by yummy » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:07 pm
Yes this system completely leaves hermits out of the big scene. It kinda reflects real life, meaning communities are more powerful than simple individuals, but in a game, it leaves someone who's alone completely powerless.
This isn't only in terms of action, but also in terms of potential world interaction (between players and environment). If your character dies by day 2 just because it only relies on roots and berries to live and that its luck ran out because it popped in the middle of a vast forest with no apple trees, then there's an urgent need for balance.
The force of world 4 was the ability to become a swiss tool, in order to face different situations, but its main drawback was that the grinding system allowed too much power towards overactive players, creating a caste of overactive territory lords who were generally hermits who lived behind an impenetrable brick fortress.
World 5 is heading to a hybrid system, some sort of active grinding and passive grinding. There's a need for balance though, as it is, time based grinding is just making people lose motivation because there's a time gap in the character enhancement process, which make most gamers think that once an action is done (generally crafting), then it's not needed to be done again... Which is false! Plus, this sort of grinding is generally a way to create another caste, where the people who joined first always have the advantage.
This heads towards a system close to EVE online, Ogame, Perpetuum.
Constructing an item generally means that they are needed for a special purpose, but as there's no potential gain for future perspectives (LP and such), besides the immediate use of the crafted object, the item generation is in most cases only made once.
For example, you would craft a crate to place items in it, but you'd only craft once a wooden plate because there's no real need to craft several ones even if you're in a community of 4 people.