by ZanathKariashi » Thu May 22, 2014 3:38 pm
Current system is fine.
I really can't find any fault with it honestly.
It's utterly superior in every way to the old system, except for the first couple hours of the game when starting a completely fresh world with absolutely no idea of what you are doing, since it's less forgiving to an absolute newb.
You keep saying unrewarded actions...they aren't. You're rewarded just as much as you were previously, but now you don't have to grind constantly to keep LP coming in. And you're free to do things like exploring, which before, every second you weren't grinding SOMETHING your development was stalled completely and you fell further and further behind people sitting in one place grinding madly or botting. The starting discovery LP is plenty to get the LP ball rolling, and afterward you're free to explore the world without worrying about what you're doing. Anything you want to make you can do so, and LP will still roll in. And since you can easily get curios for any play-style with as much or as little effort as you like, it's ultimately superior to the old system, where botters/no-lifers reigned supreme, and people who didn't were always lagging behind. Now, even if you bot, at best, you can only develop as fast a smart player.
And even then, the curio system is quite balanced. There are a host of short duration, highly efficient LP items that can be acquired with little effort, that reward players who are actively playing and can swap in new ones as they run out, as opposed to slower curios which have a similar LP/time efficiency but spread over a longer period and more suited to more casual players.
Any game where someone who plays a lot/bots, can get an insurmountable advantage over someone who doesn't (but otherwise plays just as smartly) is broken. You reward for playing is getting your towns and such built sooner, then more casual players who may take days/weeks to get the same, despite having the same potential LP gain. Also, so much of the content in H&H is already time-gated, there's really no reason to bother rushing at all. The game existing and you being able to do whatever you want IS the main reward of a sandbox game. Everything else is incidental.
I used to dislike Eve Online for having a similar throttled development, but the fact is, it works. With other games it always feels like any time not spent in the game is wasted because there's so much more development you could be doing, but curse these mortal bodies and short-comings. Games of this type free you from that cycle, since the entire reason you're logging in is to play the game...not grind some meaningless BS that will ultimately burn you out when you can no longer stomach the idea of crafting anything, even if you need it.
I've found H&H to hit a perfect balance between continual character development plus a rewarding experience for logging in the first place. The journey is the most important element of a sandbox game, and H&H's current incarnation hits that note perfectly. The core mechanics are solid, and the only area it could really benefit from boosting is a general expansion of the various types of content available.
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That said. If Study LP paid out over-time, based on it's study rate, it would pretty much destroy every possible criticism from the system. The overall system would remain the same, but instead of a lump sum of LP gained after a set amount of time, you'd gain a constant trickle of LP (the OP seems absolutely obsessed over the idea that their LP total isn't moving for long periods of time but a constant trickle of LP would probably be fine). If the study queue were perma-locked, so once an object was put in, it couldn't be removed until it was used up, it would eliminate any chance for exploitation, or as a slightly more complicated option, have each individual item act like an LP battery that drains it's total LP over time, and if removed, keeps it's study % so anyone who studies it will pick up where it left off and end up with only the remaining LP.