I want to elaborate the history, the presence and the possible future for cRPG here, as I think the actual state of matter is just depressing! I don't think that you should give the patch some time, as some of the most severe issues (especially running around naked with all the consequences for both teams and the overall gameplay) are obvious and won't disappear after people got used to the patch.
(WARNING! I will quote myself a lot from previous posts in the last months, as some of the stuff is still valid, so expect to read stuff you already read somewhere else. I just worked it over, comprehended it and corrected a few mistakes
)
Edit: added a REALLY short summary at the end of the post, for lazy readers.
Character development
The old cRPG had a big problem: character development was not limited enough, which made more and more tincans, knights and plated horse archers appearing on the servers, kind of spoiling the game. After some time all player would have been using only the best equipment. The upkeep system tried to fix this, but failed in my eyes.
Let me explain why:
We have two aspects of character creation: the equipment and the character development, as I showed here:
With the old cRPG system, the potential looked like this:
Equipment was hardcapped, as sooner or later you would have all the best of the best equipment. Levels were softcapped at about 36 I would say, every level more needed big effort, but it was doable. A player could reach any point on this graphic, representing his choice between equipment and skills. All possible points are coloured in sky blue, creating a square within the two cap bounds, but crossing the level cap (as it's soft).
With this potential, the actual character development on the servers looked like this:
As you can see, all (okay, most, of course, but I try to make statements representing the "common behaviour") players (= the coloured squares) tried to develop in both equipment and skill as far as possible, as it's only a matter of time. Take a look at the right side of the graphic: as you can see, the last few players reached the hard cap of equipment, and the only differences between them are their levels, which is only a matter of time. If you would show their development by an arrow it would start from (0|0), go up in about a 45° angle until it reaches the hard equipment cap, and then it would move horizontically, parallely along the "skill"-axis.
By the way: those sqares not reaching the caps always represents lower level players during their development!
Now do you know where my problem is?
The upkeep system only lowers the equipment hard cap by about 50%, making it a (really hard) soft cap (which in fact is no difference to a real hard cap), but basically it would look the same. Yes, the really hard soft cap concerning levels would somehow limit the movement towards the right, but ultimatively the movement would go again the same way. (There are no penalties if you cross the soft level cap, unlike the soft equipment cap)
Take a look how the upkeep system limits look like:
Again the sky blue box is (about) the potential the players can use.
Concerning this potential, look how the players develop:
Basically the same like before. Again the last movement is towards the right side, but much slower than before. But it's still the same! Players still don't have to make decision, they can use everything in between those two caps. They would all reach the first cap (equipment) and then move along this line towards or even over the level cap.
Upkeep system issues
And there are even more issues, as the intended idea of limiting the equipment players use failed. Lets see the actual effects of the upkeep system:
- Worries are added to the game. You will be afraid of losing something, and you will have this feeling all the time. CRPG is lacking real motivation! It needs a reward system, not a punishment system! (A reward is if you have more than before, and not being allowed to keep whats already yours! Of course the gold and XP is a good reward system, but its getting more than neutralized by the punishment system. You know, people tend to estimate good things as understood, but bad things as totally unfair and undeserved ;) )
- The upkeep system was meant to reward good players, but no matter how good a player is, he wont be able to decide rounds on his own again and again, to be able to sustain more than other players. Finally autobalance will decide what you can afford, and assumed that autobalance is working properly, everyone will have a 50/50 win/loss-ratio (after some time). So your skills and knowledge dont matter, luck decides. Another point of demotivation.
- People will keep on using the same equipment like before, but only half the time. If they are in the winning team, they will put on full plate and ride a charger, if they are losing they will run around naked. Which is a disadvantage for all players, I think!
- This also leads to more 5:0 maps, as once the winning and the losing teams are determined after round 1 the winning team will consist of heavily armoured players, the losing team will run around naked. There will be no thrill in the rounds after the first one, as the winner is already known. If you are unlucky autobalance puts you in the losing tam, which means you will have to run around naked for the next 15-20 minutes, not being able to turn the course of the battle. All this time you will have no fun at all. Another point of demotivation.
- We will have insane amounts of people running around naked. A farming factor has been added to the game, respectively increased, as with the previous version farming was only fighting and thus quite some fun anyway, but now it got worse, as you have no equipment at all while doing so. I think this is overall less fun.
- Due to the soft level cap, lowered WPF and higher armour penalties strength builds will become more effective, which will mean more overhead spamming with blockcrushing weapons. Which is a bad thing imo, as those kills require no skill at all, its like horsebumping.
- The increasing money and XP amount per minute encourages people to hide and run away
- Also does the missing area infect, and rounds last longer, as the teams scatter more over the map. The game turns to a stringing together of small duels. This also lowers the effectivity of using tactics (before the patch you could "force" people to hillcamp or whatever, as they needed the area bonus). Which means, that the naive theory, good players (= players also using their head and setting up tactics) could afford more equipment than bad players, recedes into the distance even more!
