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LMFAO - Zeus is a greed machine! I am equally interested in LordB's examples of 'good loot'. In Zeus TO, they are trying to get 2gc/1 iron bar... Some asking more than that... some went in the auction for more than 2.5:1; iron bars to iron ore is currently close to 4:1. The new colony system and the increased production rates have done that for the most part. Been a hilarious week, so far.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushybraw
We need a 10x buff now.
I would settle for iron deposits to be 10x current amount.
You are all heart.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ornias
Ok will do my best to elaborate. Firstly do not look at the last week as to what steel will be worth. The idea of selling iron ore above 1 gc per would mean it is now more efficient to x4 buff it than anything else in game. As a result less gold chains will run (in the long term) which will decrease the supply of gold, which in theory will then increase its value versus everything else thus decreasing the price of iron again until an equilibrium is met. In short it is highly unlikely that the current backdrop sticks. So forget about price of iron/steel for now because its too soon to worry and if you can't tell I would be a huge seller at these price points.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raubhautz
Around the direct loot I am going to use best case scenario as examples (I know there will be sub optimal results) and I am going to use small colonies as the baseline example since they are most accessible. Let me say this IF you are taking over coal and hardwood prepare to be quickly out of business. (why I suggest those rewards be drastically incresead) But perspective on the matter, it only takes about 10 minutes of time (really less) to take an entire small colony from another player. If the rewards were say on level of an IOTP it would become the best way to farm in the game. So increasing direct rewards just doesn't work IMO.
That leaves with increasing the ticking rewards so again using an optimal amount, in theory if I have 6 colony slots I could have a total of 648 titanium ore every 6 hrs. So 2592 a day or 3888 with premium. Now my experience so far is over the week I have lost a total of 2 colonies and been attacked maybe 20 times. I am sure that will change in time. But that means that over a 5 day period I have barely had to replace colonies and increased my titanium ore by 19400.
How on earth can you say those rewards arn't worth the effort? And I am not even going into how to save troops to make it more viable. However I did just abandon a colony and retook a small colony. I tried not to be very effective and took it losing a total of 200 troops. To break it down 300 steel bars for the blockers. 300 steel bars for the melee. 750 bars for the archers. 900 for the cav. So 600 steel bars, 1650 iron bars. I am guranteed 300 titanium from this (I run premium) so on my server a coin value of about 1200. Even worst case scenario I am probably only losing about 1000-1500 in value.
I don't understand you guys, you can't fix the problems you already have with the game, chat keeps going off and on, when sent an invite for adventure the advent won't open after accepting and the lag. Now you add PvP and the lag is ever worse, have to wait to upgrade buildings or take down things. We have people in the guild that pop in once a day to see if anything is fixed and leave because it is a waste of time now. Why not wait till no events were coming up to add all the new crap at least then it wouldn't mess with the events. I will be joining the people that log in once to see if anything is fixed and if not I will leave till the next day. Do us all a favor, fix the problems you have before changing or adding new things.
Iron will stay high as the sky on price as long as there is a shortage of it. Adding the pvp feature set heavy into iron production and at the same time speeding the consumption or iron by regular shops by cutting in half the time of production of weapons/smelts is the reason for iron crunch. After the first two weeks when production comes to its normal cycle things will ease up a bit. I just don't believe iron will ever go back to prices from the past.
Making our own weapons will drive demand no matter how many people will continue to do pvp and waste their resources for crappy rewards. There is simply way too much work to find (long process of 1 hr on regular geos), build, upgrade and buff the iron mines to keep the demand. I run 5 iron mines to keep bars flowing. At lev3 and 3x buffed they are still in red on 2 lev5 iron smelts. I will not build 16 iron mines just to mine some extra to sell. I assume most players also don't think spending 4 hours a day just to get mines going is worth their time. So, I think the iron crunch is going to stay for good.
The quick and easy solution to most of this mess would be making iron/steel and epic weapons less demanding in time and resources. That was given as an overall easy and painless fix to a lot of things the devs were trying to accomplish (testers assumed) by the changes to the game. O, well. BB knows better.
