On Fairness

I often see posts like the following, “It’s not fair they made a change and now it’s harder for me to level/train/get gold and it wasn’t for those who leveled/trained/got gold before the change!”

Do these changes suck for some of us? Yep.

Do these changes cost us more time to achieve the same result. Heck yes.

Do we occasionally curse when we find out about these changes? #@&* Yeah!

Could those higher level, more skilled or wealthier players not as affected by the change kick sand in our face at the beach? They sure could!! (Well, not really, since PVP isn’t mandatory, so let’s move on.)

I can see how changes are frustrating because of the additional time now required to achieve the same result. However, many posts about fairness don’t complain about time, they complain about others having an unfair advantage. Huh? What advantage (Other than PVP)? Does someone elses level/training/wealth affect the way you conduct your life?

Many changes suck, but are they truly unfair? Food for thought…

 

Why else are we gonna stamp our feet?

 

I would love to see another wipe including the land rush. Everything was so messed up. would be cool to have another total wipe 2 weeks before live.

 

I somehow doubt this will happen as many people would probably 'rage quit' over something like this.

 

Ya, they would, and it probably wont, but It sure would be for the betterment of the game and the other 98% of the players that have not started playing yet.

 

Some of us have put in an incredible amount of work into establishing businesses, creating permanent quests, decorating POTs, etc. Your suggestion is offensive.

 

How is it offensive, it is just a suggestion? I understand that you know the game is still in development right? To be clear I expect this to NOT happen but I do think it would be great for the game for more people to feel better about fairness and not some select few getting 6 months to a year head start when the game goes live. I do understand your concern though and I would object to this idea, but I would not call it offensive.

 

I honestly can't see how this would help.
And let's be clear: we paid good money for this head start.
That isn't even about fairness at all for me. We could discuss if the price for this (let's call it) service was too high or too low. But that's what it is for me, a paid service.

 

Because everyone states they didn't pay to win they paid for the chance to support a game and be part of its creation, unless of course you try to take something away from them that they achieved before the game mechanics were correct. Because it make perfect sense to do a final wipe while still working on all the core systems.... atleast theres plenty of decorations to spend $$ on in the add on store.

 

Could all of these issues have been easily avoided by balancing from the direction of hardest to easier rather than easier to harder? Absolutely.

 

Ya, its a tough situation for sure. I don't want to have anyone mad or pissed off. I do not think they would ever wipe again unless drastically needed. I am just suggesting this from the game development stance and the way I see it will be perceived from people that have not played yet. I mean no ill will or offense, just saying what I think.

 

The issue is that this game has been in alpha or "pre-release" right now. Persistence has only been in for 3 months. The dev's during resets (wipes) had to set the system up so that people could for example gain skill up really fast so that all aspects of the game could be tested. This was implemented for any "time" based thing (acceleration of such)

Now that persistence is in and we are ~6 months from release, the dev's have been setting these systems back to a "long term" model. This is effecting all things across the board. None of this is any different then any other MMO I played. Before one could feasibly GM every skill to 200 if they had time. That was never the plan, now decay is slowly being ratcheted up.

The problem is that people still dont recognize this game is under development and they are used to how "easy" it is (I could GM blacksmith in a month before persistence). As the devs tighten this stuff down people are complaining that dev mode (or easy mode) is being taken away and it now may take you 6 months to GM Blacksmith.

 

The land rush is one of the most successful things they have done. 100% perfect.

 

maybe the theory was perfect but many people could not even log in the game due to disconnects and lag.

 

I will comment at this point. The problem with doing a complete wipe at release is that the game went persistent in July. As such, many players chose to invest much of their time and energy into the game, building up a community, building up characters, decorating houses, and for POT owners, spending an exuberant amount of time decorating and arranging things as it is assumed at this point that everything would be permanent. Just imagine the chaos and anger that would ensue if the devs decide to announce that they would do a wipe at final release because of some of the issues that arose over the past few months since persistence. It would be very ugly and I am certain that Port would loose a substantial number of people because of it. It's just not a practical solution at this point. The best they can hope for right now are minor wipes such as a story line reset, or perhaps virtue points reset. Worst case would be a skill reset, but I doubt they will go down that road.

Edit: If I were told that a wipe would occur at release, then I, along with many others, wouldn't have invested as much time into this game, knowing that it would be temporary.

 

I would disagree with a virtue point reset. This would actually amplify the problem in that all of us who have been 'getting things the hard way' to protect our virtue would be disadvantaged as compared to those who pillaged relentlessly for advancement and then took no virtue hit.

 

I don't have a problem with people getting easier leveling and items. To be honest I can't invest alot of time into a game in development because I get burned out. But if there's people out there that can and are helping to indentify bugs and shape the game...well than all the power to them.

 

My primary concern is time and I do think others had an unfair advantage. Throwing out an example: if someone last month spent 10 hours to increase skill X to 100 and now it's suddenly required (for me) to spend 50 hours to grind out that same skill to 100, that's an (huge to me) unfair advantage. Since this game is all about grind right now, it's a big issue when a subset of players had the opportunity to spend 1/5 the time (or whatever that ratio is) to get to the same point. The devs could have easily reset everyone's skills to 1 while keeping the underlying xp pool intact -- this way everyone will have to spend the same time grinding out the skills.

Now, if the developers came out and said something like "Hey everyone, we're setting the skill xp gain rate to 5x the rate it normally is until Jan 1st. Enjoy!" I wouldn't have a problem with this because everyone has the same opportunity and knowledge to take advantage of it.

The "exploit early, exploit often" mentality that gets rewarded from the devs really annoys me and is the reason I stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. Now, this wasn't an exploit but rather an oversight, but the effect is the same: exploit early and exploit often to get benefits others will not have after it's caught! Garbage. I've spent a lot of money on this game, but I have very little tolerance for games that screw around with my time like this.

 

The flip side of that is my Truth virtue is in the negative presently (along with many others) because I looted bodies in the Battle of Blood River which was required initially in order to acquire an elven statue. Fortunately, they changed the quest so that it is no longer required, but at this point, I have no idea how to raise it again. Now, I'm certain that others have tanked theirs just by stealing deco. So, either a virtue wipe or fix this so that it is actually possible to do a course correction.
I'm always open to suggestions here.

 

I do have a problem with people exploiting the game to gain advantage over others but honestly how else do you balance the issues without adjusting them? My hope is that when exploits are found that people report them but that's not always the case.