Game Development: Die Noobs, Die.

[SevenBlade]

Harder?

Seriously?

Sure, a large number of you have mines and thus metal armor and weapons, and that no doubt makes the game easy as hell.
But the problem being that not everyone HAS those resources, and with all the surface mines being taken now, cannot get them.

Sure, you might like more difficulty to be entertained, but when they ramp the difficulty up so that the armored warriors with battle axes and top hunting skills can have fun, that basically makes leather armor wearing and stone axe using chumps like me in the dust.

Not even in the dust, the dust forms a boar and destroys my armor while a bear camps me and I bleed do death of a thorn in the foot.

Yeah, "Fun".

[Garlicman]

Hey, the map has been expanded a few days ago. It's a big chance to find your own mine.

[springyb]

Harder?

Seriously?

Sure, a large number of you have mines and thus metal armor and weapons, and that no doubt makes the game easy as hell.
But the problem being that not everyone HAS those resources, and with all the surface mines being taken now, cannot get them.

Sure, you might like more difficulty to be entertained, but when they ramp the difficulty up so that the armored warriors with battle axes and top hunting skills can have fun, that basically makes leather armor wearing and stone axe using chumps like me in the dust.

Not even in the dust, the dust forms a boar and destroys my armor while a bear camps me and I bleed do death of a thorn in the foot.

Yeah, "Fun".

Really? I only have leather armor and ranger boots and it has enough damage soak to stop animal attacks. The only thing that hits is the armor penetration damage.

You shouldn't be using weapons anyways, punching and strangling are the way to go. IPs take too long to get.

[arriel]

Hey, the map has been expanded a few days ago. It's a big chance to find your own mine.

Yeah well I`ve been covering the new grid near my own, spent two days - NADA.
Someone had already prospected all the mines that were there, if there were any...

Really? I only have leather armor and ranger boots and it has enough damage soak to stop animal attacks. The only thing that hits is the armor penetration damage.

You shouldn't be using weapons anyways, punching and strangling are the way to go. IPs take too long to get.

I`ve used up most of spare leather (about half-cupboard) since new update making new leather armors to replace the ones torn by boars.

[Lothaudus]

At the moment difficulty in the game is represented by a line. There are simply people on the left side of the line - who have nothing, and those on the right side of the line - who have everything.

It all starts with getting seeds. You start off and can't find any. You're desperate for them. You'll do anything for wheat (maybe even... trade!). Eventually though you find that one seed of wheat and never look back. You've crossed the line from "have-not" into "have".

Rustroot is the same. Eventually you farm enough carrots that you start seeing it. Yet once you see it, you never run out of the stuff. Once again you've crossed that difficulty line.

It's then not hard for you to take the rustroot and scout the entire super-grid for every mine in existence within that area. Claim them all, pallisade them all, take the worthwhile ones and leave the crud. You've now taken away from everyone else, mostly people who probably haven't even started yet. In another few months, every mine in the game will have been claimed.

Of course, once you have a mine, you have an unlimited supply of metal. Once again, you've crossed that difficulty barrier from the "have-nots" and into the "haves".

At the moment the line from nothing to everything is very thin and easily crossed. And once you've crossed it, you never go back.


There are a couple of ways to resolve this:

1. Make it IMPOSSIBLE to have everything.

How? Make things region based (something loftorb / jorbtar have mentioned before).

The resources we currently have are:
- Metal: Silver, Gold, Iron, Tin, Copper.
- Crops: Carrots, Flax, Hemp, Wheat, Grapes, Pumpkins, Hops, Poppies, et al.
- Wild-life: Sheep, Cows, Chickens, Foxes, Boars, Bears, Deer.
- Soil
- Clay
- Water
- Wood

Let's say this is our map of the super-grids in the world:
1A 1B 1C 1D 1E
2A 2B 2C 2D 2E
3A 3B 3C 3D 3E
4A 4B 4C 4D 4E
5A 5B 5C 5D 5E

Metal

Now, imagine if the only place you found Iron was in the Great Eastern Mountain Range that went through grids 2D, 3D and 4D.

Gold could be found in nuggets by panning rivers in 3C, 3D, 4C and 4D (well, we do have frying pans now). Tin might be in 1A - 2B... you get the idea.

Suddenly, we now have metal trade. We even have increased conflict potential as the larger factions fight it out for access to various metal deposits.


Crops

Now take crops. Why should everything grow everywhere? What if some crops only grew in certain regions (or certain soil qualities)? What if the only place to grow Wheat was through the mid-line of rows 2, 3 and 4.

Grapes only grow in the warmer Northern regions of rows 1 and 2. Hemp only grows in the South of rows 4 and 5... Again, you get the idea.

Once again, we have a reason for trade and suddenly, even the good towns with all the good players would have a reason to trade.

