Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Line wrote:

Actually, no, even easier. Just forbid mining modules on hauler bots and that's it.

there is the problem - RR and Construct modules are industrial mods you want to have on haulers,
but mining lasers not.

so either they put a bonus onto those bots that prevents them from using miners (-100% yield) or they split them off into a new category of modules.
actually, it would even be harder to make this right without gimping the whole game, then just add in small roaming npcs that have a 100% chance to kill AFK miners.

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Guys it's not a problem, let the noobs get an extra 5400 EP a night.  Who cares?  Like really?  All of you can multifunction in various things that give you flexibility.  Why would someone want to spend one year grinding in a game with less population then my guild in WoW? 

Argument in this thread:  omg!  Someone might catch up in EP to me!

Reality:  there's 50 people playing.

Give a rest, it's fine.

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

hey ville...

arguing about the EP gain distracts allot from looking at the research grind wink

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

My experience comes from about three weeks of play before the EP patch, and now about a week with it. 


Before this patch, I personally found it difficult to keep myself motivated enough to keep playing.  Veteran players had such a vast lead from the EP mechanic that it seemed like it would take months or years to be anything more than another blip on the radar and an easy kill.  It was completely out of my control how quickly I could progress in this game.

Within a few weeks of starting, I was able to personally acquire commonplace mechs that would take me months to actually be able to use.  That proportionally large time scale (compared to other modern games) mixed with the general chat having about 15 max and only myself during off hours led me to think this game's population was going below an irrecoverable threshold. 


HOWEVER

With the patch, I'm no longer hindered by a game mechanic out of my control.  If I need to gain experience to man a robot or use a part, I can obtain it through active or passive gameplay.  Logging in every three days is now the MINIMUM amount of effort put in for the MINIMUM amount of EP. 

That, mixed with the sale, has put general chat population with a low of around 25 and a high of 70 on good days.  More people are IN the game, both actively and passively.  Conversations can be had, help can be given, and fights can commence (and are).

As for the AFK mining solution.. it's easy to spot a solution.  Check the killboards and you'll notice I'm at the top by killing unarmed enemy players that I didn't even need to give chase to because they thought that liquid farming on beta/gamma islands was a good idea.  While it might not be an honorable tactic, it's a check that players can put in place to force Alpha (reduced EP) AFK mining and make others question if it's truly a good idea to attempt it without protection.  Already, I have seen an increase of miners on said beta islands protecting themselves with their allies.


Overall, this mechanic has more than doubled the noticeable population and has lead to new and exciting opportunities for new players to hopefully give the vets a run for their money, a previously unobtainable concept. 

(Reminder, research trees are still needing to be grinded, so this is definitely not as big of a boost to new players as most suspect).

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Every patch doubles the population (if you can call sub 100 people a population). The problem is they nerf it too hard which drives away the population and / or its three months between patches. There are other issues around the toxicity of in game politics but primarily from a new player perspective and for those not involved with politics it's the patches.

FINALLY there are new boys coming to Perpetuum, and with the gun rebalance arguably a new weapon system. Amazingly there are 11 new things to build and play with coming. This gives such an opportunity to drip feed content of one mech a month and at month six the gun rebalance. That's a whole year that the devs have to do no more coding other than balancing giving them time to plan the next years drip feed content. A patch a month really old cause the kind of population rise needed (especially because it's new bots).

Do I have any faith they will do this? Of course not.

The devs have shown an amazing lack of thought with this in the past. Gamma was a perfect example of a humongous amount of content that was put in game at once. Three tiers of base stuff. Dozens of new world building tools. Terraforming. Lots of new islands. They could have made that easily last a year. So what happened? A couple of months of rise, and then a dwindle in the gap to the next patch.

My ideal situation would be a mech a month with the heavy mechs and combat / wear mechs spaced to every three months. Release the light bots first to get the tease going. Nobody ever called a girl back if she tossed the salad on the first date. The game needs a bit of a through the trousers hand job.

