Catch-up Mechanics and Quality Progression

[SnuggleSnail]

I think a group that joined a year old world, or took a long vacation should be able to have topQ industry within a few months of no lifing. Not fake "well it's better than what's on the market", actual good industry, but there are some mechanics that make that unrealistic

Turnips / Flax

Qualities naturally rising over the course of a world is really good. Somebody that makes a 2k stated character in the third month of the world should not need to put in about equal effort to somebody making a 2k stated character 12 months into the world. People that stopped playing 6 months ago ideally wouldn't still have good enough stats to login for an hour and stomp new people who have been going autistic for 2 months. The rate at which old gains are devalued should be slow, but it should happen.

With that in mind, crop caps are really bad for the game. Crop circles are worse, because they basically read: "crop caps for some, infinite quality progression for others". IMO, the ideal solution is to add some in game event, similar to meteorites, maybe a giant Wild Windsown Seed that shoots baby WWWs out like a mushroom jizzing on the world. Those WWWs could be equal to, or have a chance to be equal to the topQ seeds in the world, capped by survival. Alternatively, they could come from dungeons, or small% chance when picking WWWs normally. Delivery system doesn't matter, as long as joining the world a few months late doesn't mean ur fricked forever on farmQ.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THE ABOVE CONSIDER:
Random crop growth nodes are gay as heck
Crop circles make me want to kill myself, and very few people will abuse them, resulting in giant advantages for small groups in long worlds
Uniform crop growth makes manually farming for quality (more)unrealistic, and could be avoided by just making replanting a crop a static quality gain instead of a +/-


Wild Bones

Finding superQ bones is GAY IMO, even though I'm sure some people enjoy it. I would personally find it a lot more fun if the variance in animal quality were smaller. Once you find Q700 bones, Q500 bones are basically worthless. Some nodes can't be reliably farmed, but generally you find out about one node and just farm it forever, then grief it when you don't need bones so others can't use it. It would be cool if animal quality were a bit more consistent, and lower. Instead of having a tiny fraction of a chance to get INSANE bones, you could have a low but not absurd chance to get PRETTY GOOD bones that will actually be valuable because insane bones don't exist.

Additionally, in the early game boneQ & minehole depth are probably the most important things for industry. More intermediate villages having access to top/highQ stuff with less man hours spent could lessen the divide between big autists and middle tier bois, resulting in a more active & fun political climate.


Farmed Bones

Livestock eventually give the highestQ bones in the game. People are not going to sell or let you steal their insane bone animals, they took legit 12-18 months work at minimum to make, but once they exist, and continue progressing other people are permanently stuck behind the people with them, with no realistic way to catch up. I don't think that's FUN, especially since you might waste 12 months on it only to not be rewarded because of world reset, and I also don't think it's fair to people who join late.


The best catch-up mechanic I can think of is make the quality of chickens or rabbits raise faster than livestock can, and add a FUN EVENT that happens occasionally similar to meteor, except it just makes rabbits/chickens spawn at a quality equal to the best in the world for people to pick up(with adequate survival). It could only happen in a centralized area to encourage PVP, or everywhere as just a fun reason to login & to help balance industry.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THE ABOVE CONSIDER:
Once you know how breeding quality works, it's not an interesting choice or something to work around. It's just quality, but again, and drastically increases the effectiveness of autistic sized, unfun to maintain farms for quality growth of animals. I think removing BQ would be big for equalizing it a bit.
Likewise, instead of hide%/meat%/endurance/stamina/truffle etc being +/- 5, them being +5/-3 would mean people who don't specifically breed for it will eventually reach the caps, but autists can still be rewarded for breeding optimally by getting it much earlier. Likewise, it doesn't punish people who are doing it wrong as harshly. Maybe still do these even if you don't decide against the chicken/rabbit thing xd


Realm bonuses

If you don't have mountain trad you can't make a good anvil/stone axe/clay
If you don't have backwater you can't get good turnips>mulch>trees>tools/anvil
If you don't have fecund earth you can never have good flax>htable/rope>trees/clay>tools/anvil
If you don't have marriage of the sea early, you basically auto-lose a lot of PVP engagements(doesn't matter when qualities are higher)

Based on the previous three worlds(10, 11, 12) having realms that ran out of auth or suddenly die(Morthern Kingdom, Kingdom of Storm, A.D., Motherland, Pride, Freedom, North Star, Kingdom of Ashes, Never Neverland, probably more), or just didn't provide good buffs(Motherland, Balder's Bra, Loliconquest, Candy Kingdom, North Star, probably more). Maintaining a realm is not a reasonable ask for an average player, and planning around which realms will be bad or just straight up destroyed isn't a reasonable ask even for top autists. Your realm suddenly not being good isn't a call to action, it's an insurmountable task that can functionally ruin your entire village, if quality prog is your goal.

