Topic: Alpha and beta rebalance

Alpha rebalance:

Hold on to your hats because some of the stuff in here would be pretty disruptive in the short term.

The premise:

•    All islands should follow a progression.
•    The starter islands should have enough content for the solo player and small corps with larger corps finding it less efficient to operate there.

Alpha 1

Alpha 1 should be a central location for new people to begin. One station gives a more centralised market. Basic ores that are widely demanded mean new players have the ability to mine for profit. Lots of small spawns makes it hard for big mining gangs but will mean small groups or single players will have a spawn that’s close and probably untouched they can get on top of. Starting missions and rats will give them some early introduction to PvE.

Alpha 1 island: Tellisis, Shinjelar, Hershfield

Missions: Level 0 – 2

Rats: Tier 0 – 2 yellow only

Ore: Infinite minerals.  Titan, HDT, Liquizit, Racial

Ore spawn size: 5m per spawn, 20 spawns per ore type per island

Station tier level: 1

Alpha 2

Alpha 2’s provide more stations, more minerals, better missions and rats and more room to begin to be an older player. It will support small corps and more established players providing 12 homes to live in. Rats are more aggressive here providing a good bridge in to Beta 1. The outer stations have better station facilities decentralising the islands as people get in to production.

Alpha 2 island: Daoden, New Virginia, Asintec

Missions: Level 0 – 4

Rats: Tier 0 – 3 yellow and red, red roaming spawns, red Observers (assault)

Ore: Infinite minerals.  All minerals apart from Colixium. Random and rare small spawns of Epriton, very small amounts of wild noralgis

Ore spawn size: 10m per spawn, 30 spawns per ore type per island. Noralgis grows 5 plants per 24 hours randomly and non-cumulative. Epriton spawns every 300 spawns done for 5m per spawn.

Station tier level: 2 for the Alpha stations, 3 for the outlying stations

Beta 1

These are the starter Beta’s. Easier to defend but capable of supporting less people due to time based mineral respawn. All ore required for high end building available as well as all missions to level 4.

Beta 1 island: Novastrov, Alsbale, Kentagura

Missions: Level 3 - 5

Rats: Tier 1 – 4 yellow and red, red roaming spawns, red Observers (mech)

Ore: Finite minerals with time based spawn rate.  All minerals apart from Colixium. Rare amounts of wild noralgis

Ore spawn size: 100m per spawn, 5 spawns per ore type per island. Noralgis grows 10 plants per 24 hours randomly and non-cumulative. Epriton spawns 30m in size.

Station tier level: 3

Beta 2

These would be the established game leading corps Beta islands. Harder to defend but an increased amount of minerals and more stations means your better able to support a larger population. All ore required for high end building available as well as all missions to level 5. Top tier rats enable good money making opportunities alongside high end missions.

Beta 2 island: Domhalarn, Norhoop, Hokkogaras

Missions: Level 3 - 5

Rats: Tier 3 – 5 yellow and red, red roaming spawns, red Observers (mech and heavy)

Ore: Finite minerals with time based spawn rate.  All minerals apart from Colixium. Small amounts of wild noralgis

Ore spawn size: 100m per spawn, 10 spawns per ore type per island. Noralgis grows 15 plants per 24 hours randomly and non-cumulative. Epriton spawns 100m in size.

Station tier level: 4

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Ah, the old good "nerf alpha, force people onto beta" thread. fuuu

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Mark Zima wrote:

Ah, the old good "nerf alpha, force people onto beta" thread. fuuu

Try reading it Mark. Its not a nerf but a redistribution in to smaller spawns that would benefit new players and small corps.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

I do like the idea of wild Nora.

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Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

I don't understand the flip of Alpha 1 and 2 islands.

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Rage Rex wrote:

I don't understand the flip of Alpha 1 and 2 islands.

basically more people should be living on alpha 2 and so more stations would be better. Noobs would be living on alpha 1 which makes the centralised station and market work better for them.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

7 (edited by Burial 2014-05-17 19:59:32)

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Couple of good ideas there like flipping Alphas and more but smaller mineral fields.

The 10-20 tiles of Noralgis on an island with 1-2mil passable tiles is pretty low though. If they are all spread out, could be 100-500 plants.

