@Henrik Nyström
@Starvault
It really is crunch time bros. The decisions and changes that you make now and in the near future are basically going to decide the fate of this game. Due to the law of diminishing returns, you do not have as much time this time around, as we saw with how fast Diablo 2: Resurrected flopped and World of Warcraft Classic turned into "Play all the WoW Expacs all over again!". We have played this game before and there needs to be something FRESH to keep player interest or the lifespan of MO2 will be only a small fraction of the first Mortal Online. So PLEASE READ THIS, HENRIK, it may be a little long but I'm going to break it all down in great detail because I care and want MO2 to not just survive but thrive.
The Problems:
It appears MO2 is repeating the same mistakes that were made in MO1 which lead to stagnancy and ultimately loss of player interest. The absolute bulk of these mistakes lie in the forcing of certain player behaviors via game mechanics and vendor placement.
As it is right now, the world is HUGE and players are CONCENTRATED in major cities thus creating the illusion to anyone who leaves town that there aren't many players at all. Most people when complaining about the state of the game say "we need more players!!1!!" "we need more content!!!!1". This is not 100% true. The players ARE the content and there are more players now on MO2 than I ever saw at any point during my years on MO1. When I travel to guarded cities during prime time I often think they are overcrowded. The current player housing system is not enough to get players permanently out and about in the world. Players still need access to NPC vendors and are thusly still coupled with the major cities even though they have built small communities with their houses. Because of this, the player built towns seem inactive thus adding to the illusion that the game needs more players. You might think that giving players the ability to add NPC vendors to their player made villages is the ultimate solution, but it is not enough.
Large Guilds:
The ultimate problem is that Starvault seems to encourage players to group up into these massive guilds so that everyone can be a part of keep ownership, completely neglecting small-group play and resulting once again in massive concentrations of group-think players that are detrimental to not only the longevity of the game but the development process itself (e.g. demanding hastily implemented changes that stray Mortal from its roots). Starvault becomes a slave to these guilds because of the threat that if a few players in these guilds rage-quit it could cause a cascade of their guildies following suit and result in the expedited death of the game.
Sieging:
How sieging is implemented is going to make or break MO2. It's pretty obvious what lies in the balance here. Players have been building houses for months now with no siege mechanics, investing large sums of money and labor into their houses and strongholds, filling them with items and expensive upgrades. Implementing MO1 style sieging will likely entail a HUGE loss for a lot of players. It's almost inevitable.
If sieging is anything like 2012ish MO1, these powerful tools of griefing are probably planned to be exclusively available to keep owners and the huge guilds who occupy them. It doesn't take much foresight to realize that these huge guilds will likely not initially siege other Keeps but instead take their overwhelming numbers and raze entire clusters of player houses within the first few days of implementation. Probably the first weekend. The visionary fantasy of Keep vs Keep sieges are unlikely to happen until all of the low hanging fruit are destroyed.
The ultimate solution to the ultimate problem then becomes, how to get emotions running high and players logging in with mechanics like sieging but without such a great loss of player labor and the smashing of everything by the large guilds of concentrated power?
I will tell you.
Casual. Small-Temporary-Guild. Sieging. (wtf?!)
What DESPERATELY needs to be implemented is something I would refer to in this hypothetical as "Bastions".
Bastions would be static structures claimable by players like Keeps, but much much smaller, with small player capacity limits, and not taking so much player time and investment to build. These Bastions would be the main siege targets by small groups and not cause too much butthurt when they are destroyed because there would be many more to claim and the amount of effort to claim, maintain, and hold would be miniscule. For the longevity of MO2, the cycle of build, destroy, and rebuild needs to repeat ad infinitum or stagnancy is inevitable. In order for players to want to rebuild, their loss from destruction needs to be greatly mitigated and/or preventable.
Detailed Bastion Theory:
For each Keep in existence there should be at least 5-10 Bastions placed around it in static locations.
To encourage small-group play, each Bastion should contain a guild stone which is the ultimate target of a siege. (The point would be to destroy the guild by destroying the guild stone).
To claim a Bastion, an unguilded player would need to take a small amount of gold (100g) and start a guild using the guild stone in the Bastion.
This would give the founding player a temporary claim of the Bastion, where they would have 7-10 days to recruit people to the guild to be part of the Bastion ownership and defense.
A Tier 1 Bastion would require about 5 players minimum to join the guild in order to make the Bastion ownership official with a maximum of 15 players in the guild at any given time. Failure to meet the minimum player recruitment requirement within the time period would result in the loss of the guild and the gold used to create it. (Prevents the claiming of Bastions without intent to use them as intended) If players leave the guild after official Bastion ownership was established, the timer for minimum recruitment would start again.
Each Bastion would contain NPC vendors (Utility, Equipment, etc..) and a bank usable only by the guild members who own the Bastion. As Bastions increase in Tier, more NPC vendors would be available and the maximum amount of players in the guild would increase slightly. Bastion owning guilds would generally only need to enter a major city to use the bank, auctioneer, for books, or to trade.
Bastions would contain Siege Weapon NPC vendors that would sell different types of destructive items.