With the above in mind, I don't think important quality progression bonuses with permanent effects(Flax speed, Turnip speed), or giant short term bonuses(mountain trad, snek/knarrQ, and of lesser importance TruffleQ/+FEP bonus) shouldn't be tied to something so far out of most people's personal control.

Suggestion/s

For farming realm bonuses could be ignored if the above catch up mechanics were introduced. If not, replacing growth speed with some other fun buff would be fine(harvest speed, reduced stam cost from farming, etc).

Mountain tradition is busted and shouldn't provide a big mining related bonus. Fealty stoning your entire mine is an absurd ask when it's publicly available, but often in the early game it won't be everywhere. Additionally, it's very easy to just mine for a month straight, find all of the cool quality nodes, turn Mtrad on for a few hours to mine it all out, then turn it back off again before regular people are even done building their fealty stones. It says a lot about how powerful this is that every single realm I know of(early world) picked this buff first. Reducing early monopolies on highQ metal would also curb RMT a little bit, but honestly not much.

For marriage of the sea, I honestly think the best, most flavorful nerf/fix would be just making Snekkjas/Knarrs have speeds equal to a rowboat in rivers while leaving the actual realm buff the same. Or, maybe faster than a rowboat, but speed not affect by quality. Ocean shallows and Odeeper could remain the same. Getting chased by, or chasing people who's boats are faster than yours is a big gay, and an auto lose in certain situations. Early on, if somebody has a faster snek than you, you'll probably have to ditch it, which means it gets destroyed, which is a big deal to happen for free when you're putting topQ bone glue/whale mulch wood/highQ spring water wood/topQ hide strap ropes into it on top of when you can build it being time sensitive due to realm buffs(everybody builds some knarrs then turns it off so nobody else can). Another alternative is for it to be a straight speed boost, but only when inside the realm. I think there's merit to nerfing snekkja/knarr speeds inland for other PVP reasons, tho

I don't think +FEP% buff, and woodland realm(truffleQ) aren't THAT important, I just felt obligated to mention them. Changing FEP% to be hunger reduction would be just as thematically fun, but a bit more balanced fair. For TruffleQ, IMO, they're a tiny bit overpowered at high qualities, and worse than nothing at low qualities. Re-balancing their scaling a bit to be more focused on converting FEPs to will(will2?), and less on overall fep% increase could be cool, and make woodland realm fine.


I'm just going to leave a list of credo bonuses I think are overpowered. Do with them what you will:

Required. If you don't have this you may as well not be playing
Speed bonus when chasing small animals(Forager. This effect is obv important for PVP, probs don't remove, only fine because it's such an easy credo)
Faster crop growth(Farmer, required for quality prog)
Increased crop yield(Farmer, required for quality prog)
Increased baseline quality of rocks hewn(Quarryman, required for quality prog)
Increased baseline quality of rocks hewn(Miner, required for quality prog)
Quality bonus on wild animals killed(Strider, required for quality prog)
Small quality bonus to all fuel added to Smelters and Finery Forges(Blacksmith, required for quality prog)
Higher chance to increase quality when pounding Wrought Iron(Blacksmith, does this effect still work? Req for Q prog)
Small quality bonus when smithing(Blacksmith, required for quality prog)
Quality bonus when cooking(Cooking, required for quality prog. Mulch)
Chance to double the output when cooking(Cooking, if you're making a good character without this ur dum)
Your branded animals have shorter gestation period(Herder, req for quality prog, but quality prog nearly nobody focuses on)



Not necessarily required, but powerful enough that ur dum to not have it
Increased speed when swimming(Fishing, PVP)
Increased speed when pursuing animals(Hunter, PVP)
Increased stone chipping speed and mining strength(Quarryman, only in the early game)
Chance to pulverize tiles when mining(Miner)
The first gilding of a new artifact is always successful(Tailor, only matters in the early game)
Chance to fail gildings reduced by 5%(Tailor, only matters in the early game)
Ore mined smelts faster(Miner, less *EXPENSIVE* highQ coal/black coal used)



OP, but not OP enough for most people to justify the effort
+15% damage with ranged weapons(Strider, pls make bows not good in PVP instead of nerfing this. Nobody likes bows reeEEE)
Increased speed when swimming(Pearl driver, PVP)

Special Mention
The ability to make potters clay may as well be in the absoolutely required category for the first few people rushing low mineholes, and them being slowed a bit I think is fine? They'll have enough people that it won't rly be an issue, and normal people can just buy potter's clay. It's fine, but some nibba would call me out if I didn't mention it.

