Save NordInvasion!

[Church_Bank]

Now regarding the original thread topic if you want to save NI you need to give the community what they want, since warband and NI are both slowly dying games you really can't afford to turn so many players off this mod by a few nerfs (mostly kiting) since I can guarantee that there are a hell of a lot more people who are against these nerfs than there are for it.

Exactly this is what i think!
but you can decide if you would like that NI die faster then it is dying now.

[SaxonCamel]

[quote author=Mr_Moustashio link=topic=42796.msg229407#msg229407 date=1430454878]

Now regarding the original thread topic if you want to save NI you need to give the community what they want, since warband and NI are both slowly dying games you really can't afford to turn so many players off this mod by a few nerfs (mostly kiting) since I can guarantee that there are a hell of a lot more people who are against these nerfs than there are for it.

Exactly this is what i think!
but you can decide if you would like that NI die faster then it is dying now.
[/quote]

I believe that some of us will have to face the fact that the community won't get everything it wants (or at least the what the majority wants). We, the players, will demand things, but at the end of the day, the developers would know (or at least we can assume they know) what can be implemented practically, what should be removed and what not because they're the ones that defined the vision and purpose of the mod, they're the ones with the statistics and the metrics, and they're the ones that have to do the work in implementing changes. We have to take into account the context of NI - there are no private servers, everything is 'publicly owned', everything is administrated by a select few - why? because this game is loot based, and looting has to be regulated to prevent abuse and be kept fair. This presents a number of problems, including the fact that 'hive mind' mentality persists: everybody does everything the same way, everybody conforms to the same rules, everybody does the same type of strategy and method in a run and some will eventually get bored of the monotony. I am not saying that this is necessarily wrong and has to change, rather that this a stark difference to say, other succesful mods such as Napoleonic Wars for an example - every regiment and every server has its own way of doing things. We simply have to take this into account and realise why there are conflicts of interest in this mod, why people have very different views and why we need to have threads such as these.

Should the devs listen to what the community wants? Most of the time, yes. Should the players take into account the changes the devs already have in mind for us? IMO yes.

All games/mods are flawed; we have established this already. What can we, as a player base, do to prevent this game from dying?

• As we have highlighted before, recruit people from other mods; there is an issue of player progression and it seems the devs are taking this into account; the rest of us have to make new player integration easier. IMO simply not being hostile towards them is a simple and effective step. The next step is harder, which is creating a culture of tolerance, inclusion and playing for fun.
  
• Donate. Clearly there is a money problem with this mod - is there much for the mod to offer to donators? IMO not too much - perhaps there needs to be a rethink in donator privileges, such as allowing players to switch items of equal stats, and many more textures and skins to suit our vanity. I am not sure, to be honest at these are just some ideas off the top of my head. Maybe that topic needs a new thread.
  
• Play together. Activity is king. There have got to be countless times where you want to join a hard server but Hard_XX1 is full and XX2 is empty. It only takes about 5-8 people in TS to band together and immediately you've reached critical mass and within 20 mins a hard server is full.
  

If you all genuinely believe that none of the above are possible, then there is a fundamental problem with this game and its community. In which case, this game will need a lot of time and a lot of radical changes. By then, Bannerlord would probably be released.

[Bobo]

Camel, you're the man!  :-*

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Firstly, you gotta have at least one other person to play it with you, or it devolves into following the cliques of high-level characters from server to server til they get a map they like.  Secondly, after all the grinding is done and you have a significant quantity of cash, you now have to go through the hamstrung, ill-regulated market system for any further progression (since gear is the only progression after a certain point).  Dissenters of the echo-chamber are thread-locked.  That is why your game is losing all of its players.

[greekdragonkdl]

My list of issues I have with the mod

Lack of proper kiting: With most patches and updates the past year or so, the developers have consistently been reducing the effectiveness and capability to kite or play with small groups, whether it be reduced xp, gold, and loot for smaller population servers, or by the very common map edits to cut off popular kiting routes, and for players to find new ones, only for those to be cut out later as well. Many of the map updates I have seen have often just been blocking off popular kiting routes, rather than really adding to the map. Face it, this mod, and this game, is dying, and there just simply aren't enough players online anymore in certain timezones to actually setup a successful run as often as what used to happen. Previously way back when, if there weren't enough people to start a run, you could simply kite by yourself or with a few friends, but now that kiting is mostly dead, players end up just exiting the game for they have nothing to do. I know the kiting discussion has gone on in many many threads previously, but given the state of the mod and dwindling playerbase, it might be wise to shift gears a bit and not be so harsh on kiting if you want to keep more players around.

