Ideas to make the game more rewarding long-time

[Barbamaus]

I've asked players what makes them quit (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=75458), in order to figure out what to suggest to improve the longevity of the game.

From what I've read so far, other than IRL reasons, there's a few key issues that need to be addressed. The common theme seems to be "it gets boring once you've got it all".
Here's a few ideas off the top of my head. Feel free to suggest better stuff!

1. More in-game events
Meteor is the only "event" there currently is.
More stuff like that might involve different fields.
"Whaling season" could be a group of whales spawning all in the same spot, requiring several knarrs to hunt them down safely.
"Dawn of the dead" could be group of Nidbanes spawning from long-dead animal corpses, attacking anyone holding a weapon (or something...)
"Sylvan rebellion" could be Dryads and Ents challenging several provinces around the world, turning planted crops into their wild versions if the challenge is not stopped (or something else)
These are just random ideas, to get the point though.

1.1 Dev-events
If the above examples are too much work, why not host some random dev-made event, like many other games do?
A treasure hunt... A labyrinth in the caves... a horse or boat race... an arena where players get matched up in random pairs...
Prize could be a hat, or some other cool item.

2. Link bigger stuff to seasons to break monotony
Since we have them, why not fully embrace them?
Crops seasonality comes to mind. Having set times to plant and harvest them would make a farmer's life a bit less monotonous, having to prepare for it.
2.2 Hunting "seasons"
Similarly, some animals might be a lot more common in a specific season, making hunters life a bit different as well.
It doesn't need to be linked to the actual seasons though; having times where large herds/packs of animals spawn might be interesting. Maybe groups large enough that it requires several people to work together to get them (or one guy to find a way to cheese them and ruin it for everyone ), all with random quality like in mini-dungeons.

3. Some decay
From spoiling food to rusting metal, through most animal and vegetable things... You wouldn't get to the point where you have enough of something that you could live the rest of the world without getting more of it.
It would need to be timed properly, making it slow enough that you can set aside stuff for later, but not too slow so that you'd notice things disappear over a week or more. Different things would have different timers, and Alchemy could come into play to slow down or remove decay from certain items...

4. Credo rework
I realise this is a huge one, but I feel like Credos could be the key to make the game more engaging. Not sure yet how, maybe making them more dynamic, rather than "do this - get this - forget about it for the rest of the game".

5. End game objective
A bit of a weird idea, but what if the world ended when a certain threshold is reached?
It could either be something players can knowingly achieve (like a sort of project to work towards), or a "secret" counter (like it ends after 1 million trees are cut).

All of these ideas are assuming the world keeps lasting for about a year (except the 5th one, of course)
Alternatively, the world could just be much shorter, pushing players to achieve as much as possible in the limited time they have before starting over.
A 3-4 months lasting world would make it less of a big deal to miss world reset, and allow some people to test out things to improve on the next restart (which right now is at an unknown date far in the future, so most people forget by the time it happens). But that's for another thread.

Keeping up with everything also seems one of the issues, most likely also what's stopping people from coming back after a break. Farming works pretty decently with WWWs, but other industries have no way to catching up.

Again this is less about the individual ideas per-se, and more about finding options to solve the issues mentioned in the above-linked thread to make people want to stick around throught the entirety of the world.

[DonVelD]

Some variety could be cool, certainly. Not sure about stuff like decay, though, because I personally think it'd make the game more chore'y than it is right now. Though I understand that this thread is just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks. +1

[jordancoles]

I've asked players what makes them quit (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=75458), in order to figure out what to suggest to improve the longevity of the game.


3. Some decay
From spoiling food to rusting metal, through most animal and vegetable things... You wouldn't get to the point where you have enough of something that you could live the rest of the world without getting more of it.
It would need to be timed properly, making it slow enough that you can set aside stuff for later, but not too slow so that you'd notice things disappear over a week or more. Different things would have different timers, and Alchemy could come into play to slow down or remove decay from certain items...

Dumb, bad, shameful

[DDDsDD999]

1. More in-game events

Creating time periods of high incentives for certain activities, so there's windows of pvp contention if you want to reap the higher rewards could be cool.

