Next Big Thing: Engagement!

Ictinus

Hi everyone, I'm back with another update!

Implementation is going well on the (hundreds of!) adventures and I anticipate that we'll be drawing to a close there in the near future.

Today I want to briefly go over the reward structure that we have planned and get your thoughts there. 

As I posted before, our intention with this system is to provide a somewhat structured way of getting people out into the world and either experiencing things they may have never seen before in Achaea or having some fun doing something different.

Adventures are split into difficulty tiers (easy, medium, hard, loosely), and rewards will scale appropriately to the difficulty as you might expect.

Initial completion of an adventure will offer a choice between a crit buff, an xp buff, OR an expansion to your gold cap for the day - more difficult tiers will reward better crit and xp buffs, and bigger expansions to the gold cap (likely in the region of 10k extra, 30k extra, and 50k extra as the difficulty tiers increase).

In addition to that, daily login prizes (such as the wheel spins and so on), will no longer be tied to being logged in for an hour, instead these will be awarded after daily completion of an adventure task.

Beyond that, we are looking into some options for awarding monthly prizes to the city whose citizens complete the most adventures in that period. I don't have specific details for this yet, so watch this space!

Shirszae

I am going to be boring and say I'd prefer straight gold to either of those three possible rewards, but maybe thats just me. I don't think most people hunt past gold cap, though having the option on that is nice and @Penwize will probably love it.

But personally, for me, neither of those really feel like much of a reward, and more of a 'congratulations, you completed a possibly cool quest/adventure! Now go this completely super boring stuff known as hunting to claim it because its otherwise utterly pointless.'

Basically, I don't think its a good idea to make the adventure reward thing dependent on people bashing afterwards, because most people hate bashing because bashing is super utter boring. To put it kindly. Also, if its a difficult quest, people might just be plain tired and not in the mood for hunting/not have time for hunting, and thus end up feeling cheated of their reward.

Minifie

I’d offer bound credit reward, 1 2 or 4 for each tier, gold increase on gold cap xp or crits. Even tiny hits of bound credits can help push the tiny ones further into progress, but if the most they can make a day is 7 that’s 700 every 100 days, so a year of doing all 3 for a +3 stat. That may still be too easy so it could be 1, 2, 3 and it takes ~425 days. 

Dalton

They feel like the things you get for free from sprite hunting/wheel spins that you feel slightly disappointed in but shrug and move on with because at least you didn't really put anything into it.

... That sounds a little harsh reading it back, but I still can't disagree with it.

Laedha

I agree with having options for a reward that's not tied to hunting. Gold, lessons, comms, ship ammo, etc. 

Farrah

Maybe a chance to get a rare mineral sometimes. Lessons could be a nice option, too, I agree.

Rather than monthly prizes, it might be cool if citizens' completion of adventures built some kind of 'city influence' for the city and the city could expend that influence for things.

Lenn

I'm still disappointed that they mostly dropped the activities my character actually does, just because not everyone does them, as if it's any different to PvP or sailing.

Accipiter

I don't think those rewards will encourage people to go on adventures. Maybe before a day of hunting you would do it but then you would be pressured into hunting to use the buff otherwise why bother and if the goal is to encourage interaction with the systems hunting is pretty much the opposite of that.

Perhaps think about making an 'adventurer stone' that you can tune for xp, gold cap or crit and doing the adventure adds a charge to it that can be used whenever so you can engage with the system when you are only intending to be around for an hour or so and the reward won't go away. The different tiers giving 1-3 charges and you can stack up to 3 times. Then you could make it tune for other things such as the rare mineral effects for 5 charges/hour and everyone would have a reason to use it and it wouldn't encroach on things that are currently sold for credits.

Keorin

Put me up on the list of people who doesn't hunt, and probably won't bother with a system that just gives hunting benefits.

If they're really opposed to giving out rewards like gold, lessons, or credits, then at the very least they could just steal the rewards Aetolia uses in their similar system. They don't seem perfect either, but there's at least pretty diverse options there, from what I've seen.

Lenn

Experience would also be a neat reward, assuming it's a decent amount.

Taryius

I don't think the rewards need to be super stellar, but I do think they are a great chance for giving alternative things to earn outside of bashing. I've absolutely adored all the recent additions for non-bashing activities that reward currencies or items without the need for credits (Yggdrasil talismans, mementoes, eagles), even if they're something at stupidly fun as changing your deathsights.

