Alrighty, a medium scale test to check the multipliers for ‘visitors in the last 24 hours’ at a new beacon, settlement falls into the pre-211 40c bracket:
Visitors in 24h
Footfall (40c settlement)
%
1 to 5
80
200%
6 to 10
64
160%
11 to 20
56
140%
21 to 40
48
120%
41 to 75
40
100%
76 to ?
32
80%
Only gone up to 76 so far but based on the numbers for the 100% multiplier I’m guessing it’s gonna take a lot of visitors to get the multiplier to go any lower. As it turns out, there are limits even to my own patience so if anyone is interested in helping test how far down those multipliers can go, I can set up an airlocked test beacon later in the week near some popular settlement with convenient portals if there are enough volunteers interested in helping.
I’m definitely appreciating what you publish here.
Give a time and place I have 5 characters and happy to run though if I’m online for further tests.
If you derive the exact curve they’ll probably adjust though
This seems like a reasonable way to frontload the payouts and achieve a boost in footfall at lower traffic settlements.
Presumably there’s going to be a cutoff somewhere well before a 1000 visitor hub is receiving 50% per visitor. By the time a couple of hundred visitors have passed by, they’ve more than paid back the “boost” received in the first 40 visitors. i definitely agree with you there.
I just want a visit counter so bad. I have no idea if my level 1 settlement has ever seen 40 visitors in a day. I have no idea how I’m affected by these numbers specifically, and due to the changes I’ve made by staying on track at my end while they make these changes at their end, I have zero basis for comparing my pre-empires footfall to my post-empires footfall in any meaningful manner.
So yeah, with all that uncertainty your time to isolate one part of the system and nail it down to some numbers is extremely comforting. If I can run a few alts by and help, do let me know.
Thanks, you’re welcome, and will do. If/when I get enough volunteers to get to, say, 200 visits or something I’ll construct the test beacon and try to organize things thru discord, as long as everyone manages to touch the beacon within 24 hours it should yield some positive results.
I think it’s safe to assume that the 76-100+ range would be 80%, and going any higher than this would only really be of academic interest, I doubt anyone other than portal hubs, and maybe mall owners, see those kinds of numbers on a daily basis, so I’m not entirely convinced if there’s a real need for it, as (from what I can tell, it’s been a long topic) no hub owners have chimed in on this yet, so I have no idea if they’re interested.
I do think that one of the goals of this new system is to make it easier to fine-tune, so I’m sure some of those base numbers will change as they improve the balancing, but as long as the formulas stay the same it’ll be easy to figure out those changes.
Besides, James asked for feedback in the original post, and I guess I’m providing some that goes a bit beyond ‘my footfall sucks now’ or ‘still the same for me’. If they want it adjusted further then I’ll just test it all over again after the adjustments. I’m a good obsessive.
Edit: Another thing worth noting is that only super isolated beacons, really way out in the boonies, are likely to see the higher multipliers. It seems that the system is tracking very precisely how many payouts were made in the last 24h at the time of the visit, it’s not a counter that simply resets at a pre-determined time every day. So it’s very unlikely to see the higher multipliers in locations that see a lot of daily traffic, like cities and such.
I think I might have an idea how the ranges could go on.
Till now every range has been the sum of it’s 3 predecessors. (With the exception of the first one.)
If this turns out to be true, you will need 480+ characters to hit the 20%.
Good spotting there! I didn’t notice that there was a pattern, but it sounds like a reasonable assumption. So only really super well traveled areas would have to even worry about this.
Since it only counts from payouts, rather than visits, as @lucadeltodecso pointed out earlier, just having the same person walk back and forth on the same day wouldn’t affect it, and I don’t think anyone (other than maybe portal hubs) see that many unique characters in any given 24h period.
Most ‘normal’ beacons should stick around the 100% - 120% range which is consistent with the devs saying that it should be roughly the same as pre-211, with only unpopular beacons getting a boost (the higher multipliers).
Of course, since there’s also the reduced payout from multiple consecutive days of visiting, it’s no wonder that on some days people will notice their footfall reduced a bit, and in other days (when more people that don’t visit often show up) they’re seeing it increased.
Personally I think the bottom of the repeated visits multiplier (25%) is a bit too harsh but I’m sure they’ll be making further adjustments to it over time.
