Why do we even need upkeep anymore?

[rustyspoon]

I've been thinking about this a lot. Now that Strategus is out, why do we need upkeep?

Why can't Strategus be for the serious playing and plain old CRPG be just for fun again?

With these last few patches the game has become less and less fun. You have to worry about upkeep so you can't use your cool stuff all the time. The xp bonus has been nerfed to shit, so it takes forever to level. Those are the kinds of things that help make the game fun, but now it's just a painful grind.

Also with our current system, you are punished for losing instead of rewarded for playing. Every time you lose, you will probably lose a chunk of money. Not to mention that you'll be leveling at a fraction of the level of the speed you would be at if you won. It's kind of an unfair system that puts you at the mercy of autobalance. Especially since banner balance puts most of a clan on one team. I know when there's a lot of us on (ATS) we can roll a server for hours. I know other clans do the same exact thing. I just feel that the old system of money and xp for kills was overall more rewarding and more fun. With that system, just by playing you got rewarded. Even if you lost you still made a good amount of money and xp.

Now back to upkeep. Some people say that we need it so there aren't as many tincans and horses. Honestly, who gives a shit? Too many tincans? Bring a pierce or blunt weapon. Too many horses, get some awareness and a big, pointy stick. Plate isn't that great anymore anyway, especially with the dramatically reduced chance of glancing. Also, it would stop the devs from using upkeep as a lazy way to balance certain items. (*cough*XBOWS*cough*)

If we gained xp fast again, it would make leveling more enjoyable AND it would make it easier to make alts/play different builds, etc. Some people though will complain that people will get too many heirlooms this way. Again, who gives a shit? If Goretooth had 10,000 heirlooms it doesn't make the game less fun for me. It's not like someone having more heirlooms than me makes mine worse. You can only have so many heirlooms anyway, so what's the difference?

All-in-all, I think this game has lost a lot of the fun factor over the patches and I'd like to see it return. We have Strategus for the super-serious stuff anyway.

tl;dr Since Strategus is back, we have that for serious play. Let's remove upkeep and give back the xp bonus to make the regular game more fun again.

[serpus]

[Miley]

I don't think it's not fun for me, but I agree with some of what you're saying. I don't think levelling is slow, but maybe that's because I'm used to being gen. 1 and halfway to level 34 now o.0 I agree with what you're saying about upkeep. I think it is a lazy way to balance items. It's not going to stop people from using plate every round (ex: Tydeus). People will just have to grind for some money, and they can use plate every round for a certain amount of time, so it won't stop people from complaining that much. By old system of gaining EXP and gold, do you mean from long ago when you had to get close to the fighting to get gold and EXP depending on what level the player dying was? And I agree with what you say about heirlooms. Just because the gens. were nerfed, and it's harder to get them is not going to stop people from getting them in the long run. I do think that people like Kesh who could retire in like 3 hours would be at a big advantage in the marketplace though.

[Tzar]

I can agree on the upkeep part if people wanna slow themself down wearing plate now useless thx to new armor values and get couched by a formula 1 courser lancer on their plated chargers let em.

But all the others changes from over the time is nice and should stay.

On another note i have no clue why they raised upkeep in the latest patch since it worked just fine before. 
.

[Gash]

CRPG has had its ups and downs with decisions and released patches. Most of it never really influenced the main cool part of this game: character customization.

However there are two decisions that really screwed up both this aspect of my characters;  Slot use and the higher upkeep.  Slot restriction I can somewhat manage with, but the upkeep is just lame now.

I quote you chadz, ''I always thought it was fun if everyone could create his own char, using his own items''   -  I though so too, that's why I started playing this game.

Except that now I cannot use my own items either because of the slot restriction or because I cannot upkeep mid-tier items due to the cost.

I have both a hoplite build and a Horse Archer build. 

9 months ago I was wearing lamellar armor and riding a cataphract. I understand this needed a nerf. I was comfortable with the upkeep system the way it was for the last few months... but now its just ridiculous. Before the patch; my Horse archer using a steppe horse (which gets one-shotted by crossbows), medium armor, equipped with a masterwork Horn bow and 2 stacks of bodkin arrows used to take anywhere from 3 arrows to kill cloth wearers, up to 6 (for chainmail-users) - and plate-users I didn't even bother since my arrows just tickled them. Yet, I could sustain the repair bill. Never made any gold but never really lost any either.

However, with the new upkeep costs, If I want to remain on horseback I have to drop down to regular arrows and steppe armor.  Now it requires an additional 1 - 3 extra arrows for a kill, while myself and my horse still get 1-shotted by crossbows, or a sword poke for that matter.