I am also watching how the shifts, crunches and choke points of resources are going to affect players 26-42. This is where the majority of pain is going to happen. At 26 your only decent source of granite for upgrades (unless you have rich guildies offering you free ls to BK/RB) was IOTP. But there is a very harsh difference between 750 granite (old loot) and 250 (new loot). Not to mention all the new units those players want to train are going to cost them quite a lot. Or they have to wait 2 weeks for their slow lev 2 steel sword maker to make enough weapons for 100S.
The lev 50ies complain about this and that... Imagine being lev 20ish now without gems, still leveling. Then you have something to complain about...
I need to know who I'm attacking. I need to take names!
Also endless iron mines...
Re-balance the PvP element to a sensible level, including copper ore/bars for the attack units. Or alternatively do away with the PvP weapon smith and unit and keep everything unified, simple, known....
The PvP update was much needed, the other changes like "hey its my bonus week let me suck your coal dry as I produce extra bars", well, was not.
It takes foresight, and actually engaging with the community to make any of this happen.
The OP made a remarkable about Runescape in his post. Classical example, I played for 7 years, yes 7. They ignored their player base, they tinkered with the combat system to try and compete with games like WoW. In the end the lost out big time.
Developers, I'll give you a cold hard truth. If player numbers aren't decreasing, be satisfied. There are that many games out on the market, players choose your game from a reason. It's not because you were the best, nor the most popular. It's because they liked your GAME MECHANICS.
I CAN NOT SAY THIS ENOUGH TO GAME DEVELOPERS.
If you game is broken, don't fix it. If your game numbers/profits are decreasing, have a look at forums and look at small things players are asking for you to implement. Take player polls like you do for guild market. Want PvP? What will the costs be? Here are the options, you decide! Want a new loot system so fix the endless loot sharing monstrosity this game has become, here our our potential sink holes for resources, do you players agree? Cast your vote! Let's make a forum topic for feedback!
This is why companies like BlueByte and Jagex will fall into oblivion. Take a leaf out of Runescapes (pre-EOC) book, and go from there.
All the best.
The other thing I forgot to mention in my post about pvp is just how borning it is compared to what it should be.
You quickly max out your colonies (for me took maybe 2 days) and then you just sit around waiting for someone to take 1 so you can spend 10 minutes taking another one back.
The mechanic just doesn't work. You need a mechanic where it is highly repeatable and that allows player created content. I think the system is a cute novelty but I dont think in its current form it will do anything for the game other than give a temporary blip while people come back and test and then leave.
To re-stress
1) tournaments
2) ladders
3) guild wars.
4) persistent pvp island where players can actually interact and customize so they feel a sense of ownership. From there a random attack method where the colony isn't kept by the attacking player just unharvested resources/rewards given for beating defenses. This would also give people something to grind over and new to upgrade.
Current system is just really a terrible mechanic after being cute for a day or two.
a quick change you can make is make the new weapons way Cheaper like 2 iron instead of 12 for saber and 1 iron instead of 10 for bow
and later start making it so we can upgrade to produce more resources, defense points, and upgrade existing bandit camps, be able to extend the time we hold the Island / or we just keep the island till someone takes it from us
add a guild island that everyone in guild can place buildings and use resources to upgrade, that produces resources that the guild leader can collect and distribute
and every time you kill a section leader you can collect a % of resources that were put into it (Weapons and all)
Here's my feedback: I just couldn't be bothered. Will just ignore "expeditions and colonies"
Thanks guys.... you totally horked up a decent game. It's just a crying shame that I'm not even allowed to continue playing the game the way I'm used to because you idiots had to screw everything up.
Why couldn't you just have added PvP as an optional feature and left everything else the hell alone?
I've passed on gem purchases 3x now because I either wanted to see how PvP was going to work, or because now I see it and it sucks. Not one more red cent EVER will I invest in this game.
I'll continue playing it because of some relationships I've made in the game, but in all honestly, this has removed a sizeable chunk of my interest in playing this game.
You never, ever, ever screw with a content user base.
SMH.