With that said, I have to echo @Accipiter if you want to go down the path of buff rewards type things, please make it so we can bank them some way. I think crit buffs and gold cap increases are unique and cool, lessons and rare minerals or other things are also good rewards. If you're looking for straight monetary rewards, gold should not be the way to do it, last thing we want is more ways to inflate the economy and I'd much rather small, bound credit rewards be offered directly.

As for the group reward, I'd have to vote for the more complicated and harder to implement idea of adding something akin to the Effigy or the Underrealm Portal Access, rather than straight monetary rewards. Either way, I love the idea just like shards where its competition without any way to detract from others, and instead only focus on your own team.

Tesha

I've already been watching this as something that might be interesting enough to draw me back into playing, personally. The reward scheme might end up the determining factor of whether or not it draws my interest. The current reward ideas seem to reward further play after the adventure, which is a neat concept, but it's a little forced as xp buff/crit buff/gold cap expansion are only rewards if you use them; so basically if you're already playing a lot. This is a great option for people who are currently playing a lot and making gold cap daily, etc, but it's not particularly appealing to me.

One of my major complaints about the state of the game is the sheer number of talisman/artifact/crown-artifact-thing abilities. Honestly, if even a random promotional talisman piece was a reward option, that would be very exciting for me and definitely make me want to come back and start playing more. Even if it's a completely random piece, you now have something to trade. Bound credits would also be a really cool idea. Both of these would allow you to work towards something in a much more concrete manner than endlessly bashing gold and trying to use that to get credits to then get the thing you want, with an unknown quantity of pieces.

If you go that route, it might be nice to be able to pick your reward from these sorts of options. I'm not sure if talisman pieces are something that would be able to be offered, but I can say it would definitely make me reconsider returning to Achaea as a hobby. Just some feedback from a semi-dormant player!

Cooper

I'm a little disappointed that the admin haven't removed the gold cap. After it was blatantly clear the rise in credits was mostly due to those who abused the seafaring bug, I thought Sarapis's terribly thought out idea would be undone.

That you're considering making the gold cap expandable through extra work instead is kind of disheartening.

Tahquil

I'd like to see a buff that increases your gold gain added to the xp/crit/cap reward pool.

I also agree bound credit rewards would be delightful for young ones to build themselves up.

On the thought of other rewards I think having a 'contribution' token would be good. It would be a token you can give to your order for benefits like shards in crusades being worth more, shrine networks not taking up so much power to maintain, etc.

You could also opt to give the token to your city to increase influence so city improvements cost less to maintain, or guards cost less to replace. An increase of tokens could mean an increase in reputation which means an event NPC might visit your city first perhaps? Or even the highest contributor in said city?

Anyway, I think contribution tokens would be a great way to stoke morale with a group focus and allow people to support their cities without having to pvp, hunt or invest in tradeskills.

Sobriquet

Cooper said:

I'm a little disappointed that the admin haven't removed the gold cap. After it was blatantly clear the rise in credits was mostly due to those who abused the seafaring bug, I thought Sarapis's terribly thought out idea would be undone.

That you're considering making the gold cap expandable through extra work instead is kind of disheartening.

Not saying you are wrong on Sarapis theory but the gold cap only affects a small minority of the player base. I regularly bash for extended periods and very rarely hit it. 

[Deleted User]

Sobriquet said:

Cooper said:

I'm a little disappointed that the admin haven't removed the gold cap. After it was blatantly clear the rise in credits was mostly due to those who abused the seafaring bug, I thought Sarapis's terribly thought out idea would be undone.

That you're considering making the gold cap expandable through extra work instead is kind of disheartening.

Not saying you are wrong on Sarapis theory but the gold cap only affects a small minority of the player base. I regularly bash for extended periods and very rarely hit it. 

I'm not even close to Cooper's artifacts and I can hit it relatively easily on days I can be bothered to bash longer than an hour. Pretty sure Elisella did a few times as well, when she was 2-hander, and she has less arties than I do.
eta: Soft/Mid-Softcap at least. Not the hardcap where mobs are dropping 5 gold each.

Aegoth

Been hitting gold cap pretty hard this entire week. Watching mobs drop only 2 gold is pretty fucking depressing

Penwize

Aegoth said:

Been hitting gold cap pretty hard this entire week. Watching mobs drop only 2 gold is pretty fucking depressing

I think more people hit gold cap without realizing it, because of its soft-cap nature.  Unless you track gold rate with some granularity, it would be hard to notice before you start hitting the larger end of it. The soft cap starts at about 150k every ig month, and you won't start seeing single-digit drops regularly until something like 250k.  It's almost impossible to get more than 300k even hunting non-stop, whereas you can hit the soft cap in an hour of hunting Annwyn/Catacombs or other high level places. Faster if you use ahmetite, which is silly because using ahmetite just means you hit gold cap faster, and thus stop bashing faster if gold is your goal.