- This leads to people spending more time in spectator screen instead of actually playing!
- The patch was supposed to lower the amount of archers, but the highly increased amount of lightly armoured or even naked players makes it much more attractive, and cutting damage and slower animations cant change this. Same thing concerning crossbows and throwing. Ranged fighting will pay more, we will have more shit flying through the air.
- Less armour means horsebumps becoming more effective, we will have more naked people riding around on a horse holding up a shield than before.
- Also, if people don't run around naked, but actually try to keep up some stuff continuously (as it was intended), many of them will decide to keep some slots free. Shielders will run around without body armour, 2hd/polearm players will run around without shoes/gloves/helmet, and so on. The game will look more ugly. (Than it already did
)
I think most of those points cant be denied, so its obvious the upkeep system is only an inferior solution to the problems of old cRPG.
Alternative System
Instead of just criticizing I will now present an alternative suggestion, chadz should be able to remember: the item value system, from now on being only called as my system
The basic ideas are:
- Separation between item value and item price. The item price is what you need to pay to purchase an item on the cRPG-page. The value is the items actual value on the battlefield. Its the value shown in the buy menu like in native. cRPG already had some items which had a certain price on the page, but were shown as default items ingame. So technically its possible.
- Implementation of another character attribute: wealth. It determines the maximum item value a character can be equipped with. Every level you gain a few points more automatically, so that you can use better items. Let's assume you start out with 20 points, and every additional level gives 5 points more.
- Implementation of an attribute-less skill called prosperity (we can argue about the name
). This skill point can be levelled as high as your current character level, there is no limitation. It increases your wealth attribute by quite a bit, not too much, but also not too little. I dont know if it should increase exponentially, like weapon master does, but this can only be tested during a beta, I think. Probably something between 10 and 50 points.
- Then we have to introduce a maximum level, but I would be generous and set it up at 32-40, to increase the RPG-aspect, with quite some time of motivation by gaining levels. So at level 40 a players has 220 value points. Let's assume a tunic costs 10 value points, a leather armour 50, a chainmail 80 and plate 120 points. So if you buy yourself a plate armour at level 40, you immediately lose more than 50% of your value points! If you consider that a flamberg would possibly cost 150 value points, you've got a problem with your current build.
- The system works like this: your wealth value, determined by your level and your prosperity skill value, is shown ingame in the buy menu, its the native denar budget. Of course it doesnt change from round to round like in Native, but except of this it works exactly like in native: if you equip stuff being worth more than this value, the numbers turn red and you wont start with all of it!
- With a max level retiring became needless, so its gone for good! You can still improve items at the smiths on the webside. I dont know if this is possible or not (due to the effort) but you could even make the player decide which aspect of a weapon to increase: speed, damage or reach (increase model size by a modifier). Armour can gain protection or be made lighter.
- Of course you can reskill your character again by paying some gold, you are not stuck with your skills ;). There is no need to level him up again. If you want to start from a peasant another time just create a new character!
- Implementation of reputation points. Whenever a player wins a round he gets some reputation points, whenever he loses a round he loses a smaller number of reputation points (e.g. win: +2 points, loss: -1 point. This is to create a little motivation (=punishment) to actually win a round and so to use tactics, without being too severe in its effects). Those points are spent for the smith (he is a busy man and serves only the most influential lords ;) ), next to the gold payment, of course. But you can also purchase exclusive items which cant be paid with gold. Those are only slightly better than the common top items, but have a special look, making their player looking (almost) unique on the battlefield. Those items cost shitloads of reputation points!
- Reimplementation of the area based gold and xp income. This is to increase teamplay, which requires players actually being near to each other. A gold and xp income independent of this only encourages small skirmishes all over the map, hiding, running away and so on. The final round bonus is determined by two values:
a) the k/d ratio of the teams. The more players from the winning team survive, the better their round bonus. This hopefully encourages teamplay and makes players look for each other.
b) the time the round took. The faster the round has ended, the bigger the bonus for the winner. The longer it took, the better for the defenders. This has the disadvantage of encouraging the last survivors to hide or run away. But I think the effect would be lower than now, especially as with the upkeep system even the winner might want to prolong the round! This is supposed to encourage aggressive gameplay, making players stay less in spec mode.
- Some minor tweaks concerning horses, crossbows, blockcrushing weapons, etc.
Advantages
The central point of my suggestion is the following one: you pay superior equipment with skills, and vice versa. Together with a level cap this will achieve a balance between classes and between players. A level cap between 30 or 40 should be a good compromise between an attribute based RPG and a skill based game. The motivation is the same like in the old cRPG (which was really huge), without the demotivating things like losing your equipment only due to autobalance, having to run around naked for a few maps and totally boring rounds with predetermined winners/losers. Additional motivation for players having reached the max level comes from improving items and purchasing unique equipment, similar to games like World of Warcraft (which is the motivation reference par excellence, as its literally making addicted).
