Svenn

Any word on wipes, imports/exports, or using current characters in the Sanctioned Campaigns yet? If there won't be a wipe it would be nice to know now so we can be ready. I don't want to start mobilizing my guild only for everything to get wiped or unable to be used in the Sanctioned Campaigns. Most of us are trying to avoid playing too much before then to avoid burnout before (or shortly after) launch so I don't want to get people in if they don't need to be playing yet.

Well, the real question is what is the win condition for dregs? I mean, are we going to build our own keeps and then those start generating points? Are there going to be keeps/outposts/forts that guilds have to fight over (I hope not, the whole idea of dregs was building your own stuff and fighting over that)? It would be pretty disappointing if Dregs was basically the same thing as the faction campaigns.

They absolutely need to make EKs able to be started on demand by anyone if they are public. It should be automatic, like joining an instance in any other game. When someone attempts to join, if it's not spun up it spins up automatically. This should be cheaper for them in server costs because right now what happens is instead of EKs spinning down and back up as people come and go they just stay up all the time as people idle in them to make sure they stay open. Automatic instance starting is a standard MMO thing, and if it doesn't happen it's going to really kill EKs.

So wait, the Dregs will have us just capturing forts and keeps for points? That's kind of disappointing, and seems like it will be a little weird with a hundred different guilds fighting for control of stuff. Also curious what we'll be capturing since I thought the idea was to let us build our own stuff in the dregs instead of having pre-placed buildings.

You're in luck. They've always said the plan was to let you trade VIP time to other players. Also, as I said multiple times, VIP shouldn't be entirely about EKs (or any one thing). VIP should give a variety of things for multiple types of players. You can add some of these EK bonuses along with other non-EK things that will appeal to other players, including yourself. If you don't care about these bonuses, ignore them.

Again, this wasn't meant as the only thing to be in VIP. The best way to approach VIP, imo, is to give a variety of things to appeal to different players. EK bonuses aren't for everyone, but if they are just one part of VIP then you've sold it to people big on EKs. For people not interested in EKs, there should be other things as well. As for dropping VIP, these benefits should only be available while the person has subscribed to VIP. I mean, that's how subscription stuff works.

I know some of this may have been suggested before (and may already be planned as upgrades to the system) but I was thinking about Eternal Kingdoms and realized some of these might be well suited for VIP bonuses. Expanded EK map size. Perhaps let people with VIP have a larger EK. I'm not sure if we're hitting the limitations of the engine or anything yet but if it's possible a larger EK for people with VIP would be cool. More EK space doesn't add any advantage, just gives those of us who enjoy creating our own kingdom some more space to play around with. As a bonus, this might promote spending more in the store on buildings. More players in the EK. Right now the maximum amount of players in an EK appears to be 12. I'm really hoping this is increased for launch across the board, but maybe additionally allow VIP to have more people in their EK. For some of us, we want a nice bustling EK and that means having lots of people. And having written this I just looked at the FAQ and saw this "These are also full MMO servers, so we expect them to support hundreds of concurrent players." so this idea might not be needed... Minor Cosmetic EK upgrades. Anything from actual 3d assets like a unique looking spawn temple to show off your VIP to simple stuff like custom banners/backgrounds for your EK in the lobby UI. Yeah, this requires some new art/UI so it might be something a ways off but people love cool cosmetic stuff to show off. Automatic EK spin-up. I hesitate to even put this one here because I really feel this is needed for EVERYONE in release and not just VIP, but I want to see it in any form. Let us set our EKs to automatically spin-up any time any player attempts to join instead of making us have to manually spin it up (and leave someone AFKing in there if we want it to stay up, which means lots of EKs will just be spun up when no one is actively playing there because people need to keep it open all the time so really automatic spin up would save on server costs). It can spin down when no one is there, and then spin back up automatically as soon as someone joins. This is just normal instance tech that MMOs have had for years, so I'm not sure if this was already planned or not. Obviously VIP shouldn't be entirely about EKs but some EK bonuses could be a nice thing to draw some people into VIP without adding pay to win elements. A mix of VIP elements for different areas of the game would be a great way to get a variety of people to subscribe (I'll be subscribing no matter what the bonuses just to support the game). I realize some of these may be limited by performance/tech, but I tried to keep this to things that were relatively simple and not entire new systems.

What makes passive skill training any different between these two? Both games are MMOs. Crowfall uses campaigns to change the maps and produce winners, but skill training, characters, and import/export stuff is all persistent.

I can't remember exactly which video, but there's a video where Todd mentions something about putting in a cap for skill tomes so you can use them to catch up to where you'd be if you started at the beginning, but not to pass that limit. Essentially a global hard cap on skill training that you can reach either through starting from the beginning or using skill tomes to catch up to. This was mentioned as a casual remark when discussing the skill tomes and not a definite plan, but the implication was that they want players to be able to fully catch up and they don't want players to be able to bypass the time gating.

The passive training system was basically directly lifted from Eve. As much as I hate that game... I have to admit that the passive training has never seemed to be a problem for them there.

Well, the idea was supposed to be a small power curve with passive training being just a small part of that. I think that's mostly accomplished for combat, but the big problem is gear discrepancies and that comes from crafting side of passive training. They nerfed advanced gear so now there's a smaller power curve which should help. Guilds are super important, though, and once a player joins a guild that guild should be supplying them with advanced gear. Then the only difference is the passive training which is relatively minor boosts.

It's Option #1. We've known about this system from the beginning. I can't say I'm a big fan of time based skill training (or any sort of time gates), but we've known about it from the beginning and it's really not that big of an issue. It's a gate that forces people to specialize, with "time" being the limiter instead of some other limitation. The main purpose is to prevent people from being able to master all the crafting and combat and gathering and be able to do everything themselves. That's why it will take something like 40 years to finish out the whole tree at last calculation. They could have gone with hard limits on training or some other limits, but they chose time gates as the limiter.

Again, the messaging is the bigger problem. If you join a released game months late, with planned catch up mechanics coming anyway, it's more of a "oh well, I'll get there". But imagine ACE says "Soft Launch is coming soon" and on Soft Launch day you finally log in after waiting for things to be permanent only to find out that they let people start training 3 months earlier and just didn't tell you. How disgruntled are you going to be?

You should wait for release then instead of playing now. Expect plenty more wipes.

The reason it's an issue now is because the shortened nature of everything, coupled with unknown, potentially unique, rewards. In the released game a few months of training isn't that big of a deal. New players will have a little bit slower of a start but can get up to speed with vessels and gear and stuff just by joining a guild. They'll "catch up" just by virtue of the horizontal progression aspect. Again, the issue isn't the skills themselves. It's the perception from players who will feel they were wronged because of poor messaging. Also, a question for ACE that seems like a much bigger issue, how are you going to deal with population imbalances? This post is all well and good, but if 500 people join Order, 400 people join Balance, and 100 people join Chaos... it doesn't matter what points scaling or whatever is put in, Chaos just isn't going to be able to keep up.