Examples:
1.) Small Bucket o' Fuel (75g): Starts a fire on any Small House Tier 1, 2, or 3. The house burns for a set amount of time (ex: 24h for T1, 36h T2, 48h T3), with fire and smoke animations which are obviously visible by anyone within the house view. The owner must use some sort of item to dowse the flames from inside. No damage would occur to the house unless the fire burned for the full length of time without being dowsed, in which case it would be destroyed. [This should serve as the only method of destroying small player houses]
2.) Medium Bucket o' Fuel (150g): Starts a fire on any Medium House Tier 1, 2, or 3. The house burns for a set amount of time (ex: 24h for T1, 36h T2, 48h T3), with fire and smoke animations which are obviously visible by anyone within the house view. The owner must use some sort of item to dowse the flames from inside. No damage would occur to the house unless the fire burned for the full length of time without being dowsed, in which case it would be destroyed. [This should serve as the only method of destroying medium player houses]
3.) Bastion Ballista (200g): Mobile siege weapon which launches huge projectiles that do damage only to Bastion Walls, the Bastion structure itself, and the Bastion guild stone inside. Requires loading of projectiles by players who carry them in horse bags. [This should serve as the main method of destroying player claimed Bastions]
Upon destroying the guild stone within a Bastion, the guild should be immediately disbanded and any remaining walls, structures, or NPCs associated with the Bastion should be destroyed or killed. The ruins of the destroyed Bastion should be visible by all for 7-10 days and during this time it would remain unclaimable. After this time period, the Bastion would be restored to it's original unclaimed state with a guild stone inside ready to be used by an unguilded player to repeat the process over.
_______
With this system, the loss of a Bastion and the guild associated with it would not be particularly financially or laboriously devastating enough for players to rage-quit, it would mostly just be damaging to the egos of those enduring the loss. It would also offer players the opportunity to leave a guild or group of players and pursue other endeavors without the drama, stress, and/or guilt of choosing to leave an active guild. It offers a new beginning for all, so to speak. If players choose to wait a week and claim the same Bastion again, they could. If they choose to break apart and go do their own thing, it's the best time to do so without hurt feelings and burnt bridges.
Preventing Group Bullying:
In order to discourage Keep owners from simply destroying all Bastions around their Keeps, and Bastion owners from burning down all of the player houses around their Bastions, there should be a financial benefit of not doing so. For each player house within a Bastion's radius that Bastion should have a reduced upkeep cost (with a maximum of say 90% upkeep cost reduction). The same upkeep cost reduction should apply to Keeps who have actively claimed Bastions within their radius.
That's about it for now. Thanks for reading.
-G
@Starvault
It really is crunch time bros. The decisions and changes that you make now and in the near future are basically going to decide the fate of this game. Due to the law of diminishing returns, you do not have as much time this time around, as we saw with how fast Diablo 2: Resurrected flopped and World of Warcraft Classic turned into "Play all the WoW Expacs all over again!". We have played this game before and there needs to be something FRESH to keep player interest or the lifespan of MO2 will be only a small fraction of the first Mortal Online. So PLEASE READ THIS, HENRIK, it may be a little long but I'm going to break it all down in great detail because I care and want MO2 to not just survive but thrive.
The Problems:
It appears MO2 is repeating the same mistakes that were made in MO1 which lead to stagnancy and ultimately loss of player interest. The absolute bulk of these mistakes lie in the forcing of certain player behaviors via game mechanics and vendor placement.
As it is right now, the world is HUGE and players are CONCENTRATED in major cities thus creating the illusion to anyone who leaves town that there aren't many players at all. Most people when complaining about the state of the game say "we need more players!!1!!" "we need more content!!!!1". This is not 100% true. The players ARE the content and there are more players now on MO2 than I ever saw at any point during my years on MO1. When I travel to guarded cities during prime time I often think they are overcrowded. The current player housing system is not enough to get players permanently out and about in the world. Players still need access to NPC vendors and are thusly still coupled with the major cities even though they have built small communities with their houses. Because of this, the player built towns seem inactive thus adding to the illusion that the game needs more players. You might think that giving players the ability to add NPC vendors to their player made villages is the ultimate solution, but it is not enough.
Large Guilds:
The ultimate problem is that Starvault seems to encourage players to group up into these massive guilds so that everyone can be a part of keep ownership, completely neglecting small-group play and resulting once again in massive concentrations of group-think players that are detrimental to not only the longevity of the game but the development process itself (e.g. demanding hastily implemented changes that stray Mortal from its roots). Starvault becomes a slave to these guilds because of the threat that if a few players in these guilds rage-quit it could cause a cascade of their guildies following suit and result in the expedited death of the game.
Sieging:
How sieging is implemented is going to make or break MO2. It's pretty obvious what lies in the balance here. Players have been building houses for months now with no siege mechanics, investing large sums of money and labor into their houses and strongholds, filling them with items and expensive upgrades. Implementing MO1 style sieging will likely entail a HUGE loss for a lot of players. It's almost inevitable.
