Some thoughts about Gaias Retaliation.

[Enigmatrix]

I'd like to express tremendous gratitude to Zwiebelchen for this wonderful map. Extremely addictive and well-made, this is easily one of the best WC 3 ORPG. I'm also very happy to see active development, to the point of daily beta map updates. Well done.

I'd like to ask some questions and make several suggestions to make this map even better.
1. TL;DR: Night is very annnoying for new players, and lightnings are hard on eyes.
Current day/night/weather system has some thematic value, but it negatively impacts gameplay. Several of my friends complained about zero night visibility, difficulties with terrain navigation and lightings at rain (pretty hard on my eyes, too). So, i'd like to ask: can we maybe get "lighter" night. Same thing could be applied to underground as well.

2. TL;DR: Let's give each player MC when it drops; increase MC costs accordingly (5 times)
Mana crystal system. I just recently had an issue when i unintentionally ninja'd mc (i didn't notice it dropping on andy and took it with my (rolled) green item). I suppose it happened with other ppl, too. Irrevrsibility makes it even worse - unlike item, which i can give back at any moment, MC are hard-binded on character.
Additionally, even if you don't consider accidents, MC still creates tension among players. They are very important for your characters, and, unlike loot, which is usually rolled among 2 at worst, everyone has incentive to grab MC.
Possible solution - let's give each player his own MC when boss drop one of those. This removes tension and promotes cooperation. To compensate for increasing amounts of MC, i suggest increasing all MC costs 5 times (5 being average group in my games).
Update: This solution is bad because of several reasons. Alternatively MC should become consumable item granting a crystal. Anyway, based on technical difficulty, this may be not worth implementing.

3. TL;DR: When D4 is out, D3 non-legendary gear should be purschasable with gold. Same with old droppable spells.
I'm very excited about upcoming D4, but it makes me fear some bad consequences, namely player base division. The small group of well-geared dedicated players will farm D4. More casual players won't be able to fit into, and will struggle with D3 (and it would be hard for them to find a good enough group). Something like that happened with TKoK, and even Blizzard in WoW do specific countermeasures to adress similar issue.
Possible solution - like Blizzard make gear from earlier Raids available for badges, it is possible to, after release of D4, make D3 gear available for gold (and possibly MC). Costs should be high enough to still make D3 runs worth the effort (better on average than farming ogres for the same time). I suggest several thousand gold, increasing the futher specific item drops. Ofc, legendaries shouldn't be able to bought to respect their owners.
There is additional non-obvious benefit to this change - it allows Zwiebelchen to make futher content harder with less fear of casual players dropping the game altogether. And we all want D4 to be as hard as possible .
And, while we are at it, let's make earlier droppable spells purschasable as well.

I'd really like to hear some opinions on this topic. Thanks for reading.

 

[Vestra]

I'll throw some opinions your way. First I'd like to thank you for such a well constructed post as that's pretty goddamn rare around here so I'll be friendly, 'cause that helps.

1. No actual opinion here as I play with everything on low and manage to see alright. It is pretty dark but I've yet to see the graphics on high. I'll fiddle with it later and provide more relevant feedback if I remember. I have heard many complaints about it though. Perhaps there could be some kind of moonlight toggle, or weather affect, that provides better vision.

Truthfully I love the factor of realism it provides but I do understand the issue.

2. I disagree immensely on this one. The tension created is not exactly dramatic. Truthfully, they're extremely common. In most places you'll be more than able to gather all the mana crystals your character needs for his endgame gear within a few games. If people who have all their shit are still rolling for them, they're greedy players and probably should be avoided in future.

However, changing MC to a consumable item as opposed to an instant lumber bonus sounds like a viable option to me, as something that is still a saveable item, but can be relinquished if accidentally picked up after a fight, would benefit those 'tense' situations.

Apparently we'll be seeing some more MC in later fights, i.e. number dropped and such. In the meantime, something I've found that helps is sorting out where the MC will go before the run begins, i.e. prioritizing tanks, finding out who is rolling for high priority gear/skills and who is rolling for stash. It should probably go EE/MB > Nymph/Inspire/Zeal > other class skils > other legendary items > first tier stash > secondary gear (i.e. ES for a druid) > second tier stash and then lastly collectors can go at it.

3. A very debatable idea but something possibly worth considering depending on its implementation. An option for players who have attempted d3 but would prefer not to burn hours trying to get their final gear would be positive as it would indeed encourage casual players to continue the game. However, the new world boss gear may fulfill that option by providing alternative gear.

We'll see some time next week hopefully!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

1. TL;DR: Night is very annnoying for new players, and lightnings are hard on eyes.
Current day/night/weather system has some thematic value, but it negatively impacts gameplay. Several of my friends complained about zero night visibility, difficulties with terrain navigation and lightings at rain (pretty hard on my eyes, too). So, i'd like to ask: can we maybe get "lighter" night. Same thing could be applied to underground as well.

Most of the complaints about the night come from players who don't have "light quality" set to max in game options. In this case, several omni light effects will not show up properly in the game.
This (and also texture quality on high) is a required setting for this map, not a recommended setting! It's even written on the loading screen.

