Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

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Lord Alacrity
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Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Lord Alacrity »

We've read a lot of feedback on the forum since the first new worlds with the Era System launched and we have discussed the ideas which had widespread community consensus. While some have asked about bringing back the old Age System for future worlds, for a long list of reasons ranging from server architecture to production and development workflows to the disruption caused by the needed downtimes for every Age change, we cannot launch new worlds using this exact system. However, we're happy to make changes to the Era system to better preserve the elements of the Age system that players valued and we haven't ruled out the idea of launching some form of "classic" gameworld based on the original ruleset of the First Age.

Based on feedback from players about the Era System we decided on these points:

[*] Reduce the rank required to raze to Earl. [/b]

While we still feel that Knight is too low a rank for players to be able to raze, we felt that there were many compelling arguments for lowering it from Prince. Since Earl is halfway between these two ranks, this seems like it could be a reasonable compromise. If someone can make a good argument for why it should be Viscount or Marquis, your feedback is welcome!


[*]Reduce the number of flags required for some parish buildings which had the costs increased.
[/b]
Specifically:
Turret Maker from 10 to 3
Tunnellors Guild from 25 to 6
Ballista Maker from 40 to 9

Church from 40 to 30
Stables from 10 to 2

If there are other capital buildings which the community thinks we should look at, we're open to hearing about these as well.

[*] Slightly increase the honor cost of ransack attacks.[/b]

Honor costs for attacks are rather complex calculations based on a variety of factors. As I have understood from feedback that I've read, currently the low honor cost of ransack attacks has enabled some players to inflict one-sided devastation against other low ranked players, so we will be looking to curb this.


These changes are still in the development stage, but we hope to release them across all Era worlds in the near future.
Esoteric Paradigm
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Esoteric Paradigm »

thanks for the feedback :)
DekeYoungAtlanta
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by DekeYoungAtlanta »

I favor more factions per house to allow more players into the political direction of a house. My suggestion would be 12 Factions of 20 players each, with the first 5 factions gaining automatic entry to a house.

All zones should be opened at launch day. There should be at least 3 charters in each parish.

The House Marshall should have the ability to send a message to all house members at one time.

Create a new attack form, so that if your attacking army reaches the target villages keep they are prevented from launching attacks for 24 hours.

Utilizing Monks should also break initial peace protection.

New Parish stewards are prevented from deleting buildings for 24 hours. Parish building created a second time after being deleted should not have a flag cost.

Deke
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Lord Alacrity
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Lord Alacrity »

Create a new attack form, so that if your attacking army reaches the target villages keep they are prevented from launching attacks for 24 hours.
To be clear, we aren't adding any entirely new gameplay mechanics here at this moment, we're just adjusting the gameplay a bit. This is potentially an interesting idea for a future world type, but at the moment we're only looking at the standard ruleset, not adding anything completely new.
All zones should be opened at launch day. There should be at least 3 charters in each parish.
All counties are intended to be open when the world launches. USA 4 didn't open with all counties open, this was an unintended oversight. Charters begin spawning when there are players who are able to buy them, it has been this way since Day 1 of World 1. Because of the way that maps are drawn and parishes are generated, it is simply not possible to guarantee any specific number of charters in a parish. I've seen parishes with 20 and parishes with none, it's a layer of strategy and complexity that would be lost through standardization.
The House Marshall should have the ability to send a message to all house members at one time.
House Proclamations already exist. We can look in to removing the cooldown timer if that is something players want.
Utilizing Monks should also break initial peace protection.
I've heard this suggested before and I tend to agree.

The other suggestions are good, however, they need more explanation and some more concrete examples as to why they are needed and how they will help.
Valhallas
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Valhallas »

Hi team,


As to giving a reason for why it should be Viscount or Marquis, here is my feedback to that..

It should be Viscount or Marquis because becoming a Viscount u can hold the governor seat and then Marquis u can hold the King Seat, at this rank u should have permission to Raze the unwanted players in your land.

