[Suggestion // It's a long read] New class requirements (Tier 3)

[Jez]

I'm going to start with saying this mod despite its rapidly growing player base is still in its early stages, so things will change and tweaks will be made to gameplay / balancing as the mod matures.

+Cookie cutter soldiers
With so much more exp to grind out, and with people spamming the bank with forage sales, people are going to get stupid amounts of money. 3 of my buddies have gained 20k just by mass selling their forage items to the database. I realize the items will be implemented later on, but the fact remains that these guys are getting an essentially "infinite" source of money in extremely short amounts of time (they made their fortune in one night).

This has been dealt with, foraging items now only give 1 gold when sold to marketplace.

What I enjoyed about this mod was the fact that money was tough to come by, and you really had to srape together gold for your next purchase, and everyone thought their purchase through. Now, with the stupid amounts of money pouring into pockets, I find that everyone of each class is wearing the same gear, always top tier, always heaviest.

People have a habit of saving up for the best available at each tier, despite the incoming money levels its human psychology that if there is a "best thing" available at each class, people will want that rather than anything else. Of course this comes down to item balance and having a great choice of items available. This is something that we will work on as the mod grows and we have more time to devote to this (I'm not sure if you can tell, but its pretty busy over at NordInvasion HQ)

+Frustration
As I've already expressed in the background, I was disappointed when I found out that all the time I worked for was for naught. However, finding out that the experience requirement had DOUBLED simply shot down my drive to play the mod. I realize I'm only one person, and these are 16-person servers.

BUT.

I've been playing the cRPG mod for a year and a half, and I've been most of its phases of development. The grind isn't what lost the mod a large section of its playerbase; it was the length of time it took for people to level to something refreshing and exciting.


Frustration sets in after a while. The monotony of doing the same thing over and over leads people into a sort of boredom that bears maps exclusively designed to grind and level up faster, sacrificing fun and turning everything into pretty much a shitfest of text (people get bored, and start attacking each other over the server chat etc). If I already feel that 5 days into this mod, I imagine many others would feel it as well.

Ok, this seems to be the main argument here, why the increase in XP? As ConqWorm mentioned, the amount of XP required compared to the class points was wholey uneven, meaning you would reach one ages before the other, effectively negating the point of a XP requirement at all. You seem to have picked cav, so i'll reply with my reasons as to why cav is "harder" to achieve. Firstly, you have a horse, which gives you a 1000x advantage on the battlefield, most reasonable mounted players rack up xp and kills in the multiples of anyone else playing, both through their durability and maneuverability on the battlefield.

The XP requirements are also fairly similar to those for tier 3 infantry and archer, and they do NOT have a horse, putting them at a significant disadvantage.

And a final note regarding cav, although its part of the game it greatly discourages teamwork, which is the opposite of what we are looking to promote with this mod, for this reason alone we prefer it to be elusive and extremely hardwork to reach the higher tiers, it is NOT an easy class to achieve, just because of how ridiculously over powered it is compared to the other classes. Essentially, you have to really, REALLY, want to be mounted to make it work.

+Superclasses from pre-patch fighters
It was exciting to see Mounted Cav running around on coursers and I would think "Shoot, I'm going to be doing that." However the bridge between that is staggering, really. Realizing that some of these people put a fraction of the effort for equal payout is demoralizing, really.

But more importantly, it puts the vets at a serious advantage over the not-so-new-but-kinda-still-starting-out guys. We see superclasses from people who have simply grinded more than we have, and are demolishing the entire NPC team before we can even get there. They're not necessarily better fighters, but they have an advantage in gear that is not available to your average joe.

Yes, it's fun to see the superclasses carry a team. But when they're fighting alone, for the umpteenth time, long after everyone has gotten bored of seeing their fruitless struggles repeatedly, it just gets annoying. The only person gaining any experience on the server is the guy who really doesn't need it.

Again this is down to balance and tweaking gameplay mechanics. Some of which assist xp helps to alleviate. Obviously that is still not satisfactory for all players to be rewarded, so we are looking into ways to combat that. As always, we are open to suggestions on the matter.

To summarize:

The XP increase isn't actually a big deal as it now balances the requirements of class points and XP, which you would need anyway to proceed in that class progression.

And as always keep giving us your feedback so we can make changes and balance the mod to improve the playability for everyone.

Thanks.