Although the mist system was clearly worse than what we have now, it did have some advantages.
1. It forced people to buy energy to progress quickly through the game. This throttles the rate at which people can eat through the rather meager amount of content in SK's main storyline.
2. It encouraged people to not spend so much time playing video games. This inevitably leads to less grinding and slows crown inflation. Ethically, it also encourages people to do other things in their spare time.
3. It offered incentive for people to buy energy with $$$.
I propose a fatigue system which would tap into some of these benefits without bringing back all the baggage that comes with mist.
Knight Fatigue
Every knight has a fatigue bar, which grows with time. When a knight has more than 50% full fatigue, it will start responding more slowly to player commands. At full fatigue, the knight would move as if it were permanently strong-stunned.
The rate at which fatigue increases scales with the fatigue already accumulated. This means fatigue will grow slowly at first, but increase rapidly as it nears the full bar. The rate will also depend on the depth of the clockworks.
- When the player is not logged in, the fatigue automatically declines. It should take ~12 hours for a full fatigue bar to decline to 0.
- In the ready room, fatigue doesn't accumulate at all, but it also doesn't drop.
- In haven (or depth 0) fatigue only increases until the 50% mark. Fatigue above 50% will stay at the same level.
- For depths 1 and above, fatigue will increase until 100%. The rate of growth increases at higher depths and decreases when the knight comes back to a lower depth.
Knights can eat (or use, I guess) an "Energy Biscuit" to reset their fatigue to zero. The biscuits can be purchased from Biscotti for 30,000 crowns each. Kozma also sells them in packs of six for 2000 energy. Biscuits are unbound and can be traded among players.
Weapon Fatigue
Weapons will also have a secret fatigue counter. The counter keeps track of the total damage done by the weapon. When it exceeds some threshold, T, the weapon's base power will be halved. The tooltip summary will also show a red "DEGRADED" message to warn the user.
T should be a pretty large number, like 1 million.
Punch can renew degraded weapons for a cost of 1000*(2^X) crowns, where X is the star level of the weapon. Renewing the weapon will reset its counter allowing it to be used at full power for another T damage.
Punch can also reinforce weapons, which not only renews them, but permanently adds another T to the threshold. Only bound weapons can be reinforced. Weapons can be reinforced up to five times, which means the maximum threshold is 6T damage before having to be renewed. Reinforcing a weapon that has never been reinforced costs twice the price of renewing it. Reinforcing a weapon that has already been reinforced costs twice the price of the previous reinforcement.
For example:
If I had a Voltedge, it would cost 1000*2^5 = 32k crowns to renew it, and 64k crowns to reinforce it.
If I want to reinforce it again, it would cost 128k crowns
Third reinforcement will cost 256k, fourth one will be 512k, final reinforcement would be 1024k.
After the final reinforcement, I would be able to deal 6T (something like 6 milllion) damage with my Voltedge before it degrades. Once it degrades, I will only have to pay 32k to renew it. After renewing it, I can deal another 6 million damage before it degrades.
Unbinding resets all fatigue and all reinforcements.
Armor Fatigue
You can also implement armor fatigue, but armor is not as important in SK, so it's probably not worth it since most veterans won't bother renewing.
Impact
1. Fatigue will curb crown farming while also introducing crown sinks that are tolerable.
2. Fatigue is much more taxing for end-game players than newbies. (Knight fatigue scales with depth. Weapon fatigue determined by raw damage dealt)
3. The biscuits used for knight fatigue will help stabilize energy-to-crown prices. Energy biscuit is a consumable that can only be bought with energy from Kozma and crowns from Biscotti. This establishes a hard reference of (30,000*6)/2000 = 90 crowns/energy for the energy-crown market. When energy prices are to0 high, people will spend more crowns on Biscotti, draining crowns from the market and dropping the prices.
If this actually came out I'd probably just stop playing... It just wouldn't be worth fighting through it all.
You could accomplish the same thing with a log in bonus and cheaper rarities on the market, without making people angry. Cheaper rarities means energy is worth more, and log in bonuses become the great equalizer between days played and time invested.
What would you think about doing something with sparks of life/dying? Upon dying your knight must heal in haven for five, ten, twenty and then thirty minutes before going into a dungeon. Sparks of life would double the timer up to twelve hours, but would revive you and let you continue along your way.