Game Development: Prelude

[SpidersEverywhere]

Just as a note on the "fountains and stuff" thing, though; one reason I'd be wary to implement that is that it may limit us much more severely in terms of world resets. Account verifications and subscriptions are nice in that they can carry over worlds without problems, but fountains less so. We could of course simply refund them, I guess, but that always seems a bit ugly, at best.

Maybe sell recipes instead of objects? Maybe with a limited number of uses per world for some of them.

[lachlaan]

Finally got through the posts. First off let me ask, how much prozac are you guys on to not shout back at the surprisingly not many haters?

Jokes aside.. the stat cap thing seems silly, in the reducing stats back to default sense. When a sub goes out nobody would want to become useless to their town until they have money. People would be unable to do their town job for a week if short on cash. I imagine a big town where the butcher suddenly caps everything at q50 lol. Would perhaps stimulate the need for gametime tokens to keep your poor workers effective, but it seems like something odd to me. Might be nice once implemented but as it is it feeeeeels wrong.

Perhaps do something that was suggested earlier in the thread, and cap progression / slow progression once off subscription. Up the caps a bit to not make free players entirely useless, and then do :

0-80 100% growth rate for all.
80-150 70% growth rate for free, 100% for verified and subs
150-FOREVERRRR 30% growth rate for free accounts, 60% for verified and 100% for subs.

Values obviously to be tweaked based on what feels right and goes well with other mechanics. Past that point you pick a cap for each payment bracket and throw shit-tons of diminishing returns at the growth rate down to something silly like 10-15%. That way a person that worked for their char doesn't become equal to a free player after no-lifing for a year. As an aside, if you want to do any sort of cap, bots and alt armies will become a thing. So perhaps also add a character limit per account type, or spread the stat cap across all characters. Free get the crappy cap to all chars regardless. Once verified there's no turning back, and it's still capped fairly low, but perhaps limit to 2-3 chars (main professions, but not all, so as to encourage pairing up if you make pairing up fairly safe and desireable). And as for sub accounts, I'd say designate 3-4 chars tops as "unlocked unlimited progression chars", let people raise those in a way that raising just one is desireable, and more is worse in terms of effort needed. Once sub ends you could nerfbat the growth rate based on how high over the previous cap the char is or how far over the average the main character list is.

[Comodo]

Can we play legacy haven on free accounts after server restart, or is it still for verified accounts only?

[sabinati]

you can play legacy on a verified account

[ntinsley]

Can the players with active subs when the new world starts get something for being entirely pointlessly subbed? A dunce cap would be appropriate.

[Redlaw]

Why not give subed player and paying players full outfits? the shame of being free is starting all naked. I bed that make plenty of people want to hell pay 20 bucks just to not have anything.

[Aisha]

should have done something like free players have 1x learn rate verified players have 1.5x learn rate and suscribed players have 2x learn rate

[HurlyBurly]

I think making the map smaller is a mistake. A large portion of your player base is casual hermits whose only experience with other players will be the time they log on and there is a hole in their wall and everything valuable they have is stolen/dead. A larger map helped mitigate this.

[Thedrah]

i don't like the tiered stat caps but i do like the idea of a 'max level'. although bots will have the upper hand especially if in swarms
if it's all the square root everything then wouldn't a character with 200 stats be something like 4.5 times stronger than a fresh newb? or twice as strong as a maxed (50) free tier? so aslong as it's 2:1, free:sub, won't the free win? or the bots in this case? or a verified account with 125 stats, then it'll be even closer

i do like the idea of a 'max level'. i think people will work together more as there will be greater strength in numbers moreso than stats. there will be less lone griefers imo because itll take more than one to fight. there will be less or even no 'godlike' characters
maybe make equipment and tools the larger point to being 'useful' like a butcher knife could damper the softcap some

instead of stats being capped depending on sub/verified can we either get
a. pay to get head starts (lp bonus, sold on hours/days/weeks), which will be less pay to win but pay to catch up or get ahead. maybe increased energy regeneration or an item with charges that refills hunger, but does not work in combat
b. pay to have certain rights, such as only a subscriber can be a village chief. or cash shop item to start a village/town
c. get some glitter in the ways of customizing our characters, such as having a taller character or reskin stuff like others have suggested
d. flip a table and add races with racials such as a viking or swede and some kind of demon thing or ice giants for a nominal fee for each bloodline (such as one time pay for a ice giant that can be inherited) with each have level caps to different stats like vikings are good fighters and swedes are good farmers/programmers and have caps/growth accordingly

i don't think max level is a bad thing as long as equipment helps or all are equal in some form. and maybe something to limit botters or make botting less needed lol

[strpk0]

After a change like this, I'd feel like a hypocrite to criticize or try to discuss the payment model further, as my wishes have pretty much come true already.

But just as a suggestion (and maybe as food for thought), how viable would it be for you guys to simply base your profits off store items, and not level caps/subscriptions? Maybe consumable convenience items (something like springs in salem) that can be lost and are not refunded, giving people an incentive to keep buying them, while not really giving anyone an advantage for it. Also the cosmetic decoration/item customizability/limited time items seem like pretty good ideas too. And you don't necessarily HAVE to refund them upon world reset, either. Maybe they could come with a limited warranty of X months where if a world reset happens before then the items will be refunded, but not after it runs out? Because with the current suggested system, seems like some people will just not subscribe until they NEED to (and even then, it's debatable whether they will choose to at that point).

Keyword here is consumable, non-refundable items, though. I see lots of people willing to sink a crapton of money into games that don't necessarily give you an edge over everyone for purchasing items, but instead give you small "nice things" that people don't really need, but would definitely prefer to have.

Again, I can't be thankful enough for the changes as they are already, and it's 100% understandable if you don't deem an idea like this fit for your needs (or not doable due to any reason). I just thought I would go ahead and ask you guys as you seem to be willing to listen to ideas.