I agree Knight may be too low because u can just feed banquet goods and keep them razing... But at Viscount and above u hold more responsibilities and need to worry about your land and it will be much harder to defend your land when enemies start popping up left and right and you are unable to raze them out.

That's my opinion and I also think it takes a long time for average players to get to Viscount rank.

Valhallas
DekeYoungAtlanta
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by DekeYoungAtlanta »

Concerning Players per faction and Factions per house
DekeYoungAtlanta wrote:It is day 160 and USA-4 server is in the 3rd age. House 10 is in the lead but there is a challenge from House 3 on the map. A week ago House 10 was generating over 250,000 Glory per day and Glory rounds were taking 4 days each. I will let you know how things look in a week. As of this moment House 10 has 6 of 11 King Seats and House 3 has the other 5. A week ago House 10 had them all.

There are 3,259 total players on the map. 1,355 of those players only have a single village. Yet 154 of these players are occupying a house slot.
Era rules are flawed with a maximum of 5 factions and 100 players per house. At this moment only 1,166 players are in a House. House 12 is only 23 players.
77 factions are in a House. 160 Factions DO NOT have a house.

154 of 1,166 players in a house only have 1 village. That is 13.2% of players that have a House Banner are just 1 village.

899 players have 5 or more villages
202 players have 10 or more villages
30 players have 15 or more villages.

USA-4 recently opened up all the zones, yet there are very few charters in these newly opened areas. The Firefly scripts for opening charters is obviously flawed.

Deke
GC3 is going to open on Thursday, and I will be there to track player counts, the race to page, and see how quickly the power blocks lock up multiple houses.

Current ERA rules limit a single house to 5 factions of 20 players. The Power Blocks know that they need more than 100 slots available to them in the first weeks, so they are going to plan to push multiple players to Page so they can lock up Multiple Houses. The negative impact will occur sometime next week when the casual/unaffiliated players start to hit Page, only to discover that all the houses are locked up and nobody will take their faction of unknown players.

Since these players will not have a House banner, their parishes will be open game for flag raiders from all over the map. Since Flag costs for parish buildings are so high, the casual player will not be able to defend his parish against player armies and they will never be able to accumulate the flags needed to build a parish defense. This was the case on USA-4 and I was one of the organized players flag raiding every unaligned parish in Central Nevada.

My failed power block was the smallest of 4 political blocks that organized BEFORE USA-4 launched, and even we were able to lock down 3 houses from other players (houses 7, 11 and 18). There was also a 5 house block, a 4 house block and another 3 house block. At least 15 of the 20 houses were unavailable by day 4/5.

If there were more factions per house (my suggestion is 12) and 20 players per faction the off-server political blocks will be content with 1 or 2 houses (Easier to show early Glory gains in a single house than spread across multiple houses, easier to intimidate casual players when your house has 200 players on day 3 and they only have 10 in their faction, easier to control internal bickering as many players want to be in the "prestige house" of a Multiple House Block)
If the off-server power blocks are only in control of 5-7 houses (House 10, 14, 19, 1, 6 and 17 always seem to be taken first) then around day 7 when the casual players start to hit Page they will find a place for their faction in a "neutral house".
With a 12 faction per house limit the first 5 factions should be able to join automatically. This should offer space for 50 or so casual factions lead by players trying to have fun vs. plotting on day 1 for server domination.

I would hope that Firefly can look at the historical data of the EU-4 and USA-4 server launches and see how the 20 player per faction and 5 faction per house limit crippled the ability of casual/non-aligned players from defending themselves in the early days of a server launch. Remember, that these early days is when the casual player has some delusion that they can "start on a level playing field with everyone else."

- Deke
Last edited by DekeYoungAtlanta on Wed Dec 06, 2017 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DekeYoungAtlanta
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by DekeYoungAtlanta »

Concerning Ransack/Pillage attacks in the early days of the server

It is now day 161 on USA-4 and nobody is complaining about not being able to raze players. This is only an issue in the early days.

Ransack/Pillaging is an effective technique from disrupting a competing player block from ranking up as we all race to page after a server launch. Players can use a 200 peasant card to great effect early in the game when nobody has defenses at their villages.