No, it's not like the old ones we did like because the loot is completely different and not worth the amount of troops lost doing the adventures now. They ruined the game for us non-pvp players.
The loot is terrible in PVP. Way worse than the loot you get from adventures. If you had tried both you would know this.
I agree with MikaJ all the way! The new system really is terrible and that is putting it nicely!
One thing I would like to see which would make it feel more like PVP is you see the name of the person you are attacking and thier guild if they are in one, also would like to see who took an island from you. I understand that you cant have direct battles with another person because of time restrictions of being on-line at the same time. I think this would create more guild vs guild, guild alliances, and player vs player so you can go back and forth to conquer islands.
16 large island expedition searches sent out today. 150 gold per search, that's 1950 gold, right off the bat. The best return I found was an island that pays 192 iron every 6 hours. That's 768 iron per day, or 5376 iron if I keep the island the full seven days.
Even discounting the losses to take the island, which is pretty large on these big islands, that's already a big loser; I can buy 10k iron in the TO for about 2500 coins.
Add in the losses to take the island, and basically it's complete dreck.
I was very much looking forward to expanded content, but this clearly needs a huge amount of balancing in order for it to be anything other than a complete resource black hole.
First: you have to up the rewards by a very large amount, they simply aren't worth it just as it stands.
Second: you have to give better results on the searching, or drop the costs to do the searching, or lower the cooldown time for the searching, or all three. If players are paying 150 coins and taking an explorer out of commission for 3 hours, you should not get a result that has intermediate resources as a reward unless they're astronomically huge return. Anybody who runs the large island expedition searches isn't going to need marble or hardwood. If they need iron, they want to get back at least what it cost them to take the island within 3 days, otherwise there's no reason to run the expedition.
Well, I had my fun. I took a few and lost a few. Enjoyed the mechanics and the challenge of figuring it out without much scaffolding...
But the expenses so outweigh the rewards that I feel it would be foolish to continue.
Okay, so I won a colony.
The 'prize' was 82 gold ore per 6 hours.
Oh, and what happened to the 12 hours grace from attacks? I lost it inside of 8 hours.
FAIL
So I ran some numbers. Short story is, to take the colony, it took me 2367gc equivalent in resources.
Had I kept the island for the entire 7 days, I would have gotten 4684gc equivalent in gold ORE.
Subtracting my costs, that would leave me with a net of 2317gc equivalent in 'profit' over 7 days.
I've done better than that on my worst day in TO.
I can do better than that selling ONE.... ONE.... count it... ONE Roaring Bull loot spot.
EPIC FAIL
You guys should REALLY, REALLY have done your homework on PvP. Not only is it an abysmal failure from a gameplay perspective, it costs more to play than it's worth.
So now I'm screwed out of all the coin and resources I plugged into marshals, barracks, etc. to discover just how horked up this debacle really is.
I'll be doing ONE more colony so I can kill off the rest of the troops I made, then refill the spots with regular troops and go back to playing the game.
but wait... I really can't do that either can I, because you screwed that all up too.
here's a word for your developers to look into....
ROLLBACK.
Give us ONE GOOD THING out of this debacle..... just give us our game back.
I captured a small colony, extremely expensive. I like trying something new but, the costs is just too much for PvP. There needs to be something more rewarding, a chance for a special building should you hold the colony for the full term. Increase the term so the payout is more. Either way LOWER the cost of weapons, the amount of iron needed is insane, not bad, INSANE.
I am ok with the changes to the loot from regular adventures but, it sounds like this change in production time on weapons is temporary. That would be a mistake, the shorter time frame for weapon production needs to remain.
In addition to the above: I don't know who is attacking me and I don't know who I am attacking. This is not PvP it is ?v?
lol, use your imagination :P
TSO's new PvP review.
I will try to make this a quick summary on the pros and cons of TSO's new PvP in a constructive way if BB would like some real feedback for
game changes that I feel should be made and not just whining of how much it sucks. lol
The first and foremost point.
-This is NOT Player vs Player.
Fighting NPC (Non Player Character) bandit camps in the same manner as adventures is NOT playing against another live human.