Cooper said:

I'm a little disappointed that the admin haven't removed the gold cap. After it was blatantly clear the rise in credits was mostly due to those who abused the seafaring bug, I thought Sarapis's terribly thought out idea would be undone.

That you're considering making the gold cap expandable through extra work instead is kind of disheartening.

Even having the gold cap top out at a 50% reduction would have been okay compared to just leaving the gold cap in the way they have.  Doubly so when there are many ways to make more gold than bashing without high-level bashing artefacts that are uncapped.  

Sobriquet

Maybe what Penwize is saying is skewing my viewpoint then. I usually take the gold cap as the point where mobs drops 5g and I see the rankings endowers figure increase. 

Taryius

Penwize said:

Aegoth said:

Been hitting gold cap pretty hard this entire week. Watching mobs drop only 2 gold is pretty fucking depressing

I think more people hit gold cap without realizing it, because of its soft-cap nature.  Unless you track gold rate with some granularity, it would be hard to notice before you start hitting the larger end of it. The soft cap starts at about 150k every ig month, and you won't start seeing single-digit drops regularly until something like 250k.  It's almost impossible to get more than 300k even hunting non-stop, whereas you can hit the soft cap in an hour of hunting Annwyn/Catacombs or other high level places. Faster if you use ahmetite, which is silly because using ahmetite just means you hit gold cap faster, and thus stop bashing faster if gold is your goal.

Cooper said:

I'm a little disappointed that the admin haven't removed the gold cap. After it was blatantly clear the rise in credits was mostly due to those who abused the seafaring bug, I thought Sarapis's terribly thought out idea would be undone.

That you're considering making the gold cap expandable through extra work instead is kind of disheartening.

Even having the gold cap top out at a 50% reduction would have been okay compared to just leaving the gold cap in the way they have.  Doubly so when there are many ways to make more gold than bashing without high-level bashing artefacts that are uncapped.  

Its pretty easy to check if you're hitting gold cap now that RANKINGS ENDOWERS properly updates.

Penwize

Taryius said:

Its pretty easy to check if you're hitting gold cap now that RANKINGS ENDOWERS properly updates.

Yeah, but unless you check RANKINGS ENDOWERS after every kill, you won't check it until you feel like you're hitting the gold cap and RANKINGS ENDOWERS confirms it to you.  That's part of what I meant when I said people hit it without realizing it, unless they track their gold rate with some granularity.  A 10%, 20%, or even a 50% reduction in gold that drops isn't that easy to notice among bashing spam if you're not tracking it, but when you start occasionally seeing single digit drops when a mob should be dropping a triple digit gold amount, it really sticks out.

Lenn

I find it crazy people can make 150k gold in an hour or two. What do you even do with it all?

That's about 54 million gold a year, and you're complaining you can't make more.

Archaeon

Lenn said:

I find it crazy people can make 150k gold in an hour or two. What do you even do with it all?

That's about 54 million gold a year, and you're complaining you can't make more.

die commie

Lenn

I play a merchant, an actual capitalist in a world full of people who offer to do stuff for free because tradeskills are useless anyway when you can just make a million gold by hunting, but okay.

Aegoth

I spend all my gold bashing people to dragon for free (In case you can't afford Penwize's rates)

Cooper

Lenn said:

I find it crazy people can make 150k gold in an hour or two. What do you even do with it all?

That's about 54 million gold a year, and you're complaining you can't make more.

I fund activities for citymates that aren't as credit rich, buy artefacts, buy talismans, etc. I actually don't bash much at all anymore. Ine time I made it a goal to save 30 million gold, so I did that.

Archaeon

Lenn said:

I play a merchant, an actual capitalist in a world full of people who offer to do stuff for free because tradeskills are useless anyway when you can just make a million gold by hunting, but okay.

it was a joke, lol

Caelan

So gold drops..   doesn't this just make the whole system an expansion of Dragon Lairs (forgive me as I've not gotten into lairs)? 

Morthif

No one has gotten into lairs.

Caelan

Morthif said:

No one has gotten into lairs.

That was sort of the point..  

I didn't mean it as a slam because I am sure the coders and admin are working hard but I am curious if the lair rewards aren't a hit, why a similar reward structure would be