Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 197 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14  Next
Author Message
over 9000!
User avatar
Main: enkelin
Level: 5600

Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:28 pm
Posts: 11109
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
KonanCruss2 wrote:
Yes, but also Y gear; just let it stay on the 2 weeks/4weeks buildtime it's already OP enough that people get free X gear.


That seems like a reasonable compromise. I'll revert the build time changes on the BPs.

_________________
Hi, I'm Anil, a long-time player turned developer. I am Star Sonata's lead content developer, which means that I run weekly dev meetings and make sure that any proposed changes to the game receive proper review before going live.

http://www.starsonata.com/features


Fri Aug 12, 2016 3:53 pm
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
So I got some more questions regarding this whole topic, and mainly the change of this.

Right now, with this change you only have 1 tier of gear, and that is X gear. YZ can be said to be Tier 1.25 and Tier 1.5 I guess, but they aren't really "tiers" higher then X gear.
This whole game is based on multiple Tiers of gear. By saying this I would assume the same will happen to ships eventually? Since everything of bases will become 1 Tier, it will mean it is a prototype for what futur decisions will be for ships.

The multiple tier of Base Gear gets deleted (not deleted but useless), for a system that just has 1 Tier. That means progress in terms of Base Gear, cannot be made; if people can't make 'progress' in a game, why do you bother playing a game to stay at the same lvl untill infinity. From a gameplay perspective it makes little sense, and might actually hurt the game more then you could think (speculation based). This lifts all the newbies up immediatly to end game, for bases; would a newbie enjoy it that he'll get end game with bases immediatly?

Junkyard Kits were perfect balance performers for the lower tier players, with the Ambrosia X gear, and the not available cost. You would have to reaug them, and add some Shield Transes, but those are cheap. The lower tier of players already could defend a galaxy, in my opinion, fairly decent by using Junkyard kits. Ofcourse, you'll have people that put alot of effort into killing your galaxies, I mean 13 ofc. But he once stated that he didn't attack people that defended their galaxies well, or something. But he's a factor which you shouldn't account for; it's just content creators that need to be creative to make sure that doesn't happen. The BvB slot thing is a good thing for that, creative. Just need to see how it gets implemented.


Sun Aug 14, 2016 2:56 am
Profile
over 9000!
User avatar
Main: enkelin
Level: 5600

Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:28 pm
Posts: 11109
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
That is an interesting argument. We are definitely aware that this change removes one aspect of progression from the game. Of course, progression is key to the MMO experience so we are always careful when we reduce progression possibilities. In this case, the opinion of the dev team (not just my own) is that the specific kind of progression we were getting with modular base gear was not a net positive experience in the game. As I've said earlier, we want to focus the cost of basing on per-uni investments (kits and augs) rather than up-front investments (modular gear). There are several reasons for this, but a few top ones are:

1) requiring modular gear investment means that there's a higher barrier to entry into basing
2) endgame modular base gear is expensive and/or tedious to replace, and can be lost even while the player is offline
3) the skill of juggling dozens of necessary items to set up a base was obscure and not particularly fun

Mini discussion: Skill =/= fun (sometimes)

I'd like to say a few more words about point #3, since it hasn't been discussed much yet. All games require their players to develop certain skills, and sometimes developing a skill is a really enjoyable experience. For example, getting better at dodging mags on SD or tractoring enemies on Engineer can be really fun. However, sometimes the game makes you develop a skill because of UI limitations or historical reasons, and learning the skill isn't actually fun at all. A simple example of this kind of skill is being able to type "/ap Red Photon Research Entry Way" or "/mc UrQa Kasa Akka" on your first try. You may occasionally feel some small satisfaction in that accomplishment, but on the whole it's a pointless skill that doesn't really improve the game experience. Of course, most examples land somewhere in between these two categories. In the end, the dev team decided that the inventory management skill that comes with modular base gear was more of a nuisance than an asset to the game experience. I myself have frequently forgotten one or two important items for a BvB--that feeling when you have all your kits dropped and realize you didn't bring a Shield or Shield Capacitor for the last one is something many of us have probably experienced. While you can of course say that this is part of the skill building process, and eventually people get better at taking correct inventory of gear before the attack, that organizational skill is just not particularly fun to develop.

(end mini discussion)

The part of your argument that really caught my attention was the speculation that this philosophy might eventually be applied to ships. It's an interesting idea that what we do for bases eventually trickles to ships. In some ways though, it's the reverse. For example, there still isn't any gear glue for bases (and there won't be, either). In any case, we have no intention to get rid of ship gear tiering.