Not gonna lie, i skimmed over a lot of the math lol but I appreciate the effort so im up for running through your beacon to help your data. Just say where
Well hopefully there’s a cap, and whatever curve they’re using goes flat/vertical/whatever before that.
I’m not doing the math but by the time there have been 200 visitors the busy hub/shop will have paid back the “boost” from the earlier visitors at >100%.
Continuing reduction past that point is a hard nerf to footfall and exactly what the devs have stated they weren’t trying to do.
Now I really want a big test. I mean, if it’s not a nerf at some point the early boosts are paid back and reduction based solely on visitor count should stop.
Well, since I still receive about half of what I received before the 211 update on my 2 main beacons it still feels like a hard nerf to me in certain situations.
Tho have to say, that there have been quite a few days past week that sales in my shops have risen so it does seem to be working at least for some people and since I notice it in my profits that is still good!
But, still gives me a kinda bad feeling that they did say no one would get less footfall yet some people still do…
So we’ve confirmed that @Kirinvar was correct in guessing that the multiplier for 4 days away would be 80%.
Base (pre-211)
Base now
%
Days Away
60
15
25%
1
60
24
40%
2
60
36
60%
3
60
48
80%
4
And the running total:
Post-211
Pre-211
Pre-211, 24d
Day 1
1680
1200
1200
Day 2
1308
1320
720
Day 3
1075
1200
600
Day 4
1768
1320
960
Day 5
1471
1200
600
Total
7302
6240
4080
Regarding the feeling of a nerf (or at times, a hard nerf) I think this comes mostly from the multipliers for visiting many days in a row within the 5 day period, rather than from the addition of the popularity multipliers.
Even if you have few visits in 24h, if all of those are daily visits (let’s say from neighbors) then they would ‘eat up’ the higher unpopularity multipliers while still giving a 25% base payout, that’s probably where most of the people seeing reduced footfall are having a problem. I’m not sure how this could be solved unless the 5 day timer were scrapped entirely, or at least changed to a much lessened reduction in the base payout.
At this point I’m confident that we’ve sufficiently decoded the changes. With just one more day of testing to go, merely to confirm that the 5 day timer does not reset when the visitor comes every day. I’d be very surprised at this point if this was proven to be otherwise.
All other numbers, save from the popularity multipliers for extremely large numbers of payouts in the last 24h, have been narrowed down and, at least in my mind, successfully proven, and plotted into @Kirinvar 's spreadsheet. Feel free to post to disagree and suggest more testing if you’ve been following this closely.
I’ll take a few days break from extensive testing after that, and then I’ll try to tackle a quick test for all the various configurations in which guild alignment / ownership of beacons might affect payments and then I think all unknowns will be satisfactorily known.
Edit: Also, I forgot to close the door to the testing facility at one point and ended up with a single unscheduled 72c visitor, thus only getting 4 of the 200% multipliers today.
If they changed the 5 day timer to a 3 day time, It would put us back close to where we were before patch. Its getting better daily for mine. but has slowed to roughly 60% of before.
Unless of course they decide to go with my earlier suggestion of boosting the daily / weekly feat payouts (100c for dailies and 500c for weeklies doesn’t really make a difference to anyone in this economy) and adding a larger monthly payout to the timed feats.
That could help make up the difference for the ‘average joe’ without really impacting the higher income bracket in any meaningful way.
It seems logical that repeat visitors would be the ultimate target, or goal in a system that is supposed to be rewarding the creation of useful places and things.
To be honest I’m hopeful about it, and I’m not generally a glass-half-full type of person. On the one hand, it would give an incentive for shops to actually want to sell things, instead of just existing as a footfall trap, so in that sense it is a good change.
On the other hand, portal networks, roads, bridges and other public services have no direct income other than from footfall.
I suppose curbing the appeal of people making unwanted roads and bridges and such to ‘leech’ footfall from established settlements could be a positive change in some cases, and reducing the income on those is understandable since they’re pretty much passive, but it could negatively impact portal networks since those do have to be sustained.
Since I’m not involved with any, I can’t really speak on their behalf and I’m only speculating when I say this: There’s been a noticeable lack of outcry from the people who are involved with those (unlike in the 24 day situation) so I can only assume that the current system is allowing them to be self-sustaining.