If sieging is anything like 2012ish MO1, these powerful tools of griefing are probably planned to be exclusively available to keep owners and the huge guilds who occupy them. It doesn't take much foresight to realize that these huge guilds will likely not initially siege other Keeps but instead take their overwhelming numbers and raze entire clusters of player houses within the first few days of implementation. Probably the first weekend. The visionary fantasy of Keep vs Keep sieges are unlikely to happen until all of the low hanging fruit are destroyed.
The ultimate solution to the ultimate problem then becomes, how to get emotions running high and players logging in with mechanics like sieging but without such a great loss of player labor and the smashing of everything by the large guilds of concentrated power?
I will tell you.
Casual. Small-Temporary-Guild. Sieging. (wtf?!)
What DESPERATELY needs to be implemented is something I would refer to in this hypothetical as "Bastions".
Bastions would be static structures claimable by players like Keeps, but much much smaller, with small player capacity limits, and not taking so much player time and investment to build. These Bastions would be the main siege targets by small groups and not cause too much butthurt when they are destroyed because there would be many more to claim and the amount of effort to claim, maintain, and hold would be miniscule. For the longevity of MO2, the cycle of build, destroy, and rebuild needs to repeat ad infinitum or stagnancy is inevitable. In order for players to want to rebuild, their loss from destruction needs to be greatly mitigated and/or preventable.
Detailed Bastion Theory:
For each Keep in existence there should be at least 5-10 Bastions placed around it in static locations.
To encourage small-group play, each Bastion should contain a guild stone which is the ultimate target of a siege. (The point would be to destroy the guild by destroying the guild stone).
To claim a Bastion, an unguilded player would need to take a small amount of gold (100g) and start a guild using the guild stone in the Bastion.
This would give the founding player a temporary claim of the Bastion, where they would have 7-10 days to recruit people to the guild to be part of the Bastion ownership and defense.
A Tier 1 Bastion would require about 5 players minimum to join the guild in order to make the Bastion ownership official with a maximum of 15 players in the guild at any given time. Failure to meet the minimum player recruitment requirement within the time period would result in the loss of the guild and the gold used to create it. (Prevents the claiming of Bastions without intent to use them as intended) If players leave the guild after official Bastion ownership was established, the timer for minimum recruitment would start again.
Each Bastion would contain NPC vendors (Utility, Equipment, etc..) and a bank usable only by the guild members who own the Bastion. As Bastions increase in Tier, more NPC vendors would be available and the maximum amount of players in the guild would increase slightly. Bastion owning guilds would generally only need to enter a major city to use the bank, auctioneer, for books, or to trade.
Bastions would contain Siege Weapon NPC vendors that would sell different types of destructive items.
Examples:
1.) Small Bucket o' Fuel (75g): Starts a fire on any Small House Tier 1, 2, or 3. The house burns for a set amount of time (ex: 24h for T1, 36h T2, 48h T3), with fire and smoke animations which are obviously visible by anyone within the house view. The owner must use some sort of item to dowse the flames from inside. No damage would occur to the house unless the fire burned for the full length of time without being dowsed, in which case it would be destroyed. [This should serve as the only method of destroying small player houses]
2.) Medium Bucket o' Fuel (150g): Starts a fire on any Medium House Tier 1, 2, or 3. The house burns for a set amount of time (ex: 24h for T1, 36h T2, 48h T3), with fire and smoke animations which are obviously visible by anyone within the house view. The owner must use some sort of item to dowse the flames from inside. No damage would occur to the house unless the fire burned for the full length of time without being dowsed, in which case it would be destroyed. [This should serve as the only method of destroying medium player houses]
3.) Bastion Ballista (200g): Mobile siege weapon which launches huge projectiles that do damage only to Bastion Walls, the Bastion structure itself, and the Bastion guild stone inside. Requires loading of projectiles by players who carry them in horse bags. [This should serve as the main method of destroying player claimed Bastions]
Upon destroying the guild stone within a Bastion, the guild should be immediately disbanded and any remaining walls, structures, or NPCs associated with the Bastion should be destroyed or killed. The ruins of the destroyed Bastion should be visible by all for 7-10 days and during this time it would remain unclaimable. After this time period, the Bastion would be restored to it's original unclaimed state with a guild stone inside ready to be used by an unguilded player to repeat the process over.
_______
With this system, the loss of a Bastion and the guild associated with it would not be particularly financially or laboriously devastating enough for players to rage-quit, it would mostly just be damaging to the egos of those enduring the loss. It would also offer players the opportunity to leave a guild or group of players and pursue other endeavors without the drama, stress, and/or guilt of choosing to leave an active guild. It offers a new beginning for all, so to speak. If players choose to wait a week and claim the same Bastion again, they could. If they choose to break apart and go do their own thing, it's the best time to do so without hurt feelings and burnt bridges.
Preventing Group Bullying:
In order to discourage Keep owners from simply destroying all Bastions around their Keeps, and Bastion owners from burning down all of the player houses around their Bastions, there should be a financial benefit of not doing so. For each player house within a Bastion's radius that Bastion should have a reduced upkeep cost (with a maximum of say 90% upkeep cost reduction). The same upkeep cost reduction should apply to Keeps who have actively claimed Bastions within their radius.
That's about it for now. Thanks for reading.
-G
