Well amid all the whining post I thought I'd throw this in here. This is party a discussion thread but also party a suggestion thread, as you shall see. But now to the substance of this here post
*ahem*
So after playing cRPG often for several months, I must say I've never enjoyed it so much as now, despite the bugs. The new upkeep system is quite wonderful, as it adds more to character customization than zerg to the highest level armor/weapon. Now you must weigh not only the weapon stats, but its cost, when deciding what to buy. I've bought some things--and I've seen others do the same--which I never would have purchased before because, although it was good for the price, it wasn't top level equipment. This is great because it adds a lot more variety and gets more equipment used.
Secondly, the new XP system is great. No longer do you have to grind retirements or stay clustered together in a mob and bash into the other mob with no tactic or organization. I've been flanking, defending positions, and other such things which I didn't do before because you got no XP doing it. Also, playing siege has been fun, but that's a bit off topic so I won't go further. The grind has been severely reduced. Now you can just play and try to win and not worry about XP. This is a great thing and makes the game a lot more fun.
The biggest flaw I see in the new system is the fact that winning gives you such a high bonus. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, since the better organized & skilled team should work together to win and get a reward, right? Not really, because
autostack autobalance throws you in randomly with whoever. I think I saw something about autobalance by banner, which is a step in the right direction for more teamwork. But the system needs more work. Right now you get tons more XP for winning, which you can hardly control. I'd really like to see the default xp/gold turned up a little and the bonus reduced to X .50 each win or less.
Now about the upkeep, I will say a few more words. The folks who want to play the game to have fun and use all kinds of armor and sundry times are out having fun, while the tincan chinese gold farmers who have no skill are complaining "zomg chadz mah armor costs too much! waaah waaah" At this I smile. The game has gotten a lot more like Native in this respect. In Native you run around with low/mid level gear most of the time, and if you do good, then you can afford some high-level gear. This now is quite similar. Now I anticipate much of the cRPG population, upon reading this, will think: "but cRPG isn't supposed to be like native, its supposed to be
a constant grindfest where everyone wears plate with lightning fast 2-hand swords and the guy with the higher stats beats everyone else to a pulp customizable!" Well, I don't think that was chadz vision.
If I may venture a guess, I think chadz wanted to make a mod which took the best parts of Native, but adds persistent stats and customized equipment. Which this patch does well. Not do say it doesn't have its shortfalls. There are still many. In fact, you will probably see me posting a lot here wanting things changed. Yet I think we've got the nuts and bolts of the engine made, so to speak, and now we just need to fine tune it. And here are some ideas to get us started thinking about this:
I'd like to see cRPG money dis-linked from Strategus and a Strategus economy added. I know this will take some work and time.
As I already mentioned, the autobalance needs to be changed. Please let us play with our clan mates. You are never going to get good teamwork out of pubs, especially without some kind of voice server for everyone to use. Maybe throw in some kind of squad system (perhaps an evolution of the current battalions?) Let autobalance reassign everyone in the squad at once, so people can stay together with their friends and clan mates. This is still one of my biggest complaints, since it feels very lonely playing by my self. There is no point being on vent when half the people there are on the other team, and you are just going to get autobalanced in a few rounds away from the ones on your team. Or maybe make some clan system built into cRPG (separate from Strategus since some people have alts). I'm sure you bright folks can think of something.
And where are the American servers? I'm tired of playing with 150-200 ping D:
An a totally different idea, show gold ingame on your stats page. That way if I'm wondering "should I wear my heavy set of armor this round, or do I have enough extra money?" I can simply press C, check, and make a decision. Also some kind of counter showing the maximum repair bill you will have to pay for your current equipment (ie if all your stuff got damaged, how much would it cost).
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So I'll make this a bit briefer.
