Stat curve shouldnt be changed

[dageir]

Just got a great idea! Introduce seasons. For instance you could have slowed down development of the "titans" during winter. The reasoning/lore for this I am not sure of. This seasons would allow for catchup.

[LadyGoo]

Just got a great idea! Introduce seasons. For instance you could have slowed down development of the "titans" during winter. The reasoning/lore for this I am not sure of. This seasons would allow for catchup.

That's a good idea, if executed properly. I was thinking about the same thing but for the farming. However, I had some of my guys saying that it's going to be as retarded as in Salem (they did not enjoy winters really).

[MrPunchers]

Ooga booga nabs need catch up1!!!!!! How else do we expamd plaer base !!!!! My roundpoels got catapultd

[Granger]

Me? A kin of LadyGoo? Are You nuts?

Given that both of you seem to be unable to entertain a thought that requires looking a bit farer than the tip of your nose... I at times have the impression that you were decanted by the same clone facility.

Stupid decay mechanic for character is like using a carrot rod against donkey, with exception that You won't let the donkey touch it.

Explain to me the difference to the current carrot of endlessl increasing numbers? Apart from them possibly being over 9000, thus allowing lesser minded beings to compensate shortcomings...

He thinks a decay will change something against big guys or LadyGoo special forces.

I don't think (and never claimed) that it'll allow dominance over coordinated factions, these would still lead. Just that it would reduce the maximum distance that these could get ahead, allowing new factions to emerge as the existing ones could be reached (given effort) - which currently isn't possible as the qualities they have (as of the time they had to raise them) are impossible to reach.

Plus I dislike the visuals that need a decimal separator to make the item quality display readable.

The fallacies you entertain:

If I stop playing because X happens and I come back to see that people once I know are titans now and I am reduced to half or more of what I was

Titans (unbound growth, as of now) would be unable to exist within a system with character decay that is limiting the reachable numbers.

Given that the current broken mechanics (being able to feast with multipliers that give FEP several hundred levels worth per item for effectively no hunger gain - or quest for millions of LP a pop) are adjusted to sane levels, limiting the absolute amount of levels you can effectively put constantly into a character within a given timeframe would remove the ability to permanently out-eat/study the boundries (which would confine the characters to a balanceable level range), you would only be able to temporarily push a character toward the upper limit (since at some point the drain per day would be higher than what you can repeatedly stuff into a character) but it would be uneconomical to feed the maximum on a constant basis. It would be worth though to do a feast prior to an engagement to give you a little temporary edge over your opponents, which would well be in line to the lore ('tonight we feast, tomorrow we go and fight').

it also can mean I lost my base, I lost my almost entire progress.

In case you lost your base you, by definition, lost your industry and with that the ability to produce high quality items.

If I could close the gap of what I lost simply in one day, then what's the point, just waste of time?

Dishonest argument, noone sane suggested that ability.

The problem isn't lying that stats are endless, it is just that it is hard to catch (not impossible, but hard).

With the current system taking a prolonged break is by definition permanently losing progress (compared to characters that keep playing, as these raise their crops, trees, animals and through that general industry quality - while you don't). With my approach you would fall back but would be able to recover and catch up to the ones that kept playing, like a RL athlete that stops training for a time but picks it up again.

But as long as the stats/qualities are able to raise endlessly there is no way to catch up (or even get close) to a group that dosn't take a break, irrelevant of how big your group is or how much work you put in it - unless you wield your credit card to buy stuff with tokens. This is the mathematical consequence of quality of crops defining the qualities of the items you can make, giving an old enough world.

It's better to either make progression logarithmically decrease (midgame being fastest point in game to increase in all matters, slowing down greatly in endgame), so if the world is going to be a longer one, new players / vet can still come back in game and somewhat catch up to players from very beginning,

How would they be able to bring their industry quality (crops, trees and cattle) to or near the levels that took others years to reach? Grab some crates of tokens and buy the stuff (seeds/animals) from someone willing to sell? I thought you're against pay2win...