Any fear of losing something, and any temporally restriction of item usage would be gone!Now lets have a look how character development would look like with my suggestion:
Together with the hard level cap, and the hard equipment cap by spending all your skill points into the prosperity skill, players could never move away from (0|0) further than a fixed distance, probably the distance between (0|0) and the hard caps. Like this:
I MADE A MISTAKE! AT THE RIGHT SIDE, THE VERTICAL LINE, IT'S A HARD CAP, TOO, OF COURSE!So the opportunities for players would look like this:
As you can see, if you want to get close to one cap you have to sheer off from the other cap. You pay equipment with fighting skills and vice versa. This way, players would be forced to actually meet decisions, instead of just waiting until time makes everything possible. As some players would prefer equipment, other skill, the builds would look differently. The characters in the game would look like this:
As you can see, we have different builds with more or less the same strength. (The strength is the surface area of the different player boxes. And as perfect squares offer the greatest surface area, probably balanced builds would be the strongest, but I can't say for sure. If you go only equipment I am sure the surface area would represent the effectivity: lowest possible. But if you would only go for skill I am sure this would be a rather good/decent build (as you get wealth points each level anyway if you wouldnt it would also be close to zero, of course).
Next to higher character varieties, more balanced builds, and a much easier balancing (as you don't have to consider "Nerd" builds with 24/24 or so ;) ), the system would lack one important thing: a punishment system, currently demotivating great parts of the community.
Comparison between the two systems
Now lets have a look how things went with the release of the upkeep patch:
After some confusion (big tactical mistake, as this already makes players feel angry about the patch) the community downloaded the patch and joined the servers. First thing they probably realised was the ingame character page and the voice menu, which are great things, but also are not really related to the upkeep system itself. They lost a lot of level, but this was okay somehow. After a few rounds they saw, they are losing shitloads of money, so many of them took their items off and either bought/used cheaper equipment or ran around naked to farm enough money for being able to play with their most favourite equipment. This is already some kind of punishment, as it doesnt only add a temporal limitation to the game (like server only opens between 6 and 10 p.m
.), also grinding is needed (
if you were in school/at work today! Otherwise: forget it!). Tincans, cavalry and all the other annoying stuff didnt disappear, you just have to be balanced into the losing team, and you would have to deal with exactly the same shit, but with way inferior equipment than before. Your game became luck dependant, really frustrating while in the losing team and not really exciting while in winning team. So many players went to the forums and started to criticize/whine/rage.
How would my suggestion feel like?
First of all I would insist on a topic telling the players exactly what is coming, what they will have to do and everything else, to prevent confusion und frustration. Once they downloaded the patch, they would see all their attribute and skill points being reset, but their levels would more or less stay the same. (The XP curve was fine in the old system, I think). As they knew about the value system, they would have a look at the items they want to use by all means, then compare it to the skills they want to have, and decide for their personal build. With this they would join the servers with the characters they decided for, and try out how their build performs. Perhaps they would even make different presets for different occasions? Of course there would be a lot of crying, because many people cant create the build they want/they were used to. But I think the whineage would be way smaller, as many players would accept that things need to be balanced out. The system wouldnt base so much on luck (autobalance), and there is no need in running around naked half of the time. There would be less tincans with flamberg, and even if there are some, you know they wouldn't be so dominating in meele ny more. I don't know if there would be less cavalry, but it would definitely NOT be so dominating any more, and there would be almost no heavy cavalry. Also plated horse archers would more or less disappear. On the other hand all players who want to play those classes can feel free to play them as long as they want to, they just have to accept they won't be as effective as they used to be. (This will sort out the "result oriented" players from the real class fanboys)
Players would be constantly rewarded by XP, gold and reputation, while any greater punishment than waiting in spectator mode and losing a small amount of reputation for being killed/losing the round would be missing, like it was in the old cRPG (which did pretty well concerning motivation).
Summary (for lazy readers ) - the main issue of the old cRPG was that players didn't need to make decisions, and were rather unlimited in their choice of skills and equipment. This lead to an inflationary usage of top tier equipment, and lead to a strong imbalance between classes.
- the upkeep system meant to fix this, but on one hand it failed partially, on the other hand it created new problems. The main problem if the upkeep system are players running around naked, which has a lot of negative effects on the overall gameplay, for everyone.
- so my alternative suggestion was to balance skills and equipment. To equip superior equipment you would have to skill it. (NOT item requirements, you skill your overall inventory value). With a (high) hardcap, and a few minor changes, this could lead to a balanced AND motivating gameplay.
