Posts made by GamerSeuss

Right off the bat, I'm going to comment on your last couple of points:

1. I totally agree about the Siege Window being able to be set as any 4 hr window convenient to the city Governorship. With the global player base, there is always going to be a time when people can be online to siege a city, and, as you said, it is far easier for an individual to take a single day and plan around sieging a city than it is for a city owner to constantly have to readjust their realworld schedule to protect that city, and a city should have a reasonable chance to gather its protectors without too much fall out to their real time lives.

2. Scope of the game: As much as I'm excited to see the 3 continents per world system an 3 planets to start, I agree that initial launch doesn't need to fulfill that total scope on day 1. Initially, for good growth of your community on each planet, it actually makes sense to release a single continent per planet initially, and then save the other continents for expansion material down the road. This is good from both a gameplay/community building standpoint, AND from a development schedule standpoint. Now, granted, once you perfect a continent on a given world, it takes very little to duplicate that continent with just a different shape to the landmass, so your not saving a whole lot of development time, however, if you plan each continent to have its own unique ecosystem elements, and unique legends to confront, than you are still saving a lot of development time you can instead use to speed up the initial release of the game. Personally, I'd be fine waiting until 2025 for the game to come out as long as the quality isn't compromised, but scope can be pulled back and then expanded later without sacrificing quality. Also, I'm 50 with health concerns, and it would be nice if the game actually released before I passed, just so I got to more than just Alpha/Beta it.

That's all I have on this video so far, but great overview of the changes, @Nekrage and thank you for taking the time to lay it out there. Even PvE players such as myself can agree that there is a lot that can be done to refine the game to the betterment of play for all involved.

I guess there isn't much new to discuss, kinda waiting for the new Roadmap and such now

On the other hand, a Tutorial Quest to 'Catch a Horse' and 'Buy a Land Plot' that can be done or skipped might fit better, one before the exploration zones, and one after (as you need gold to buy a plot)

Under the catch a horse heading, you could have making capture nets

Another quest might be to craft a Tier 2 piece of Armor/Equipment based on Archtype that walks them through changing the materials used.

@FLeaLoD One variation on the Tech Tree upgrade scheme is if a City upgrades their Tech Tree, then those outside City Limits who have resident plots attached to a city can benefit from the upgraded Tech Tree.

Now, so new players no, Residents are NOT citizens, so the Governors cannot evict them, or control them in any real way. The only thing the Governors get out of Residents is they help make the Qualifications for City Upgrading, and the Governor gets a portion of the cost to buy your plot. The main other risk is if a city downgrades and loses its Tech Tree levels, thus you lose your access to higher level crafting, but most Cities will fight to maintain at least that, barring getting taken over by Sieges...AND Residents don't lose their plots if a Siege is lost, unlike Citizens, so you can go on with a new City Owner after a Siege is over, still reaping the benefits of the city's Tech Tree upgrades.

This is just one Schema, however, and they have played back and forth with how this works. The majority of the Governors are trying to get more power over Resident plots, so if they Siege a city and win, they can evict people and move their own Guildies/Allies in to the plots outside City limits (because inside plots are at a premium) and also they don't like the fact that their enemies could be Residents outside their city and gaining from their largess

Yes, and as I have also said in previous posts, although the game is supposed to cater to both PvP and PvE type players, the PvP/Combat mechanics are the ones that will need the most testing. A lot of the PvE mechanics are already ironed out and working pretty much, with the exception of fine tuning crafting, which they continue to do with each iteration of the Alpha.

I don't anticipate Races requiring too much special testing to get right, so that is probably why they are putting off the testing of them until they get the crunchier bits tested and working smoothly. As for other blue prints and such, they have already said that the Foundation Blueprints will only be available once the game fully releases, so don't anticipate those to be tested at all in either Alpha or Beta testing phases. Truth is, much as us non-PvPers might dislike it, the lion's share of Alpha and Beta testing is going to be PvP/Combat-centric

@OlivePit Exactly. In this game, Rares are either the Lost Tales you get from Legendaries, or the Legendary Reagents needed to unlock Tier 3 Enchantments

@FLeaLoD decorating your houses is what Foundation Points are for. They guaranteed us no Pay to Win, so instead, if you want visual pretties, you have to get them by spending real world money

The Developers are dedicated to a Player Driven Economy, so everything that drops is either a Reagent or a Material for crafting, and anything else is crafted by the players (except the Lost Tales, which only drop from Legendaries, and are only worth Knowledge Points)

They have flat out stated that other than that and Gold, they have no intention of adding other "treasure" to the game.

Trust me, as a community, we totally get this concern. As a matter of fact, this has been debated on and off for not just months, but ever since the crafting got introduced fully into the Alpha testing.

Here's what has come before, so you understand. It was of course originally introduced before cities, so a personal plot could have any crafting area that could be built. This was just to test the individual crafting tables mechanics.

Then, when Cities were introduced, personal plots became highly limited in what they could build on them, as they wanted a reason for the city system. These cities could basically be locked by the Guilds/Governors that owned them so that non-citizens couldn't use any of the facilities.