Decay in any game, that touches player directly and is a MMO, is very hostile approach against a player. You want people to play the game right?

According to this logic claim authority drain (among other stuff, like armor wear) must be removed as it makes the game suck, right?

A game is fun when it's reasonably challenging - which isn't the case with a system like we currently have, that at some point (titans) allows to kill high level mobs with similar effort as you have to kill a bunny (sans the monty python grail one).

[overtyped]

@granger i dont think not being able to catch up is necessarily bad. I used to hold your view, but changing the quality grind would make haven unrecognizable.

[jordancoles]

Just got a great idea! Introduce seasons. For instance you could have slowed down development of the "titans" during winter. The reasoning/lore for this I am not sure of. This seasons would allow for catchup.

That's a good idea, if executed properly. I was thinking about the same thing but for the farming. However, I had some of my guys saying that it's going to be as retarded as in Salem (they did not enjoy winters really).

How long would a season last though? A week? A few IRL months?

"Oh it's winter in haven right now? Fuck that I'll wait until it's spring to play"

[Aceb]

[...]

If I want to grind my carrot to 9000Q and eat it, that's my darn choice and I can at least lick that carrot. Yeah there's "no border" but the border becomes my limit. Which means I can try to reach the carrot instead of knowing from the start, I won't reach it.

Reducing the maximum distance You say? If I recall, your idea was 0,025% of decay during ingame hour. It would give 1,8% decay of stat in real life day. Let's round it up to 2%.

(hopes that math doesn't fail a tired person)
Let's assume it comes now, during this world.
Titan: 10,000 in STR. = After a day -200 in STR.
Avg P: 2,000 in STR. = After a day -40 in STR.
Me : 500 in STR. = After a day -10 in STR.

Now, You may think -10 STR in not a big deal for me while -200STR for a big guy is highly unfair, doesn't it? Coming up to let's say 500 in stats with decay from very beginning, it means, losing 10 point IN EVERY OTHER STAT PER DAY. For a faction, where people might have only one role per player, might be not much and easly jumpable and still have the possibility to gain, per day, 10+X in required stats.

Now, let's take a small village, where people usually have multi roles. Compared to a faction, they probably have not only a smaller processing capacity but also we want them also progress so one day, maybe they will rise to a new faction. Not only each day they get a log thrown at them to stop their growing, but also have to actually pass above that log to continue to grow. Having a lot of less processing capacity than a faction, it becames a looooot harder task to do when the decay hits.

Now, let's take hermit. It's already hard to do everything by yourself even with alts. Now, each day You got hit with I don't know, a -5 to all stats. So simply If hermit decides to take up a second role, after a two irl weeks, suddenly, they got enough worse with decay they have to rise needed stats BACK to previous level and yet, again, the other stats goes down...

That's the fuckin punishment for not being a nolife or a botuser, or min-maxing a lot. Factions don't suddenly appear out of nowhere, first people must stop being hermits, then get along with each other, than make a village and etc., etc., with a decay, rising of a new CHALLENGING faction would be a lot harder unless wipe happens.

Also, Imagine someone stopped playing for a month. With being generous with that: 500 in all stats. After a month, I would be probably somewhere at 250 or 300. Which means, that for one stat it might not be much for You, but in all...

Titans would remain a titans with lower statistics, but still titans compared to others in that matter. Better is to make a somewhat catch-up mechanic, where 3 players that started later, have a chance to fight such a one titan or I dunno, get better RNG rolls until X quality or stage or whatever.


@edit: correcting grammar here and there.

[Granger]

Some things I would like you to factor into your contemplation, possibly they might help you reach the perspective I have on it:

A change like this can't happen mid-world and it wouldn't make sense as the only change, multipliers for feasting and cha would need an adjustment too (and stuff like fuel exploit be-gone and whatnot). Thus the numbers you picked would no longer be obtainable so any discussion about what would happen to a 10k character is moot.

The basic idea is to limit the levels on the server to a range where they still make sense when interacting with the simulated world and other characters.