P.S: Client updates are rly good, would advocate continuing down that path above anything else if world wipe isn't soon!

[vatas]

Before reading OP properly, I'll just drop in suggestion I came up with in some other thread.

Each crop will have determined "current maximum value" which could actually be equal to 90% of the quality of highest planted crop of that type, if balancing is deemed to require it, or just simply that value.

Crops that are of current maximum value, or only 5 lower, will use current random values system or something slightly less cancer, when planted.

Crops that are lower than (MaxValue-5) will always increase by +5 quality points, as long as character that plants them has farming that is equal or higher to (Seed+5)

[strpk0]

+1, suggestions like this could help with world longevity and with worlds becoming too stagnant with only one faction ruling everything.

[Enjoyment_2]

oh, you did it, another list! good girl.
now we should wait until jorb implement this shit to confirm this game is developed by the wishes of one player!

Did you think it would be something like this?
Post some autistic stuff devs won't react, and you'll "see, they don't do what I say!"?
Well, you're not a smartest guy, just take it and go on.

Most of said "problems" could be solved much easier, with just one change - remove snail from the game and. done.

[WowGain]

Please, for the love of god and all that is holy, fucking remove global pools. Especially in the early game when you have the most people scrambling for things like Glimmermoss to utilize as high end early game foraged curios the only thing global pools serve to do is cater to people who are able to most autistically farm them (botters).

If the only options are that the autists have an inordinate amount while everyone else has a healthy amount, or the autists having a healthy amount while everyone else has none I would absolutely take the former every time. At least in that situation everyone else has a chance.

[Lalaxx]

Most of said "problems" could be solved much easier, with just one change - remove snail from the game and. done.

What's your point? Remove snail and another snail will take it's place.

oh, you did it, another list! good girl.
now we should wait until jorb implement this shit to confirm this game is developed by the wishes of one player!

I think it be better for game to be developed by 1 player who actually play the game then by 2 developers that not testing anything in their game before patching.

[Fostik]

Don't really think that credos are that overpowered as you said.
Sounds weird to me, to call any credo bonus that makes game more conventient, and bursts your progression game breaking. Credos are high effort achievements in the game, it's almost impossible to have all credos at a time for one character/player, so players forced to collaborate to cover all credo bonuses for their villages, e.g. someone has potter branch, other has smith, and third has cave hermit. On the other hand, do you really want anyone to achieve everything as you did just by raising skills for LP? As far as I remember, in legacy haven, credos absence and equal quality of animals has never created any catch-up mechanics.

The only thing that really should be fixed - is credo influence on PvP, without removing bonuses, just to add debuff that activates when you are in combat with other player, and turns off all credo bonuses. Also lasts some time after ending combat, to prevent abusing.
Inb4: There are already existent mechanism to determine which type of combat you are in: PvE or PvP, because initiating PvP combat causes you to leave scents. So it will be not a big deal for server to determine is that PvP combat and player should receive debuff, or PvE so player should still have credo bonuses.

[jorb]

Post some autistic stuff

Take some time on curfew for this and every past instance of not being particularly nice.

[telas]

W12 its my first world and i have learn a lot in the past las months, and still learning and im going to give my opinion about this ideas.

I think a group that joined a year old world, or took a long vacation should be able to have topQ industry within a few months of no lifing. Not fake "well it's better than what's on the market", actual good industry, but there are some mechanics that make that unrealistic

this is not OK, if you came late to the game(like what happen to me) your progress has to start from 0, its not a logical reason to get an easier game just because you start later to play, or you decide to leave tha game and catch later when it get easier to rise qualities.

Qualities naturally rising over the course of a world is really good. Somebody that makes a 2k stated character in the third month of the world should not need to put in about equal effort to somebody making a 2k stated character 12 months into the world. People that stopped playing 6 months ago ideally wouldn't still have good enough stats to login for an hour and stomp new people who have been going autistic for 2 months. The rate at which old gains are devalued should be slow, but it should happen.

qualities system its hard, but its part of the challenge that come with this game. make a 2k stats char on 3 months its humanly imposible in a good way, and that the real problem to the game mechanics. you need an army of characters supboting one big ass whale stats character. make this should be impossible at the beginning of the game.