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

before all that, they have to make a working random mission generator, that doesn't rely on manually placed npc spawns, event trigger and mission text that doesn't fit into what the game is.

the idea to flip alpha 1 and alpha 2 is sound, but you forget that alpha 1 islands are smaller then alpha 2's they'd better add additional alpha 2s and move the alpha1-alpha2 teleporter next to the terminal.

what they could do to improve alpha mining and harvesting - allowing spots where only lights and assaults can reach.

last but not least, alpha needs danger zones, that are dangerous to noobs and vets alike...

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9 (edited by Merkle 2014-05-18 01:07:42)

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Or take the Eve Model and relise most people do not like, or want to live on beta (0.0 or Lowsec).

This realization has made them moneys in the long and short term, only now are they starting to scale back alpha (1.0) operations.

Carebears to pay the bills, most of the time.  While PVP is the gilts and the glamor that pulls players into the game.  Casual and hardened.

Edit:

I will give you the fact that they have ganking over there which does keep things (AFK and the like) in check.  Most of the time.

Most of the botting in that game takes place in 0.0 due the fact of the size of the game space.

Good or bad?  Botting always bad, space, not so much.

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Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Merkle wrote:

Or take the Eve Model and relise most people do not like, or want to live on beta (0.0 or Lowsec).

This is why you need Alpha 2 to be more challenging and rewarding for the solo player and small corp but also give reasonable incentives for the people who do want to live on beta to make that choice.

Right now if this were eve there would be million isk bs rats in high sec belts that don't aggress you, massive mining belts of everything up to arknor, suicide ganking would be impossible and you could run multi thousand man alliances out of one system.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

if you limit the resources on the alpha islands then you will get a lot more problems.
simple as it is. you can not force ppl to go to a pvp island. this is not a pure pvp game. even if a lot of us think of it as such.

there are plenty of ppl that dont want to go to beta and gamma, and you need content for these ppl as well.
what will a alpha player do when he no longer can find any ores he wants to mine. he will not move to beta if he does not want to go there. he will leave the game. because the game has not to offer what he wants.

epriton is already beta only and its the essential reason for beta.

colixum is gamma only and it might be a valid reason in the future when the devs bring in more meaning for it.

where is the problem in unlimited resources? the limiting factor should be your game time. i dont know if you can play 24/7 but i cant. and i have other things to do besides mining.

if some ppl decide to mine on alpha for the next 5 years then let them do so.

ppl that want the better stuff will move to the pvp areas on their own. the only trick is to give them stuff there that makes it attractive for them to go there. not by taking away their stuff on the few alpha islands.

if you have made your math then you know that epriton is a large essential part of t4 production in gather time as well as in nic value. and you only get up to assault and t2 items with the alpha ores.
also nora is quite pointless to plant on alpha because it will be stolen before you can harvest it.

your major point is taking content away from caerbears. and i have to so that is a very bad idea.
if you think ppl can get too much ore in too less time then this might be another ballancing issue.

-1

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Zortarg Calltar wrote:

-1

Did you even read it?

Let me tldr some key point just for you

Infinite minerals stay on alpha - the mineral amount and respawn is the same just distributed in to smaller more common fields

Alpha would have wild noralgis and the occasional epriton field

This is far from a nerf but a boost for small corps and solo players.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

13 (edited by Celebro 2014-05-18 19:18:48)

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

In general I like the idea, but the question remains. Would this be enough for players to move to beta and mine Stermonit? I doubt that. The mining field system need a overhaul imo, either make resource spawn server wide instead of island wide, still infinite but will need to move to other islands to find it, or make a mining layer field system, where you start mining e.g titan then mine on to factional ores once titan is mined and so on.

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Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

How about something simple like make fields respawn every 24hrs, once you deplete an island if you want more you go get more elsewhere.

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Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

-1

Amidoinitrite? tongue

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

+1

Needs some fine tuning but good ideas overall.

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

+1

Needs some fine tuning but good ideas overall.

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

I like the idea of flipping alpha 2 and 1 (disregarding your sub-changes).

If you want this game to grow, rather than balance it's current state of the established player-base, you have to rethink your sub-changes completely.

+1
-1

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Flipping Alpha 1 and 2 reminds me russian police reform. Militia - it's an old sovied thingie, while police serves people, so:

1. Rename militia to police
2. Done

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Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

One thing that could help here, a list with what you can get right now on Alpha 1 and 2, and what you can produce with it - without anything bought from the market or get from the other islands.

Re: Alpha and beta rebalance

Theortically, you can make and mine everything on Alpha.  If you take PLs into consideration.

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