[Feedback] Colonies and PvP - Dev Diary

[Bluesavanah]

Old players have tons of gems and nowhere to use them.
They always complain that games lacks new content, but when the game gets changed they ask why did you do that we liked it just the way it was before.
Tso players want to have their voice heard, devs should ask players first....yet most of tso players are clueless what they really want from game, besides getting rid of couple of minor bugs.
A true fan will adapt i have to go with ksinori on that.

There are few issues here and they are masking each other, the basic premise of the PVE overhaul was that weapons would be removed and replaced with a comparable amount of raw materials. The amounts of raw materials is in no way comparable to the weapons lost. Nowhere in the original thoughts did it say BB would remove adventures from the merchant, that happened October 31st and wasn't even put in the change-log and a direct question was asked on the test server forum and was never answered. Also why did Granite and Exotic Log amounts get nerfed ?

The only people I've ever seen moaning about Fairytale content being to easy are those that have already done all the content and knew full well that any changes wouldn't effect them anyway. Now BB might consider them to easy but shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted is rather unfair on those who haven't even started them, they are hit with the double whammy of now they are much harder and they have to craft all the weapons.

The PVP in essence is fine, although it isn't really PVP at all. It provides new content which is always good but brings problems with it. It is a resource hungry beast so will require many new buildings that a lot of players don't have space for, also it means your standing army has to be significantly bigger so many will also need more housing. Not even an estimated date has been given for extra space. It is pretty hard to adapt to a situation if you are not given the tools to do so.

[Markos]

There are few issues here and they are masking each other, the basic premise of the PVE overhaul was that weapons would be removed and replaced with a comparable amount of raw materials. The amounts of raw materials is in no way comparable to the weapons lost. Nowhere in the original thoughts did it say BB would remove adventures from the merchant, that happened October 31st and wasn't even put in the change-log and a direct question was asked on the test server forum and was never answered. Also why did Granite and Exotic Log amounts get nerfed ?

The only people I've ever seen moaning about Fairytale content being to easy are those that have already done all the content and knew full well that any changes wouldn't effect them anyway. Now BB might consider them to easy but shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted is rather unfair on those who haven't even started them, they are hit with the double whammy of now they are much harder and they have to craft all the weapons.

The PVP in essence is fine, although it isn't really PVP at all. It provides new content which is always good but brings problems with it. It is a resource hungry beast so will require many new buildings that a lot of players don't have space for, also it means your standing army has to be significantly bigger so many will also need more housing. Not even an estimated date has been given for extra space. It is pretty hard to adapt to a situation if you are not given the tools to do so.

Ok i can understand problem with replacing weapons with some resources not nearly enough to even compensate for losses let alone make profit, but BB probably wants to make the game more challenging and make players work harder to get to lvl50. As for us old players, they dont care much about us as we are no longer their cash cow and that wont change in future so its just two options, try to get used to the change or gracefully say goodbye, at least thats how i see it.

[topgearfan]

Problem: too many weapons in the game
Solution: make new type of combat that use none of the old weapons

[Gerontius]

There are few issues here and they are masking each other, the basic premise of the PVE overhaul was that weapons would be removed and replaced with a comparable amount of raw materials. The amounts of raw materials is in no way comparable to the weapons lost.

Don't think any further feedback on this point can be made until we actually see the loot drops on the live server.

Everyone knows the test server balance was rubbish. I'm not saying I'm holding out great expectations that the live server situation will be an improvement, I'm just saying to hold off on this conversation until we know for sure.

[Mannerheim]

I did play the closed beta of "pvp" and from chat or something I got the impression that new everything was mainly due balance so people with storages full of weapons or with all/event generals would not have upper hand in the colony system. Now everyone is limited by same buildings, weapons, generals. They could have probably planned it all with all old stuff too some way but was probably easier to make new stuff and salt it with new real time combat system.

Still I can't see the reason to care about balance because at the moment there is no real pvp there

[procell]

All this talk about high level players moaning and threatening to leave is quite significant. In my guild the high level players help lower levels to advance in the game. I do not know if this is common practice?
If High level players feel that the changes will make adventures pointless then what is there for them to do in the game. The answer is Nothing. The loot from adventures needs to make them worth completing or people will just stop doing them. I for one will give it until the new year and if I feel its a backward step I WILL leave. this means that the lower level players I currently assist will get less support and will probably also leave due to lack of advancement.

It is remarkable that there have been NO comments from BB in this forum which is supposed to be feedback. This suggests that they don't bother reading it. The only way to get a reaction from them seems to be to write something obscene or profane which immediately gets censored.

BB please can you just say Hi so we know you have read this?

