Ideas: Level Cap and Item Sinks

[LadyGoo]

There is a dilemma between letting the players to feel that they have somewhere to grow and making it possible for the rest of the playerbase to catch-up with the hardcore players. I have been thinking about it for quite a while and have come to an easy solution, in my point of view:

Reaching 300 stats should be much quicker and easier. You can benefit from the fep, satiations, LA boosts, any type of curios. Once you have reached the soft cap of 300, your further progression should become much slower.
Possible ways of implementing it:

1. The curios will divide into two types. The high and low tiers. People can study either before they'll reach 300 in skills. Afterwards they would have to use the higher tier curios only, that will study for ages, consume a lot of materials + the player's learning ability reduces. That way it would be still possible to develop endlessly, but catching up with the pros and having good stats (compared to world pvp average) would also be quite easy. It is not necessary to implement new curios, just add a tag to long-studying ones.

List of high-tier curios:
Bluebells, Flotsams, Edels - so noobs could trade them to the pros and there would be a constant demand for them.
Golden teeth, Silver rose, Silken Ribbon, Sand castle and etc. etc.

2. After reaching the softcap in stats (300), you fep % bar caps to 100-50% instead. This will make every high-quality food to count, increase the use of pepper, increase the meaning of quality.

[shubla]

I think devs should add some methods for chars to die.
Such as random chance that your char would get deadly infection, or dementia.
Chance for this would rise over time. And would result in either complete loss of your character or grafual loss of attributes and abilities.

[Zeler]

I love the idea of softcap after which stats are very, very hard to rise up.

I think devs should add some methods for chars to die.
Such as random chance that your char would get deadly infection, or dementia.
Chance for this would rise over time. And would result in either complete loss of your character or grafual loss of attributes and abilities.

It's not fun mechanic to randomly lose your character.

[zebratul]

To be honest, the whole idea seems rather clunky, and is partly implemented (higher level stats and skills require much more materials to develop further).
Is there really a reason to slow down late-game even more? That doesnt solve the issue with lacking endgame content, and sounds more like an annoyance.
At least now you can grind stats and Q even higher.

I think this is more of a balance issue and should be inspected by devs from the ingame statictics screen from the angle of «Are there people with tens of thousands stats already and how will that affect our game»

[shubla]

I think devs should add some methods for chars to die.
Such as random chance that your char would get deadly infection, or dementia.
Chance for this would rise over time. And would result in either complete loss of your character or grafual loss of attributes and abilities.

It's not fun mechanic to randomly lose your character.

It wouldnt happen all of a sudden.
It would start with slow stat drop until you'd have everything at 1.
Idea would be to make chars not live forever and gain 10000000 uac or farming.

[DeadlyPencil]

Under your idea, do you have to max all skills to 300 first before you can raise anything higher? Because if you don't have it that way, it might get stupid if I could only put high tier curios on when I only have 1 skill at 300 and the rest at 1.

[LadyGoo]

To be honest, the whole idea seems rather clunky, and is partly implemented (higher level stats and skills require much more materials to develop further).
Is there really a reason to slow down late-game even more? That doesnt solve the issue with lacking endgame content, and sounds more like an annoyance.
At least now you can grind stats and Q even higher.

I think this is more of a balance issue and should be inspected by devs from the ingame statictics screen from the angle of «Are there people with tens of thousands stats already and how will that affect our game»

I have stated in the OP post what is the actual aim of my ideas. Stated the problem too and there was not a single word about the end-game content. Not all of my suggestion are about the end-game. This particular one is about the issue of players not being able to catch up and the need for the development and item sinks.

Yeah, there is a reason to slow down the stat and skill grind significantly: other players should feel like they can catch up; meanwhile people should always have somewhere to develop; there should be a use for curios and food that people produce both economic and gameplay-wise.

Moreover, choosing what gives the skills and stats after the soft-cap will affect the trade world significantly in a positive way. Things that tend to stock endlessly could be used more. The noobs will be able to trade their stuff more efficiently and etc.

