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

[dexxtaa]

Here is my case against the recent exp increase with the most recent patch (18th Dec).

I'd like to keep this thread clean, no flame wars, no insults. I'd like this to be an informational read for anyone who wishes to explore this aspect of the Nord Invasion Mod.

Background
Okay, so I was grinding away for the last 2,000 experience points to tier up to heavy cavalry when I finally broke the mark! Glorious 40k experience, and I took a loan from a friend and got myself a respec so I could eventually go full knight. 38,800 was the total gold I spent on the respec.

However, I didn't see the heavy cav tab light up for a while, and I was positively baffled, going so far as to drag one of the mods onto the IRC channel at 3.30 in the morning.

As soon as he asks me the first question about my issue "mounted soldier, right?" I realize that the experience requirement for the cav had DOUBLED to a requirement of 80,000 experience. The mind positively boggles.
~

The point being
While I realize that this change was to balance the fact that people had experience coming in faster than class points, I feel that this change has been a little too drastic for most. I'm sitting here with 12 class points and 40k experience, and really nothing to do with it. For a long, long time.

The prospect of getting this far had me in the grips of excitement to level up and explore the rest of my options when I increased my skill class. So, as you can expect, finding out that I had to pretty much grind out the same number of points that I just slayed for kind of puts me out, really.

But besides my feelings being hurt, here are some actual valid reasons that the 3rd tier classes should be reduced:

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+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).

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.

>>> There is little variation in the attire that the fighters wear. And frankly, the human team is starting to look more and more like another NPC team that's just smaller and swings with a little more desperation. With the current class experience requirements in place, everyone will be using the same gear sooner rather than later, and it's going to be a looooooonnng grind to the third tier.

~
+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.

Simply the connotations that the word "DOUBLES (40k -> 80k)" brings is enough to put me off playing this otherwise great mod (except for mountain pass, that's still a nick in that armor). I realize and understand that yes, perhaps the devs see valid reason of increasing the XP requirements, but incremental increases would be much easier on everyone, really.

It was nicer when people told me "Oh yeah, you need double the XP from Cav2 to Cav3," versus the current "You need 5x more XP to go to Cav3." "Basically, you're saying I need to do the same shit  4 more times?" It's just so disheartening to hear that.

~
+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.

>>> The implementation of the massively increased experience point class requirement will increase the gap between the old fighters and the new fighters, where old fighters will continue to reap experience that they don't need, and the average combatant will be left with nothing but a red mark on the roster, with all the other dead guys.

~
What I'm really trying to say:

I think that it's great that the devs are working to balance the class requirements to make it more even for the game as a whole. However, the recent patch (as of 19th Dec 2011), the XP requirement increase is far too large to implement in a single bound, and should either be reduced to a more enticing number (ie Cav 60k) or incrementally increased (ie Cav 60k to start 80k later).

While I make my point regarding my current position at the level and class upgrades, I do this because I'm trying to give you insight to how it feels to be at this stage in the character development, and poof, let's just make this a lot harder out of the blue.

Bear in mind that I have 12 class points that I don't know what to do with, because with the current level cap (I understand it to be 42), speccing into anything else will stop my future plans for knighthood. The same could be applied to Tier3 -> Tier4, really, now that I look at it.


~
This whole post in a nutshell :
Holy butts XP requirement 2nd -> 3rd Tier mang, crazy stuff.
~

Please discuss this with the civility and respect befitting of a mod and community of this quality. And always remember ;

Spoiler

[Image: 7634585.jpg]

edit; changed font, size and color to make for easier reading
edit; changed "yesterdays" in first sentence to a date, to better reflect age of patch pertaining to discussion

[Kwal]

Yea 'twas a bit too much I agree

[Conqueror_Worm]

I think dexxtaa brings up alot of valid points with this.

However being in the middle of the road from Heavy Longbowman to Sniper myself, I do not really see a problem with this for the other classes. We already had the exp needed a LONG time before the required class points. I know several of us, archers, that converted assist exp into melee just for that small 0.1 increase in exp after all that was all we needed for class points.

But I agree with you on the cav part. That grind is just way to long to be enjoyable. You could of course argue that you would only want cav as a side class, but as it is now it is still very much supposed to be a third class and the grind is just frustratingly long.

[Earthdforce]

Great read, I agree with you completely. Cav is definitely amazing in game, but it seems like too much of a grind to even become cavalry these days.

[Golradir]

God, 160k for knight, really? I was counting on 3 more levels till knight (i'm 36) what already is going to take a while...but this is just too much...

[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.

[dexxtaa]

Thanks for the reply, and I think it's great that you've clearly considered your options before implementing them in the patch, I appreciate it.

The issue I have I guess isn't so much about the final amount that you decided on, but simply the fact the lack of incremental increase with the XP gain.

I'm excited to tear around in a steppe charger (if that's even available), but I feel like people are going to be a lot douchier with being cav, in my scrap to get more XP. I'm almost certain that will be the case with me, if my buddies aren't on.

Prior to this, I spent a lot of my time herding the NPCs for our melee fighters to kill. I don't mind assist XP, and if everyone benefits from that, that's even better. I think I'm one of the most team oriented cavalry there is, really.

I realize that most cavalry tend to be kill stealers, really, and I support the decision to raise the XP requirement wholeheartedly. If it brings me new challenge, bring it on! I'd just like to see the increase be incremental, as opposed to a "lump sum" sort of format.

[Golradir]

Steppe charger is at heavy cav.

[Polobow]

Jez, please, if you change things like this ( XP requirement) or forage items sell for only 1 gold, post it as a update! I hate having things changed without knowing it.

[MrShovelFace]

cav already has several disadvantages

1. They do not gain the same amount of stats as their land companions
2. They have to fight like us foot sloggers on half the maps


the only cav that has it really easy is the super armored cav that ride through everything with no regard for their own saftey because their horses are neigh invulnerable. Unarmored cav cant even screw up once if they want to keep riding.

Balancing doesnt mean making a class harder to level, all that punishes is the people who havent reached to point of overpowered (punishing light cav because heavy cav is rediculously easy)