General principle

[RiverPhoenix]

They just dont get it do they? What's coming will blow the petty amount we've been losing out of the water.

I get it (I can't speak for anyone else) but what I don't get is that if it is going to be so wonderful wouldn't that require a lot of foresight on the part of the developers? If so why can't a small amount of said apparent foresight be used in the short term as well as the long term? On the other hand maybe this demonstration of lack of foresight in the short term is a demonstration of a lack of foresight entirely... so why wait around for this wonderful game which might not even arise? (I've been around long enough to have had too many games that were supposed to be wonderful turn out to be duds or mostly just hot air (even from normally reliable people, teams, companies).

I apologize if my answer seemed callous, it wasn't meant to be. I'm of course sad to see people go, but at the same time I know I'm doing my best making the game better, not worse. More playable, not less so. I can't hope to do much better than that. Maybe we made a bad call, but I'm pretty sure we'll make worse mistakes down the road. And, really, the maps are getting swiped anyway.

And the bolded bit is my point entirely - had the walls been put in before destructible objects then it wouldn't have been a problem as we'd have walled everything in before we got raided.

And as for everything getting wiped away - then I shouldn't bother playing until then? See below for an explanation... for farmers security is a necessity to playing (though it needn't be total security, just significant enough to allow continuity of the process - do you know how long it takes to make and eat raisin buns compared to killing and eating a rabbit?

I don't want the discussion to turn into an exchange of simple assertions, but I can't help but feel that expectations are... somewhat skewed.

You have presented people with what appears to be a working game (whatever label you attach to it (blame Google for people having higher expectations of alphas and betas than they ought warrant - back in the day an Alpha would be expected to crash daily if not hourly - a beta once every couple of days though at least by that point a lot of the graphics were in place and weren't just stand-ins or completely glitched - oh look, your game doesn't look like an alpha or a beta either!) and since it works people get upset when you make it stop working.

You chose this model of development so you've no-one but yourself to blame.

... oh, and you'll have your walls in a couple of hours or so.

so a few days too late then?

sami calm down. its not J&L fucking up our town, its others. i love the moths. so cuddly *sigh*

ah and river, its sad that you wanna leave, come back!

It doesn't matter who fucks up the place - the point is that as a farmer I need a lot of tools and a lot of inventory space to store stuff, I also have a clearly defined location and a lot of work goes into creating the goods that I create (you might like to compare these to those necessary for a hunter - very few - or a thief - nearly none). I medieval times it took hordes to completely pillage and raze a village to the ground... here it takes one person... but takes just as many to build the damn thing... the question for the builders is why bother? Why not make a better living being a thief and criminal? The problem is that being a thief makes better economic sense (in terms of time, resources, thought and stress). So this suggests to me that the devs don't know basic economics... learn some or else you are building a wilderness - a very cool wilderness but a wilderness never the less.

I might come back if I remember this place but it's such a small part of my life and has caused me so much stress that why should I think it any more worth it in the future? Some of the players are nice but I've found that in small communities the 'net over and even in some large ones.

Unless you prove you are better than the rest then why should anyone believe you? I mean I've played beta before (many times) and I have to say that this place seems to have the ability to become something big (unlike most of the others - didn't listen to their players, didn't talk to their players, destroyed the community spirit, made paying players so powerful that the paying players had no-one to play with and so deserted - I've seen it all *sigh*). But unless you can convince newbies with less time than you have to devote to the game it will be nothing more than a niche game and it that state you are never going to get enough people to build anything more than a small hamlet because there are just too many thieves (real world comparison might be useful here... do you know how many thieves there are to each person in a real world country of the sort you want to create? More than that and you'll end up with thieves taking over, less than that and you'll have a dull place... this is why dev's have to spent almost all their time on balance (well should do anyway).

Which leaves one last hint. If you want to have as little dev interference in the game as possible then you need to automate balance in the game... have you thought about balancing the amount of LP each action gives... easy to automate; count the number of times each action is performed and reduce the LP of those performed a lot and increase it for those not performed much - if you have some things that you prefer/do not want players to do then fractionally weight them (this happens in the real world - the more someone does something the less they learn each time unless they don't do it for a while). Same applies to food and the increase in stats. Same applies to animals... if players always kill off all the bears then spawn fewer bears. If all animals are killed on sight then maybe there are too few animals in the world - spawn more or else give the players ways to spawn more.

Automate the balance and you're job is almost done (plus if players complain about LP or consumption gains or lack of bears then they've only themselves to blame (just like trees).