_________________
Hi, I'm Anil, a long-time player turned developer. I am Star Sonata's lead content developer, which means that I run weekly dev meetings and make sure that any proposed changes to the game receive proper review before going live.

http://www.starsonata.com/features


Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:10 am
Profile
Main: ShawnMcCall
Level: 2589

Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 5:42 am
Posts: 1932
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
anilv wrote:
That is an interesting argument. We are definitely aware that this change removes one aspect of progression from the game. Of course, progression is key to the MMO experience so we are always careful when we reduce progression possibilities. In this case, the opinion of the dev team (not just my own) is that the specific kind of progression we were getting with modular base gear was not a net positive experience in the game. As I've said earlier, we want to focus the cost of basing on per-uni investments (kits and augs) rather than up-front investments (modular gear). There are several reasons for this, but a few top ones are:

1) requiring modular gear investment means that there's a higher barrier to entry into basing
2) endgame modular base gear is expensive and/or tedious to replace, and can be lost even while the player is offline
3) the skill of juggling dozens of necessary items to set up a base was obscure and not particularly fun

Mini discussion: Skill =/= fun (sometimes)

I'd like to say a few more words about point #3, since it hasn't been discussed much yet. All games require their players to develop certain skills, and sometimes developing a skill is a really enjoyable experience. For example, getting better at dodging mags on SD or tractoring enemies on Engineer can be really fun. However, sometimes the game makes you develop a skill because of UI limitations or historical reasons, and learning the skill isn't actually fun at all. A simple example of this kind of skill is being able to type "/ap Red Photon Research Entry Way" or "/mc UrQa Kasa Akka" on your first try. You may occasionally feel some small satisfaction in that accomplishment, but on the whole it's a pointless skill that doesn't really improve the game experience. Of course, most examples land somewhere in between these two categories. In the end, the dev team decided that the inventory management skill that comes with modular base gear was more of a nuisance than an asset to the game experience. I myself have frequently forgotten one or two important items for a BvB--that feeling when you have all your kits dropped and realize you didn't bring a Shield or Shield Capacitor for the last one is something many of us have probably experienced. While you can of course say that this is part of the skill building process, and eventually people get better at taking correct inventory of gear before the attack, that organizational skill is just not particularly fun to develop.

(end mini discussion)

The part of your argument that really caught my attention was the speculation that this philosophy might eventually be applied to ships. It's an interesting idea that what we do for bases eventually trickles to ships. In some ways though, it's the reverse. For example, there still isn't any gear glue for bases (and there won't be, either). In any case, we have no intention to get rid of ship gear tiering.


I would have to disagree, base progression is probably the best part of the game, because even with baseline Anni gear you are fully capable of protecting a galaxy, but as you progress with base gear you actually get a feeling of real progression, because with each piece of high tier gear you get you feel that much more ironclad. This change takes all that away, basebuilding is no longer a progressive experience, it becomes a quarterly chore instead. You have nothing to be proud of under this system.


Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:24 am
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
anilv wrote:
That is an interesting argument. We are definitely aware that this change removes one aspect of progression from the game. Of course, progression is key to the MMO experience so we are always careful when we reduce progression possibilities. In this case, the opinion of the dev team (not just my own) is that the specific kind of progression we were getting with modular base gear was not a net positive experience in the game. As I've said earlier, we want to focus the cost of basing on per-uni investments (kits and augs) rather than up-front investments (modular gear). There are several reasons for this, but a few top ones are:

1) requiring modular gear investment means that there's a higher barrier to entry into basing
2) endgame modular base gear is expensive and/or tedious to replace, and can be lost even while the player is offline
3) the skill of juggling dozens of necessary items to set up a base was obscure and not particularly fun

That is true, it is tedious to progress with base gear. But I thought, that's why Junkyard kits got added. For people that don't have anything to be able to actually do bases, at no cost at all; except augmenter. Right now everyone is pushed in the 1 tier system. While now there is the 1 tier system and the fact of multiple tiers. Arguably, with the change to Radiation, and Heat Dampeners, it is much easier to actually make competent gear. And for some basic defence on the lvl of the people that need basic gear, just Titanium Dampeners are already very high tier for them (while actually not being expensive).

anilv wrote:
Mini discussion: Skill =/= fun (sometimes)

