The warp costs in the last release were a little wonky. There are two reasons for this, firstly there is a bug which is incorrectly measuring the distance between worlds and coming out as the maximum amount too often (8 hops), and secondly the current balance is harsh (500,000 for 8 hops).
We will fix the bug, and re-balance the costs soon, so you won’t be stuck on worlds you don’t want to be on.
The explain the balance a little:
The idea for warp costing is that it is more affordable to do more smaller hops, than larger hops. This is so that people will move out from their starting worlds discovering new places as they go, rather than jumping straight to a distant world.
Travelling longer distances will be more practical when using portals. The portals will be expensive to set-up individually, but the idea is that players with ample resources will set up portals to distant worlds, and then get small amounts of money from those that use the portals to make a profit on the enterprise.
The numbers that went out were a very rough idea for what they might be if / when we had the full game balance with income being what we expect it to be, rather than considering the current game balance.
We are trying to find a middle ground between releasing quickly, or releasing less often and giving each release more polish and tweaking time. Recently we’ve been maintaining a high rate of release, but there have been rough edges (e.g. these warp costs, and grapples). If we want to reduce these bumps in the road, we would have to reduce the rate of release and hold features back to make sure they are solid before release. We’ll continue to try and find the sweet spot between release frequency, and polish, but please bear with us if we go too far one way or the other.
I would just suggest sticking to one thing or another, you guys keep saying you can’t balance anything yet because there’s so many missing features.
So I’m not sure why you decided to both nerf the grapple hook and patch in something resembling your final vision for warp costs. These are balancing changes, not new features.
I would much rather have seen Portals, Stat trees or Guilds come in before the grapple hook or warp cost changes.
Obviously everything you’re saying makes total sense with regards to warp costs and a final game, but you patched in your balancing changes to make this happen without any of the required features to help it work…
We’re supposed to be playing an early access version, we could handle half finished new features rolling in. But that really is not what’s going on.
This sort of thing is 100% typical of playing early access games. So many parts of the game have to be designed from the ground up, then re-evaluated, re-designed, and re-made until you have something useable. Then, you have to see how that works with other new features and then re-evaluate how it works together, then redesign, and re-make it to fit.
Grapples for example was not a simple nerf balance change, but a redesign based around a new function (It was not previously possible to grab entities.) Warps were changed to interact with the distance between planets and the number of hops involved. These are NOT BALANCE CHANGES. THESE ARE NEW FEATURES.
If these things upset you so much (and I’ve read many of your posts that seem to suggest as much) then I’d have to suggest you come back for 1.0 and give it a try then.
Ollie covered your concerns in his OP. [quote=“olliepurkiss, post:1, topic:6267”]
We are trying to find a middle ground between releasing quickly, or releasing less often and giving each release more polish and tweaking time. Recently we’ve been maintaining a high rate of release, but there have been rough edges (e.g. these warp costs, and grapples)
[/quote]
You can either accept that the devs are humans who make human mistakes in development and give them constructive feedback, or you can not and come back when the game is in a more polished state.
Frankly, it’s my opinion as a player that you’re being far too upset over small things, and you should come back when the game is more polished.
Well I’m entitled to my opinion and you’re entitled to yours
I was expecting to play a game where I could have fun and try out new features as they are built upon.
Instead in the last few weeks or 150ish hours playing I’ve found myself enjoying the game much less than my previous 200 hours. I’ve just been trialing roadblocks as existing features are over polished towards their finished versions whilst the rest of the game is absolutely miles off.
And that is why I decided to stop playing, as I said yesterday.
No need to tell me to do something I already said I’m doing
I won’t stop giving my feedback though, as I totally believe this game would benefit far more from building towards a 1.0 featureset overall, rather than over polishing existing features that are missing their complimentary planned features. It also eats into more time that could be spent on the ever dwindling list of 1.0 features that haven’t even been decided upon yet.
To me this is all part of early access, I don’t see what the problem is. They’re developing core game play, and we get to help with that. They could easily be wiping the worlds with every release, decide grapples don’t belong in the game at all, or decide that you can only build a portal with Unobtanium.
The point is they’re trying to make a game that will appeal to (hopefully) millions of people, its also realistic that it will not appeal to billions of people. The final product will have to be both challenging, and entertaining. They’re getting there, but I have a feeling that what we’re playing now will be vastly different by the time 1.0 comes out.
At the end of the day every skill point you gain, coin you earn, or castle you build is going to go away so whats the problem?
Opening a portal should be an event, and maintaining it should be quite an undertaking in resources, but like pretty much anything in the game we want to enable dedicated solo players to do it. We want to encourage people to work together, but not force it.
My point here is that the changes you are mentioning are 1.0 core features that are being tweeked, not over polish. It may come as some surprise to you, but multiple people are work on multiple facets of the game at once. Portals, guilds, and other core features are being worked on in parallel to features like grapple hook improvements and work on one does not equal stoppages on another. All of these things are part of a 1.0 feature set and MUST be done. The disapointment you are experiencing is the result of updates being rushed out for play testing before they are ready. (On a side note, grapples are much better after the latest hotfix.) IF guilds and portals were released right now, you’d probably make a long forum post complaint about how broken it is. It’s not uncommon during development for EVERY update to break at least one part of the game. Sometimes it’s no fun for the players. OH WELL!
Lastly, just because you don’t personally know what the planned 1.0 features are does not mean that the dev’s are cutting them. It’s typically safer for developers to under promise and over deliver.
Hf and Gl in what ever games you decide to invest your considerable free time in over the next several months, because meanwhile this game is going to endure several changes and updates that are certain to be irritating players who don’t understand the creative process of game development.