From now on I will just refer to it as the new colony expedition adventures. (NCEAs? might work better)
Pros:
-Being able to adjust which troops fight in mid-battle is not just fun but an excellent and original idea. I love it.
-New maps are always good for long time players.
Cons:
-Without being able to 1. Actively defend your colony in real time 2. Heal 3. Adjust troops while being attacked, this so called "PvP" is truly a joke and even repellent to people that seek a true challenge from other players. (Please change this)
-Taking out any form of REAL competition by NOT revealing whom the attacker and defender of the colony is also hugely dissapointing and further adds
support to the fact we are NOT playing against another person but in fact just against the computer. Since there is no Requirement for players to play NCEA except to challenge other players, there is no reason to withhold this information except someone getting their feelings hurt. This happens whether there is PvP in ANY game or not. (Please change this)
-After playing an NCEA there seems to be a 12 hour period (cooldown) where it is not possible to play any other adventure. This is a major problem..The NCEA has caused a massive need for increased production of several resources which requires more adventures to be run and also causes another issue... Lack of building space on long time player's islands, to keep up with Both NCEA and Regular troop production. (Please change this)
-Limiting troops amounts sent to an NCEA and defending troops allowed.
-Limiting spaces for defensive towers and also where they can be placed.
-With less space and need for double the population with NCEA and regular troops, there is a need for better/improved population buildings than what is currently available or ways to get them.
It has been the common consensus on Ares server that regular adventure loot has been adjusted downward in order to make PvP more appealing. I'm not sure if this is factual but it's what makes most sense in the eyes of the common TSO player such as myself...
That being said here is a common sense observation...
This makes Both the NCEA And the normal adventures less appealing to most players.
On the last note,
without being able to properly hold our hard earned colony that we've spent so much resource/troops and time to capture there is no real urge for anyone to play NCEA since you lose that colony soon afterward to ANY skilled player that happens to land there, And even if you do somehow keep the colony, it Expires after 7 days (That Needs to be changed)
Thank you for your time if you read this far :P
Benz
Ares server
The so-called PvP totally sucks. Also opting out does no good because the iron production is totally messed up. It is impossible to produce enough iron now to meet the needs, even if you do not participate in building the new troops, which are ridiculously way too expensive to be worth making. Also the battles in the PvP do not even have any e-mails to show how the battle went and why you loose them. Please fix the iron production mess up.
You covered this just as I would if I could write half as well as you. Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nobenz4me
Hello,
Thanks everyone for your feedback.
I have compiled everything and forwarded it to the development team.
I always read the forums and even if we don't post any official statement, it doesn't mean that we do not listen.
I can understand why you're upset, especially because PvP has an impact on players running adventures and I really appreciate that you leave constructive feedback. It really helps us and reinforces your arguments about why this system needs tweaking.
Cordially,
BB_Endesmor
Thanks BB_Endesmor.
I took one small colony island, and lost 224 troops. To rebuild the weapons needed to replace those troops will take over 52,000 iron ore. Running all 16 iron mines at level 5 (without any buffs) it will take nearly 3 days to replace the ore. While buffing the entire chain would reduce the ore needed, running everything buffed 100% of the time is not practical. Given the current trade values of all the resources required to make these troops (not just the iron ore) and the maximum value of the reward resource should I hold the colony for all seven days, this colony will result in a net loss of over 24,000 gold coin.
Zakdorn, think the system through, try again. I have yet to take a colony that doesn't turn a 'profit'. Not saying its great profit. But your example..... just think the system through before trying again.
Why did you put the word profit in quotes? That implies you're changing its definition. What was the intention there?Quote:
Originally Posted by LordB
I haven't had enough coffee to do the math, and I'm not sure I even have the interest to confirm, but I'm thinking that Zakdorn's numbers were somewhat out of whack. However, your statement, "I have yet to take a colony that doesn't turn a profit," (quotes around profit removed - so I'm using the standard definition of rewards being greater than costs), is even more out of whack.