I'd like to say a few more words about point #3, since it hasn't been discussed much yet. All games require their players to develop certain skills, and sometimes developing a skill is a really enjoyable experience. For example, getting better at dodging mags on SD or tractoring enemies on Engineer can be really fun. However, sometimes the game makes you develop a skill because of UI limitations or historical reasons, and learning the skill isn't actually fun at all. A simple example of this kind of skill is being able to type "/ap Red Photon Research Entry Way" or "/mc UrQa Kasa Akka" on your first try. You may occasionally feel some small satisfaction in that accomplishment, but on the whole it's a pointless skill that doesn't really improve the game experience. Of course, most examples land somewhere in between these two categories. In the end, the dev team decided that the inventory management skill that comes with modular base gear was more of a nuisance than an asset to the game experience. I myself have frequently forgotten one or two important items for a BvB--that feeling when you have all your kits dropped and realize you didn't bring a Shield or Shield Capacitor for the last one is something many of us have probably experienced. While you can of course say that this is part of the skill building process, and eventually people get better at taking correct inventory of gear before the attack, that organizational skill is just not particularly fun to develop.

(end mini discussion)

That is certainly true, but it could be easly resolved if when you push the 'base' button on the inventory control pannel, it actually shows what the bases are saying when they have nothing equiped. I imagine it being easy to implement, and it could be rather beneficial.

anilv wrote:
The part of your argument that really caught my attention was the speculation that this philosophy might eventually be applied to ships. It's an interesting idea that what we do for bases eventually trickles to ships. In some ways though, it's the reverse. For example, there still isn't any gear glue for bases (and there won't be, either). In any case, we have no intention to get rid of ship gear tiering.

How can that be said? When the first Base Rebalance happened, this never went into discussion, about switching to a single tier system. I'm really positive that it might still take 5 years, if the game still is around at that point, to make a single tier ship system. For me that uncertainty is what kills the gaming experience, I can invest 1T in something, but it can be useless in a month because it has been reworked/tweaked to be completely useless.

The first step to uncertainty is the crucial one, you can never go back basicly. If you're uncertain at all times, why bother playing?

Me personally I would have done something with Junkyard kits at the place of changing how the bases work at the moment. The BvB slot limitter combined with how Junkyard kits are right now, it would be something really cool to do.
What also would be cool is that Junkyard kits actually had some extra upgrades inside the kit, the XYZ stuff, in my opinion is boring. Would be fun that I can get an extra capacitor slot but that is limited to a certain tech lvl. Junkyard kits could be way more indept of several upgrades you could apply to the kit in itself. It would be interesting, while having no cost at all.

Again, this could be done in combination on how it works after the changes, but then you're changing it to upgrading system, rather then just plain basing.


Sun Aug 14, 2016 1:26 pm
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Bump, so enkelin can reply or read it or something.


Tue Aug 16, 2016 1:52 pm
Profile
over 9000!
User avatar
Main: enkelin
Level: 5600

Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:28 pm
Posts: 11109
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Sorry, as you know I'm a volunteer and am not always available to reply on here.

1) Yes, Junkyards have ended up serving as a pilot program for this model of basing. Our take on it is that while there will no longer be much progression in terms of accumulating base gear, there are still other kinds of progression in basing. You have wealth progression in general, determining what sorts of kits and augs you can afford. You have intel progression, determining what sorts of kits and augs you USE, and how you deploy them strategically. Finally, you have sociopolitical progression, determining how you coordinate territory defense and politics with your allies and how you engage in conflict with your enemies. All three of these provide seriously deep progression possibilities.

2) I don't understand what UI element you are referring to, or what you are saying it should do. I will say that you should be careful when assuming what is or isn't easy to implement in the UI. It's quite complicated to work with (unfortunately).

3) You seem to be saying that since this plan wasn't announced in tandem with the Base Rebalance, that makes you concerned that some other unexpected change may come up someday. Actually, we had not yet come up with this idea at the time of the Base Rebalance. The reason the two changes are linked is that they adhere to the same general philosophy, which is that the game should provide better scaffolding in base building to new players, and that catastrophic losses should be minimized. So when I relate this change to the Base Rebalance, I am not saying that we have had a secret plan to do this change for years. It's more that we see this as a natural continuation of the work that began a few years ago.

I don't understand exactly what you are proposing regarding Junkyard kits and BvB. Perhaps you can clarify.

_________________
Hi, I'm Anil, a long-time player turned developer. I am Star Sonata's lead content developer, which means that I run weekly dev meetings and make sure that any proposed changes to the game receive proper review before going live.

http://www.starsonata.com/features


Tue Aug 16, 2016 2:07 pm
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
1) The progress of wealth doesn't come from something good, it comes from something broken called Industrial Commods. Still nothing about what nerf are going to happen. Just go back to Extension Y's, it wasn't broken to this point atleast. And colonies were actually usefull in the Extension Y period. The progress in bases means nothing now. Affording augmenters is laughable with something broken as Industrial Commods. The prices have gone insane since this got released.
Why bother selling something, when you just can wait 1 day, and AFK and get the same amount of credits. With Extension Y's you atleast had to make them yourself and to transport them yourself.