Plase please please , don’t balance your game around such humongous numbers.
No one likes to run around with 234.567.534 coin, to pay 200.000 for a simple metal tool or 500.000 for a warp.
Now that’s an idea i can get behind of.
This game definitely needs such huge (community-) undertakings. There is nothing more engaging than having a big project to work on. And there is nothing more rewarding than finishing it and earning the benefits.
(Speaking of experience, building a Titan-sized ship in EvE Online takes about 1000 man hours of work.)
@olliepurkiss: I like the idea that short hops are cheaper than the large one. This will also force the player to discover worlds “step by step”. But as @Vastar mentioned, please keep the currency values “small”. Numbers greater 100k should be avoided IMO.
I can agree with you. This is something I already tried to communicate a couple of times [here and here] but without any success
IMO, grapple hook is a “class c” feature that should come in a really late stage because it’s “only a tool”. If this is a doability test for their weapon/tool mechanics it’s fine. But the effort for one simple tool could be seen as “over-polish”. I agree with @Wichall.
@Havok40k: as always I need to disagree with your arguments. Because I don’t want to start another discussion (as so many before) I won’t reply to every (false) argument you named and just refer to the before mentioned links.
I think everyone in this thread and community (pretty much) have the right expectations of progress.
Hopefully the general trend is an improving game, but clearly there will be some bumps along the way - and this is simply because we’re releasing updates that have had limited testing and balance. Especially in this case.
Feedback is very valuable to let us know if something was an improvement or deterioration. Whilst not always enjoyable to read it’s valuable and requested.
However I’m concerned about statements highlighted above where the general trend is downwards. It means we’re getting stuff more wrong than right.
Additional: We’re releasing a fix to the spiralling Warp cost shortly today.
This is what I appreciate about the development team. They can take the feedback and recognize trends in the wrong/right direction. This is why it is important to not just chalk things up to “its and early access game”. Yes, it is, but that’s when our feedback (even when we don’t agree as a community) is so important. The open dialog and some times even disagreement can help alot.
Thanks Devs!
Your links were already discussed. The dev communication is loads better than it was around 9 months or so. You have to remember it’s a small team. James does his best to put out weekly updates that are quite comprehensive and transparent.
I think instead of a lack of communication problem we’re seeing a lack of listening problem (on the community side). I’m with @Havok40k, it’s an EA game, things right now are as expected.
@Wichall, think of building a game like building a house. You need a foundation. Support structure. Walls. Roof. Entrances. Etc. All of these are necessary before you can start arranging furniture. And some are necessary before others. You can’t put a roof up if your walls aren’t stable enough to hold it up. But that doesn’t mean the roof isn’t being worked on somewhere else or that it doesn’t even have a design yet. Polishing current features is a necessary step before releasing big new things or your roof could collapse your walls and you have to start all over. You want as much control over what you’ve got as is possible before releasing something that might not play nicely with other things. If you’re looking to start painting or checking out how well the windows and doors open and close, I agree with Havok. Come back in a few months.
But at the moment I’d disagree with James. Your feedback of “this isn’t where I want it to be” and “I think this shouldn’t be released before this” isn’t really that useful. If you have comments to make about things out there, please do so by pointing out specifics and perhaps giving suggestions for improvement! THAT is useful.
The spiralling Warp cost issue has been fixed and the game has been updated.
Here is the updated cost at this point in time. It could change when we go v1.0
0 hop = 100
1 hop = 200
2 hops = 300
3 hops = 400
4 hops = 500
5 hops = 600
6 hops = 700
7 hops = 800
coming from the guy who thinks the death penalty is too harsh and who thinks enemies hit too hard and that trying to force us to maintain health item back up is too serious for as common and sleuthy as the ai currently is,
im pretty much ok with half polished releases coming out. its part of the fun of an alpha or beta, and if everything is ‘fine and dandy’ what basis or instigation do we have to think up more clever or creative or fair changes?
IMPERFECTION is the greatest catalyst of suggestion. I know there are several YES MEN on the forums who will gladly tell you that every little piece of content polished or unpolished is perfect as is, and who will attempt to justify everything on behalf of the devs but that serves no one positively. In fact it hurts the game imo.
So, id like to see the half polished releases, so that ‘we’ can continue to make suggestions, give constructive criticisms, and or cry like a little girl ahem, death penalty about things we feel need adjustments.
Also, ALL YOU NEED TO DO!:
is to put a little disclaimer at the beginning of each release notes that ‘hey, all of the numerical values are placeholders. if you see something funky and interrupts the flow/feel of the game then let us know and we will do our best to address it in a timely fashion (with respect to current dev projects) with a solution keeping the long term goals of boundless development in mind’
i agree with james. our feedback during early moments as stated to others in other threads is of the utmost importance.
in terms of the polish, a lot of the polish is minor. numerical values… KEK! we can deal with wonky numbers.
i mean… when i read your first reply about the costs when the release happened, i decided id just work locally till they could be fixed. you saw that they were adjusted rather promptly…
While i understand that with development you dont want to release too much halfway-built stuff as bugs can stack and be created in such a way which causes more work to fix later on. i do also understand that there are a lot of minor tweaks and changes that can be done later if needed such as resource requirements coin costs etc.
I personally prefer the early edition preview easter egg aspect of unfinished work. i like seeing it as it grows, and i love being able to put my feedback in while devs are still undecided, because decided devs seem to be less open to feedback.
meaning, when the games ive played release something ‘polished’ good luck getting them to see comprehend and respond according to player-base feedback / concerns.
while things are released before completion, devs in games ive played seem to be more responsive to the ideals needs and feelings of the community.
, don’t balance your game around such humongous numbers.
about things we feel need adjustments.