3. Some decay

No, ew. Plenty of people consider returning, see all their animals dead, and just stay gone. We don't need more incentives to stop playing.

4. Credo rework

I wouldn't mind credos as much if they could be done just passively doing the activity. Right now they're just slot machines that incentives your village to hoard random crap that's otherwise worthless, and have a "if anyone sees this random crap in the wild, I need it for a credo" discord channel.

Keeping up with everything also seems one of the issues, most likely also what's stopping people from coming back after a break. Farming works pretty decently with WWWs, but other industries have no way to catching up.

The WWW catchup mechanic is functionally non-existant, but I think the way non-world leaders receive an increase towards quality gain helps. Lowering the effort/number of bots required to maintain industry, and having mechanics for late-comers/returning players to catch-up would go a long way to improving long-term world population imo.

Some ideas:

• Remove/cap quality increase from questing, this shit is impossible for anyone who doesn't play 10+ hours a day, and it's the primary industry grind super-late-game.
• Simplify animal breeding so optimal quality growth doesn't require literally thousands of animals. Remove breeding quality and individual quality %'s.
• Do the stat equalization thing that was planned for this world.
• Rework hunger, mostly so bad FEP/hunger foods aren't so punishing. Though not very necessary with stat equalization.
• Some sort of gear equalization in PVP would be cool, so even smaller players that don't want to grind industry can still compete. E.g. some rare drops like gilding leafs/stones from various activities that you can plug into your weapons/armor, and makes them equalize vs high q gear, while not pushing your quality. These rare-drops could tie into those in-game events previously mentioned, and people with top industry wouldn't hunt for and hoard all these rare drops since they're specifically for lower q gear.
• Shifting industry grind towards end-products (weapons, tools, armor), and away from infinitely raising anvil/workstation quality in general would be a good move imo. Factions putting in q10 inputs and still getting high q items because their tools are so high q is kinda silly. But it would require a pretty massive industry overhaul.

[MightySheep]

I'm 1 of the few who still think kingdoms still have the potential to be a good endgame content. I used to play a game called Face of Mankind (its dead now) where you had 7 factions and youd fight over about 11 different territories. The whole game was player driven there was constant RP stuff like politics, alliances, wars, drama, etc but what really fueled it all was the battles for territories, which the whole playerbase engaged in.

Kingdoms in haven are just fucking stupid, we didnt even make a kingdom this world even though we had the resources to do so. Whats the point? You get fuck all from it, theres no thingwall interface so you need to make spreadsheets and shit and it takes months before it even generates any pvp and the pvp it generates is the waiting around incase somebody turns up kind. Nobody ever does turn up because like I said theres no thingwall interface and nobody is engaging in spreadsheet faggotry. At best you get some PvP when you happen to reach an enemy kingdoms zone which usually takes so long that all the PvPers have quit by that point. The whole thing is just way too slow.

Right now there is no end game content. There is no community playerbase events or anything like that. Some people create a market but thats about it. Very boring. Not suprising the playercount drops like a rock every world and doesnt come back till the next world. I suppose siege is the exception but I doubt there will be any more big sieges now that everyone knows its basically impossible to pull off vs anyone except inactive hermits.

[SnuggleSnail]

1) The feasting system is one of the worst parts of the game and should be top prio RN for big changes
2) A global chat for people to just see the same names during their daily chores would be a lot bigger than its given credit for.
3) A killboard would also prolly show that the world is alive and I imagine be very easy to implement.
4) FREE TRAVEL WEARINESS METHOD TO GET TO A CENTRAL MARKET would lead to community events, and is literally the entire reason people long for world 10
5) Less chores would be really nice. I think a lot of villages start out strong, then do a death spiral when there aren't enough people to maintain what they have even if some of the willagers wanna continue.

[azrid]

2) A global chat for people to just see the same names during their daily chores would be a lot bigger than its given credit for.
3) A killboard would also prolly show that the world is alive and I imagine be very easy to implement.

These 2 are HUGE and deserve a separate thread with a million +1 replies.
Not only are they easier to implement than all these other ideas in the thread they also will have the greatest impact.
Jorb specifically asked for these types of ideas on stream.

Whateverbay's and Snail-empire's forum brigade crews should work together and signal boost this genius level idea.

