Game Development: Perry Flotsam

[lachlaan]

Balancing between early worlders and fresh people can be approached in 2 ways, sadly new joiners can just as well be alts of the early worlders and try-hards, no?

I believe the last time you approached this in ye new olde game, it boiled down to either letting ~X stat char only compete with ~X stat char, but letting people joining later catch up to ~X stats in a reasonable time frame.

or allowing for less than ~X stats compete with ~X stats in some way shape or form. Be it more people of low numbers can beat a titan, or a well played lower stat combat char could still deal some damage to a titan. As it stands I have no idea how well balanced pvp is, but I was under the impression a mob can mess up a single char potentially, as well as a titan being able to mess up someone less advanced than him or her gear wise and stat wise.

A few things allowed for skill to be a factor before, when escaping or fighting, and some of them have been cancelled out by the new ways to die nowadays. Die less on foot if you manage to hug speed boosts and carry all of the water, fail more if you meet a knarr in any sort of open water perhaps.

In terms of quality grind, you guys have already set up the world to allow for quick catch up as opposed to the direction Salem took after you guys gave it up.

Buy materials, start new industry in your own base with near 0 effort. Qualities aren't really location based save for ores and clay/water nodes perhaps.

LP wise, a new player just needs to, in my opinion, reach a relevant amount of LP to not feel entirely useless, and that's pretty doable given how many people are being nice with trades.

FEP wise, you really need to decide wether you're okay with diminishing returns being how you limit try hards, or perhaps time gating, or just general rebalancing of available foods. As it stands you have slammed all of the breaks on all of those fronts on progress. Foods are fairly bad hunger wise, kind of horrible satiation wise, and if you just keep stuffing your face everything is worse and worse. The hunger scaling with satiation thing is nice , if a roundabout fix, but while that might've helped newbies and worker chars, now we get longer satiations and a guarantee at needing bulk foods.

People that play actively will effectively need to either wait even longer to progress towards the older players, or produce more than they'd normally have to if they decide to park in the sweet spot of satiations, whichever that may be, where satiations restore as fast as you feel like eating.

I don't know where i'm going with this, but I'd sure like to see Jorb and Loftar re-evaluate the meta of their game, before trying to fix other stuff. Trying stuff out is great when compared to letting things be, but aiming changes more accurately at specific issues would be nice.

[bmjclark]

Will whales break flotsams from knarrs if you're on them? Because if so, that change seems like 90% useless since whales in theory are the only thing that'll break your knarr.

[Omnipotent]

I have to agree that RNG satiations on food is extremely stupid. In real life you eat food and it fills up your stomach. It doesn't sometimes fill your stomach, and sometimes not do anything. Why does Haven work this way?

Sometimes you can only eat two of one food, other times you can eat 6+ and not even get sated once. This makes absolutely no sense. It randomly screws over players indiscriminately. Just remove the RNG on satiations entirely, lower the amount being satiated, and make eating food always satiate their respective categories. Then eating food is no longer an RNG guessing game.

[Ejnekor]

the only trade u can hope to do is sell hats or sub tokens so gg with that, the only real trade is early shit between hermits and that aint even close to catch up. Have you seen prices on the market? tools going for 2000 points lmao

I mean different quality has a different price. I checked several topics and its ~500 points for 200q vs ~2000 points for 250. Hermits can get that 200q one by negotiating with different things. Factions buy stuff like truffles, pepper for sure. And some 'annoying' things are a possibility, like mass mussles or green lanterns. And if you want even lower q - it can be traded for almost nothing. Reality is there - 250q is top-tier anvils at the moment and only dedicated may afford it by ingame means. It is a fair thing to have. People spend hours and hours grinding for that stuff after all.

And if developers make it so by some means new player can get same quality much easier... it will be just a spit towards people's work in game. Amount of work that people put together to make it happen from scratch should stay the same regardless.

[Ejnekor]

Not the issue. Balancing between later and earlier joiners could be.

How will you distinguish later joiner from an alt to abuse mechanic like that? Why time spend on something from scratch (aka without outside boost of 'developed' settlements) should differ? Isn't a difference in development is exactly what makes people come to trade posts that others make (even in the real world)?

[Tarnum]

"Additional catch up mechanics in the same vein as the one we added to questing last patch, by which players receive bonuses in relation to how far behind the global server lead they are. Food? Curios? Metal quality? Bad idea?"

Absolutely demotivation. When you work hard day by day mounth by mounth to be in top and see something like this you just have choice abandone game or become same player as all just with waste few mounths of your life more then they. I think must of top players will abandone game after it, players who did all to get top ( buy subscribe and tokens to trade best food, curioses, materials, who work day and night about quality and outhers ), they will quit.

Well, whot we can do for new players, to give posibility to get chance in this world? I think need food rebalance, for exemple newbies dont know with food OP and with food suck, they craft whot they see, but now whot we can see? we have no balance, some food absolutely op, and some absolutely useless, exemple: you got a bear and have choice whot food to craft



Well if you dont know what food is imbalanced and what absolutely useless - you will stay back. Make some balance and people will got balance about stats also. About catch up quality - we have a world trade and any 1 who work some can buy realy good q tools and make himself strong enough to join global fights for exemple or to trade

[Kaios]

( buy subscribe and tokens to trade best food, curioses, materials, who work day and night about quality and outhers )

It's your choice to buy tokens and use them in that manner, I'm guilty of it myself but I personally feel it does more harm than good to the in-game economy. Would you complain about that if you had just paid a dude through paypal instead?

[DatSheep]

Hmm interesting hat this time around.
>Palisades should no longer cascade if smashed by hand, fixing a number of problems we've had recently with wall cascades used to break into bases.
That's fair lol. For a moment I didn't see hand bashing and I was like BRUHH

the local resources is something that makes sense and makes it spookier but worth it I guess to collect shit. Whenever I do so I'm never contested anyways so YEET

Frankly I'm surprised it took this long to get grape juice as a drinkable juice but it's a minor thing. Way more annoyed that hand bashing keeps taking longer and longer for battering Rams, rip.

[Yasso]

Hmm, don't see a fix for Wild bees

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Stop trying to balance people who play a lot with people who barely do.

Not the issue. Balancing between later and earlier joiners could be.

Not sure I understand the logic in this, really. I've been a late joiner in about half the worlds I've played in, and 'catch up' is something that's already achievable. No one is ever going to 'catch up' with the giant factions until they stop playing. They polish the mechanics to a lustrous shine and do everything in a 'pure efficiency mode' manner that no nooblet or faction lacking the necessary manpower can hope to match. The only feasible way I can see to make late joiners vs current achievable is to ensure there is always something new people can acquire that existing people will always want.

Foraging used to do a decent job of providing that, (sans bots) but gardening seems to have impacted that role significantly. In order for new people to have a positive and engaging experience they have to be able to contribute something to existing players of whatever Q level. There are some feasible answers here, but they are all of limited utility:

1 - Fish - Though it's questionable how useful fish are to late game players.
2 - Foraging - As above, further nerfed by Gardening.
3 - Appearance lumber (Given the base newbs ability to plant trees en masse with a shovel now)
4 - Natural Resources (provided said natural resources are available on a randomized timer, and spring up across the map instead of having static locations)
5 - Squirrel/Hedgehog/Mole/Other non-breedable critters (including most birds of course).

The issue with #1, #2, and #5 is that the things obtainable through these sources have to retain meaning. Other things along this thought pattern should be included. Somewhat rare, obtainable by newbs, not campable by anyone, useful or highly essential at all stages of play.