Alright jorb you have convinced me to return and post my thoughts. I will, if nothing else, support this endeavour for at least the first month as I think its a good step.
Allow me to start off by saying that I appreciate a willingness to experiment and attempt to find better solutions to the games various problems. In such a strange and ambitious game the problems that we face require equally strange and ambitious solutions. I have seen enough of indie development to know its not something you can ever truly be complacent with. At no point can you sit down and say "Yep thats good" because there will always be too much work and too much changed in each iteration. In essence, I do not anticipate any reset or update to fully solve a given problem.
With that being said, I do think that some issues have been allowed to grow out of control. The lack of a meaningful endgame in particular is something that has, quite simply, not received enough attention. This new level cap could prove to be a good start, but it will not solve the issue of player interaction. Theres plenty of ideas floating around (kingdoms, better ram timers, more flora and fauna, new skills, more trading, more resources, etc.) but its not really possible to accurately predict which ideas will work out in the end. As such the only way to find out is to try and experiment, but we have not, in my opinion, seen enough experimentation in this area. I am being somewhat unfair by using such a broad category in that I cannot refer to specifics, but perhaps this vague categorization is exactly why it is difficult to pin down and solve.
My main concern can be boiled down into the following: I believe the development resources must be refocused into providing more varied player interactions. As an example - adding a new resource/mechanic should not be done explicitly for more variety, or for popularity. With the current need for player interaction in mind, I believe that, for the next few months, new ideas should have three things:
- it ought to encourage interaction (not truly useful to a hermit and/or requires other players)
- have consequential necessity (not needed immediately, but offers specific advantages)
- no one feature should induce mass polarization (single changes with massive implications are more like lottery tickets instead of consistent improvement)
The last idea ties into my earlier statement about not expecting any long existing problems to be solved in a short period of time. As such I strongly urge an avoidance from going balls-deep into highly a complex and ambitious system. Something like the kingdom system is great, but it needs an iterative approach that incorporates player feedback and ties into future updates. Updates that, hopefully, also improve player interaction.
I am, amazingly, self-aware of the idiosyncratic nature of my ideas. Shocking right? I know my ideas are limitng in the sense that they funnel players down interaction instead of allowing greater freedom and that, as such, you might very well be highly resistant to such ideas. Consequentially, I would like for you to share a general design philosophy with the community. This would lower the barrier between community ideas and your own since we could, essentially, meet halfway instead of missing each other completely. Obviously some people will be stubborn, but I do think its better than taking blind shots based off vague ideas gleamed from disparate forum posts.
As a final note I would like to apologize for my earlier posts regarding the initial payment implementation. I still think you could improve the information pipeline between yourself and the community, but my reaction was salty and immature instead of productive. A certain degree of thought needs to go into feedback, otherwise there is no point. Paradoxically, the amount of thinking put into this post also limits its readability and understanding. Some habits die hard I guess
by Shadow7168 » Fri Feb 05, 2016 5:12 pm 
Smell of Arrogance