Other than that, the night and fog vision are meant to affect the gameplay, because that's how it would be in real life aswell!

2. TL;DR: Let's give each player MC when it drops; increase MC costs accordingly (5 times)
Mana crystal system. I just recently had an issue when i unintentionally ninja'd mc (i didn't notice it dropping on andy and took it with my (rolled) green item). I suppose it happened with other ppl, too. Irrevrsibility makes it even worse - unlike item, which i can give back at any moment, MC are hard-binded on character.
Additionally, even if you don't consider accidents, MC still creates tension among players. They are very important for your characters, and, unlike loot, which is usually rolled among 2 at worst, everyone has incentive to grab MC.
Possible solution - let's give each player his own MC when boss drop one of those. This removes tension and promotes cooperation. To compensate for increasing amounts of MC, i suggest increasing all MC costs 5 times (5 being average group in my games).
Update: This solution is bad because of several reasons. Alternatively MC should become consumable item granting a crystal. Anyway, based on technical difficulty, this may be not worth implementing.

It's not like that would be hard to implement, but it would also be highly impractical. Remember that consumable items take up inventory slots and can only be used from the hero inventory, not from the bag (for technical reasons).
This means that as soon as you want to use the MC to increase your lumber count, you'd have to drop all potions or an item before. I can see this being much more annoying than just be careful with what you click at.
Auto rewarding everyone with an MC kills the fun of negotiating with group members or rolling. I don't like that idea either. I know it's not a 'real' roleplaying game, but let us try not to remove the last thing that serves a certain degrees of player interaction and trade. I already had to take trading out of the game to prevent players from abusing the save/load to duplicate items. I was never happy about that.

3. TL;DR: When D4 is out, D3 non-legendary gear should be purschasable with gold. Same with old droppable spells.
I'm very excited about upcoming D4, but it makes me fear some bad consequences, namely player base division. The small group of well-geared dedicated players will farm D4. More casual players won't be able to fit into, and will struggle with D3 (and it would be hard for them to find a good enough group). Something like that happened with TKoK, and even Blizzard in WoW do specific countermeasures to adress similar issue.
Possible solution - like Blizzard make gear from earlier Raids available for badges, it is possible to, after release of D4, make D3 gear available for gold (and possibly MC). Costs should be high enough to still make D3 runs worth the effort (better on average than farming ogres for the same time). I suggest several thousand gold, increasing the futher specific item drops. Ofc, legendaries shouldn't be able to bought to respect their owners.
There is additional non-obvious benefit to this change - it allows Zwiebelchen to make futher content harder with less fear of casual players dropping the game altogether. And we all want D4 to be as hard as possible .
And, while we are at it, let's make earlier droppable spells purschasable as well.

About the droppable spells, there might be a vendor later in the game that might have some of the older spell scrolls for sale, but requires a certain level to buy them, so that new players are still encouraged to farm for the spells.

About the items: don't worry about it. D4 will be designed so that the first encounters can be beaten with items you can get from outdoor content aswell. There will also always be several crafting items to "gear up" in solo play. Also remember that there are outdoor bosses.

 

[muzzel]

About 3.:
I know the problem of player base division from tkok. However in tkok you have the "Game Distance" forcing you to kill every single boss at least once to reach the latest bosses. In Gaias there is no such a mechanic, you can walk wherever you want and you can join any fight you want.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Also, we must not forget about the JCPenney effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4

People usually enjoy a little bit of randomness more than when everyone gets something to an equal value.

 

[Enigmatrix]

Nice to hear your replies (interesting video btw). About MC - you should consider converting to craft materials (from F3 bag) soon. Otherwise in next updates crus/dru/bish (following by others) can start soloing ogres, and MC become about as good as gold. Anyway, if you like MC mechanics (instance bosses dropping some collectable, which can be used to buy supercool stuff), MC should be swapped with something else, or MC costs should rise tremendously. IMO "Living Energy" could be cool title (and ready model of orc shaman's auto-attack).

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Level 50 content will drop far more MCs than pre-50 content. The MC cost of level 50 items will be higher accordingly, so one MC that can be farmed on a 600 second respawn timer doesn't really matter. Also, no class will be able to solo ogre boss to farm MCs. I tried it and it's not possible. You need at least 2 people to do it.

 

[muzzel]

challenge accepted :> Im pretty sure its possible with a lvl 50 druid ...

 

[S0ulseeker]

give me a few weeks after 1.2a release

 

[Zwiebelchen]

give me a few weeks after 1.2a release

Yeah but what's the point if you can get to those MCs much faster in 1.2 content?

 

[muzzel]

 

[Last_Wish]

Level 50 content will drop far more MCs than pre-50 content. The MC cost of level 50 items will be higher accordingly, so one MC that can be farmed on a 600 second respawn timer doesn't really matter. Also, no class will be able to solo ogre boss to farm MCs. I tried it and it's not possible. You need at least 2 people to do it.

Actually I did it with dudu, monk and zerk, pretty sure bishop can do it also, not sure if crusader can (prolly merc runs out of mana too fast). But as long as they don't drop mc after every fight it is still annoying to farm MC there.