If that’s really the case then with just a little fine-tuning for the specific circumstances of ‘most of my visitors are neighbors’ beacons and we might be in a pretty good place moving forward.
Arguably you get more footfall from repeat visitors now than you did before.
Before it was based on “visited time” not “payout time” of the user, so if a bunch of users used a portal network, and played the game every day so that it was less than 24hr since the last time they stepped onto the portal network beacons each time… they would NEVER generate footfall after the first time since the 24hr timer would reset every time they stepped through the portals.
Now, even if those users play every day and constantly walk over the portal network beacons… they will generate footfall every 24hr (even if its a reduced amount compared to a user not using the network every day) since the timer is only reset when the payment is made, not just because you stepped into the beacons.
Was this a new thing or a recently introduced bug? Because from what I recall of our last discussion during the 24 day thread that this was not how the system was supposed to work, and I also don’t recall this happening in my testing during december when (tho apparently a lot of people still dispute this) as far as I could tell the system went back to a 24h cooldown.
When padding the footfall at my shop with my other characters (with no permissions) I’d sometimes step in earlier than the 24h mark and then after waiting an appropriate amount of time footfall would be generated as usual. Sadly I didn’t keep records of any of this to offer up as proof (nor did I realize that people still thought that the 24 day cooldown was still a thing) since I stepped away from the forums for a bit.
(The enjoyment that I was getting from participating in them was entirely negated by having to deal with the stress from the constant posting by a certain pink pony avatar that shall remain nameless and seems to have left the forums in my absence)
With no data anything is arguable. I argued enough here today lol.
I didn’t hold my plans or build unchanged for the duration and I have no tools or metrics to provide data from before (or after really) these changes that I would consider “arguable” especially with a developer on staff.
Would you be willing to state that factually, we are receiving more footfall from repeat visitors now than we did before?
In that case we could perhaps turn our attention to finding the root cause of the missing coin, whether that be active player loss, change in traffic/habits, or something else?
I would think the goal would be to get more individual players and not the same players every day. If your build is popular with only 5 players, is that really better than it being visited by 35 different people each week?
That’s a big part of the problem here is that people want the system to extend “judgement” of artistic or functional merit that aren’t easily quantified. It’s normal human behavior but based on what I can gather it’s a case of more worrying about what other people have than what you have.
Specifically to your example is it better to create a portal hub that enables 5 daily players, or bury 5 digits of prestige under a gleam deposit that gets 35 visitors in a week?
In the current system, given the objective of generating a usable amount of coin, it’s objectively a better move to bury the stones under the gleam. Never take on the oort expense or the social burden, and get on with whatever gameplay you enjoy.
At this time, I just want the devs to come out and say that the system is working as intended. And I want some metrics. I’ve learned that my personal prestige is only a side matter on my city builds and until the economy can adjust I will strive to continue thinking of it as “bonus coins” rather than income.
For me footfall amounts vs footfall expectations have been a roller coaster since the first time I realized that coins could appear in my beacon and came to the forum to learn why.
I can certainly understand that it is important to a lot of players to know if the system (as it currently is functioning) is as the developers intended or to much income or not enough is being generated. It does set player expectations and that is important for an economy to run. If you know you will be getting 2000 coin a week then you might be willing to spend the coin. If the coin is too variable without a variation in players crossing the beacon, then players will be more reluctant to spend their coin.
Personally, I never had plots in a location where I ever got a steady income from footfall. That being said, I do have friends that do and the swings in the amounts they have gotten since launch have been pretty severe. I will have to point out that the player count is also down quite a bit since launch so that is part of it. But there have been acknowledged bugs in the footfall calculation and some fixes and tweaks and I think players are still trying to understand the latest system.
I will agree with part of this. If you want to run a portal hub then do so, but understand the Oort cost. If you do not then there are other ways to play (I agree with you). I think you need to have the objective of having coin in order to need to create prestige vaults and locate beacons in well traveled locations with the intent of generating footfall. You can play the game without coin. I know of groups of players that make and trade everything amongst themselves and do not really require coin. If you want to engage in the economy then you do need coin and footfall is a great way to get passive income, so I do understand the desire to maximize it.
