore player, I generally dislike dying anyway.

    I play games to be challenged. That is fun to me. If you remove the death penalty you remove a big part of the challenge. You would be able to cheese your way through any content in the game with resurrection chains. I am personally not looking for another casual easy going game, that is exactly why I am here.

    Everything in the game is already far too easy. I vote for harder content and harsher death penalties!

    Why does a Destroyer bear have 31k HP and a Red Dragon 9k hp? Give the Dragon 50k hp already!

    I realize I am part of a minority group :)

    Just my 2-cents from the other side of the fence.

    What about a different kind of death penalty? Maybe you could leave your corpse behind and have to retrieve your equipment. You could make the corpse never expire and only loot-able by the owner. Just don't know... you can't remove all penalty for death, that would be stupid, so there needs to be something else.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2018
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  14. Vero

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    @disorder I am curious, how 'harsh' would you make death-decay if 'it was up to you'? just wondering ;). is the 'few mill' you can loose when reaching high levels still to low for you? just wondering how much decay you would like to put on yourself :)
     
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  15. disorder

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    Like I said, I am part of a minority group. You have to understand that I come from games like Everquest (where you could easily lose over 24 hours of progress and spend the next 4 hours on a corpse retrieval) and Diablo Hardcore Mode where you straight up lost your character and all items, and I love those games. Not sure that I am the guy you want brainstorming that ;)

    I just know there needs to be a death penalty.
     
  16. disorder

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    Maybe a harder durability hit on equipment and no skill/xp decay is the way forward. This would help the crafters market.
     
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  17. kaeshiva

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    Not really. Stuff breaking as fast as it does is the main reason crafters can't make a profit on high end goods, nobody's going to pay even the resource value for something that's junk in a month.
    Although, if there wasn't an experience penalty, people could just go grind in crappier gear I guess, since dying wouldn't be as big a deal. Just makes the game all about embracing mediocrity though, and I really hate that direction.
    I agree death needs to do -something- but as long as its got a severe time hit (hours of re-grind) or worse, economic hit which can be potentially even worse - its a problem.

    The best suggestion I've seen is to make death trigger instant full attenuation - all xp gains cease for a time. You don't go backwards, but its a fairly big wrist slap. More importantly, it doesn't discourage people from trying to do harder content where XP gain is not the objective.
     
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  18. disorder

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    I like the idea, but I want them to make boss loot better and not have people cheesing it doing resurrection chains with not a worry in the world, when in reality they have no place being there.
     
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  19. Vero

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    For death decay i am 'hoping' for a sort-off 2nd 'negative' pool which on death 'needs to be emptied' before the normal adventure pool can grow again. So let's say a players loses 1.5mill on 1st death, that would make the'decay pool' 1.5mill. Empty that pool back to 0 by adventuring and start building regular adventure pool again.

    Leveling up 'everything uber high' would still give high death decay, but would feel less like a kick in the nuts :p

    just a thought!
     
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  20. disorder

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    Best idea I've seen yet, I like it.
     
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