LP Concerns

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

I probably should play the devil's advocate to actually present an opposing side to the curiosity system:

"The main problem I see with the curiosity system is its ease to make alts and one of the source of devaluation the usefulness of mains which itself devalues the impact of a permadeath system as you no longer put your eggs in one basket so each death is more like breaking a branch of a tree than cutting its trunk which somewhat defeats the purpose of the survival aspect. The lost of value of main itself presents a problem in its own right as it makes consequences of ones own action less severe. It is arguable if this raises the aggression of different factions but even if such conflict breaks out, wars will be fruitless as warriors can be manufactored easily and even if there are more conflicts appear on Congress, it will simply be trading casualties back and forth endlessly.

I'm not as certain if the curiosity system actually solved botting rather than diverting them to other field, particular farming and autoforaging. If anything, botting may actually be more feasible since due to the emphasis on alts in this world it gives a higher net LP gain total as oppose to world 4 and earlier (this case in account after animal and initial minig LP nerf. While you have to grind hours to get up to 1 million LP on those world. You can get 50% to 100% more than that spread across 5 characters. Bots are the perfect workers to gather materials to make such curiosities with little to no risk."

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

"Perhaps the curiosity system is designed, intentionally or not, so that it limits the potential of the LP gained from bots due to the limited mentory as well as INT capacity but there are bots that are can still bypass this to a degree. Such means may include but not limited to autofill mentory, raising an alarm in the presence of a troll when automining which itself brings in materials to make more curiosities. While I applaud the effort of the curiosity system to try to curb the effort of bots, it may have simply diverted their effort to field that may make them even more potent.

Of course we can both agree that alts are an innate problem which the curiosity has an unfortunate side effect of aiding. Let's say that alts are less of a problem after a major patch and stronger character are more encouraged on the curiosity system. You are still going to have several decent powered characters. It is just that they are less concentrated on zerg rushes fodder cannons as opposed to elite warriors but now you can make several of them instead of 25 disposable characters."

[jorb]

I probably should play the devil's advocate to actually present an opposing side to the curiosity system:

"The main problem I see with the curiosity system is its ease to make alts and one of the source of devaluation the usefulness of mains which itself devalues the impact of a permadeath system as you no longer put your eggs in one basket so each death is more like breaking a branch of a tree than cutting its trunk which somewhat defeats the purpose of the survival aspect. The lost of value of main itself presents a problem in its own right as it makes consequences of ones own action less severe. It is arguable if this raises the aggression of different factions but even if such conflict breaks out, wars will be fruitless as warriors can be manufactored easily and even if there are more conflicts appear on Congress, it will simply be trading casualties back and forth endlessly.

This. Project Overhaul includes a change that should... change this.

[Potjeh]

PvP being accessible is a problem?

[jorb]

PvP being accessible is a problem?

Death being meaningless is.

EDIT: Yes, I know you don't actually want character development at all, but you can forget about that.

[Potjeh]

It's far from meaningless. OK, so the skills might be a tad too cheap (which is simply a matter of rebalancing LP payouts of specific curios like shrewbread), but the loss of good equipment is definitely felt. Thanes and dhelms are expensive as fuck.

[jorb]

It's far from meaningless. OK, so the skills might be a tad too cheap (which is simply a matter of rebalancing LP payouts of specific curios like shrewbread), but the loss of good equipment is definitely felt. Thanes and dhelms are expensive as fuck.

Yeah, sure, not denying that. I just don't like how there's no actual need at all to actually play a character. The old LP system -- back when the "metagame" was more naive (i.e. bots weren't invented yet) -- had the advantage of people actually caring about their characters. I notice that there are a lot of people out there who simply do not care if they leave scents even on the openest of grounds, and I don't think that is as it should be. There are admittedly many variables to that equation -- siege being one of them -- but I don't like it when people aren't being the least bit concerned about how they behave.

I'd like it if the characters required at least some investment of actual time spent playing. If people are more concerned about their helmets and rings than about their characters then I think something is wrong.

[Potjeh]

Back in the old system before bots LP gaining was a grind of the shittiest kind. I used to work on developing the village, socialize with neighbours, and generally productive stuff like that. Other people used to hunt 24/7. As a consequence, I had less than 10% of their LP and was worthless in combat.

As for leaving scents willy-nilly, that's all about vaults. It's not that people don't care if their character is summoned, it's that they KNOW it won't be summoned because that's physically impossible with some trivial precautions. Characters still represent a fair amount of resource investment (more than rings and helmets for sure), just like they did in ye olde days of bear grinding, because at the essence of it player's time is the ultimate base resource. Sure, you can more easily redistribute that resource, but at the end of the day you're still losing some of it when you die. I mean, would you say that losing a battlecruiser in Starcraft is meaningless if it happens on the offence, because your base isn't directly damaged? The main difference here is that you can't actually find the enemy base to exploit his weakness after losing his battlecruiser, which once again is an issue with vaults.

Oh, and the stupid tradition/change slider certainly doesn't help any. Things would be much better if every death was 100% loss, and declaiming didn't refund LP.

[jorb]

I don't think I disagree with any of that.

[Potjeh]

Well if we agree, you should put that character development overhaul on the backburner until you've fixed siege. Personally I think that all the issues are to blame on vaults, but I guess I could be wrong and the LP system needs yet another overhaul. Thing is, you can't make any meaningful observations with vaults around, as they break just about everything in the game. I mean, even if we were back to old LP grinding character death still wouldn't mean much when you can't locate and destroy the enemy's base.