Random crop growth nodes are gay as heck
Crop circles make me want to kill myself, and very few people will abuse them, resulting in giant advantages for small groups in long worlds
Uniform crop growth makes manually farming for quality (more)unrealistic, and could be avoided by just making replanting a crop a static quality gain instead of a +/-

Crops mechanic like grapes, its not based on a real thing. grapes vines should get their quality grow with the time planted. best wine vines should be the old ones, with locations near to the the sea, mountain or rivers, and with an adequate type of soil to grow

Finding superQ bones is GAY IMO, even though I'm sure some people enjoy it. I would personally find it a lot more fun if the variance in animal quality were smaller. Once you find Q700 bones, Q500 bones are basically worthless. Some nodes can't be reliably farmed, but generally you find out about one node and just farm it forever, then grief it when you don't need bones so others can't use it. It would be cool if animal quality were a bit more consistent, and lower. Instead of having a tiny fraction of a chance to get INSANE bones, you could have a low but not absurd chance to get PRETTY GOOD bones that will actually be valuable because insane bones don't exist.

to avoid people ruining some very high Q bones, Quality should be attached to the time without people hunting on that node. natural resources should gain quality with the absence of human intervention.

Mountain tradition is busted and shouldn't provide a big mining related bonus. Fealty stoning your entire mine is an absurd ask when it's publicly available, but often in the early game it won't be everywhere. Additionally, it's very easy to just mine for a month straight, find all of the cool quality nodes, turn Mtrad on for a few hours to mine it all out, then turn it back off again before regular people are even done building their fealty stones. It says a lot about how powerful this is that every single realm I know of(early world) picked this buff first. Reducing early monopolies on highQ metal would also curb RMT a little bit, but honestly not much.

realm bonuses are a good relief from game difficulty for the people living in them. use them on that tyrannic way its what gives communities a motive to make his own realms and support the people that live inside their territory. RMT its an extended subject, that can be eliminated by restraining game content, and the only good way is with snitchers and object trackers to prove the RMT cases

For marriage of the sea, I honestly think the best, most flavorful nerf/fix would be just making Snekkjas/Knarrs have speeds equal to a rowboat in rivers while leaving the actual realm buff the same. Or, maybe faster than a rowboat, but speed not affect by quality. Ocean shallows and Odeeper could remain the same. Getting chased by, or chasing people who's boats are faster than yours is a big gay, and an auto lose in certain situations. Early on, if somebody has a faster snek than you, you'll probably have to ditch it, which means it gets destroyed, which is a big deal to happen for free when you're putting topQ bone glue/whale mulch wood/highQ spring water wood/topQ hide strap ropes into it on top of when you can build it being time sensitive due to realm buffs(everybody builds some knarrs then turns it off so nobody else can). Another alternative is for it to be a straight speed boost, but only when inside the realm. I think there's merit to nerfing snekkja/knarr speeds inland for other PVP reasons, tho

one way to balance the speed bonuses could be dont letting knars enter river waters, or get a debuffed speed on inland waters, making sneks only receive buff on coast waters, things like that to make rowboat great again.

Speed bonus when chasing small animals(Forager. This effect is obv important for PVP, probs don't remove, only fine because it's such an easy credo)

OP effect should be high tier credo, hard to get.

Small quality bonus to all fuel added to Smelters and Finery Forges(Blacksmith, required for quality prog)

this will be nice on low tier credos to low the work charge

+15% damage with ranged weapons(Strider, pls make bows not good in PVP instead of nerfing this. Nobody likes bows reeEEE)

bow looks like a good chance to make the gap between 2k stats autist botter players and common players down

The ability to make potters clay may as well be in the absoolutely required category for the first few people rushing low mineholes, and them being slowed a bit I think is fine? They'll have enough people that it won't rly be an issue, and normal people can just buy potter's clay. It's fine, but some nibba would call me out if I didn't mention it.

potters clay should be OP not the thing is right now.

To the developers:
Tks for a great game, and keep it going guys.

[vatas]

(Numbers are wack off, just for the scenario)

Let's say we have a world reset and top people have 2k stats. Some new people start. People in favor of catch-up aren't arguing they should be given near instant 2k stats, but rather catch-up mechanics would help them gain 1k stats much faster than it took the top factions from the start.