Varyag's testimony on the current state of cRPG

[Nemeth]

I think many today's active players are very recent ones that's never played prepatch cRPG. Recent, fast-growing clans are plenty of these. This is a testimony of how many players left the game a short while after the last patch, because it became boring for them. A graph of the average active population would be even more expressive. You would have a slowly growing population prepatch, then a spike starting with the first big patch release, then when people start to be bored, crash. Today we are hitting ground levels in active population, without Strategus and without a long-lasting and acheivement-based gameplay. Many players come, level fast, hit 30 and quit, in lack of a proper goal to be set. Asking them for their opinion about the patch has little meaning.

The patch in general was extremely harsh for acheivers that lost nearly all the meaning, goals and acheivements they had. Varyag and Vicious posts are symptomatic of this. The 180° turn that was the patch was perceived as a treason for those types of players (please, don't be mad on me, I'm not turning you into a guinea pig, I'm just explaining things in an extremely elitist psychology style).

Would you like to share the data you are making your conclusion about the player count from? Because otherwise it's just a post of bullcrap. Also, I don't know what you mean by "ground levels in active population", when there is always at least 50+ people on EU1, quite a few people at siege as well even at 4 am (tested several times), and hunreds of active people during the day on EU only.

[Espu]

There are clearly two types of players around. Those who started during the very early phases of the mod and because of that had strong characters, or who just play a lot and were strong because of that. Then there are those who were just cannon-fodder for these higher level people.

I had a few characters close to lvl 40 before the upkeep/xp patch hit because I had played for a long time. Sure, it was kinda fun for me personally to be like a Legolas, destroying people who were 15 levels lower than me and had played way less. The problem is that it sure wasn't fun for the poor lvl 25's who were trying to play their way up but were just too far behind to realistically be able to catch up and thus would forever be doomed to be the "weaker nubs".

Currently the competetiveness-curve is a lot smoother. Hitting lvl 20 does not take too long and at that level you can fully participate in group fighting, as most people are within sensible level range. Heirlooms are pretty well balanced already so that they don't give too big benefits to ruin the balance.

In short, this debate is essentially between the hardcore and casual player types. The game has moved from early hardcore style towards more casual approach, which I find an excellent trend. Neither side is wrong though, it's just personal opinion of how they like their games to play out.

I don't know what will I do when everything is lordly and mw.

No game of this style can have infinite character progression. It just ruins the balance (without level/"toughness"-limited servers, but I don't think the player base is large enough for that).

[Punisher]

I think quite the opposite, the upkeep patch improved the game a lot. I started to play cRPG short after the last wipe and quit 2 months before the upkeep patch because it got plain boring. I had full plate, masterwork weapon, level 39 build and nothing left to achieve. Actually the last month I played only Strategus as there was nothing else to do in cRPG and after Strategus turned into UIF vs the world it got boring too.

The upkeep patch brought me back, the multiplier system is a lot better than the old xp/gold radius system, there is a large variety of weapons and armors (before everybody would have reached plate+highest tier weapon at some point => tincan wars) and with the level cap at 30 (as most people retire immediately after they hit 31) makes the battlefield more balanced then ever (no more level 40+ people or gen20 with 400 wpf , etc). Also remeber the upkeep patch brought the banner balance, one of the best improvements in cRPG imo.

I don't see how the patch was harsh on achievers, they can still grind and retire as many times as they want. Probably a lot of people who where level 40 GTX since they now had to rely on their skill rather than stats/equipment.

If you watch the gameplay now, most people learned to block and feint, before the patch everyone was wildly spamming without bothering about anything else (including myself, 24/24 220 WPF build made me able to spam my poleaxe in full plate like crazy).

So, I am enjoying the current cRPG and looking forward to the next patch, DTV will certainly bring some fresh air and the slots/weapon changes should make the game more balanced then ever. And of course there is Strategus, if we ever get it back many of the old clans will return, a lot of people are now inactive waiting for it to come.

[okiN]

There are clearly two types of players around. Those who started during the very early phases of the mod and because of that had strong characters, or who just play a lot and were strong because of that. Then there are those who were just cannon-fodder for these higher level people.

I had a few characters close to lvl 40 before the upkeep/xp patch hit because I had played for a long time. Sure, it was kinda fun for me personally to be like a Legolas, destroying people who were 15 levels lower than me and had played way less. The problem is that it sure wasn't fun for the poor lvl 25's who were trying to play their way up but were just too far behind to realistically be able to catch up and thus would forever be doomed to be the "weaker nubs".

Currently the competetiveness-curve is a lot smoother. Hitting lvl 20 does not take too long and at that level you can fully participate in group fighting, as most people are within sensible level range. Heirlooms are pretty well balanced already so that they don't give too big benefits to ruin the balance.

In short, this debate is essentially between the hardcore and casual player types. The game has moved from early hardcore style towards more casual approach, which I find an excellent trend. Neither side is wrong though, it's just personal opinion of how they like their games to play out.

You're forgetting the middle ground. I've played cRPG since the very start -- sometimes more, sometimes less, a couple longer breaks here and there. I've never been anywhere close to top-level, but I've never been cannon fodder, either, except at the start of a new char. No matter what stage the mod was at, I've almost always been somewhere near the top of the scoreboard, sometimes at the very top, because while I'm hardly the best player, I'm still pretty good, and I know how to play my strengths.

So I'm obviously not new, but I'm not a diehard. I'm not exactly a casual, but I'm definitely not a grinder, either. There's a whole lot of players like me out there, too, so where does this leave us? We don't enter into the equation?

