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Unintended Consequences of Renown
At the cost of potentially upsetting a great number of you who have become quite accustomed to daily renown, I fear that it may be having some adverse effects on the game as a whole.
While this has not solely been the result of renown, I will say that I've noticed a large decline in the amount of hunting being done in the game as people who have reached Dragon level don't hunt as much.
What I will say is that renown seems to have made earning credits so much more comparatively easy to do that it has de-incentivised much hunting and may need rebalancing. I think foray credits seem to be the big culprit here. I honestly think we could halve the amount of credits earned per person per day and it would still be probably overtuned considering it takes several hours for someone to hunt the equivalent amount in gold before hitting cap. I do feel like it feels more like a 'daily quest game mechanic' similar to most other MMOs out there and less like an immersive world system that Achaea has typically leaned towards.
The positive consequence of renown is that for the first time in forever credit prices have stabilized. There isn't such a huge demand for unbound credits that the market continues to inflate unchecked.
I just notice people spend far more time in their respective cities, and far less time interacting. Lots of folks waiting around for forays to pop. Perhaps this is simply my observation, but I welcome others to speak their peace on the matter as well. Maybe I'm off base and everything's fine. But i'm throwing my two sovereigns out there.
While this has not solely been the result of renown, I will say that I've noticed a large decline in the amount of hunting being done in the game as people who have reached Dragon level don't hunt as much.
What I will say is that renown seems to have made earning credits so much more comparatively easy to do that it has de-incentivised much hunting and may need rebalancing. I think foray credits seem to be the big culprit here. I honestly think we could halve the amount of credits earned per person per day and it would still be probably overtuned considering it takes several hours for someone to hunt the equivalent amount in gold before hitting cap. I do feel like it feels more like a 'daily quest game mechanic' similar to most other MMOs out there and less like an immersive world system that Achaea has typically leaned towards.
The positive consequence of renown is that for the first time in forever credit prices have stabilized. There isn't such a huge demand for unbound credits that the market continues to inflate unchecked.
I just notice people spend far more time in their respective cities, and far less time interacting. Lots of folks waiting around for forays to pop. Perhaps this is simply my observation, but I welcome others to speak their peace on the matter as well. Maybe I'm off base and everything's fine. But i'm throwing my two sovereigns out there.
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I do agree with Andraste though. Hashan CT is mostly people asking for Forays, rushing to get there before someone else, and seems to be the main focus for a lot of people. Not saying free credits are bad, but maybe lower the amount for Forays, or cap it at 10 rather than 20. (Or maybe keep 20cr for newbies?)
Its also very very heavily skewed to seafaring, with only 2 for exploration. That alone is massively unbalanced.
First off, very agree with this, having people just hunting for credits is way less engaging for them and others than group activities they can engage in with others, and let’s people be a lot more interested in actually talking to each other. The system needs other rewards put in place however, or at least to add adventures that people can do that still involve others, but are not just forays. Aet has some that are to kill a certain number of people while partied, and has a higher value one if one of those people is below level 80, and that would be good for getting more people engaged, and helping with people doing something aside from forays.
Another thing that makes me a bit hopeful is that pve is one of the things they said would be a major focus this year, so maybe they will alter it to be more interesting, or at least slightly more group focused.
Last thing I will mention, I do think that it might be a good idea to add adventures based around rollplay goals, not just strictly mechanical ones, like something to reward city leaders, and something to get people to be interested in engagement. Having rewards guides can grant for answering questions on newbie, or editing help/city/house scrolls could make players more interested in actively working to improve rp focused things. Yes, this could be used to cheat, so would need a limit, but could be a good way to get people to help new players and do something actively to help with rp, without feeling like all their time updating houes scrolls was completely ignored.
I disagree with the gold cap statement, partially because of the credit market one. If more bashed to cap and markets continued to inflate, I don't think that means more people would bash just to get the gold to buy high prices. And even if you did drop foray renown, people will still just grind renown to whatever the cap is, and avoid the other stuff to hit cap if they've no desire to do it.
If people aren't leaving cities, that doesn't have much to do with renown so much as the state of most factions has been aggressive, and there's not much reason to go out and interact with other factions. Not that renown has taken up interaction. Who really interacts with other bashers anyway outside the "sorry here's the gold I snagged". That's my view on it at least.
tldr: Don't make people waste more time running around doing things for lesser amounts that are harder to help the newbies with. Lowering renown cap won't make people bash more. Neither thing promotes interacting with others.