I took a small colony that gave 93 Exotic Logs every 6 hours. I think I kept it for about 4 days before it was taken. That's less than 600 logs. There is no reasonable definition of profit that makes it work. I'll freely confess to using brute force, and maybe could have taken it with less than the 450ish troops I used. But even with Zakdorn's 224 lost troops, the costs of replacing them far outweighs the 600 logs I got out of the expedition.
So I'm back to my question - how can you say you turned a profit on every colony? You've acknowledged that you lost some before the 7 days were up, so you couldn't have maxed the colony's value.
Sure Hob. I hate you for making ME do math this early in the day, where is that calculator and coffee. I want to disclaimer that this isn't going to be exact because I consider buffs so cheap i never factor them into my cost of production anymore. I also don't value coal at the crazy prices it moved at over the last few weeks because of the unprepared.
Lets break it down. Most small colonies (different variations will require different troop expenditure) require about 220 losses AT most/worst. Some I do with about 80.
It costs 20 iron ore, 30 coal to produce 10 iron bars, and then to turn them into steel bars it costs an additional 30 coal. It then costs me about 2550 bars to train the troops required (assuming I am not using the free blockers). Add on another 15000 in coal costs (be generous and consider that a 200 gc cost)
When I take the colony I get rewards, when you lose your colony you also get rewards. My experience with small colonies (I run premium) is that I get a minimum of 3300 iron ore per colony rewards. You also sometimes get nice little bonuses like gold depos, or granite (small I know)
So lets pretend I take a titanium ore colony and only hold it for 2 full days. That will equate into 864 titanium ore. So currently my out of pocket expense is about 200 gc in coal, and an additional loss of maximum 1000 steel bars (after converting the free iron to steel, it is usually much much less). Again giving steel a valuation of 1:1 which I think is too high that means my total 'cost' is 1200 gc. I would trade 1200 gc for 864 titanium ore any day. And that is before you consider I run premium so its really 1296 titanium ore.
Colonies turn profits if you play it right and arn't a muppet. It's just a really bad profit compared to running RB or FT, hence my quotation marks.
Doh! I took a coal colony... so that means my reward is worthless. But at least I get to keep it all week! In fact I have had one for like 12 days now... it stopped producing after 7 days, but since it's worthless coal I can't tell the difference. And periodically someone looks at it and leaves and I get 26 valor points...Quote:
Originally Posted by LordB
Quote:
Originally Posted by KingHomer
That could be a good strategy to getting valor points. You may be onto something here ;)
Sounds like you're just using Attack Infantry at every defensive camp, and there I was, mixing up my troops, using ones that were "optimized" for the defenders.Quote:
Originally Posted by LordB
Clearly, I'm the muppet. :)
I still think you are swell. But yea. The only way cav/bowmen should be used is if troop losses become your limiting factor. So situationally they can be required for large colonies, but never small. Cav can be used if you are too lazy to send a double general or need to do a triple block though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hobknocker
tried the new pvp and don't care for it at all. Please at least give us a way to bomb the buildings and get our space and licenses back for them! Having 4 garrisons and the armory and barracks...that I will not be using is a lot of wasted space and licenses!
you could always use the tool to remove building found in the building menu, but might you want to try again before you do that to be sure? :)
I think "bombing" them is much more in line with the sentiment about pvp than removing them. :)
Me and my guildmates have been happily playing this game for years. You work together to complete goals and help smaller players to move ahead. Meanwhile you can develop your own island with production chains and decorations. And you invite friends and family to come play too.
Most of the online games are competitive and require players to be mean to each other by stealing resources or territory, TSO is not like that at all. This game stands out from other online games in that it is 'cooperative' and not 'competitive'.
Introducing PvP and changing the production chains in TSO are 2 mayor mistakes. Players are here because this is a peaceful feelgood game and changing everybody's production chains overnight is just rude and against the spirit of the game. Changing the rules during the match is not fair to players who have been loyally building and playing for years. For that reason many players (including moi) are considering going to another game. I hope the changes can be reversed.
If BB wants to offer a competitive game they can include PvP in a new game like ANNO or a new Settlers-server. If they want to 'improve' the game they can just introduce a new building or character in the game now and then, more is not needed to keep everybody happy :)
Don't try to fix something that aint broken, you might break it.