[Ujin]

I had a lvl 43 (or 44, don't remember exactly) character pre-patch , cav/infantry polearm with 21 str/26 agi. I had a max heirloomed german poleaxe which at that time had 96 speed +all the bonuses and damage it has nowadays. I had 201 wpp in polearms and could stunlock people and kill them in 1-2 shots, sometimes i couldn't even see my own swinging animations, that's how ridiculously fast i was.
Oh, and also on top of that i had maxed out riding/athletics/ some iron flesh and 7 power throw with, of course , the infamous throwing lances. My character could do nearly everything and compared to the average player's character it was simply x2-x5 times superior in stats.   

Now you tell me that was absolutely fine and didn't require any fixing at all.

All in all, +1 to Okin, imo the game is moving in the right direction, although i've got to admit i'm abit tired of waiting for the patch + Strategus.


P.S. now my character is lvl 33 hybrid 2h+polearm with decent riding+athletics, but nothing overpowered or unbalanced, i'm completely fine with it.

[Beauchamp]

i think number of players keeps continually growing, at least looking at clan forums and seeing all those rosters of 20+ makes me think that. in early stages there were mercs, templars, guards and a few randomers, but nobody else...

it would be good to have some official data about player count though...

[Kalam]

i think number of players keeps continually growing, at least looking at clan forums and seeing all those rosters of 20+ makes me think that. in early stages there were mercs, templars, guards and a few randomers, but nobody else...

it would be good to have some official data about player count though...

I know I have more inactives every month, but it's true that there's always new blood to add to the numbers. It's the loss of veterans that is obviously more of a worry to some. An experienced cRPG player isn't made in a week, despite what those who insist that the dichotomy of talent and practice is chief in the making of a desirable player may say.

[Babelfish]

in early stages there were mercs, templars, guards and a few randomers, but nobody else...

huhmm, calling us randomers? 

There were the order of the staffmasters, guards, ninja, order of the rose.. days if not weeks before mercs & templars
 Rosewood's guild had some insane people in it, like argento (aka ptah/ozwan) & ragni..They were the shit back then, not the mercs and certainly not the templars.
(Although the mercs did progress very fast, skill-wise.. Templars just had numbers on their side, besides daymun & tommy).

[MrExxc]

I joined cRPG a couple of days before the "patch", and one of the first things I saw was the immense gap between player levels and gear. Peasants were literally smashed by 2-3 plated chargers in every team, must have been fun times for those, yeah.
Another thing that I noticed too, was indeed, the happiness of owning your first decent piece of armor. We might have lost that feeling nowadays, but is it that bad? the rise of new clans might be a sign that cRPG has become a more team-based game. Prepatch, a lvl 40-45 could rape 20 peasants without the help of anyone. (I remember some of them, tincans and flamberge, deadly combo)

The game is growing in population, even without strategus being up, so of course the beta possy is no more, but I guess it's for the greater good.

Then again, like I said, I didn't really knew the beta and prepatch period very well...

[Beauchamp]

huhmm, calling us randomers? 

There were the order of the staffmasters, guards, ninja, order of the rose.. days if not weeks before mercs & templars
 Rosewood's guild had some insane people in it, like argento (aka ptah/ozwan) & ragni..They were the shit back then, not the mercs and certainly not the templars.
(Although the mercs did progress very fast, skill-wise.. Templars just had numbers on their side, besides daymun & tommy).

and roses and ninjas that i forgot (but roses never had really more than 10 active players at the same time)

[Espu]

We've had ~2800 unique player keys active daily for quite a while. There was a slight bump during new year, but generally the trend is very stable. Also 100+ new keys register daily. Obviously most of these have to stop playing pretty much immediately or we'd have over 9000 players.

So no, I don't think cRPG is dying.

[okiN]

So do you have any earlier figures to track trends in user numbers? When was the high point, and what was it?

[Ginosaji]

I started with cRPG some weeks before the last wipe and I was so glad about that wipe
We were all peasants again and I could actually do something! Before that wipe I had to stand somewhere because as soon as I moved out of my cover I was dead.
After a few days playing and having fun with low gear I had to quit playing for about a weekend. When I came back it was like before that wipe: Many ppl. with levels above 30 and I had only peasant gear. I don't have the time to play every day and several hours a session, on top of that I'm no very good player anyway. I'm glad if I can block a few swings and kill someone.
So for me the patch made this mod really enjoyable at all.

[okiN]

Yep. The wipes were nice, but the effects were always all too short-lived. I think we could really do with one more full wipe, to remove all the problems that still exist because of flaws in earlier builds that have since been fixed. Maybe some of the worst grinders would GTX, but honestly, I can't say I'd miss them any. I have no respect for people who are more attached to their level or gen count than to the game.

[Kalam]

Yep. The wipes were nice, but the effects were always all too short-lived. I think we could really do with one more full wipe, to remove all the problems that still exist because of flaws in earlier builds that have since been fixed. Maybe some of the worst grinders would GTX, but honestly, I can't say I'd miss them any. I have no respect for people who are more attached to their level or gen count than to the game.

In my personal experience it's usually the casuals that play only once in awhile on weekends who quit when that happens. I mean, let's face it, the grinders will always grind. It's those who hate the grind who leave.

I mean, picture this. Over two months, you finally get to level 30 and can be competitive with everyone else. You don't intend to retire because you don't have the time, and then the devs go and delete all that hard work. If you truly hate the grind, are you really going to come back to grind some more?