Lots of people interact without leaving their city, and even more of them don't interact with outsiders because they have a more insular attitude. There is nothing wrong with a character that never leaves Ashtan because the rest of the world is filled with nothing but raging morons, idiotic asshats, and roaming madmen.
It doesn't mean their level of interaction is low. In fact, they probably interact more than most. Insular characters tend to spend a lot of time working within their faction, which not something you can observe, let alone judge.
I see no issues in presenting alternative methods for players to earn bound credits to outfit themselves with basic artefacts and class skills. Unbound currency will always be more valuable, especially in the current market climate. Hunting has not lost any of its value.
But a number (and I do mean a number) of people in Hashan can attest to the fact that I refused to hunt to get to dragon. Even if it would have been "So easy".
I got most of the way there by just PK. post level 80ish.
Hunting is boring as shit to me, and I just have zero desire to do it. I can't multi-task as easy as other people who throw up a youtube video and turn kbashing on and just numpad movement while watching how meat waste is turned into hot dogs.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
The only thing I don't like about hunting is if I want to hunt at 100% efficiency it's always the same thing, weeee serpent garrote forever... why o why can't we have balanced hunting for all classes? Just seems foolish that to be a top hunter you go serpent. It's not coincidence serpent is always the most players online (next to runewarden)
zGUI 4.0 - A Free GUI for Mudlet 4.10+
Unartied serpent isn't thatttt great for hunting.
I also like hunting, but I do that more out of boredom because drumming up someone active, and looking to RP something spontaneous seems rarer, especially for us rogues/
As probably the smallest person in this thread, I ask to please not do away with Foray renown. If people are too hyper-focused on getting to them, then other aspects of Achaea need to be rewarding, not forays becoming less rewarding. I mean, we're talking about a game where it takes 500 credits to get most level one artes. That's 25 days of maxing renown for each one (not as easy to do for smaller people--I've actually only done it during the themes and double Renown events).
Renown (especially through Forays) is honestly a big part of what keeps me active right now. Hunting was a huge factor pushing me to dormancy in the past. I tended to do it solo because I didn't want to miss out on experience and I hated pretty much every second of it. It's not fast enough gain to make it enjoyable.
Forays are fun, social opportunities, and short/easy enough that I'm usually just left wanting more afterwards. Short, sweet daily adventures like this are -the- way to keep people interested, in my opinion. Limiting them to a set number possible per day, is how you keep them from being abused. Please don't encourage Achaea to regress back into more grindy-ness...
I've never stepped out of a Foray and thought "well, that sucked."
Can't say the same for hunting.
Don't change them.
Same goes for if we're spending hours skirmishing back and forth, maybe there should be multiple milestones you can hit on each of the criteria for renown, so you can continue to build it past the first 100 (even at diminishing returns). This could probably apply to other renown sources but I don't do those so can't give specific examples.
Also it's completely possible to max out renown within 30-60 min of play without ever touching a foray (or the other 1000 renown things)
I don't see why hunting needs to be encouraged more, but I do think pk should be. Everyone doing forays all the time is boring. I also wish questing had higher renown rewards.
Dying during a sanctioned Raid: 200
Killing during a santioned raid: 200
Disarming a tank: 500
Assisting with a kill during a sanctioned raid: 25~50 (repeatable)
One raid should, honestly, cap out your renown. That shit sometimes takes MUCH longer than a foray, and odds are? You have a much higher likelihood to just drop dead because of it.
If destroying a shrine would be worth renown, putting them back up ought to be, too, else everyone's just gonna defile when no one's around to get it on quiet days, and if shrines aren't being used to motivate PvP, I don't know that rewarding attacking them is a good idea.
I'd be fine with halved rewards for defenders during a sanctioned raid, given the imbalance of odds there, generally speaking, but assist renown would be amazing. Might get more people involved both in attacking and defending, and that's only a good thing.
I'm convinced you live on a different planet than me because when I am there we are usually fighting 2-3 times our numbers. I'd be surprised if more pk renown caused more people to team, though. You still need justification to attack and people who don't like teaming are unlikely to suddenly team just for credits they could more easily get from a foray. This is mostly just so people who choose to pk rather than foray aren't disadvantaged. There are already a limited number of people willing to instigate pk.
I doubt assist renown with pk would happen (other than things like tank det renown) though, since they won't add assist xp. I'd be happy with just more ways to earn it so you can reasonably cap if you spend your time pking rather than having to say "sorry guys, I need to foray instead!" or not get your credits.