Bonds/Claims in Character Sheet

[llemonpie]

I suggest a middle ground solution: add two (or generally N) slots only for claim bonds near the study inventory grid. If you need more claims than slots, then use study.

It solves the problem of alts if you simply need 1 or 2 claims (for example: main + mine). And gives a hint to a player that you can have more than one claim. (Some players dont even know you can have multiple claims for one character). If you need more claims then, well, you need a second character or study slots. Maybe even add a credo bonus that increases bond slot count.

Code: Select all

CLAIM    STUDY
┌───┐    ┌───┬───┬───┬───┐
│   │    │   │   │   │   │
├───┤    ├───┼───┼───┼───┤
│   │    │   │   │   │   │
├───┤    ├───┼───┼───┼───┤
│   │    │   │   │   │   │
├───┤    ├───┼───┼───┼───┤
│   │    │   │   │   │   │
└───┘    └───┴───┴───┴───┘


[bumfrog]

Putting a mass-produced curio on a study desk once a month is effectively nothing. I'm not even the one person in my village who does this, I have no personal stake in this.

I don't think that having to spawn an alt, take it to the location of the claim (or use a wilderness beacon for it), and then having to remember to log in and replenish it with curiosities every now and then counts as "nothing". I mean, again, I don't want to give the impression that I think that leaning on alt tedium is good and desirable, and if possible it should be avoided. All I'm saying is that, lacking any better options (the position I sometimes find myself in), I think there's at least a case to be made that it's better than literally nothing, at least depending on the context. Tedium may not be a nice lever to pull, but at least it's a lever that we can pull (or at least avoid retracting for existing mechanics), lacking others.

Tedium is barely related to the point.

Having even a single bond on your ‘main’ is effectively a permanent debuff to character progression, since you will process curios and gain LP about 15/16ths as quickly. A claim alt is the solution to this, and despite being technically unintended the logical outcome of incentivizing character progression and making bonds of bloodnsoil an alt-escapable obstacle push the game in favor of alting. It makes claims a noob trap, another means by which players who care enough to understand the game in practice are better off than those married to its unrealized, theoretical stated ideals.

You say encouraging alts is intrinsic to what the game is, and even ignoring how that’s just defeatist and sad (since you have absolute control over what the game is and is not), the aim of this thread is to show how, in the specific case of claim bonds, the problem is solvable. One can devise a system where bonding a claim is not an obstacle to progression, or one where creating an alt would be a larger obstacle.
Hence people taking “this problem can’t be fixed” as an admission that you’ll never be able to make the game good. You think “the game” is the controlling variable here, when it’s more about the “you’ll”.

Easier said than done, I suppose. But players are stuck doing the saying, in their inability to do the doing.

[loftar]

Having even a single bond on your ‘main’ is effectively a permanent debuff to character progression, since you will process curios and gain LP about 15/16ths as quickly.

Sure enough, that's a good point, one I'll concede is worth considering. While I'm not convinced enough of the changes discussed thus far to remedy it to just go right ahead and make them, I sympathize with that description of the problem. Will consider.

Just to be clear, the "separate inventory for a few bonds" seems a bit ugly to me since it complicates the UI with a combination of mechanics that are otherwise disparate, and as for removing bonds entirely, I still feel that the main and immediate effect of that change would be to just encourage more claim spam. But I'm sure there's a happy medium somewhere out there. One thing that we have actually considered in the past is that claims become "inactive", as in no longer receiving LP from studied curiosities, when the owner hasn't visited the claim in a while. Not sure that's optimal either (we haven't implemented it in the end, after all), but conceivably, it or something like it could be a good enough counter to removing bonds that it might be worth it.

You say encouraging alts is intrinsic to what the game is, and even ignoring how that’s just defeatist and sad

Certainly, I don't want to give a defeatist impression about it, but I also have to be able to admit when I don't see a clear path to the goal.

You think “the game” is the controlling variable here, when it’s more about the “you’ll”.

Certainly, but le jeu c'est nous, n'est-ce pas? ^^

[Zentetsuken]

Certainly, I don't want to give a defeatist impression about it, but I also have to be able to admit when I don't see a clear path to the goal.

Can we take this rare opportunity of catching you temporarily off your guard to get a concise update on the development of OCO and tree conversations?

[SnuggleSnail]

One thing that we have actually considered in the past is that claims become "inactive", as in no longer receiving LP from studied curiosities, when the owner hasn't visited the claim in a while. Not sure that's optimal either (we haven't implemented it in the end, after all), but conceivably, it or something like it could be a good enough counter to removing bonds that it might be worth it.