Under your idea, do you have to max all skills to 300 first before you can raise anything higher? Because if you don't have it that way, it might get stupid if I could only put high tier curios on when I only have 1 skill at 300 and the rest at 1.

Good question. Your scenarios looks similar to the fep system (when the highest stat determines how much more you have to eat next).
There are various ways to address this, like counting the lp you get from the high tier curios separately and using it solely for the skill that is at 300.
Or leaving it as it is (like fep system), so you'd have to think about your development beforehand before entering the higher tier.
Or making it require 1.5 times more lp to up anything above 300.
Or slowing down the stat gain only.
Or getting halved lp from the low tier curio after 300, and normal lp from higher tier
or
or

The idea behind of the curio tier is to control the curio study variety (i've posted somewhere that a lot of curios are being unused). So, some stuff you'd be better to use earlier, some - later.

[ricky]

I still believe the best way to regulate stats is to keep FEP system as it is, but to only allow levels to be gained once a certain objective is met.

for example, to gain a strength point you must participate in activities that would realistically make you strong, such as mining or chopping trees, as well as meet the required food intake

inb4 "the bots will ruin us!" - there will always be bots, if you dont make the threshold of activities so high that you have to clearcut a forest, problems like this wont arise

inb4 "its just another hoops for players to jump through!" - it's only a hoop for hardcore statgainers who feast for 3 days and three nights. casual players will have a new reason to explore new avenues of the game or to get some work done around their base that could be considered boring, or bottable.

[ekzarh]

Reaching 300 stats should be much quicker and easier.

IMO this is fast enough already.
I would do initial players growth analysis. And then maybe fine-tune the character progression so that it is tied to average playtime. Something like:
' Average player in a well-working village should spend 200-300 hours of playtime to reach it'
'Solo player should spend 450-550 hours'
This is like 1-month for 8h/day player, 2.5 month for village 3h/day, 5 month for casual hermit.

1. The curios will divide into two types. The high and low tiers.

Good. Stimulates the trade and interaction. Maybe even 3-4 tiers are reasonable.

2. After reaching the softcap in stats (300), you fep % bar caps to 100-50% instead. This will make every high-quality food to count, increase the use of pepper, increase the meaning of quality.

Tier idea suits better here IMO. Roast meat and vinegar/cheese/butter base foods are the same for <300 char, while >300 char receives much less from primitive foods (roast meat, unprepared carrots, etc)

IN ADDITION
This may delay, but won't really stop the gap increase.
IMO making stats and LP skills less influencing after 300 can balance players better.
Its hard to describe in general, but can be easily shown by these 2 very-very approximate exmaples:
'Stat-300 character is twice as strong as stat-150 character' (twice damage, faster cooldowns, higher block powers whatever)
'Stat-1500 character is twice as strong as stat-300 character'

As a result after reaching the cap players still gain bonuses, but they have to evolve character for a long time to gain substantial advantage over softcap reachers in terms of stats.

It is bare numbers, the core idea is:
Player A, the hardcore one and Player B (the one who plays 2-3h per working day and 5-6 per weekend) start at the same time.
In 1 month they have some difference in character combat value (we don't take human skill into account in this example). I have no data to say how big this difference is now but it shouldn't be like Player A can easily kill 3 players B trying their best.
In 1 year this difference in combat value should not stop growing for both, but should remain about the same given they keep their playtime on the same. So still no uber-characters, no OHKOs etc.

P.S. And yeah, I forgot the case when 5 people with 8+ hours of well-thought playtime a day invest all of their time to raise a single uber-monster character.

[MadNomad]

I love the idea of softcap after which stats are very, very hard to rise up.

I think devs should add some methods for chars to die.
Such as random chance that your char would get deadly infection, or dementia.
Chance for this would rise over time. And would result in either complete loss of your character or grafual loss of attributes and abilities.

It's not fun mechanic to randomly lose your character.

well people with lower stats would profit from this if they lose proportionally the same amount (proportionally, so at lower stats less feps lost ofc), cause their enemies who worked for advantage would lose more, so idk maybe thats why he got such idea. also at higher stats every next fep is slightly less efective ofc so yeah, its enough i think.