Author Topic: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.  (Read 4922 times)

ChEeKi

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Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« on: February 27, 2014, 02:44:37 PM »

AOP's game design is very obviously based around PVP. The core is a magnificent beast of a PVP zone that offers rewards to anyone brave enough to venture in and take them. The risk is the constant threat of enemy players killing you and taking your things.

Initially core gameplay was pretty heavy, the only way to gain money was through the core and at the risk of other players. This is ideally how the game should be because it uses the core (the main mechanic of AOP) to the fullest potential, encouraging most online players to be in the core at the same time as one another.


The rewards in the core are
-Low Tier Crafting Materials (Junk, Metal Parts, ect)
-High Tier Crafting Materials (Polymer / Ceramic Plates, ect)
-Blueprints (Holodisks, Guns & Bullets, ect)
-Low Tier Vendorables (Melee weapons)
-High Tier Vendorables (Sherif's Badge, Water Bottles, ect)
-Low Tier ammunition and Weapons
-Chances at player PVP and loot.

Disadvantages
-Low income
-Slow, it takes a while to loot zones
-High danger of player PVP
-If you die to NPCs, a player may snag your stuff before you get back.




Unluckily we figured out how assignments work. Even before the cap income on assignments was increased, it was pretty obvious they were now the BEST choice of advancement for our characters and they provided most the benefits of looting the core with nearly none of the risks.

Rewards for Assignments
-Large amount of Caps (Upon Completion)
-Large amount of XP (Upon Completion)
-Reputation (Upon Completion)
-Low Tier Crafting Materials (Junk, Metal Parts, ect)
-Armor-Repair materials (Broken CA)
-Low Tier Vendorables (Melee weapons)
-High Tier Vendorables (Noodles, Water Bottles, ect)
-Low Tier ammunition and Weapons (Hunting rifles, 10mm SMgs, ect)
-Mid Tier Ammunition and Weapons (AK 74s, ect)
-High Tier Ammunition and Weapons (Advanced Missions only)

Disadvantages
-If you die in a bad place you might not get your loot back (Otherwise you can just run back and take it back as much as you want).
-Takes up a bit of Ammo



As it stands , Assignments are faster, multiple times more profitable, far less risky and so on and so on. The way they currently are it's extremely likely that most players will use them to level themselves and avoid the core entirely until they are higher level and willing to PVP, at which point they probably wont loot anything but blueprints, modules and high-tier crafting materials. Right now there is no reason to loot junk or metal parts because assignments give you all these rewards anyway from sciencing the drops.


All in all, Assignments severely undermine the base PVP aspect of AOP. They detract heavily from the core aspect of the game and give players the option to just silently level up and gather gear without any player interaction whatsoever.


But don't jump to conclusions and imagine that assignments need to be removed, or the rewards nerfed into the ground. They still provide a valuable source of experience to players (Which is missing in the core) and easily obtainable parts to repair armor.

Assignments should supplement the core, not replace it. A huge step towards making assignments a supplement would be removing the bottlecap rewards entirely. This would make assignments a challenge you take on for extra experience and reputation, while leaving players needing to return to the core to scavange the money for ammunition to continue doing assignments.


You get what i mean, the core should be where the money's at, the assignments where the experience is at.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2014, 03:17:34 PM by ChEeKi »
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John Porno

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2014, 03:22:56 PM »

the problem is just that with ~5players online, you dont have ZC. ZC should, and even with the current balancing would be your main source for xp, caps and rep, with 100+ players. It's just that for the sake of the test, we upped the reward for randasses a bit to make the game playable.
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Shangalar

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #2 on: February 27, 2014, 03:27:06 PM »

Rewards from ZC have been reworked recently, and some changes are still required. With more players and regular ZC operations, this way of growing your char should become more interesting than assignments. There are also dungeons that are on the way, and which also include pvp opportunities. Other features should arrive later to give you more possibilities for growing your char.

If, despite all our efforts, assignments remain the safest and more optimizerd way to grind that everyone uses, we'll examine other solutions.

I don't think we plan assignments to be available at will on the long term. It is possible some timer arrives at some point to prevent doing them in chain. Now, we of course foresee alting coming along to bypass this solution, so your argument might remain valid at that point. Removing caps from assignments is an option as well.

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Disadvantages
-If you die in a bad place you might not get your loot back (Otherwise you can just run back and take it back as much as you want).

I guess mobs will loot your gear at some point. You might be able to retake it just by killing that thief, but you might as well fail again and lose even more. It's something to examine further anyway. Also, currently assignments are easier because of the mob AI issue with friendly fire. This bug has been fixed though (next update), so expect more challenge.

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But don't jump to conclusions and imagine that assignments need to be removed, or the rewards nerfed into the ground. They still provide a valuable source of experience to players (Which is missing in the core) and easily obtainable parts to repair armor.

haha! That's funny how you're afraid of our potential reaction. I hope we'll work well enough in the future to change that. Anyway, random assignments are one of our major features, it has a huge potential to develop and it will never ever be removed from the game.

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Assignments should supplement the core, not replace it.

That's exactly our goal.

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...This would make assignments a challenge you take on for extra experience and reputation, while leaving players needing to return to the core to scavange the money for ammunition to continue doing assignments.

