Game Development: Steelmaking, and stuff.

[kimya]

What's more, you're trying to force interaction on a community that is, at this point, far too small for it. Specialization will naturally happen as it becomes viable. Yes, costs will eventually have to be upped, yes skills go a bit quickly, but right now, it's not entirely that people don't WANT to trade. They're just not always able to, especially in farther-out areas. Some people even choose to play "solitary" or in very small groups, prioritizing and dividing skills among themselves as necessary. If you try to force large-scale interaction too much, you'll make this style of play impossible or extremely difficult.

I disagree in some points. I think, there are enough players to be able to make a flourishing economy right now. its just that you didnt have to specialize, as everything was/still is easy to accomplish. like jorb said, you could build everything thats possible after some days of playing. so everybody has an oven, a smelter, a kiln, a cauldron, meatgrinder and so on.
The only thing that will ppl force to trade is the lack of things. Iron/steal will sure be somthing really rare now. as soon as other things get rare, ppl will have to think about how to get that stuff. or make a community, like there are some yet (at the great sea, or bay12).

I pretty much like every change, only the cabins... well. they are so small and you need soooo much wood for it. its too expensive with too little to gain.

regards,
kimya

/edit
why does the quote not work properly? and why cant i delete my posting?

Mod edit: Enabled BBCode

[loftar]

I pretty much like every change, only the cabins... well. they are so small and you need soooo much wood for it. its too expensive with too little to gain.

That is true, right now. There will be more to gain, though. I'm currently working on implementing general decay in the world, so that things in the outside world be decay fall apart over time. Things placed indoors would not be subject to that.

why does the quote not work properly? and why cant i delete my posting?

I'm not sure why you can't delete it, but the quote didn't work because you had disabled BBCode in your post (you may have set it as the default in your forum profile). I enabled it for you.

[sami1337]

holy shit. I spoke to you and said we needed something to work on, but this is hardcore. Will keep us busy for a long time.
Awesome :D

Edit:
Actually, holy fucking shit. Cabins take half a forrest to build now.

[dekafu]

On the subject of houses and trees, if I were master of the universe this is how I would handle things:

First of all, temporarily knock the costs of houses back down to somewhere similar to before. Or possibly 2 or 3 times the original cost, since they were a bit silly-cheap.

Then, implement tree regrowth (either natural or plantable) and stump-removal, both.

Then, increase the log cabins back to maybe half or a third of their current cost, while also implementing a bigger house with comparable costs to the current. That way, the people who want the best available (ie. most people) still have a nice project ahead of them, but lone wolves can still eke out something less impressive.

This would control deforestation a bit up until the system is in place to support it, without leaving people hanging and parts of the game undesirable and pointless.

I know I'm trying to tell you folks how to do your job :P I'm sorry. But it looks like I'm out of the game for now because my friends refuse to play anymore until something is done.

[sami1337]

Yeah..I was going to start a deforestation project for coal, but the cabin costs made me reconsider.

[Trafalgar]

I've pretty much stopped playing after this update too, partially because of "In order to produce steel, the Crucible has to [i]remain lit[/i] for [b]ONE INGAME WEEK[/b] that is for 56 real, IRL, hours. This will turn one unit of coal, and one unit of Wrought Iron, into one unit of steel." and the already incredibly low return rate for iron bars. The other reason is the constant rollbacks and dissapearing items. I keep killing and skinning cows and putting the leather on drying racks and the rollbacks keep erasing it. It's gotten so frustrating I just gave up. This last time somehow the leather vanished yet all the meat and intestines remained... Unless the leather was stolen that time.

Edit: What the heck? Does BBCode default to off or something?

[fldash]

Are you sure roll backs are removing your hides or are they being stolen?

I like this update, I like the extension of time, and I also like how they are wanting to make player specialize more. I'm bringing people to the game (advertising on all the communities I frequent).

My only concern is deforestation, which they say they are answering. Forests should re-grow (with automatic replanting) at a slow rate of speed, and players should also be able to plant their own tree farms.

I'm only sad it doesn't work on my laptop - well, it works, but the mouse moves really slow and laggy like... This laptop is OLD.

Edit: I just want to mention, it's really immature to post, 'this update is making me quit' or 'everyone is quitting because of x change'. Be constructive and be heard. Anything else is just being childish.

[Trafalgar]

Until this last one it was definitely the rollbacks.

As for specialization... I'm not sure this helps. I've been speccing nature, and I already couldn't trade for iron bars because they're so precious. I don't see how this helps. And everyone who's specced industry can still have farms and beehives just fine. I read that the crops were supposed to take 24 real hours to become harvestable, but that doesn't seem to be the case; or the crashes are FUBARing that all up too - I've only got five tiles planted so far, but I was figuring that I could expand them very rapidly because of the fast turnaround time and speccing nature, but NONE of them have grown up and it has been several days. I had been keeping a close eye on their progress, too. And obviously I don't have a beehive, because I don't have any straw.

(The only thing I can trade is butter and leather, and leather goods, and there's no way any sane person would trade away wood, charcoal, or wood products from their homeland.)

fldash, about you saying it's immature to post that, normally I wouldn't post "I'm quitting unless you change XYZ" - but I haven't really quit. I'm just really frustrated, and it's more frustrating than fun right now, so I'm just trying to voice my concerns.

[loftar]

I just thought I'd reflect on some things.

I read that the crops were supposed to take 24 real hours to become harvestable, but that doesn't seem to be the case; or the crashes are FUBARing that all up too

Yes, that has been because of the crashes. In my defense, though, I should say that the server has become a lot more stable now since I've been able to fix a lot of bugs thanks to all of you. Right now, it's been up almost 24 hours straight, which is a record since the TIGSource post. :)

(The only thing I can trade is butter and leather, and leather goods, and there's no way any sane person would trade away wood, charcoal, or wood products from their homeland.)

Because of the imminent problems, we will probably be fixing tree replantation very soon, and since you're aligned towards nature, that will probably help you in such an undertaking. :) The only problem is that I need Jorb to draw the graphics for it, and he's been gone the whole day. I think I have a good and quite reasonably laborious process for tree replantation figured out, though.

As for the steelmaking, I've been trying it out myself at Loftar Steel since we implemented it, and my first batch is almost a quarter completed by now. If I may say so myself, I think it seems to be working very well with the crucibles. I realize that it might be hard for people on a rigid schedule to log in once every 12 hours, but as long as one can just log in for a little bit, only a few minutes are needed to refuel the crucibles. It should also be added that only the high-level content actually requires steel; mostly everything is made from cast or wrought iron.

[Dennislp3]

My quick note on the "I quit for xyz" comments. Personally I feel that if you do not approach this game with a very open mind than you will have that issue...we are hardly players and rather much closer to testers...think of this like a job (well more like community service cause I know I dont get paid :P). As with any job there is plenty of joy as well as frustration. We are all aware this is an alpha build and as such there is no garuntee of stability or balance or anything really (still took off guard by the self healing deer LOL). I have already made this point in a previous post of mine by stating the following on the new changes because someone got on me cause I made some comments about this update:

"since it still is alpha I thought it was something that can be addressed openly."

I feel that critique and constructive criticism is what is needed to make this game move forward. There will be setbacks in many ways with crashes, bugs, map wipes (eventually), lack of balance, and lack of some game mechanics.

My point is that I noticed it seemed like it has started to become a bit of "everyone freaks cause we feel this is gonna stay forever" type situation. All we need to do is step back, take a deep breath, act mature, and constructively help Jorb and Loftar make this the game it is going to be.