A Compliment and Critque of World 5's LP System

[Snarks]

The Complement
The new LP system is great. My group of villagers have done less pointless basket making and instead, have concentrated on more valuable activities such as killing rabbits and raiding ant hills. During world 4, it was simply more efficient to mass produce something for LP gain before reaching farming level 10 or building a boat to fish. At the start of world 5, a friend of mine and I decided to brave the new world. We had two objectives, locate a supply of food (in this case, apple/nut trees) and find a cave for access to metal later on. Upon finding grassland with apple trees, we built a camp for the night and slept. The next morning, we were more ambitious and sought out fishes to augment our food supply. We were successful. With the new surplus of food, we decided to find a better spot to found our permanent settlement. By this time, I had enough LPs for Yeomanry and my friend had Boat Building. After scouting out multiple areas by boat, we found a cave nearby a fishing hole and built our claim.

The Critique
The initial LP gain rate is too low. At least 1/3 of our play time was spent wandering the wilderness which was extremely unproductive. If it were not for the exploration LP reset the next day, I would have been short a couple hundred LPs for Yeomanry. In addition, I only had enough LPs because I had died twice by wild animals (small resolution didn't help) and inherited my previous characters. A simple fix would be to simply raise the LP gain from curiosities relative to Yeomanry and Boat Building. Alternatively, certain skills could have their LP cost reevaluated. Or perhaps more curiosities can found at the start to further speed up the initial progress (waiting on 1 pine cow is very tedious). While raising the LP gain from exploration would seem more logical, it also promotes the potential abuse of killing off early characters and inheriting experience. All that is needed is to make it more accessible for starting players to advance beyond the forest wandering stage.

[DeadlyPencil]

Maybe they need to make buildables give some LP to. so when u complete a boat, when u complete a basket etc. i think that would speed things up.

[ImpalerWrG]

Early LP gain could be help by providing a new newbie Curiosities in the starting equipment, they have the restriction on only equip to study to a players under the "baby blue eye's" status so they are not farmable for regular players.

LP for buildings would just encourage grinding, it would be a kalidiscope of stuff but still grinding, and should not come back

[Jackard]

Maybe they need to make buildables give some LP to. so when u complete a boat, when u complete a basket etc. i think that would speed things up.

This would create an incentive for players to waste resources on objects they don't really need.

[dra6o0n]

They've already started wasting resources to craft certain stuff they don't need.
Really, you make a dowsing rod, but you can't make a well until you made a rope and discovered the other materials.
Until you find a stinging nettle, you can't make nettle shirts, which means it relies back to exploration.

Yes we have curiosities and discoveries of items, but what's the middle and end game LP system going to be?
It starts you off decently, until it stops short. After a while, you are severely limited to certain conditions in order to pull this through.

I wouldn't be surprised if more players resort to botting, since I've heard that arksu botters are capable of programming high end AI to their clients.

Besides, it's human nature to waste things.

[Jackard]

Besides, it's human nature to waste things.

Oh, well that excuses it. Carry on!

[ThirdEmperor]

Yeah, I kind of agree with a lot of this. I like the new curiosity system, but really, you're going to end up with so many more resources then you need, and nothing to do with then.

[Eemerald]

the lp system is pretty annoying. if it werent for finding an empress from an ant raid, my lp would be pretty small scale even with the curiosities, which i keep making and adding. which seems pointless to me.

building something useful should be where lp is.

theres only so many new things u can find to get lp.

[Gauteamus]

Maybe they need to make buildables give some LP to. so when u complete a boat, when u complete a basket etc. i think that would speed things up.

I think this sounds like a good solution.
Give the same amount of LP (50 LP at 100% learning?) every time a player finishes a building he has never built before.
I can not see how this can be used for macroing, the long term balance should not be affected too much, as the sum total of buildable objects is still a quite low count, but it would help quite abit i think, in getting the 10 survival, Yeomanry, or whatever you hunger for in the beginning.

I do not see a problem in giving every new player (or new alt) an incentive to build one "test building" of each kind.
(Maybe exclude a handful of extraordinary resource consuming buildings (like timber house) from the list of LP yielding objects, but meh, it is 50 LP, or maybe 200 at 360% change - who cares?)

EDIT: I do not mean that it is a solution, but that it may be a step in the right direction, with minor influence on long term balance, few unwanted effects, and even give the game mechanics a stronger feel of coherence.

[Potjeh]

IMO they should just boost the existing discoveries a bit.