no gates? what the heck
jeu, 11/11/2010 - 14:02
so I'm in emberlight today and there's only one gate that's even open from here
it's not really worth my time to go up to moorcroft or haven and adventure from there since the rate of crowns and heat up there won't do a lot for me*
is this going to be a normal, commonplace event where gate selections are brutally limited from subtowns?
making matters worse i went to the bottom of diamond falcon yesterday and while YEAH FIRESTORM CITADEL!! the levels above that** are not particularly exciting and so i'm not enthused about playing them again
*i'm assuming that this is true even with the relative difficulty increase from wearing gear with a bunch of stars
**except the aurora isles ones, those are pretty fun too -- in general i enjoy static levels more than randomly-generated ones it seems
jeu, 11/11/2010 - 15:40
#2
Blegh
Well, if people don't deposit their minerals in a gate, you get no gates.
Blame the community or something.
jeu, 11/11/2010 - 21:51
#3
Just a warning from YPP
Just a warning from YPP folks: Depending on other players to provide a gaming experience is not a good idea.
How about a short fixed dungeon at each town?
ven, 11/12/2010 - 15:49
#4
just make firestorm citadel a
just make firestorm citadel a permanent fixture of emberlight, like the firefly gate is to haven (:
ven, 11/12/2010 - 19:33
#5
benamas...
you're asking too much...this would make the arcade totally useless at emberlight.
ven, 11/12/2010 - 21:30
#6
[quote]Well, if people don't
[quote]Well, if people don't deposit their minerals in a gate, you get no gates.
Blame the community or something.[/quote]
If there's an instance where there are no gates up, that should be an issue address and fixed by the dev team. You can't just say "people need to use their minerals" when there's no way to actually force people to use minerals. So it's a bad design decision to rely solely on people putting minerals in. There needs to be a system in place that is both affected by people and also the devs.
ven, 11/12/2010 - 22:20
#7
Didn't one of the devs say
Didn't one of the devs say that the number of minerals required is based on the number of minerals harvested in the past? If that's the case, and play hours are decreasing, then it's going to be harder to get the gates to go deep until play hours level off or start going up again. Perhaps it could adjust more quickly to changes in play hours so it doesn't feed on itself? (There are less levels to play, people play less, people harvest less minerals, people deposit a less minerals than before, there are less levels to play... rinse, repeat.)
sam, 11/13/2010 - 08:51
#8
no, please, no
reducing our play time? more than it is already reduced? d you forgot whe are in closed beta? we NEED to play as much as we can, to be able to test everything, and to show then the bugs and the suggestions wwe have to improve the game. A reduction in gameplay time would be good only after the release, but not now, that we already have a very limited amount of game time, till you go to emberlight, that's it. But, yet, who will discover the bugs in the system i lower depths?
I would suggest what other one suggested: a dungeon, like firefly, in each one of the home floors.
sam, 11/13/2010 - 09:09
#9
Uh
>If there's an instance where there are no gates up, that should be an issue address and fixed by the dev team. You can't just say "people need to use their minerals" when there's no way to actually force people to use minerals. So it's a bad design decision to rely solely on people putting minerals in. There needs to be a system in place that is both affected by people and also the devs.
That's the purpose of the firefly gate I think. It's a chore to do those levels when you have 4* gear though.
sam, 11/13/2010 - 20:54
#10
> you forgot whe are in
> you forgot whe are in closed beta? we NEED to play as much as we can, to be able to test everything,
Except that the game currently forces you to not play as much as possible to test everything.
Look specifically at energy. The energy needs to accomplish stuff, to go down in dungeons, etc.
"But there's an energy market". Except it's failed in the current preview (can't call it beta. Call it development phase 3. I think this is phase 3. Is it?).
How to solve it? Until good coin sinks are in place, it needs to have energy pumped in by the "game" (either somehow tied to activity, or to direct developer actions, or something.) Yes, I know the idea of "A good indication of a successful design is people being willing to pay for what they see". I know the idea of "If they will pay, we've got a good start, lets make it better".
But I've had a friend refuse an invite because he doesn't support "pay to play a beta test" approach. He's a competitive gamer, and if he were to play, he'd play more than the 100 free energy per day -- and you can't buy more energy with what you've earned on the 100 free.
I don't know a good solution. One starting idea: For every N 100 units purchased, another Y units are dumped on the exchange for sale. At the least, it would drive the price down; it would make it semi-realistic for free testers to play more and test more; it would still give a reason to buy some.
dim, 11/14/2010 - 17:48
#11
well, it's closed, and we are testing
So i consider it as being a closed beta, don't matter how long it takes to go to open. Games always have 3 phases before being tottally implemented: alpha, where the devs test the game theirselves, along with friends, to find the most bad bugs, then it goes to closed beta, that it is when the devs choose some players to play it closed from the general public, to encounter the not so easy to find bugs, also improving most parts of gameplay, then it goes to open beta, that it is when the game is open to the public to test, but still with too much bugs to be found, and with the intent to see what the general public will think. When most bugs are reversed, and it becames more known at the comunity, it can begin to be called as a full game.
What i'm saying is that we can't play too much at lower levels, so we don't have much time to test all the features that need to be tested while in low levels. It's far easy to test high level features (like boss fights). The game should be more liberal with the ways to make itens and test the game at all.
This idea for reducing the prices is quite good, i must admit, but i don't think it will be implemented...Well, we will need some divine intervention quite soon if nothing is done soon.
lun, 11/15/2010 - 19:03
#12
Here we go again
Incidentally, remember that the purple snake gate creates soon (tonight?), and is presently a few hundred minerals short of reaching the core. Keep adding minerals, and let's see if we can't retain at least one gate that goes all the way down!!!
While I can say nothing about the goals of the developers, the approach of "gates always construct from the top down" means that deep gates will tend to be rarer.
If my conclusion of "Adding more blocks at once is harder" (my original idea that only one block can be added per tray has been disproven, but adding blocks seems to get harder as you put more in the tray) is accurate, then you need to build up gates over time.
In any event, the following seems to be reasonable guesses:
1. The minimum number of minerals to build blocks is too high (it worked fine with higher play volume, and is starting to fail as the apparent volume of players is declining).
2. The difficulty of building down is harder than expected
3. If you want to have deep gates, you need to do your share -- and while you say you prefer the "prebuilt" levels over the random ones, the randoms seem more likely to have minerals.
How many minerals did you pick on your " YEAH FIRESTORM CITADEL!! " run?
If you had done 7 levels with minerals, with a party, that would have been 20+ each (and apparently you get bigger mineral pickups with more than one mineral per down there), so you and your friends would have contributed significantly to digging deeper.
---
> is this going to be a normal, commonplace event where gate selections are brutally limited from subtowns?
Ultimately, I think we need to wait for the next preview event to get a better idea of how this will work.
This initial (second?) preview event, as I understand it, is more about seeing if the technical setup is working, and if the server is functioning, and initial game play / energy system feedback to the developers.
I'm expecting to see a lot more stuff before any hint of a release -- I want to see some sort of functioning economy, and we've had one comment implying some sort of blocking / front line combat system is coming. There's going to be a lot more items, obviously, and hopefully more recipes. I certainly don't expect the core to be so easy to reach as just a 25th level. I'm not expected the current behavior to be considered "balanced" or "fine tuned".
And I do think that multiple arcades, not connected to each other -- so that the deeper players build their deeper depths -- has to be involved in the final solution. Yes, that means that the middle gets hurt -- I don't know the solution.