[Gacrux]

I've asked players what makes them quit (viewtopic.php?f=42&t=75458), in order to figure out what to suggest to improve the longevity of the game.

From what I've read so far, other than IRL reasons, there's a few key issues that need to be addressed. The common theme seems to be "it gets boring once you've got it all".
Here's a few ideas off the top of my head. Feel free to suggest better stuff!

1. More in-game events
Meteor is the only "event" there currently is.
More stuff like that might involve different fields.
"Whaling season" could be a group of whales spawning all in the same spot, requiring several knarrs to hunt them down safely.
"Dawn of the dead" could be group of Nidbanes spawning from long-dead animal corpses, attacking anyone holding a weapon (or something...)
"Sylvan rebellion" could be Dryads and Ents challenging several provinces around the world, turning planted crops into their wild versions if the challenge is not stopped (or something else)
These are just random ideas, to get the point though.

I love the Sylvan rebellion; this would keep wild crops relevant after year one and even allow for possible crafting variants with said crops.

1.1 Dev-events
If the above examples are too much work, why not host some random dev-made event, like many other games do?
A treasure hunt... A labyrinth in the caves... a horse or boat race... an arena where players get matched up in random pairs...
Prize could be a hat, or some other cool item.

Sounds neat but would be dangerous without a world "hub" similar to that of Salem's Providence.

2. Link bigger stuff to seasons to break monotony
Since we have them, why not fully embrace them?
Crops seasonality comes to mind. Having set times to plant and harvest them would make a farmer's life a bit less monotonous, having to prepare for it.

Tedium for the sake of variety is not "fun" its TEDIOUS. No crop rotations or seasonality. They could instead provide boons to different crops during different seasons. (Yield, maybe even color variants when they are planted.)

2.2 Hunting "seasons"
Similarly, some animals might be a lot more common in a specific season, making hunters life a bit different as well.
It doesn't need to be linked to the actual seasons though; having times where large herds/packs of animals spawn might be interesting. Maybe groups large enough that it requires several people to work together to get them (or one guy to find a way to cheese them and ruin it for everyone ), all with random quality like in mini-dungeons.

I like the concept perhaps random dungeon frequency based on seasons/times.

3. Some decay
From spoiling food to rusting metal, through most animal and vegetable things... You wouldn't get to the point where you have enough of something that you could live the rest of the world without getting more of it.
It would need to be timed properly, making it slow enough that you can set aside stuff for later, but not too slow so that you'd notice things disappear over a week or more. Different things would have different timers, and Alchemy could come into play to slow down or remove decay from certain items...

To comment on Number 3. Just... absolutely not the game is already "chore-like" this adds a nuanced tedium. BUT I do like the notion of using or forcing food spoilage to contribute to the grind. My brain jumps to vegetable rennet. And maybe adding "fullness" bonus to compost bins. Just working off the idea.

I didnt want to touch credo or end game those arent fleshed out well enough. Credo's def need a rework based off perhaps global player knowledge or even a look at specific numbers and character's "known" knowledge.

[Harunobu]

I think decay is a very bad idea. The game is already harsh enough as it is. I do think consumables are good idea, but they don't quite of work well with the quality spiraling. Subpar quality items become obsolete, so that is a sink in a way as well.

I think special locations/hotspots/dungeons/biomes with high level content and rewards would be a good thing.

[Barbamaus]

Lots of good ideas so far, keep them coming!

This thread is less intended to discuss each suggestion per-se, and more as a way to put out there lots of ideas to help devs (and why not, the community), come up with something to help the game last longer.

Some are very easy and fast to implement, even mid-world, some clearly require a lot of work and would be best introduced with a new world. Some, like dev-events, could even just be a "temporary fix" to keep people playing until more structured things can be added.

Something else that came to mind, which would require a lot of work though, is adding "phases" to the world.
Maybe animals get stronger or spawn in bigger groups as the world goes on. Or maybe the map starts smaller and expands over time. The initial area could become more dangerous, or it could be the other way around where the further you go the more risky it is (eg. more trolls spawning, more aggressive animals spawn, more MIDGES )
Adding -something- every couple of months would go a long way to keep people interested.