Release Date Trailer: Eternal Alpha, Aug. 21st 2015

[Zodiac215]

so, without hearth secret i also wont be able to party my friends when we spawn to know their location?

Well, we haven't really decided on the exact mechanics; it's quite possible that hearth secrets per se will remain so that you can kin and possibly also form a party with people, but in the case of the latter, there will at least not be any long-distance party arrows.

at least we will be able to use the hearth secret to start the game together?

[Oddity]

at least we will be able to use the hearth secret to start the game together?

No. That's the point.

[Altich]

Also, discouraging the creation of alts will cause some other issues. I suspect that till now, people use alts for different tasks (crafting, farming, exploring, fighting etc). The alts with the highest probability to die are explorers (and fighters if the player is pvping). But even if such an alt die, it won't be a huge loss because the rest of the alts will still have their attributes and skills. And also (without being sure) it seems that explorers don't need so many lp, so not much will be lost.

If no alts are available, all the above jobs (both risky and non risky) have to be done by this single character. In that case, death will be devastating, because if will affect you whole, and not just one of your alts.

In my brief time of playing, and by reading some posts, I noticed that between new players and old ones there is a huge gap that it's impossible to close. I suspect that, in the new Haven, things will be much worse, because you can't have spare alts that can die. So, if you happen to die (it can happen to everyone, even to the best), or you if you start haven some time after the releasing date, you lose all hope of being competitive. After that, you won't even be able to play safely using alts; it will be a "game over".

Are there any thoughts on how these problems will be avoided? I personally can't think another way except introducing caps, but I know that caps have been suggested, and the developers didn't like it. So how will these problems be solved?

[TeckXKnight]

Protip: You were never competitive. If you were competitive, even with a late start you could compete with larger factions. Large cities often fall to ennui. That said, if you want to compete with a player who has a large, active village playing for 2 years non-stop, then get a large, active village and play for 2 years non-stop. You'll get to the point where the difference between your characters is insubstantial.

If anything, lack of alts has the exact opposite effect of what you just described. Large factions can't build an army of titans on the side and raid willy nilly with them without consequences. Death for an advanced player will also be substantially more devastating if their one character dies, versus the small amounts of lp lost that a new player would suffer. Losing 6 months of work versus losing 6 days of work.

Mind you it's not that cut and dry. An experienced player on a new character is less likely to die and is going to progress much faster than their newbie counterparts. This is unavoidable. Likewise, a player with a large industry and support network is going to be able to recover from a death much more easily than a player without these.

If you really want to make the game equal out over time, then use permadeath to your advantage. Make the game so progressively difficult and every jaunt through the woods so dangerous that unless you're walking out with a full entourage of fully fledged fighters each time that 95% of characters will die before they reach 3 months of age. Engulf us in permadeath, reward us for playing smart, and really punish us for being sloppy.

[Altich]

You were never competitive. If you were competitive, even with a late start you could compete with larger factions.

Of course I was never competitive. I've already said that I'm new to this game, it doesn't take a genius to say that.

You say that an experienced player may recover faster after death, but even that isn't always true if his house/ village gets destroyed too. After he loses everything, can you explain how can he compete with other players that are increasing their stats from the very beginning? He might develop faster that a total noob, but still not fast enough.

In my opinion average of only 150 players for a potentially great game is not enough, and proves that something must be changed. I've also seen posts saying that, after a new world is created, the population is steadily decreased because of the fact that some players lose the ability to compete (after death, or after realizing they are way behind).

Making death more often will not solve anything: More people will die early on, missing the chance to compete with others. But there always will be the few who will survive and dominate later.

[TeckXKnight]

I guarantee you that a player who knows what they're doing can acquire resources and navigate the world much more rapidly than a player who does not. Knowledge of your surroundings, trade partners, friendships with neighbors, and just in general knowing what you're doing make it so that you almost always grow faster the second time around. A player who has not developed any knowledge of the game, friendships, or supply caches is not someone I would consider experienced in any way.

The 'competitive' bit wasn't referring to you. It was referring to the 'if you die you can't be competitive anymore' bit that you stated. If all it takes is a bump in the road to derail your growth in-game, then you were never competitive to begin with. Large factions war all of the time and players die all of the time. Losing a villager isn't the end of the world. It might feel like you've been set back to 0 but growth in this game is not linear. Costs to grow grow exponentially while their benefits diminish at the rate of a square root. That said, if an enemy faction murdered every single ally of yours, all of your trade partners, all of your neighbors, and all of your villagers as well as burning and salting every single one of the associated villages and all of their spare supplies; well, they've won. Recovering will take longer and they will have an advantage in the future. Such is life when so much is on the line.

Not that this is relevant in any practical form. Conflict in this game is almost never two hermits duking it out to the death in a 1v1 cage match. Conflict in this game is your farmer and miner grinding out higher quality goods faster and longer than your opponents so that you can send out 5 statted up guys to gank their 2. You will never get the luxury of a fair fight.

At the moment the game lacks content. It's a great game but lets be honest, there's not a lot to do at the end game. Animal AI is also too basic to present real challenge so it's pretty easy to start killing bears, deer, and boar on the first day of the game. Until the game is fleshed out more and areas that need major rebalancing are, there will be drop-offs of players as they get tired of different aspects of the game.

Don't put much weight onto the number of players online. This version of the game hasn't had active develop for years and many of the veteran players have burned themselves out on the content that it does offer. Bringing an influx of new players in would just be a bandaid to the issue that an alpha game needs development to keep growing. We will see our first real update to the game in a couple of months, so focus a bit of weight on that instead.

[borka]

I think a lot of these discussions and suggestions are unlaid eggs anyway - let's wait for August and see what eggs loftar and jorb hid for us

Otherwise there's a neat C&I subforum to use

[Altich]

Costs to grow grow exponentially

Costs don't really grow exponentially: they just increase by 100 every level (or by 1 for the attributes). Meaning it's not that harder to go from 500 to 600 than it is to go from 400 to 500. (While the difference between 0-100 and 100-200 is proportionally much bigger.) As the character levels up, the increased difficulty becomes less and less apparent. If costs were growing exponentially, maybe that would solve some problems.

I think a lot of these discussions and suggestions are unlaid eggs anyway - let's wait for August and see what eggs loftar and jorb hid for us

That is true. I also believe that what we are talking about have already been thought.

[Potjeh]

It's a valid issue that's been brought up so many times before that the devs are actually doing something about it - they're capping combat deltas. That is, they're going to cap the multipliers to the power of your attacks and defenses that you get from the difference in combat skill levels, so for example raising UA from 400 to 500 won't give you anything when compared to a 100 UA character but will make a significant difference when compared to another 400 UA character (numbers are just for illustration, the exact formulas haven't been released).

[Altich]

It's a valid issue that's been brought up so many times before that the devs are actually doing something about it - they're capping combat deltas. That is, they're going to cap the multipliers to the power of your attacks and defenses that you get from the difference in combat skill levels, so for example raising UA from 400 to 500 won't give you anything when compared to a 100 UA character but will make a significant difference when compared to another 400 UA character (numbers are just for illustration, the exact formulas haven't been released).

Do you know what will be the practical result of this? For example, does this mean that a player with, lets say 1000UA can't easily kill with one hit a player with, let's say 100UA? Also, does that mean that, even low UA players have some chances if they group up against one with higher UA?

(Edit: Also, do you know if the same is going to be applied at strength as well? And how about constitution? That's also an important thing for a fighter I think)