This majorly upset the solo/small group set of players (which actually makes up the majority of players on MMOs, just not as vocal usually). The Devs came together and next made it so more could be done in personal plots, AND proposed that cities could not restrict use of city-wide crafting stations, so even the solo'ist could take advantage of their services, but everyone does so at risk of others taking their refined goods if they aren't there to monitor the completion.

Anyway, there has been some back and forth, and right now, the Devs have it so cities can restrict things to citizens, those outside of cities can build some refining and some crafting stations, but they private plots cannot access the higher tier materials in crafting as they are locked behind Tech Tree advancement of cities. This is an ongoing process. The City Owners have argued (not all of them, mind you) that final crafting should be locked to cities to encourage people to come into cities, but have also lobbied to be able to lock their crafting to their guild/citizens which as you note, would leave solo'ists/small groups without the ability to get upgraded gear without buying it in the market, when and if it becomes available.

Personally, my own suggestion was similar to yours. Based on the size of your personal plot, I think you should be able to make 1 final refining craft station, and there should be a way to pay to upgrade your personal tech to allow that 1 station to craft higher end materials. In addition, based on size, you could have 1, 2, or 4 refining stations in your plot, which can refine any materials they are able to refine, with Advanced Refining stations maybe taking up 2 'slots'

Either way, this is a long, drawn out, and oft revisited debate/argument in this game. The solo'ists/small groups and PvE delegation have pretty much pulled for more on personal plots, the Guild/Large Group/PvP crowd have argued that as Multiplayer is in MMO, that there needs to be incentive to make people interact with each other, and so some things need to be restricted to cities, BUT also some want to be able to lock said crafting stations to only citizens, so we'll see where it goes. The game's stated goal is to cater to both camps as equally as possible.

Manufacturing is a Skill unlocked on a City Tech Tree. Only within City Limits can you make a crafting bench that will have access to that skill. Private homes outside cities are limited in what they can make as they don't have access to Tech Trees

If you mean the Rock Ridges that are iimpassable and that you have to find a path around, the Developers have said on more than one occasion that those were put in on purpose, so that if you cut across country off the 'paths' shown in the map, you sometimes end up having to double back. In fact, even teleportation powers won't let you circumvent these kinds of ridges.

As this is a purposeful inclusion, I seriously doubt your going to get them to change it.

You can only craft Tier 2 or higher materials with Craftmanship unlocked in the City's Tech tree...and that works only within the city, not in the residential area. Residential plots can only craft Tier 1 items, in other words, no metal period. You can refine it, but not craft it.

Prometheus already said that losing the buildings and everything is fully intended so that unpaid upkeep doesn't leave a clutter of buildings around, nor does it make it easy for someone to swap ownership by just letting their upkeep lapse, then having their friend buy up the plot(or you rebuy the plot before the decay happens)

This is another purposeful money sink.

@Hawkshield my anticipation, although this is just my own theorizing, mind you, is that they will give us Beastmen as promised next test, but for testing purposes, just fold them into Syndesia for now.

More than likely, the other worlds will probably not be made available until near the end of the Beta testing run unless a given world has some major mechanical differences to try out.

I made the top 100, I'm now #94

a new roadmap is forthcoming, according to Prometheus, once they finish getting the siege mechanic up and running.

As to player population at the start of an alpha, it varies to some degree from alpha to alpha, partly determined by what the primary test focus is for that particular alpha test phase, and partly by how disappointed people were in the last test phase, as some are prone to skip a test or two when disappointed.

All in all, though, I will say when an Alpha starts, they overload the server with login requests pretty much every time the first couple days, so, that speaks to a pretty vibrant test population base.

@Roccandil Actually, to serious players, neither Chess nor Go are considered games, they are considered Strategic Thought Exercises. They get sold/marketed as games, for sure, but their lack of any Random element pretty much precludes them from being real games so much.

The Word 'Game' does include a lot of subsets, including puzzles, activities, and simulations, but when you really come down to it, an actual game needs an element of chance.

@BlueGoblin actually, RNG is pretty much what makes most games, GAMES, as opposed to just activities or puzzles. Boardgames have dice, Cardgames have the shuffle, Skill games have the regular chance of failure in any skill-based activity. Success means very little if there is no chance of failure, and thus, RNG is what makes a Game a GAME!

And my point is, there shouldn't be any in-game incentivization to Guild membership. It is purely a social construct.

As to Militia, it was one possibility for testing/utilizing PvP on Syndesia. If you joined a Militia, then you could attack anyone of a different Militia, but if no Militia was chosen, you were opting out of PvP play. Nobody really took advantage of it.

Back to the previous point: Guilds create their own benefits, and the game should not add to them. A supportive guild can loan money, come to the rescue of its members when doing corpse runs, band together for larger raids, and yes, form up and back one of their own to be a governor of a city, but that is all Guild internal things. The game does enough to support guilds by letting you join your guild in-game, and allowing resources to be shared to your Guild as one of the options (as opposed to Friend, Party, Co-Owner, Citizen, or Everyone)

I am all for the Notice-Board system, it is desperately needed for a few things, like Crafting stations so you can put in who is refining what, and who gathered what, or is working towards what project so fellow citizens are less likely to just take what's there and use it for themselves.