Under the current approach the devs would need to constantly add more and harder mobs to keep up with the players, up to the point where a single character (to over-exaggerate) would face the equivalent of god - and defeat it. Sure some might see 'fun' in being able to solo all mobs in the game: cut mammoths down by the dozend in one sitting and slay whole families of trolls... but I think that this kind of mobs shouldn't be a single-player thing.

I think a good target would be that casual hermit characters can be kept around a level where they can comfortably hunt lesser critters without much danger, while stuff like bears and moose are doable but with a fair risk of defeat. Organized groups should be able to support characters that can solo these somewhat relieable (still with a fair chance for receiving damage) but a mammoth or troll should still be able to relieable flatten no-lifers should they confront them alone.

The idea is to limit what a single character can do alone - when it comes to PvE - by limiting the absolute abilities a character can reach. The side effect would be that the item quality on the server (incl. crops & trees) gets a limit, which in turn limits the multipliers that are the result of quality (and character stats, like charisma). Simply put: it's easier to balance the game when there is a known, reasonable, upper boundry for things. In case the possible range between nothing and top gets too wide the resulting effect is either way overpowered at the high end or near effective zero at the beginning - at least with how the mechanics are structured currently throughout the game. But with a known span stuff like combat (both PvE and PvP) can be tuned to be fun, engaging and challenging - though this might not be welcome by ones that simply want to cut down everything that moves, irrelevant of mesh and texture...

To put a number on it: it shouldn't be possible to push a character above 300, with about half of it maintainable with reasonable investment in regular playtime, which would also result in the item quality on the server seeing this as an upper bound (since you won't be able to raise crops higher and such) and thus limit the multipliers inherent in them to something that is manageable (so the needed nerfs to mechanics like feasting won't boil down to effectively having to remove them, as would be needed like currently where items that result in higher multipliers exist).

With such a boundry it should also be possible to adjust character progression speed to a sane level: slow enough to disable mass-production of characters and giving enough time till reaching the 'ceiling' to have reasonable accomplishment, fast enough to not deter people from starting into an already running world (to get rid of this topic). It still should give a big enough spread in the average abilities of the population to make investment into the game have benefit and differentiate enough beween low- and high-end characters, encourage group play (for defeating the bigger monsters and to gain the synergy effects of a group) - but spare the devs from eventually having to add the god mob...

I see your point that over-specialized characters (relying only on few attributes, like combat alts) would be cheaper to maintain should the decay be applied to each stat individually, but it should be possible to come up with a way to structure it to discourage such builds (and through that: specialized alts).

[overtyped]

@granger, your method just punishes people. None wants to log off for a week and see they lost some of their hard earrned stats.
A stat limit is far better than your idea, and even i dont think a stat limit is good.

Here is an example, Xcom used to have a time limit to complete a level, which people felt like a punishment for not going fast enough.
Then they changed it to have no time limit, but the faster you complete the more points you get. It's basically the same result, but one is a reward, the other is a punish.
Stat decay is a punish, and people shouldn't feel like they are being punished for having good stats, it's a poor idea through and through.

[Aceb]

Certainly, it is more clear (at least to me) now, but still, it doesn't seems right to do something like this. I mean, logically thinking, if You progress to get stronger, it doesn't feels right to wake up almost weaker next day. I'm thinking here of the end game with decay.

At one point it could just become a struggle where it is either to give up or not and we have to remember that many players can and will probably have a days off from the game and that might be just unfair.

Unless we tweak your idea to have initial decay to rise with each day of inactivity or a some catch-up to "once been on that level, it is easier to come back on that level" or something. But it would just bring the idea back to each other that was there or here discussed: slowing players down.


Just however I think of it even in it is best light... it doesn't seems right.... That's why I see this as a punishment. Unhealthy, forcing to be active and making twice as much to stay, third as much to go over, just to go back a lot if You to take a break.


Edit: and it would probably lead to account sharing on a bigger scale than it is now. Not to say alt meta getting higher thumbs up too.