Replace upkeep system with equipment limiting system that works!

[Khalim]

Sorry, I did not read all but I hope I can still give you a qualified opinion.

The upkeep is fine as it is. To improve the system I would take out the randomness, but this is fairly easy by just make a fixed upkeep cost per round.
Instead of 50% chance of 1000 cost just change it to 100% of 500.


What I think is, that it is really bad to put the player into the choice between "wealth" and "skill". Its just very unfun to play.
You can either wear good gear and have no money or you can wear bad gear, but have better stats.
I dont see the advantage in this system, because as I said the player has to decided between two devils.


The only way to balance upceep and the worth of gold is tweaking the >Viability of Armor<. Personally I dont wear good armor because it slows me down and costs me more gold and I would rather spend the saved gold on heirloom items.
Ok, its not nice either to get 1 or 2 hitted, but it is acceptable.

To buff the value of gold the armor needs to get buffed to but maybe thats the wrong topic.


What the game maybe needs is a cool idea of a viable goldsink so that player really enjoy wasting their money ;)
Recently I read the idea of someone who said that there should be introduced Tier 4 items and the upgrade from 3 to 4 is not with Heirlooming but with gold(maybee 1-2 Mio)

I dont think that Items are too cheap generally. Ok I am still gen 1(but this is due to the sucky altchar-system, so i started from new) but whenever I have to pay for my warspear(~500) it hurts

[Beauchamp]

Horses and heavy armor already have the worst value for money of all item types.

the biggest joke ever

[Vexus]

Yes, horses are extremely cheap compared to the rest of the other things.

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[Kafein]

the biggest joke ever

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Saying or implying the contrary would be the biggest joke ever.

EDIT : pictures will be back at the end of the month. I pointed out that a destrier is the same price as a churburg cuirass, a palfrey the same as a GLA, and the sumpter horse is worth the same as the mace.

[Joker86]

The only way to balance upceep and the worth of gold is tweaking the >Viability of Armor<. Personally I dont wear good armor because it slows me down and costs me more gold and I would rather spend the saved gold on heirloom items.
Ok, its not nice either to get 1 or 2 hitted, but it is acceptable.

You can't balance things over the viability of items. You just implied that different items/armours should have different viability values. But if there are armours of lower and of higher viability, who would use the less viable ones? Everyone would stick to the same few armours, resulting in everyone running around with the same look and stats. Which is exactly what we have now. Most infantry is using the armours in the range of 40-50 protection. There are only very few tincans, and we also have only few light armoured, quick infantrymen, 60-75% are the typical heavy infantry with always the same weapons which can be found in the last two lines of the shop site. No one plays heavy cavalry any more. And the reason is NOT that the upkeep is too high. The reason is that the class is made unviable. And why is that? Because balancing it by upkeep didn't work.

Many of you wrote that you shouldn't fix what is not really broken. My point is, that you don't really feel that the upkeep system is broken, because you don't know it any other way.

I always thought it was fun if everyone could create his own char, using his own items. The point was not to outgrind other players, but to just spice the game up and give it some variety and persistance. Have your own char, live with it, with it's strength, but also with it's flaws.

This is what chadz once wrote about his motivation. He mentions variety. But there is no variety. If you want to play shield infantry, you know exactly which builds and which equipment is viable, which is not. Same goes for 2hd infs, pikemen, archers, cavalry and so on. Usually you use the items which are in the third quarter of the list, because that's the area where the developers decided to add the highest viability.

Yes, currently all classes are of about the same strength, but it's for the price of limiting them to a few viable items, making balancing easier. If the developers would allow people to respec and to rearrange loom points as they want, or at least way more often, for a limited period of time, they could balance things much faster than now.

[Rainbow]

I am already a multi multi multi millionair.  Leave it alone.

[Joker86]

I am already a multi multi multi millionair.  Leave it alone.

That's the problem. I don't want you to have ingame benefits from it. 

[Rainbow]

Why not?  I had to sacrafice a lot of time and energy to be able to afford the in game benefits.  People always want something for nothing. 

[Kenouse]

So you dont want a guy that spends alot of time playing the game, to get benefits?
Thats the most selfish comment ive seen in a long time...

[Joker86]

So you dont want a guy that spends alot of time playing the game, to get benefits?
Thats the most selfish comment ive seen in a long time...

I want implemented features to work properly, and not players who spend a lot of time ingame circumvent those. Dedication is a good thing, but it shouldn't grant massive gameplay advantages, the advantages should stop at some point. You need to limit it.

He can have advantages, but please not "unlimited" access to equipment that he shouldn't be supposed to have. The fact that this equipment is not really viable doesn't change much.

[Rainbow]

The people who can afford all this top notch gear and lose money spend a lot of time playing the game which means they are probably better.  Everybody will quickly say they are good because they armor crutch or whatever but that isn't the real advantage.  As a general rule of thumb, more time played = better at the game and armor crutchers can be beat wearing 50,000 gold gear by a guy with a stick wearing gear that cost 5 gold.  The main advantage is experience.  Maybe we should nerf that to balance huh?  Nerfing or buffing repair is not a solve all.  It just appeases the broke people who claim someone better then them won because of gear.  That isn't always the case. 

P.S.  Sell your loom point and wear any armor you want for an entire gen.

[ArchonAlarion]

In the end, the idea is fail because it simplifies the game. Gold is good because it adds an additional context, which players can build strategies around. Further, it ties wealth into a multi-generational continuum. Wealth is then not simply part of a generation's build, but is part of a wider strategy that connects generation to generation. I'm probably not explaining this well.

For instance, a player would do well to start the first generation off with a cheap gear specialist build, then retire and sell the loom point. As the generations go on, the player can use more expensive gear and heirlooms to offset the cost of hybridization (especially in the case of riding). I think the game will only get better the more main to alt, gen to gen continuums are added.

[Vkvkvk]

Why not?  I had to sacrafice a lot of time and energy to be able to afford the in game benefits.  People always want something for nothing.

Not to break your bubble, but how can sitting on your ass pressing mouse buttons repeatedly sacrifice your energy? Might want to get checked in real life.

[Kafein]

In the end, the idea is fail because it simplifies the game. Gold is good because it adds an additional context, which players can build strategies around. Further, it ties wealth into a multi-generational continuum. Wealth is then not simply part of a generation's build, but is part of a wider strategy that connects generation to generation. I'm probably not explaining this well.

For instance, a player would do well to start the first generation off with a cheap gear specialist build, then retire and sell the loom point. As the generations go on, the player can use more expensive gear and heirlooms to offset the cost of hybridization (especially in the case of riding). I think the game will only get better the more main to alt, gen to gen continuums are added.

I think you are right about alt-main relations (alts need buffing anyway), but not on generation continuum. Generation continuum would be acheived too with these ideas implemented as gold would still exist. It would simply be separated from "upkeep". Back in pre-upkeep cRPG, simply buying regular items used to take a lot of time. To give an example, I think I needed 3 weeks to make enough cash to buy my destrier (which was more expensive than the first few generations). A single generation is shorter than that for an active player nowadays.

With upkeep out, the gold income could be lowered and regular items worth something again (of course implementing such a change would cause distorsions between players if not done right)

[sF_Guardian]

The current upkkep system is nice, leave it as it is.
Stop bein butthurt and post idiotic crap, just cuz ur IWANTPERMAMILANESEPLATEPLATETCHARGERAND2WEAPONS doesnt work...
I like the system cuz u cant plan exactly how much you will loose and u are forced to stay in mid-tier equip generally.