Grind/time investment reduction

[Scilly_guy]

Did you read my suggestion about using unhappiness to slow down work speed, if you repeat something it increases your unhappiness (exponentially?), especially on unessential tasks (like making buckets). That way when you're making your nth bucket you'll be really slow because you're so bored. As farming is repetitive by nature it should have a low exponent and a low unhappiness, which is decreased further with the nature slider. The only way I can see to code this though would require storing the time you last performed each action, which might make it infeasible.

I do not have an issue with no lifers, despite my opening statements, I just think its silly that the way to get ahead is to find a task that gets lots of LP and repeat it, I would've thought the game should reward people who build up their village, group, homestead, linearly, as in farm a bit, build a bit, craft a bit, fish a bit, hunt a bit, repeat.

[erozaxx]

... ...

Sorry, no I did not read the whole post and I like the idea of utilization of Happiness bar this way.
+ to your idea

[Tamalak]

So your solution is to change almost nothing but make it more complicated for virtually no reason. This won't stop or even slow down bots/grinders, they'll just keep botting and grinding through the debuff and still get ahead of you and everyone else.

It's not really complicated. It's just a way of implementing the old sqrt(x/constant) formula. Perhaps the way I explained it was complicated.

Why do you think it won't slow down bots? It would make a huge difference.. if they were previously getting 36 times the LP of other players, now they'll get 6 times. That's still more, but bots can be discovered, and killed, so there's a risk to go along with the reward.

If I had a retarded cap at 100k LP a day before my gains diminished like fuck, I'd have to spend a few extra hours grinding if I wanted to not softcap my crops and meat quality while building up a few points in combat skills. Seriously, a few hundred thousand lp doesn't go very far, a farmer will be raising their farming skill by at least 5 points a day.

I wonder if the game was designed with the intention for people to gain about 300,000 LP a day? That's three times the most expensive skill every day? Do you think it was balanced around that?

Look at how skills and attributes are calculated with each other. They're usually multiplied and the square root taken. That means that the developers probably want it to be about as hard to get 80 in a stat as 80 in a skill. Do you think that's the case with the current system?

I understand you're USED to getting 300,000 LP a day and have planned your village around that and would feel disrupted if it were no longer the case. But I think that kind of inflation does more harm than good.

[Potjeh]

Forcing people to switch tasks is worse than what we have now. Say, I like farming, but the game tells me that I farmed too much today so I have to go hunting, which I don't like at all. And it's not just that I'd lose LP if I don't, in your proposal I'd be physically incapable of farming any more.

Giving LP for activities was a flawed concept from the get go. Curiosities achieve the goals you're going for in a much less intrusive fashion. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's basically getting LP from items which takes some time, and you get those items for pretty much anything you do. The important part is that you can't have two curiosities of the same type active at once, so while you could grind up a million treecutting-based curiosities, someone who has a wide array of curiosities would still leave you in the dust due to much better LP gain rate. What this means in practice is that I can farm all I want without the game forcing me to stop, and then exchange my excess farming curiosities for somebody else's excess hunting curiosities. This would naturally lead to a significant rise in trade, cooperation within villages and general player interaction, which is what MMOs are all about.

[Tamalak]

The curiosities idea would work fine with me.. I like how it's in line with the produce and trade-based theme of the game..

Are the developers actually working on this? I can't tell from the search what stage it's in..

[Potjeh]

It was implemented on a lesser scale on a test server, which was limited to a small group of long time forummers who were consistently active in C&I forum. On the test server activities was still the main source of LP, curiosities were just a small bonus. But majority of the testers agreed that making curiosities the only LP source would be a good thing, for reasons I covered in that last post. I think that the devs are on board with that idea, but there wasn't direct confirmation. They also felt that the system could use some more improvements, so it's possible that there'll be some major changes in the curiosities mechanics.

Unfortunately, replacing activity LP with curiosities would require a huge number of different curiosities (test server had like 5-6), which in turn would require a ton of art assets. AFAIK they're working on it, but the progress is slow since they have to devote most of their time to Salem thanks to it's short deadline. Hopefully the pace will pick up again after Salem is out.

[Tamalak]

I just worry that without the draw of more LP for more actions, people will do something similar to what Scilly said on the previous page.. just grind/grab/trade for all the curiosities they were planning to get and log off. A game should have a "just a little longer" hook to it.

Also, this game is pretty much a series of chores.. farming, making things, moving things from one place to another.. part of what makes it fun is you get XP for the chores. I imagine it harder to work up the desire to harvest that field if I don't get a basketful of LP from it.

[Potjeh]

Cost of curiosities could be balanced to get that effect. But even if you get all the curiosities you wanted, you can still gain from playing longer, only it'd be gain in stats or infrastructure rather than LP. Personally I get more of that "just a little longer" thing when I'm working on a project (wall, cattle pens, silk, whatever) than when I'm working on raising my skills.

[Tamalak]

True.. you'd still get hunger as a "XP for doing stuff" boost.

[TeckXKnight]

Look, Tamalak, you have nice intentions but it's painfully obvious you have no idea what you're talking about. Things like farming aren't capped by any stat or tool and it's not 'Used' to anything, it's the necessary gain to keep up with just every day occurrences. If you cut players down to a set amount, say 100k, a day, you're looking at absolute stagnation of the player economy after no more than a week or two when even the most dedicated, focused players will only be able to raise a skill by one point every other day. The game is not designed to cap out and stagnate so rapidly. Not everyone is a brand new character with q10 crops just starting out. The game is designed for the player to be free to capitalize on all scenarios possible and balanced on the idea that said freedoms will lead to competition and fun. What it breaks down to is that if you're willing to do a reasonable amount of work then LP, stats, quality equipment/tools, and domestic infrastructure grow along with you.

Your proposition is simple; no one except for botters/grinders can have an edge now. Dedicated players are fucked sideways where they were capable of remaining competitive before. Casual hermits never were and never will be able to compete with players willing to dedicate the hours or willing to turn on a bot. Granted, bots/grinders still have huge advantages now but if they became the only way to surpass a lp limitation with any degree of success, then they would always win, period. No one needs these huge time gaps that you're proposing to develop their city to accommodate them. If you wanted to be a decent city, you already were exploring for resources constantly, building the best kilns and smelters you could afford, and producing the finest tools that your materials and skills permitted. Not to mention feasting constantly due to your massive over abundance of food. Having the game shove into your face that "Welp, you've earned 200k lp today, guess that means you're only getting 1/10th of what you were before until tomorrow!" doesn't promote any growth, just more reasons to log off.