Hope it goes well and maybe I'll rejoin after the map reset but why should I not expect something of the same nature as has happened repeatedly before to happen again? Ah... Alpha - then maybe, like every other newbie, I should wait until you're finished... of course that assumes we can all be bothered waiting and not just play a game very like yours where the devs do give a damn about players who want to have fun rather than get done over by the devs the whole time.

Just my two cents worth,

River

[sami1337]

I apologize if my answer seemed callous, it wasn't meant to be. I'm of course sad to see people go, but at the same time I know I'm doing my best making the game better, not worse. More playable, not less so. I can't hope to do much better than that. Maybe we made a bad call, but I'm pretty sure we'll make worse mistakes down the road. And, really, the maps are getting swiped anyway.

I don't want the discussion to turn into an exchange of simple assertions, but I can't help but feel that expectations are... somewhat skewed.

... oh, and you'll have your walls in a couple of hours or so.

Apologize accepted.
I do think the wall update fixes the problems we had. But if it had come earlier we would not have been reduced to a poor town living in poverty.

After we recovered you could come back river. But it's going to take a long freaking time. But we do need help reconstructing and updating the place so it works with the latest update.

[Yolan]

RiverPhoenix writes:
So this suggests to me that the devs don't know basic economics... learn some or else you are building a wilderness - a very cool wilderness but a wilderness never the less.

You could have asserted your position without being so rude about it.

'just my two cents worth'.

[Raephire]

RiverPhoenix writes:
So this suggests to me that the devs don't know basic economics... learn some or else you are building a wilderness - a very cool wilderness but a wilderness never the less.

You could have asserted your position without being so rude about it.

'just my two cents worth'.

2 cents is 98 cents shy of a dollar :p

I can appreciate RiverPhoenix' concern but his concern is misplaced. Loftar is a great programmer, his design and forethought are merely overshadowed by his ability to code. Everyone has their flaws, but pay attention to what they have both said before. They appreciate the feedback and suggestions but it's THEIR game :p

Edit - You can always choose not to play in the wilderness.

[JTG]

Well he has many ideas wrong.

1. He is not a village, and single people did go around causing havoc. Ever hear of highwaymen or robbers? Of course not. You don't have medieval newspapers telling you of everytime someones murdered another person in an era with no global communication, and infact slow communication where many things aren't even recorded.

2. A single person can easily do the work of entire villages, or make massive projects. Think about it. You can mine and smelt and do everything at once. The glory of it is everything ingame takes time to process so you can start processes in the middle of current processes and build things, and etc. I've made large monuments, and kiln walls, and all sorts of things in short periods of time. Its a matter of how much you are willing to do.

3. This game isn't going to be deserted period. I've played mmorpgs all my life starting from OSI Pre:UOR UO, to Ragnarok Online, to fucking World of Warcraft.

The special part of this game is the full dynamics. Its basically a civilization simulation, where it is up to YOU to change the state of affairs. All it takes is one thread on a few forums and you'll be gaining a stupidly high amount of players looking for this kind of game.

Not to mention this model of permadeath is a very good one, I've seen many permadeath models and this is the only one that works.

[sami1337]

I think you're wrong JTG. Sure someone like you can live on your own. You don't have to worry about being strong enough and raise your stats. But if you want to do the work of a town on your own you won't be able to specialise in any of those things. Only thing you can do is make food and work on something else. Usually steel. But i have yet to see a homestead with time invested in everything.

Plus if you keep your industry / nature slider neutral you're heavily disadvantaged.

[JTG]

What you call a disadvantage is someone elses advantage. You tradeoff being able to do everything for more resource production.

Its very easy to start a massive tea crop, and hunt and stockpile food, and mass produce iron at the same time.

We are also seeing, (Mind the stupid term) Ronin ingame. They fit the criteria, and have the same behaviors. Although I wouldn't exactly call them samurai beforehand.

[sami1337]

Yeah but who cares about a gazillion cow chorizo, tons of tea and lots of cast iron if it's wrought, steel, silk and bear meat you're after.
I mean sure you can get all of that eventually, but then the game becomes more like work and you'd be planning your game time to finish stuff you need while you also could rely on someone else to do it for you and everyone else living with you.

[JTG]

Steel isn't very high maintanence, and neither is silk.

[sami1337]

Yeah both both require you to invest alot of time. For steel you need to go through the whole production process starting with iron and silk requires you to catch rare creatures, wait for them to make eggs, wait for the eggs to hatch, feed the silk worms and eventually get their silk.
If you wait too long with either the production will fail.