Explaining Footfall post Release 211

Devlog
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Hey Everyone.

I want to share an authoritative position on the aims of footfall.

There are quite a few threads on the forum about the iterating state of footfall and lots of players explaining how it does / doesn’t / should / shouldn’t / used to / usedn’t to work.

Originally:

  1. The aim of Footfall was to reward players for creating useful and hence popular spaces.
  2. It’s a function of prestige, player activity and time.
  3. It’s a system that we want and need the ability to balance as the game and population changes.
  4. Pre-release 211 there was a mistake in the system where some logic was reset every 24 days instead of every 24 hours.

Aims of Release 211:

  1. Boost the footfall received by less visited settlement.
  2. Maintain the footfall received by popular settlements.
  3. Smooth the footfall received so that it’s less effected by player population.
  4. Make the system independent of server resets.
  5. Fix the 24 days / hours issue.

Any claims that footfall has been deliberately nerfed are false.

The challenge with the update is that modelling how much footfall an updated algorithm would generate is extremely hard as it is driven by the chaotic input of player movements. We would have needed to replay all player movement to compare iterations.

(Don’t laugh at the next bit…) We considered running the old and new systems in parallel for a release so that we could balance the updated algorithm before exposing it to players. However when we planned out the released around the Guilds + Messaging update this would have significantly delayed the public release of the Footfall changes too much. Given the community urgency around fixing footfall we instead concluded that it was better to fix it publicly and get it released sooner.

Release 211:

The release has contained a few issues and we think they’re now fixed.

However we still need to review the footfall generated. As above it’s extremely hard to model the systems, we did our best, but post release balance changes will likely be required.

Giving us feedback on how your beacon performs is helpful. We will use these reports alongside reviewing the game analytics to balance the footfall.

Future Presentation:

I’m planning to remove the “Footfall per visitor” value from the GUI. This is only a single parameter used by the system. (Players often query why they have generated 100c in footfall when they’re getting a reported 30c per visitor. Did a 1/3 of a player visit me?) Sharing a single parameter isn’t helping players understand the system and is leading to more confusion.

My preference is switching to a presentation where a settlement reports the maximum footfall a player can generate. As the prestige increases their maximum footfall will increase. This will also be a clear indicator for when their footfall has reached a known capacity.

I think this is a clearer, and helpfully, completely accurate measure of the additional footfall generated by increasing your settlement’s prestige. This was the original aim of sharing the footfall per visitor metrics - more prestige means more footfall. But this is a single input and not the result of the system.

Conclusion:

The footfall system and importantly it’s balance are still a work in progress. We tried to get the balance right with this release but fully expect to tweak the balance based on your reports and analytics.

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Footfall seems roughly 1/3 or less of what it was pre patch, at least for my pretty high traffic plots in Ultima, Finata. Others are reporting the same from what I’ve heard.

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Thanks for this, it’s helpful information.

Is there any possibility of showing the number of beacon visits in the beacon information?

IE, visits in last 24 hours, week, month, lifetime etc.

Not only would this help the player understand the amounts received, but could also serve as an aid to what helps bring people to a beacon. You can see the effect changes are having.

I think everyone appreciates the effort and constant adjustment you guys are making, I’m also sure that you understand the confusion and frustration some of us are experiencing. Hopefully your post will help to alleviate that somewhat!

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Things seem to have stabilized for me since the last update. I’m seeing coin in multiples of ten at least. And usually it’s a multiple of coin per visitor.

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math.

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This is what I’ve been trying to say in the other thread and I think I have a few “I told you so” cards to hand out to one or two individuals lol. ( @Ark ) :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you, James and the rest of the team for your continuing hard work and efforts. And thank you also for continually keeping us updated and for listening to our (the players) concerns. All of this is very much appreciated! :slight_smile:

We’ll get there in the end.