2) http://imgur.com/a/aoTfR I'm enjoying that it doesn't get made useable first and then add content. You are limitting yourself by a whole lot.
And if you don't understand the bases missing items thing. When you deploy a fresh kit, the inventory says what items the bases is missing. If you implement it in the button I showcased in that picture, it would do wonders and it fixes your problem of "forgetting an item" that seems to be a big reason for this change.

3) So because some people use JY kits, while others uses fully geared kits, you expected that this change is just "natural"? You seem to farly underestimate what you are doing by giving EVERY base kit X gear. Free Adamantium Gear and Armada Gear is NOT the solution for new players not get shit on.

My module part is kinda how your XYZ gear works except it's modular. You can build a Capacitor Extension, just like XYZ gear, and you'll be able to equip another Capacitor, while it also comes with a Capacitor of itself. You could make so it has a 7th weapon slot, and it comes with a weapon of itself. You can tinker with you own bases, at the place of setting up the build for Y and Z and just forgetting about it. At the place of making bases more modular, more expandable, you make so EVERYONE is the same, which again, is poor game design. You want people to be as different as possible, without the need of calculators. Your game should tell that what they do is a good action, or what they did was a bad action.

How the game currently is, with more modular bases like how explained in the section above this, and with the BvB limiter holoprojector thing would be a very fun environment for people that are new and that are old. Combined with Termites you could make it so people have to find out a optimal course of actions to be 100% safe.


Tue Aug 16, 2016 2:35 pm
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
anilv wrote:
Tron20 wrote:
The idea is nice, but you guys are going to have to put a limit on how many kits the attacking team can place, which I'm sure you will for lag sake. But if it's too high a limit, then you've done nothing to help low/medium level teams. A large team with the resources, pvp/pvb capability to defend those kits while they finish construction, and most importantly, the characters/accounts to set all the kits they want, could very easily set up as many kits or more than the defending team's own system.

Easiest way I can see is defaulting the limit to say, 3 kits. And then increase the limit through team skills by adding a skill that increases the limit by say 1 slot per level that doesn't cost an absurd amount of team skill points but nor is it cheap enough to the point that the limit never existed for the larger/older teams as well. While you're at it, you'll want to take a look at team skills and fix that up a bit as well.

As it stands, not having a limit doesn't prevent a larger team from steam rolling with as many assault bases as they want to set against a smaller team. Even big teams will be in danger of this as this means systems with just a few kits will become even easier to brush past if (And that's not a big if) the attacking team can keep those kits protected until they can begin

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a limit to how many station kits can be placed in a system? If that's so... will the attacker's kits contribute to the slots in a system? If that's correct, then it also prevents defenders from setting up new kits in a system with maxed slots as well as even preventing attackers from setting up in the first place if the max slots of a system have been reached.


Thank you for the well thought-out feedback. I think you have gone off on a slightly wrong track on this matter, though. The purpose of this change is not to make it harder for endgame players to beat new players if they so choose. That has always been a simple enough task for endgame players and it will remain so as well. The purpose is to make it so that when a new player inevitably does lose to an endgame player, they aren't losing base gear that is valuable or tedious to replace. In other words, the two main points of this change are:

1) to streamline the process of getting a decent base up and running, and
2) to reduce the replacement cost of a base in the event of its destruction

Not responded too, seems like it still hasn't gotten an answer. But it's not like it matters, it are all the same stuff anyway during this whole thread.

anilv wrote:
KonanCruss2 wrote:
But the point is: Anni X is *free*
Annihilator Gear & Laconia Dampeners do take effort to make; while with Anni X, everything that players have made for base gear will go to waste.
Plus with these changes, you will even need more DPS to be able to dent kits. RIP PvB also with these changes.


I disagree that this is the "point" at all. If the advantage of +1 BvB kit is roughly the same now and later, that means the change is roughly neutral in that respect. I have shown that making the modest assumption that anyone who is talking of throwing down materials (esp. augs) for a several-kit BvB can afford to gear those kits AT LEAST with Anni and Lac tier, the advantage of +1 BvB kit is indeed close to or equal to neutral.