Possible penalties for growing crops out of region include:
- Reduced crop yield (even at full nature, crops may only give 1 seed).
- Crops simply won't grow in some regions (they die or "cannot be planted in this soil").
- Increased growth time (Sure, you can grow Wheat here, but it's going to take you a week).

So, you want wheat? Well, you either stick to setting up in the climates that grow it or you trade for it.


Resources


Need clay? Well, clay is only found in large quantities in the great clay marshes of 4B.

Need good soil? Everyone knows all the good soil is in 1E.

Water? The finest water you can trade for is found in the fresh springs of 5A.

Wood? Trees of course grow everywhere but the thick forests of 4D, 4E and 5E give the most wood. That's because they grow thick and fast. The trees that grow in the Northern regions are thin, with little wood and take longer to grow.


Rarity

This increases rarity. Those that can grow Wheat will grow lots of it but then they'll need to trade it for supplies of wine or linen. Suddenly that cupboard full of Bread goes from "I'll harvest more when we need it" to "that had better last us the Winter 'cause I can't be fucked trading all that way for it again".

Now you can spread the wild-life around (and add more in plz ZOMG bears and boars and deers? WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?). Bears might be found in the dangerous Mountain regions while foxes stick mostly to the plains out West, where the chickens are.

Boars are found in the thick forests down South.

Make the South too cold for Sheep to be kept and so they die from the cold. Make the North too warm for Cattle, who get sickness and die there.

Want to balance your FEP now? Well, trade.


Trade

Of course, some people can't be fucked (reference thread where someone whined they wanted a bigger wooden house because they didn't have metal for the stone mansion), so we encourage traders. These are people who only travel up and down the major river systems selling their goods from their river barges. It'll be a big day when the barge comes to town and you can get rid of your stores of Bread in exchange for some Meat or Metal.

At the moment though, with teleportation, most of the better organised towns will simply setup satellite villages and pop back and forth between them.


2. Make Metal harder to find.

At the moment, someone who can see rustroot can pretty much scout the entire super-grid they're in. Why? Reduce the range on rustroot. In fact, what you should have to do is actually dig a piece of soil out from the ground, mix that with a whole bit of rustroot and have that give you the result for about 20 tiles around you.

This increases the chance that areas may have been missed and allows new players the rare possibility they might discover a mine in their area. Perhaps make the distance or range based on skill or the Quality of the rustroot mixture.

Mines should also run out of Metal. At the moment, once you find metal, you win! Make mines come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Small, Medium and Large. Small mines might run out quickly but even the large mines will run out eventually. It'd be even funner if you could find an "iron seam" and then follow the seam, rather than simply digging out a giant "Iron ore building". That way you don't just dig around in an ever increasing circle, but have to perhaps dig a long tunnel as you exhaust the seam.

That way, if people become too complacent their mine will run out, necessitating either a move or trade. Theoretically it should last long enough to allow a player to get established with a cash crop that would allow them to exist their via trade for however long they wanted.

Spread the love around a bit too. Maybe a small mine only nets you 20 or so bars before it's exhausted. Certainly enough for that pickaxe and scythe to make life easier. Either that or add in the "panning for metal" idea that was mentioned before, for finding small amounts of metal in various terrain.


3. Add Natural Disasters.

Animals should randomly get disease and die (based on decay ticks?). Crops should get infected and die. Plagues of locusts should wipe entire crops out. Floods should change the landscape from time to time, rivers could get swollen and flood their banks. Earthquakes might tear apart a super-grid, maybe leaving giant impassable cracks in the ground and knocking over buildings.

Volcanoes might erupt creating new mountains and high quality soil deposits.

This means some towns might get struck and have to re-build or may even have to abandon their area for a safer location.

I imagine all of these would be rare events, maybe even run while the server is offline if necessary.

Keep people from becoming too complacent. EG: A city like Sodom with a well organised group of players setup a town around a mine, that works well for setup but eventually the mine dries up so now they have to trade for more metal or look for another mine and possibly consider relocating. Maybe it's hit by an earth-quake and the villagers have to re-double their efforts to rebuild the town or an outbreak of disease wipes out their animal herds and forces them to re-establish good breeding stock (For the record, I have nothing against Sodom, I'm just saying "All the experienced players who are likely to get bored in about another month when they've done everything there is to do and have everything they need to have, get bored and decide to go on killing sprees / quit").

Forcing trade or recovering from disaster adds an element of "fun" (and also QUITRAGE drama, "WTF LOFTAR WHY DID YOU SPAWN A VOLCANO IN MY TOWN") and keeps people occupied.

Like for example, right now, I'm struggling to grow enough straw to feed the appetite of my Stone Mansion BECAUSE SOMEONE DECIDED TO MAKE WHEAT TAKE TWO TIMES LONGER TO GROW. :RAGE: So from my perspective it's difficult.