Extremely Repetitive: This coincides a bit with kiting, although is a tad bit separate. NordInvasion is an incredibly repetitive mod just about any way you look at it. This was part of the reason I left/am taking a long break for the time being, is because I got fed up with playing event after event doing the same maps, same nords, same weapons, same strategy, over and over again. Things only got exciting or interesting when a shield wall would break and we would have to reposition and manage to defeat the wave, but such a thing is rare if you are well organized with good gear and players. With shield walls and cading, what ends up happening is that pretty much everyone never moves, stands still, and just left clicks over and over and over again to either slash or shoot, or in the case of a shielder, literally do nothing. At least playing native GK_Siege or something for example is more exciting since you aren't always in one spot and have to move around and it isn't just so stale and fixed. Kiting, and cav mode, although that needs a LOT of work still, are the two other welcome changes to the tedious shield walls. It offered a different playstyle that kept you a bit more engaged with the mod. I know cav mode is not a primary focus of the mod, nor do I think it should be, but I feel it should be worked on at least a bit more so people will actually play it more, because it is kind of fun and something different.

Unfriendly to newer players: This point isn't some "anti-elitism" thing, but rather pointing out the very real wealth gap of newer players to veteran players, and the amount of wealth new players have to obtain to get gear decent enough to actually do successful runs without being carried by veteran players. In addition to having to jump this wealth hurdle, new players start out with TERRIBLE stats. I mean it's kind of fun for some of us veteran players to do things such as fluffy events sometimes, but if you're brand new to the mod and have horrible stats and nothing but a red shirt and shitty sword, you feel and are extremely useless, will die a lot, and just feel like you have to sit back in a larger server and let others carry you. Quite honestly the only useful thing a redshirt can really do in a run is to drop med boxes, which only exist if another player brings them in. I feel that this probably has turned a fair amount of people away from the mod. I'm glad that I saw Kip mention that the developers are in the works of tweaking this a bit already. In my opinion the lower level tiers should be buffed in stats, or maybe a tad bit in starting gear, enough so that they aren't completely useless and aren't required to essentially leech to level up.

Loot system: The changes made in the 0.7 update were a step in the right direction I think, but I feel it was too little too late in a sense. It didn't really seem to make the drops any fairer, or reward those more who contributed more, at least from what I saw. In many event runs (post 0.7 patch), I would be playing as warden and often getting #1 in kills or close to it, yet nearly every event, other players with less kills than me would almost always seem to loot more than me, as I would often go many runs without looting a single decent material drop. Not to say some of these other players didn't deserve the loot that they got, it just wasn't logical that someone who got less kills (comparing ranged players to other ranged players) would get significantly more loot. I know the loot system is something that is limited in it's scope given the limitations of warband modding, but if it were possible for there to be a more reward based loot system, I feel that many players would prefer that.

[Looter]

I would agree with helping red shirts in terms of gear more. Buff the marketplace swords for peasants [t0] and give them better starting gear like worn awlpikes/etc [like worn darts, This would be a weaker wep but still ok means of dealing damage in game early on] this would ultimately let newer players feel more useful and be able to at least make it past wave 4 with teamwork instead of needing 1-2 vet players to carry.

Additionally a buff in the peasant stats a bit would be helpful as well.

Now onto the strategies in game, honestly that's up to the players to develop and create, though with how Map sizes are so tiny now it limits players in doing so.

[Slayer]

Just give all new people wormbanes. Then Madjosh will come back and be the wormbane master!

[DR.]

Just give all new people wormbanes. Then Madjosh will come back and be the wormbane master!

Yes that mean i can pay to win how much is M&B $15?
$15 for not even a mill good deal ya

[Bobo]

GreekDragon thanks for a good analysis, very true. New players indeed need some changes or they're useless and that's frustrating for them. I would rather consider stats than gear for the reason weapons can be picked up from the ground and that's also some fun for new players that they can test some items they're not familiar with or they can't afford yet.

[[ASSASSINE]]

I agree to everything greek has mentioned, most important this line

Face it, this mod, and this game, is dying, and there just simply aren't enough players online anymore in certain timezones to actually setup a successful run as often as what used to happen.

this mod is no longer able to enforce only one playstyle as i have mentioned before. The small playerbase is getting smaller and smaller by every update going towards discrimination of kiting