In the end; my character isn't really customized. He's forced to look like the upkeep system is telling him to look like cause he can't sustain the repair cost of anything else.

Yet, there are still multiple tin cans out there wielding 2 handed weapons and dominating the field.  I don't play a horse archer to dominate the field - I play it cause I like the play-style and horse archer culture. But at the rate which I'm losing gold (I went from 24k  5 days ago to 3k tonight) I won't be enjoying it for much longer.

[Miley]

+ to you Gash.

As I said in the "Ups and Downs of this Patch" thread that chadz made, I agree that this mod has lost A LOT of its ability to let players customize their characters. (Ex: The addition of slots just destroyed the ability to be a hybrid with a War Bow, Long Bow, Heavy Crossbow, and Sniper Crossbow and a two-hander or polearm.) It's like there are a few set builds for every class, and no one is unique anymore.

I'd rather have upkeep over the stupid slots though.

[Gheritarish le Loki]

I disagree, upkeep is not only here to punish player or to prevent plate all the time, for me it adds a manage dimension of your equip.
You must choose your equip wisely, depends on the situation, you must manage your gold.
I´m pretty sure that even with upkeep it´s easier to new player, before january patch when you were a peasant you stood as a peasant a long time as you can´t even afford to buy good gear. Also it seems to me that it was harder to level up.

xp gain, it´s good as it is, i mean it´s pretty fast to lvl to 30, it´s hard to go 31 but nobody force you to retire and you play with an achieve build since 30.
If you make it easier then there will be a lost of interest, easy thing become boring faster...

[Tears of Destiny]

I do believe that there does need to be some kind of balancer, for right now playing strat gives no gold nor xp for your character, and you need gold to buy items to get higher multipliers (to a point, admit it a stick is harder to use then a proper weapon) and you need XP to level your character to play strat properly. Because of this I support the idea of an upkeep system.

However, I think that upkeep does need to be lessened significantly.
Pre-patch it was fine in my opinion. The average user was not a tin can so what exactly was the problem?

Right now new players are dressed in rags and stay that way for a disturbing amount of time. I do not understand why we want so many similar looking characters now that a great deal of combnations are no longer practical due to the new upkeep system. I can sort of understand making arrows more expensive and such so that there is more "variety" in archers as before they pretty much all used bodkins and that was boring (now I am seeing real variety in appreciable numbers), but for melee everyone is quickly shifting towards using the same boring low-end gear after the latest patch... I am not too happy about that.

[Miley]

I do believe that there does need to be some kind of balancer, for right now playing strat gives no gold nor xp for your character, and you need gold to buy items to get higher multipliers (to a point, admit it a stick is harder to use then a proper weapon) and you need XP to level your character to play strat properly. Because of this I support the idea of an upkeep system.

However, I think that upkeep does need to be lessened significantly.
Pre-patch it was fine in my opinion. The average user was not a tin can so what exactly was the problem?

Right now new players are dressed in rags and stay that way for a disturbing amount of time. I do not understand why we want so many similar looking characters now that a great deal of combnations are no longer practical due to the new upkeep system. I can sort of understand making arrows more expensive and such so that there is more "variety" in archers as before they pretty much all used bodkins and that was boring (now I am seeing real variety in appreciable numbers), but for melee everyone is quickly shifting towards using the same boring low-end gear after the latest patch... I am not too happy about that.

I don't think so, I think there was a lot of variety in arrows pre-patch too. Kesh used normal Arrows, people used Bodkins, Rayna and some others used Khergit, Qaki used Barbed. I think it's impossible to be a hybrid with archery now, and even some crossbows, because of the dumb slot system. This mod lacks diversity now.

[Tears of Destiny]

I don't think so, I think there was a lot of variety in arrows pre-patch too. Kesh used normal Arrows, people used Bodkins, Rayna and some others used Khergit, Qaki used Barbed. I think it's impossible to be a hybrid with archery now, and even some crossbows, because of the dumb slot system. This mod lacks diversity now.

Bah, Kesh only used regular arrows once Kesh became a hybrid! Most people questioned me endlessly when I announced that I used standards instead of bodkins on the forums, including Kesh! 

But yes I get your point, but in my eyes there is more of a variety now then before (though perhaps that will end as Standards are starting to become the new Bodkins, so to speak) though certainly that is argueable.

I do agree that diversity is starting to look a little sad then before, especially with the poor horses and armour.