... and yet, when I do manage to finally finish my Mansion I'll be over the moon because yay, I've finally done it. Wheee!!! ... and then what? I just need to throw a few stones in it every once in a while to keep it from falling apart and I'm basically out looking for something else to do.

The wilderness, however, is far too forgiving right now, in my opinion. I don't really understand how people can state an opinion to the contrary. I mean, even with a noob character, I can wander the entire world basically without fear for anything at all, except possibly other players. Food is abundant (and was even before the hunger rebalance); it's easy to flee from animals, and even if you cannot and they knock you down, all that happens is that you lie out cold for a minute and can continue afterwards; and there are no other dangers to speak of whatsoever.

That's because your world is too small. 1 tile == 1 sqm. A super-grid is 5,000 sqm or basically 5 kms by 5 kms. The average human can walk 5 kms in an hour, meaning a world of 5 x 5 grids takes a meagre 5 hours to walk across, let alone boat. If you had large oceans that you could only cross in sturdy sea-going vessels, then by all means, fill it with sharks and Giant Octopus' and have them as the "no go" zone for noobs. Spread word that the savanahs are filled with lions and noobs shouldn't try crossing them unless they want to become lunch meat.

Actually, having terrain indicate safety or danger would go a long way to resolving both issues of "keeping smarter noobs safe from dying because SURPRISE THERE'S A BEAR BEHIND THAT TREE" and killing off the dumbnuts. For example Bears only lived in Forests and only attack during the day-time. Then night-time becomes a safe time for noobs to walk through a forest. Bears of course fight to the death.

If Swamps are filled with attack-on-sight-until-you're-dead Crocodiles, then noobs know not to venture there and that they'll have to go the long way around. Keep things like Boars as the "they'll only knock you out and then they'll leave you alone" type of animals. Foxes should run around. Sabre-toothed Tigers stalk the grasslands at night... etc...

IE: Give people time of day or terrain indicators so that they have some way of protecting themselves against the more dangerous animals. At the moment, I walk off-screen and OH SHIT BOAR OH GOD RUN OH CRAP IT'S SEEN ME FUCK I'M KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS NOW. Which is too much of a "SURPRISE YOU'RE DEAD!!" approach. I'd like to be able to know that a Bear isn't going to spawn right outside my house or that if I want to cross that large Forest, I'll do it at a certain time of day or make sure I have a certain type of armour first.

People will complain but once they work it out or "get it", then things will be fine.

Oh and: ADD MORE WILD-LIFE VARIETY PLZ.

[Skyrage]

I agree 100% with the regional limits for resources, specially crops.

I would frankly want to add an additional feature on top of your idea: I was going to suggest something very similar myself, but with an extra twist. Basically, first of all, increase the variety of crops and resources a bit. Second of all, add some kind of prestige value that villages can gather. This value is based on how many different kind of resources and food-types etc etc a village has. More trading = more varied resources and foods = more prestige. As for what prestige could do is up to the devs, but some sort of bonus to the village members would be nice - like I dunno, an extra layer of village territory which is based on prestige. The higher the prestige, the bigger the extra territory bonus, but only as long as you can keep the prestige level up, etc etc.

[Garlicman]

Hey, the map has been expanded a few days ago. It's a big chance to find your own mine.

Yeah well I`ve been covering the new grid near my own, spent two days - NADA.
Someone had already prospected all the mines that were there, if there were any...

That may have been just bad luck or somebody really prospected it. We've got to the border soon enough when the map expanded, found about six mines as soon as we got into the uncharted territories.

[Garlicman]

I like the idea of the difference of regions, leading to the necessicity of trading, but it'll need some kind of boat autonavigation system. This clickturbation we have now is dull and boring.

[theTrav]

That's a great big post with lots of great ideas that will be lost in the slurry that is the Announcements forum.

Why not post it in C&I where it belongs?

[SevenBlade]

Harder?

Seriously?

Sure, a large number of you have mines and thus metal armor and weapons, and that no doubt makes the game easy as hell.
But the problem being that not everyone HAS those resources, and with all the surface mines being taken now, cannot get them.

Sure, you might like more difficulty to be entertained, but when they ramp the difficulty up so that the armored warriors with battle axes and top hunting skills can have fun, that basically makes leather armor wearing and stone axe using chumps like me in the dust.

Not even in the dust, the dust forms a boar and destroys my armor while a bear camps me and I bleed do death of a thorn in the foot.

Yeah, "Fun".

Really? I only have leather armor and ranger boots and it has enough damage soak to stop animal attacks. The only thing that hits is the armor penetration damage.

You shouldn't be using weapons anyways, punching and strangling are the way to go. IPs take too long to get.

What I described above was a standard day attack by wild animals, I can't make heads or tails of the combat system to actually "Hunt"