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You’re not alone @C0ND1T10NR3D . There’s a few of us who have some cards to hand out. Lol

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Indeed :slight_smile:

Ok, going back into the blocky world (as I like to call it to some friends, hehe) and check my footfall!

Will report back!

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I’m positive that this was at least partially done. Being a very meticulous (some would argue insane) person, I’ve been testing the footfall reset timer religiously since when I pointed out to @lucadeltodecso that the timer was broken, and it was definitely back to 24 hours at some point in the first week of december (give or take a couple days) and up to release 211, tho I don’t recall any patch notes or announcements that the original mistake had been corrected.

I suppose after evaluating the analytics for the previous month, a decision was made to further tweak the balance, leading to the current system, then?

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Play the game.
Dont scratch your head with footfall.

Thx @james for the update.
Never thought footfall going to be the major issue in this kinda game for some people lol.

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What I find the most confusing are the players with stores that apparently were depending on footfall income instead of selling things to get coin. I would have figured a busy store made its money on volume sales. I do understand why this affects players running portal hubs.

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My sincerest apologies, I did not realize I was having fun incorrectly. :slight_smile:

But on a more serious note, it is the backbone of the in-game economy, so I think it is pretty justifiable in my opinion to care that it works correctly and in a balanced fashion.

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I can see why. I only started buying stuff in shops since I have footfall from my shop in the Gyosha Mall…

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Tho in theory shops shouldn’t need their own footfall to be profitable, the coins for people to spend on shops must come from somewhere, and footfall is the only reliable, repeatable way for coins to enter the economy. Unless of course one wants to, say, break 500.000 foliage (which can only be done once) to be able to afford one forged tool that is going to eventually break. :slight_smile: And then I suppose they’d have to break 500.000 trunks to afford the replacement… and so on.

TL;DR: without footfall (or some other coin-generating system, but footfall is the only one currently in game), eventually the economy grinds to a halt, particularly affecting shops.

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I can do without the footfall, but it helps me in two ways:

  1. I do have a bit of extra cash to spend and put in my baskets
  2. if I have less footfall the rest of the players do too, which means they can spend less, which means they buy less from me, which means they visit less, and so on…

So yes, even the best shops/malls/markets still will notice this in a big way…

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Not sure where you sell your leaves or buy your forged gear but 500k leaves for 1 forged tool???

I buy fibrous for 7c, sell AoE gem tools for 12999c…
Inky is higher, 21 or 22 not sure by heart, trunks 2c… a million coin for trunks alone will get you quite a few forged tools :wink:

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I was referring to the Aborist feat that pays 7000 coins for 500.000 leaves broken.

Because without footfall the only way for coins to enter the economy are the very tedious, one-shot feats (and the trickle from dailies and weeklies). I thought it was clear when I said it can only be done once. :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: I meant foliage. Spent too many years playing minecraft, its hard to break the habit of calling them leaves

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I agree that currently footfall is the only real coin generator in the game. I also agree the coin players need to spend in shops does need to come from somewhere. I was just surprised at the players running larger shops that are really getting their coin from footfall and not from sales.

It seems that just like having plots near a portal hub, it might be a good strategy to open a shop in a busy shopping location and spend the minimum time managing it but go for the footfall.

I will agree with this and some of the other posts you have made regarding footfall. I have read what the developers intended to do with this change (more remote locations get more footfall and the more popular keep the same). That does not appear to be happening. Not entirely sure why. This will affect portal hubs and the economy as there really is not another source for decent amounts of coin in the game.

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LOL, sorry, yes, you’re right! not paying enough attention, still not quite awake!

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With the latest fixes, so far from my limited testing yesterday it appears to finally be back to working as intended, but it may take a few days for people to start noticing it because of the timers.

And of course more time will be needed to properly test the effects of repeated visits before the theoretical 5 day period and whatnot, so parts of it may or may not be working, fingers crossed that they are, but it’s too soon to tell at this point. :slight_smile:

At least first visits are back to generating the expected amount.

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