Please don't do that. The solution would be really simple, 1 alt per claim instead of 1 alt per 16 claims, and the alt lives on the claim with the desk in your main village + a bot logs in the alt on a timer to actually trigger the LP/auth gain. It wouldn't be a big deal to do in terms of time/resources spent, it would be another mechanic that makes me feel like my time is being intentionally wasted for no reason which is unfun/discouraging.

Have you guys considered removing safepalis? OP would still be as valid, but it would be applicable in less situations

[telum12]

Just to be clear, the "separate inventory for a few bonds" seems a bit ugly to me since it complicates the UI with a combination of mechanics that are otherwise disparate [...]

You could solve the UI ugly-ness by having all claim-related things in a separate widget (i.e. remove village/realm from Kin widget to new widget with pclaim). Then, have some pclaim slots or w/e there. It would make the interaction a lot more intuitive. As a side-note, it would also be a lot more intuitive if some of the paginae stuff would be in that widget, e.g. taking from coffers, leaving village, and so on.

This would probably make claims slightly less confusing to new players. I know I was very confused when I initially interacted with the different types of claims, especially when the interactions could be found in 3 different places (clicking on pclaim, in the "Kith & Kin", and in the paginae).

[DonVelD]

Speaking of UI-related stuff, something as crucial to the gameplay as the credo tab is so hard to find for a new player its ridiculous. I remember playing for months without knowing that this exists, only to get told about it by a more experienced player.

IMO there should be a tutorial for stuff like that.

I agree that there will always be an advantage in having the ability to have characters in multiple place at once. But I think just adjusting mechanics to not so favorably encourage alts is enough to reduce the mandatory alt usage, and make the game better. I would personally love to use less alts and have less logins, but the game actively handicaps me if I want to use one character to both craft things and fight other people (the latter requiring the former). If I want to make claims, I have to shove them onto alts because having a claim would handicap my LP gain.

Make it so the LP system doesn't favor splitting combat and crafting skills between 2+ characters, since they're competing for the same learning points. Then do the same for FEPs so I can raise fighting and crafting stats on one character without them both competing for the same hunger bar. Then let me own a few claims on my main without eating up my mentory (this thread). I'm sure 4-16 claims per character is enough maintenance-tedium to prevent whatever abuses you imagine, without needing to handicap the character's stat growth.

Edit: Also I forgot, I completely agree with this. ^^^^^^

[wonder-ass]

Part of the problem is also that the alt problem is entirely intrinsic to everything about the game. I hardly see a future where we can make it so that it's not strictly speaking better to have two or three alts just to be able to do multiple tasks at once, so trying to entirely eliminate it feels somewhat futile. That doesn't mean I like it, or that I wouldn't prefer being able to do something about it, but it's kind of hard to see what kind of game that would even be. Other than needing personal identification to register an account, I guess.

I agree that there will always be an advantage in having the ability to have characters in multiple place at once. But I think just adjusting mechanics to not so favorably encourage alts is enough to reduce the mandatory alt usage, and make the game better. I would personally love to use less alts and have less logins, but the game actively handicaps me if I want to use one character to both craft things and fight other people (the latter requiring the former). If I want to make claims, I have to shove them onto alts because having a claim would handicap my LP gain.

Make it so the LP system doesn't favor splitting combat and crafting skills between 2+ characters, since they're competing for the same learning points. Then do the same for FEPs so I can raise fighting and crafting stats on one character without them both competing for the same hunger bar. Then let me own a few claims on my main without eating up my mentory (this thread). I'm sure 4-16 claims per character is enough maintenance-tedium to prevent whatever abuses you imagine, without needing to handicap the character's stat growth.

this +1000. I really dislike using alts I would much rather do everything on my main, these points would be a really great step in that direction.

[loftar]

Potential critique on the specific ideas linked aside, would you guys really stop using separate combat/crafting characters just because that were implemented? It is difficult for me to imagine that you wouldn't have separate crafting characters anyway just to avoid the risk of them dying in combat. Or is dying purely a thing of the past now?

[SnuggleSnail]

Competent players don't die outside of bugs/crashes/DCs. It's such a rare occurrence as to not even be a consideration.

If suggested mechanics were implemented I would never make a general purpose crafter ever again. There would still be incentives to, EX: credos(haha credo scaling bad), alt chars to use during redhanded idle/afk time, etc, but it would be a small enough deal I would ignore it.