[rustyspoon]

I disagree, upkeep is not only here to punish player or to prevent plate all the time, for me it adds a manage dimension of your equip.
You must choose your equip wisely, depends on the situation, you must manage your gold.
I´m pretty sure that even with upkeep it´s easier to new player, before january patch when you were a peasant you stood as a peasant a long time as you can´t even afford to buy good gear. Also it seems to me that it was harder to level up.

xp gain, it´s good as it is, i mean it´s pretty fast to lvl to 30, it´s hard to go 31 but nobody force you to retire and you play with an achieve build since 30.
If you make it easier then there will be a lost of interest, easy thing become boring faster...

There's a lot of people who don't need to manage their gold. I have a dumptruck full of gold. I could wear plate all day every day if I wanted to and there are a lot more people that can also. I also thought this was a game about hitting people with swords, not Medieval Accountant.

There is one big difference between our current version and the pre-January version and you have to think of this from a new player's perspective. Pre-January you'll die a lot and get gold kind of slowly. But, when you buy an item, you have it and can always use it to it's full ability. It won't wear down or break. With the current version, you save up your money and buy that cool new whatever you wanted. But then, oh shit, you have to pay upkeep on it that you can't afford and you eventually can't use it anymore. As an experienced player, you know what items are worth it and how and when to spend your money. New players, not so much.

I also think that XP gain is WAY too slow. Nowadays it's a grind. With the old xp bonus, the benefit of being a high gen was the ability to try out new builds relatively quickly. There was a lot more "play" involved than there is now. With the current system, if you respec to try out a new build you then have to level it back up to 30 to REALLY try the build out. That takes a stupid amount of time.

Since a lot of people think upkeep is "SOOOO AWESOME" I came up with another idea for it awhile ago. A sliding scale of upkeep. To do this, all upkeep costs would be dropped dramatically. However, the higher "tier" of equipment you use would increase the chance of breakage. If you do the math right, upkeep for high-end items would be about the same, but dramatically less for low and mid-tier gear. It's much friendlier to newer players and then everyone can have their precious upkeep.

I still think that upkeep doesn't do much other than lessen the amount of fun. People say they don't want to go back to the horrible days of everyone and their mother on a plated charger wearing black plate, but as everyone who knows who played back then...it wasn't like that at all. Also, the nerfs to things like heavy armor and cav would make a situation like that not bad at all anyway.

A lot of people play this for Strategus anyway. So, why can't we make the regular game more fun as we level up our characters for Strategus?

[Magikarp]

I don't think so, I think there was a lot of variety in arrows pre-patch too. Kesh used normal Arrows, people used Bodkins, Rayna and some others used Khergit, Qaki used Barbed. I think it's impossible to be a hybrid with archery now, and even some crossbows, because of the dumb slot system. This mod lacks diversity now.

Impossible to be a hybrid? I disagree completely. Well, you can't be that super overaccurate archer anymore, 2hitting people, with a Danish on your back ready to own people. Yes, you can't be as good in melee anymore as other pure melees. But when you take a strong bow, you can still be that hybrid.

The whole point of the devs with the slot system and weaponpoint requirements was to make hybrids less overpowered. And they have done a fenomenal job.

A classic c-rpg would be cool though, without the nerfs, without upkeep etc.

[Mihai_qc]

~ Deleted ~

[IceManX]

Good idea.

I am also for removing the upkeep.

Upkeep punishs every player that plays. But some get hurt more than others.

We have people running around in plate and using plated horses. Only problem is this are the rich people that can use them.
Normal players cant afford that gear, so only the old and hardcore players can use those items. Increase the upkeep even more? Not a good solution, we still have players running around in rags and using wodden sticks... Without upkeep we have more balance because new players can use their best gear and try to fight back. At the moment they can just die..

Remove the upkeep plz and everybody can use what he wants and can have fun.
This is persistent MP of M&B Warband! Where you can lvl and equip gear...
I dont like Native MP... the gear drops everytime...
Thats why I like MMORPGs, you keep your gear stuff, chars and so on.
CRPG is like a MMORPG

[Overdriven]

Why was upkeep even raised this patch? Seems a bit of a silly decision. I know you're items supposedly break less. But you still come out paying significantly more.

However, the silliest part was making arrows more breakable. They break every damn round if you're carry 3 stacks. Bodkins have a repair of 800, that's already at least 800 lost every round.

Upkeep should definitely be lowered compared to pre-patch, not raised.

Either that or make all the ridiculously rich people who had dump truck loads of money from pre-upkeep, lose a huge proportion of their gold. Seems a bit silly to add upkeep, but let those players keep all the gold they grinded before upkeep was introduced.