I have already acknowledged that this change does mean that certain modular gear pieces will see less use. This has come up a few times in the thread but it's definitely not the main argument people have been focusing on, which was that this change would actually shift the balance of BvB strongly in favor of the attacker. Regarding your point on usefulness of modular gear, I will say that this reflects a general belief on the dev team that the expense incurred by bases should be in the recurring costs, not the up-front costs. So that means in the cost of the kit and augmenters, not the gear that you can reuse next uni. The reason for the belief is that we want to work on the psychology that goes into building and losing a base. By shifting away from up-front costs, we reduce the barrier to entry (no need to build up a bank of gear before you build) and therefore also the reentry cost in the event that someone loses their galaxy. All us veterans know that plenty of people have ragequit over the years because they lost their base gear and couldn't stand the thought of having to make it all over again. Some of those people have returned (thankfully) but some have not.

Your point about DPS actually enforces my argument. As I've argued, BvB is usually about denting for the attackers, but not so for the defenders. Slots-rich attackers can lay virtually unlimited cheap healer kits behind their line of assault, meaning that it's impractical for defenders to rely on winning by means of DPS. Therefore, any improvement to average base tankiness that isn't accompanied by a corresponding increase in base DPS is actually beneficial to the defenders. You can't have it both ways.

Indeed, this change takes up one of the original goals of the base rebalance and goes one step further: to reduce the relative strength of PvB. That was a much-needed measure when the first base rebalance was done a few years back. With the stat creep that we've experienced since then, we believe it's needed again.

Disagrees that Anni X gear is free. I don't know what kind of drugs to see this.

KonanCruss2 wrote:
The multiple tier of Base Gear gets deleted (not deleted but useless), for a system that just has 1 Tier. That means progress in terms of Base Gear, cannot be made; if people can't make 'progress' in a game, why do you bother playing a game to stay at the same lvl untill infinity. From a gameplay perspective it makes little sense, and might actually hurt the game more then you could think (speculation based). This lifts all the newbies up immediatly to end game, for bases; would a newbie enjoy it that he'll get end game with bases immediatly?

Junkyard Kits were perfect balance performers for the lower tier players, with the Ambrosia X gear, and the not available cost. You would have to reaug them, and add some Shield Transes, but those are cheap. The lower tier of players already could defend a galaxy, in my opinion, fairly decent by using Junkyard kits. Ofcourse, you'll have people that put alot of effort into killing your galaxies, I mean 13 ofc. But he once stated that he didn't attack people that defended their galaxies well, or something. But he's a factor which you shouldn't account for; it's just content creators that need to be creative to make sure that doesn't happen. The BvB slot thing is a good thing for that, creative. Just need to see how it gets implemented.

Not responded too, only thing you get is that 25% doesn't mean anything. IT'S FUCKING 1/4th of the stats, and it doesn't mean anything.

As for the second paragraph, nothing to be found answering or saying anything about it.

There is more stuff unanswered, but I cba to copy paste more quotes in 1 post, since it gets ignored anyway.


Wed Aug 17, 2016 2:47 am
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Image


Wed Aug 17, 2016 12:18 pm
Profile
User avatar
Team: Eminence Front
Rank: Officer
Main: Chrono Warrior
Level: 5817

Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:36 pm
Posts: 328
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Image

_________________
anilv wrote:
#feelthethrm


Wed Aug 17, 2016 12:31 pm
Profile
User avatar
Team: Eminence Front
Rank:
Main: Vitruvius
Level: 3998

Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 5:43 pm
Posts: 62
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
:D

+1

_________________
What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.


Sat Aug 20, 2016 6:47 pm
Profile
over 9000!
User avatar
Main: enkelin
Level: 5600

Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:28 pm
Posts: 11109
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Pandine wrote:
:D

+1


Hey Rhice

_________________
Hi, I'm Anil, a long-time player turned developer. I am Star Sonata's lead content developer, which means that I run weekly dev meetings and make sure that any proposed changes to the game receive proper review before going live.

http://www.starsonata.com/features


Sun Aug 21, 2016 12:07 am
Profile
User avatar
Team: Eminence Front
Rank:
Main: Vitruvius
Level: 3998

Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 5:43 pm
Posts: 62
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
anilv wrote:
Pandine wrote:
:D

+1


Hey Rhice


Make any friends yet while I was gone? :P

_________________
What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.


Sun Aug 21, 2016 2:55 pm
Profile
Team: Resident Evil
Rank: Councilor
Main: Kaguya
Level: 3248

Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 11:20 am
Posts: 204
Post Re: Quality of Life Changes to Bases
Probably more enemies than friends rofl. xD


Sun Aug 21, 2016 3:23 pm
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 197 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1 ... 10, 11, 12, 13, 14  Next


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 21 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
cron
Powered by phpBB © phpBB Group.