by DaniAngione » Mon Feb 22, 2016 7:55 pm
I think that it's a combination of arguably not so bad design decisions that unfortunately, when combined, resulted in a bad situation overall for many players:
1. Decreasing world size - Not a bad call per se. World 8 was too big, a smaller world would be welcome.
2. Spawning everywhere - Again, not a bad decision. Though it removes the 'prospect' of exploring the unknown and venturing far to where no other hearthling has been, it spreads the population more reasonable across the map.
3. The new resources - Probably the arguably worst decision here, because the idea itself is great but the execution and balancing are... let's say... weird.
Thing is, when you combine these 3 things, you get the recipe for disaster. You have a huge population that was waiting for reset, cramped all around on a small map where you can't find 'isolated' places AND you get incredibly unbalanced/non-sensical resources that allowed a lot of people to get murder rage before even planting a seed.
The game is not meant to be fair or balanced, that is true, it does mean to provide ways people can mitigate or counter the efforts of others, however. I like the example Jorb himself used to describe Nidbanes, for instance: it's a 'cruise missile' you can throw back at aggressors, especially when they're too strong for you to handle. So... although the hearthlands are a grim, cruel place, there are things that were designed to "give everyone a shot". What happened to this world is that it leaped this kind of natural balance all over, allowing people to murder each other without care BEFORE anyone was given the chance to "use" the mechanics meant to counter these things. (Nidbanes use Wax, after all) Not fearing any possible kind of retribution makes it easier for people to commit acts that would generally have a greater weight.
So I don't see the decisions as bad decisions (individually). I see a very complicated/frustrating/annoying early game that is happening because of the combination of these decisions, and unfortunately there's not much to do now except endure and try to survive. I foresee that mid-late game will get relatively easier - for those that survive and manage to get a settlement up - because, on the other hand, we now have some interesting new realities to deal with, like the non-existance of palibashers and caps that - while arguably a bad thing overall - will also allow not-so-hardcore people to have more balanced grounds against stronger groups.
So... we'll have to see what happens on the upcoming weeks... It's a big noob-slaughterfest for now, though.
W15 ???
W14 Proud defender of
Kakariko VillageW13 Sporadic member of
RavkaW12 Occasional member of
Lake TownW11 Inactive member of
YggdrasillW10 King of
The Northern KingdomW9 The Revenant of Wulf's RetreatW8 Lawspeaker of
New ThotoshireW7 Lawspeaker of
Esteldín