An even more effective technique is to obtain a village idiot vassal for your attacking armies. There will be a great number of "accounts" that will log in and place a village on the map. They will not even complete the Tutorial and leave their account at Village Idiot rank. Somehow legitimate players will be able to send these "accounts" a Vassal request, and the "account" will log in just to accept the Vassal request. From there is is easy work to play a few 200 peasant cards, send the troops to this phantom Village Idiot vassal and send your pillage/ransack attacks froom that location.

The honor costs of attacking a Village Idiot are huge, and attacking is pointless because the "account" does not care if it has any buildings or resources to lose.

The issue middle and long game is not the lack or rank needed to send a raze attack, it is the effort/honor cost to send a raze attack from a Prince to a Village Idiot.

My solution would be to require all players to log in at least once per day in the first week or lose their "account" village to inactivity. I challenge any of you to go to any server and look at the huge amount of Village Idiot "accounts" that are on the map.

USA-4 is on day 161 and there are still 36 "accounts' who are Village Idiot and another 67 who are Bumpkins. These cannot be actual "players" and must be phantom accounts.

I will be tracking GC-3 starting on Thursday just to see how many of these Village Idiot "accounts" are cloging space on the map and providing launching pads from power players trying to inflict greif and intimidation during the first week of the server launch.

- Deke
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Priest Guardian
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Priest Guardian »

DekeYoungAtlanta wrote:Concerning Ransack/Pillage attacks in the early days of the server

It is now day 161 on USA-4 and nobody is complaining about not being able to raze players. This is only an issue in the early days.

Ransack/Pillaging is an effective technique from disrupting a competing player block from ranking up as we all race to page after a server launch. Players can use a 200 peasant card to great effect early in the game when nobody has defenses at their villages.

An even more effective technique is to obtain a village idiot vassal for your attacking armies. There will be a great number of "accounts" that will log in and place a village on the map. They will not even complete the Tutorial and leave their account at Village Idiot rank. Somehow legitimate players will be able to send these "accounts" a Vassal request, and the "account" will log in just to accept the Vassal request. From there is is easy work to play a few 200 peasant cards, send the troops to this phantom Village Idiot vassal and send your pillage/ransack attacks froom that location.

The honor costs of attacking a Village Idiot are huge, and attacking is pointless because the "account" does not care if it has any buildings or resources to lose.

The issue middle and long game is not the lack or rank needed to send a raze attack, it is the effort/honor cost to send a raze attack from a Prince to a Village Idiot.

My solution would be to require all players to log in at least once per day in the first week or lose their "account" village to inactivity. I challenge any of you to go to any server and look at the huge amount of Village Idiot "accounts" that are on the map.

USA-4 is on day 161 and there are still 36 "accounts' who are Village Idiot and another 67 who are Bumpkins. These cannot be actual "players" and must be phantom accounts.

I will be tracking GC-3 starting on Thursday just to see how many of these Village Idiot "accounts" are cloging space on the map and providing launching pads from power players trying to inflict greif and intimidation during the first week of the server launch.

- Deke
36 village idiots on usa 4 day 161 . sounds right to me

To think that 36 americans decided to try SHK's for the first time in the last 2 weeks and spawned on the newest usa map to give it a try only to drop the game because its not their type of game? sounds legit to me.
After you try all the other MMO's , you keep coming back to SHK's
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Lord Alacrity
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Lord Alacrity »

Valhallas wrote:It should be Viscount or Marquis
It can only be one and these are rather different. The order is:

knight
baron
viscount
earl
marquis
duke
prince
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Lord Alacrity
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Re: Coming Changes to Era System on all Worlds

Post by Lord Alacrity »

My solution would be to require all players to log in at least once per day in the first week or lose their "account" village to inactivity. I challenge any of you to go to any server and look at the huge amount of Village Idiot "accounts" that are on the map.
We've had a lot of discussions regarding the inactivity timer and our main focus has been on ensuring that there is enough space on the game world while making sure that casual players do not lose their villages due to inactivity.
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