I agree with every single word you said man .Foofmonger wrote: ↑Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 pm This entire thread is an interesting microcosm of the gaming industry. Love it.
Players having good ideas that are immediately dismissed by devs? Check
Players harassing other devs over the quantity or quality of their work? Check
Fragmented playerbase that has diametrically opposed opinions? Check
Look folks, this is par for the course in this industry. Nobody can please everyone. The devs can't please the entire playerbase, the playerbase can't get their **** together and communicate properly with the devs as to what they want, etc... There is no blame game here and no one person or group is "at fault" these are typical and normal issues.
So let's be fair here, there's a give and take, and the best way to move forward as usual, is to compromise.
Devs: To stick you head into the sand and say "there is no problem and we want it this way", when there very clearly is a problem (regardless if this is the solution), isn't helpful.
Players: To harass the devs about their work or them not making immediate changes to what you want to see happen is disrespectful and delusional. This is a small unpaid private team who do this in their free time, they've done an amazing job and continue to do so. Yes, they aren't perfect (to my point above), but nobody is. We need to work together, not opposed to one another.
To the topic at hand: There is very clearly a middle ground here that can be had, where some progression can happen without being locked into FOMO content (unfortunately a basic game design issue and a legacy of 2008). The reality is, and let's be clear here, that this style of progression engine is outdated, not widely used in the gaming industry, and led to the issues that caused the live WAR to collapse. Simply replicating Mythic's failures will just lead to the same failures happening twice.
Now, to be fair, the devs have already started to do some of this. You can get Royals from gold/purple ORVR bags. To be fair to the players devs, you say "we don't want you to be able to progress in ORVR" well that's just not true based on the system you've already implemented, it's just incredibly slow/tedious.
There is certainly a way to open up ways to achieve royal crests, without simply flooding the playerbase with them and making them extremely easy to get. The issue is not the rate of progression in a vacuum, it's the "access" to that progression. Simply put, it's not about "how fast you can get your end game gear", it's that "if you do not play at the proper times, or 24/7, or discord/sor citywatch, you do not progress". So everyone needs to understand that any response such as "you just want to progress faster" is completely irrelevant and misses the point. It is not about speed, it's about being able to progress at all.
Now, I've seen a lot of posts about motivation, etc.. I want to nip this in the bud right here. There are plenty of different types of people, with different personalities, who play games for different reasons. There is plenty of objective research on this subject if you want to educate yourself (and functionally how modern game design works). Your anecdotal experience of what you want as a person is frankly, irrelevant. You aren't the entirety of the playerbase. Different players play games for different reasons, fact. And some people play games to feel a sense of "progression", fact. Gear grind games fill that itch, fact. Now from my subjective viewpoint, I like playing the game regardless of having BIS gear, but I much prefer to pay the game with BIS gear. You say "if I don't want to play without BIS slot gear, why would I play with it", and I can tell you, because then I can play the game on an even playing field. Why do I want to try and go do ranked 6v6 vs people in full BIS slot gear when I don't have it? Why do I want to go try to solo roam and gank people when I'm gonna find people who I can't beat due to gear discrepancies? Etc... (for the record, I do still play, and I don't have BIS slot gear, but I'm giving hypothetical examples).
Regardless and to wrap this up, there is a way to free up progression from FOMO events, without flooding the market with royals. Devs, you do not need to speed up the progression, but if you want to keep your playerbase healthy you need to figure out some ways to allow people to progress that doesn't involve them quitting their jobs to play this game 24/7, or waking up at 3 AM just to log on and do a city. Ignoring this issue is going to lead to a dwindling playerbase and eventually, a dead server. I'm not saying this to "threaten you" or to be hyperbolic. I've seen more MMO communities rise and die than most people can count. I've seen all of this happen before, and I'll see it all happen again. I highly suggest you take this issue seriously and not be flippant about "what you think is best", if you think locking progression behind FOMO events is best, you are wrong, and the entire gaming industry as a whole will tell you that.
Now, I'm not saying "this proposal is the way", or that "players should drop Royals". I make no stance on what I believe the solution to be (frankly because I haven't thought it through and I don't have one currently, I'm not going to propose a half-assed solution), but I want to ensure that we have a shared understanding of what the actual issue is. It's hard to solve problems if we can't all agree on what the root cause is. I'm sure the devs or someone else can come up with some neat and inventive solutions that solve this issue and satisfy both the devs desires for their vision and growth of the server and the playerbases wishes.
For just a rough brainstorm on the topic:
Royals from X activity but are capped at Y per day/week
Royals from Ranked 6v6 (maybe capped)
Royals from player kills, not capped, but reduce the royals you get in cities by the same amount per week. If you get the royals from the cities, then the royals you get from player kills count towards this total (I'm not wording this well, but basically, imagine if you can get 20 royals a week from player kills, however, this total is not "additional" to cities, so for instance, lets say you get 20 royals from kills, the first 20 royals you get in that same week from cities give you 0 royals, you already got them from kills, you only get any additional royals from getting 21 or more from cities.
etc...
I'm sure there's like 50 "solution ideas" people could come up with on this topic. Just want to get peoples brain juices flowing here!
I propose solution to Weekly quests or quest. This will give a lot of people flexibility not login for every city or specific hour. On 7th page here or I started the post called "This is suggestion" it explains everything....
I'm not saying it's best solution to 24/7 grind and login in at specific time for city and so on... However it's a step towards it...