As you all know, the purpose of the upkeep system was to limit people to a certain level of equipment, instead of having everyone running around with the best item of one type or working on it.
But the system had several flaws. Before I start listing them up, I want to say that I am sorry if I repeat what I wrote a year ago once already, but as you introduced the marketplace feature, you rendered the upkeep system useless. That's why I will have another try to convince you folks.
Upkeep system has these flaws, at least in my eyes these things are flaws:
- it adds the fear of losing something (= fear of being punished) to the game. It doesn't make people quit, but still I think it's not nice or the best solution. (How about having people hope to get rewarded instead of not getting punished? Isn't that much nicer?)
- it's luck based. I don't like random chances.
- it's limitations are not 100% of the time. If you save up enough money you can still ride around on a plated charger while wearing plate yourself. Once you do so, it doesn't matter how long you had to grind for it, as soon as you do it you have the old imbalances back. Perhaps it's fair for you, because you grinded hard and now you pawn on your armoured elephant, but for everyone else there is just a player on the server who is stronger than the others for some reason. Imagine a hand grenade for 100.000.000 gold, which has only 1 ammo, but once thrown kills all enemy players on the map. The price would still be too low, because it would still suck to lose against such a thing. And never mind how high you raise the price, it would always remain fucked up. What I want to say is:
you can't balance things by the time (=gold) needed to achieve them, because time is an endless ressource, at least it seems for a few unemployed powergamers here. This works only in SP, where you need to balance only between the game and the player (time/effort => reward), but in MP you need to balance between the different players.
- characters are limited in their choice of equipment (most of the time) with no alternative, so you remove the path of relying to superior equipment from the game, which is a pity and limits freedom of character builds.
- winning teams put on better equipment, losing teams put on cheaper items, which further limits the chances of turning the course of the battles on a certain map.
My basic idea would be to implement a system to balance the two factors "character stats" and "character equipment".- Every player gets a "wealth value", depending on his level. This wealth value represents your ingame gold, exactly like in native, with the difference that it doesn't change ever, in other words you don't lose or gain gold while playing. It's just a value. If you have a wealth of 12.000, you can always equipment worth 12.000 or less. If you put on more on the equipment screen, the number gets red, and if you spawn anyway, one item is being removed/replaced. (I don't know the exact mechanic behind that, which item it is and how it's being replaced, but you know what I mean, it doesn't matter for now)
- Items are still bought on the webside with the gold you have, and the price of an items does NOT represent its ingame value, nor is your gold on the webside related to your wealth value ingame at all! Currently in cRPG items are bought for a certain price on the webside, but appear as "default item" ingame, so we know items can have two prices, one on the webside and one ingame. ("Ingame price" is only related to the Native mechanic. It's still just the item value.)
- As said above, the wealth value increases with every level, but only a bit. All in all the value should allow you to wear equipment, slightly better than the most basic stuff, once you hit lvl 30. Below this, you can wear less and less. While being a peasant an running around with peasant stuff you can be sure it's the maximum your wealth allows, anyway.
- Introduce the "prosperity" skill. Perhaps you are a nobleman, or a successful merchant or something like that? This skill increases your wealth by a good amount, and is completely unrelated to your attributes (Or perhaps not? It's a question of balancing and fine tuning. Perhaps it should be an attribute, instead of a skill?). Being level 30 and having 10 or 12 prosperity skill should allow you to ride around on a plated charger with plate armour all the time. The problem is, that your fighting skills will suck, so things will be balanced. You will have less riding skill most likely, so that you will just be able to ride the horse, making you really slow. Also you will have lower power strike, rendering your hits less deadly. And perhaps you will decide to go without a shield, making you more vulnerable in general.
- The fear of losing money for repair costs will be removed, so your character's success won't rely so much on the other players on the server any more. (Which is pure horror, at least for me.)
- You can plan precisely how your build will work, and you will always know which equipment you will be able to wear
- You can wear your favourite equipment 100% of the time, without being punished. And if your equipment is really good, you are still balanced compared to the other players, because your skills will be lower, so no demotivation for others. No need to grind to have fun for a short period of time. (This makes even heavy cavalry a playable class again)
- You have the choice of playing either a skilled veteran with poor equipment but superior fighting skills, the rich merchant who can afford a great armour but is not that experienced in fighting, or you can play the professional soldier with decent equipment and good skills. Your choice. Currently you have the choice between playing the experienced fighter with good equipment and... well, that's it.
- never mind if you are winning or losing, you can always wear the same equipment. So after a round has finished the next round has equal chances for both teams. Instead of one team having 5-20% better equipment than the other one.
Of course this suggestion leads to a few problems, and I am aware of these. For example the marketplace basing on gold would be rendered completely senseless, as gold would be reduced to a "byproduct" which would be generated without limitations and used only for buying items and trading heirlooms, which is pointless, as the amount of gold would be literally unlimited. Inflation would would change prices by several 100% within a few hours.
So you need to rework the complete round reward => retirement => marketplace mechanics. But I bet there are solutions out there, and together we can find them. Although I might sometimes create the impression of seeing myself as wise guy who has all answer, I most certainly am not (neither do I think so), but to me the market place with its option to sell loom points and circumvent the maximum equipment value is an issue that needs to be fixed. The marketplace and so on are features that don't belong to the core of the game.
Sure, going without heirloom points has similar effects like "skills vs. equipment" (although the additional "skill" here is generated by the items itself, instead of character stats), but the relation is in no way comparable. And it's a final decision which can't be undone.