[Singaboy]

I remember back in the days when we actually had to produce crossbows from scratch. It was fun, helped by the loot of granite and logs to build a titanium smelter etc. Adventures were played with the 200unit generals, it was tough but manageable. In time, while progressing through the levels, we learned to play BK in a team of three, each really contributing to the adventure. We got the adventure via some gem seller, who would buy the adventure from the shop.

BB must have thought, that was all too difficult. They introduced massive amounts of expert weapons via loots (while maintaining the laughable 4 xbow daily reward), they started to dish out better generals by the month it seemed, starting with 220, then 250 and even 270 topping it with the MMA. Map fragments were suddenly available via the provision shop etc. Buffs went from 2x to 3x and even 4x to speed up resource collection even more. What's next, well, gold towers for everyone so that we get a massive inflation. Never mind about that, premium was added as if we don't have enough stuff already. To me it seemed BB was hell bent to speed everything up to the max.

Now, they complain that the game is too fast, we play too many adventures, we have the star full of resources. In fact I guess the real problem is, we don't spend enough money for gems. Who asked BB to sell 10 gem pits for an initial investment of 20k gems?

But once you feed players with all this, it is very hard to go back and now say, sorry, we didn't want all this, we are going to slow the game to a near standstill. What about the players, that spent real money for generals, for explorers, for the gem pits, for premium? They won't like the changes and BB can't just say, too bad for you. This is not a smart way to deal with customers.

Maybe, the real goal is to drive TSO into the wall so that they can close it down within some time. Then, they would try to get you all into TSO 2 (aka know as settlers of anteria), cos that game is a full price game while being a FTP game at the same time. They need people to play that.

[minoreva]

I remember back in the days when we actually had to produce crossbows from scratch. It was fun, helped by the loot of granite and logs to build a titanium smelter etc. Adventures were played with the 200unit generals, it was tough but manageable. In time, while progressing through the levels, we learned to play BK in a team of three, each really contributing to the adventure. We got the adventure via some gem seller, who would buy the adventure from the shop.

BB must have thought, that was all too difficult. They introduced massive amounts of expert weapons via loots (while maintaining the laughable 4 xbow daily reward), they started to dish out better generals by the month it seemed, starting with 220, then 250 and even 270 topping it with the MMA. Map fragments were suddenly available via the provision shop etc. Buffs went from 2x to 3x and even 4x to speed up resource collection even more. What's next, well, gold towers for everyone so that we get a massive inflation. Never mind about that, premium was added as if we don't have enough stuff already. To me it seemed BB was hell bent to speed everything up to the max.

Now, they complain that the game is too fast, we play too many adventures, we have the star full of resources. In fact I guess the real problem is, we don't spend enough money for gems. Who asked BB to sell 10 gem pits for an initial investment of 20k gems?

But once you feed players with all this, it is very hard to go back and now say, sorry, we didn't want all this, we are going to slow the game to a near standstill. What about the players, that spent real money for generals, for explorers, for the gem pits, for premium? They won't like the changes and BB can't just say, too bad for you. This is not a smart way to deal with customers.

Maybe, the real goal is to drive TSO into the wall so that they can close it down within some time. Then, they would try to get you all into TSO 2 (aka know as settlers of anteria), cos that game is a full price game while being a FTP game at the same time. They need people to play that.

Well spoken,I couldnt have said this in better way :-)

[Nogbad]

I'm an older player and all I can see is that these changes will make a slow game deadly boring. It also says a lot about he devs who use a community suggestion to improve and enhabnce the game, to take revenge on all those who wrote guides, discovered lootsptots and blocks. Things they obviously failed to foresee or predict BECAUSE THEY NEVER PLAYED THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Even worse, they never played the original, compare what was done in just 700Kb of code and run on 2-10Mb of memory with what's being churned out now with all the resources that takes.
And if they really think people are going to buy Kingdoms of Anteria, reality check time. There is NO gameplay in it, just placing the odd building on an interface so clunky because they made the same 3D mistake as 10th Anniversary, and went for look over function, then occasionally drag an adventurer around an environment and click on the odd random goodie, until he walks into some bandits, then sit back and watch to see if he wins or loses. Really hate to say this, having bought every iteration of Settlers since its concept, even the bad ones, and those unavailable in this country, but cannot justify this at all.

[Nogbad]

An interesting footnote that nobody seems to have spotted yet.
PvP has been discussed at length over the years (and nowhere did anybody suggest nerfing the normal adventures in the process).
However, Qualan came up with some very interesting worries, and they are still valid today, this will be far too easy to exploit.

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...ld-Zone-as-PvP