That doesn't make sense to me however, assignments are not meant to be part of a sort of cycle. Game should provide equally appealing features and you should be able to decide whatever you wanna do. Of course, the more danger you're in, the better reward. Currently though, the core doesn't show itself as it should because it lacks fighters. It lacks fighters, so it lacks danger, and so it lacks appeal.
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Oliver

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2014, 07:37:49 AM »

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Removing caps from assignments is an option as well.

You can low it in few times. It will be pleasure get 10-20 caps for assignment.

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I guess mobs will loot your gear at some point.

This is really good.


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Sir Craftkid

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2014, 06:45:12 PM »

The idea of gear looting mobs is very annoying. They should only loot things the mobs consider of value; such as thugs only taking drugs, guns, and caps, or farmers taking ammo and consumables. On a related note, could you please make it so that non-human NPCs can not open doors? It would be nice if deathclaws would stop following me, half the time waiting by a door and half the time opening it. At least revert back to the f2 system where doors were breakable.
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Shangalar

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2014, 07:27:06 PM »

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The idea of gear looting mobs is very annoying.

Could you elaborate?

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They should only loot things the mobs consider of value; such as thugs only taking drugs, guns, and caps, or farmers taking ammo and consumables.

Why so?

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On a related note, could you please make it so that non-human NPCs can not open doors? It would be nice if deathclaws would stop following me, half the time waiting by a door and half the time opening it.

I think Deathclaws opening doors is not a bad thing, though it wasn't intended. I'll have to investigate that.
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BG Sexpert

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2014, 09:33:00 AM »

On a related note, could you please make it so that non-human NPCs can not open doors? It would be nice if deathclaws would stop following me, half the time waiting by a door and half the time opening it.

Kids these days are too soft. I remember starting in AoP. There were no vendors buying junk, no NPC's giving out quests. There wasn't even an NPC trading metal parts/alloys for basic ammo. Just a man, his tutorial weapons and a broken XP mechanic that yielded 6 whole XP for killing death claws.

The only way to get caps was to wait for ghouls to spawn, and hope there was a neutral NPC to fight them. Ammo was too expensive to waste shooting a 200 hp ghoul for 4 XP! So you would loot these ghouls for 2-3 caps each, and eventually have enough to buy a box of 100 rounds for whatever gun you had lying around.

Then when you'd "farmed" for hours to get enough to buy ammo; you spawned in an encounter  with grey death claws who ran faster than you and crit knock down 100% of the time.

Those were the golden days of AoP ;_;
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 10:24:09 AM by BG Sexpert »
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John Porno

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2014, 01:06:56 PM »

btw, the xp system never was broken like that.
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BG Sexpert

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2014, 09:33:17 PM »

btw, the xp system never was broken like that.
You are very wrong. It absolutely was.
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Sir Craftkid

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #9 on: March 09, 2014, 11:10:16 AM »

By mobs looting only certain gear, I did not mean like a select 1 or two objects; I meant that robbers would have no reason to pick up plant spikes and rocks, or enclave would have no reason to pick up 10mm pistols and spears. It would be an interesting system if a mob overpowered a newbie in an assignment, and he was forced to scavenge through his looted pile for anything of use he could utilize against the weakened enemies.
By looting being annoying, I was simply remembering the good ol days of 2238, where NCR guards ran at everything that died.
Maybe deathclaws were a bad example...I doubt they have the coordination to open a door, but they could easily break it. Rats, however, have no chance in hell of either opening or breaking open a door.

Kids these days are too soft. I remember starting in AoP. There were no vendors buying junk, no NPC's giving out quests. There wasn't even an NPC trading metal parts/alloys for basic ammo. Just a man, his tutorial weapons and a broken XP mechanic that yielded 6 whole XP for killing death claws.

While that is admirable, it was your choice to play the game at such a level of grinding when you knew it was going to be fixed at some point. There is no reason to hold everybody to that standard now that you have done it. There is a difference between challenge and broken grinding mechanics.
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Shangalar

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Re: Sustainable Bottlecap income should only come from the core.
« Reply #10 on: March 09, 2014, 09:53:57 PM »

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By mobs looting only certain gear, I did not mean like a select 1 or two objects; I meant that robbers would have no reason to pick up plant spikes and rocks, or enclave would have no reason to pick up 10mm pistols and spears. It would be an interesting system if a mob overpowered a newbie in an assignment, and he was forced to scavenge through his looted pile for anything of use he could utilize against the weakened enemies.

Well if you die, you appear back in your room and can take equipment again, so that wouldn't happen really. It would be extremely complicated to set this up too with the multiple types of enemies we have, and I don't see what's interesting really in it anyway.

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By looting being annoying, I was simply remembering the good ol days of 2238, where NCR guards ran at everything that died.

That's not the same though. We're talking about mobs that you can kill to get your loot back. it's just about preventing players to go die on a safe spot and just come back to grab their stuff and continue the fight just as if nothing happened.

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Maybe deathclaws were a bad example...I doubt they have the coordination to open a door, but they could easily break it. Rats, however, have no chance in hell of either opening or breaking open a door.

Breakable doors could be implemented, but later. Do rats open doors?
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