Fake edit: for god sake make some money out of this. If your doing a mech a month sell a 5 run CT of next months mech in the cash shop for 10 - 20 dollars. its a blatant money grab but your a business that needs money. Who gives a damn.

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: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

@Anni: that's why I said "mining modules". Hauler bots shouldn't be supposed to do things like mining, harvesting, building or whatever else engineering. Actually, they don't really need chassis slots at all.

@Hulk_Hogue: thing is that AFK-miners can be found on Alphas too, and there is no threat for them at all.

@Jita: If they gonna sell it, that would result in player base reduction, as it will be like "why should I pay for new bot I've waited for years and it doesn't have anything special". Would be much better to implement paint jobs but hey, that's another "let's finish it later" project.

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

When the beta missions started to pay out actually decent money there was an associated NIC inflation. During that there was a sligth period where people were making money but prices had not yet shot up. What we might now be seeing people being excited as they still value ep in the context of old rules without things having settled with the new rules. If there is need to moderate the ep gains its going to be somewhat of a bigger cry than what happened to the moderation of the mission payouts.

I do agree that erring on too much is the rigth side to err in this thing.

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Well AFK alpha miners were here long before EP patch so... Mostly that's the reason all the liquid ores accessible on Aplhas are so cheap.

Have a productive day, runner!
R.I.P. Chenoa, you'll never be forgotten.
DEV Zoom: Line, sorry, I was away for christmas.
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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Jita,
AC is located in Hungary, which belongs to the EU, as such, they have laws to make their annual income public... maybe you can check what they made the last few years wink

@Line: i noticed that. i just wrote what i think its the consequence of trying that with the abilities the DEVs have shown the last few years.
Yes, mechanic wise, an error like "you cannot fit this module" may be the most straight forward thing to do. Yet roaming npcs wouldn't be bad in any case!

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Line wrote:

@Jita: If they gonna sell it, that would result in player base reduction, as it will be like "why should I pay for new bot I've waited for years and it doesn't have anything special". Would be much better to implement paint jobs but hey, that's another "let's finish it later" project.

I don't think they should ONLY sell it, I just think that people would pay ten dollars to get a construction template a month early and it wouldn't impact the game too much. The more they can monitise in game the more they can do sales etc on the game cost.

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: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Ville wrote:

Guys it's not a problem, let the noobs get an extra 5400 EP a night.  Who cares?  Like really?  All of you can multifunction in various things that give you flexibility.  Why would someone want to spend one year grinding in a game with less population then my guild in WoW? 

Argument in this thread:  omg!  Someone might catch up in EP to me!

Reality:  there's 50 people playing.

Give a rest, it's fine.

Almost 5400 smile
http://i.imgur.com/d9w335F.jpg
Don't have time for games atm, and no idea what to do with the current EP except for numbers smile
And what vets have got for the last 5 years is as usual only the better reasons to whine on forums smile

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Mining vs combat which one in practice gives you more EP ?

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks tongue

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ? tongue

88 (edited by Gekko 2016-07-07 05:48:41)

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Obi Wan Kenobi wrote:

Mining vs combat which one in practice gives you more EP ?

4 hours on highTech alpha spawn ~= 24 hours of scarab.
In practice, it's 4 hours against 10 minutes of personal time smile

What's sad is the lack of motivation to use riveler for mining and maximize it's efficiency.  I liked it more than spawns.

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Hmm ok so a Riveler would be what about the same EP as combat?

True Pros make a Podcast to influence the Devs minds, 
The rest of you guys are Hacks tongue

PS. I got my Highways & stopped playing b4 they came in & have never used them! ...... Irony much ? tongue

90 (edited by logicalNegation 2016-07-08 00:32:56)

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

A riv gets the same EP as a Scarab.
Number of modules gets factored in and divides the chance so the likelihood of a EP bonus from a mining cycle is the same 1xmodule vs 5xmodules.

Documentation from Patch Notes:
"The chance is divided with the number of active modules, so it doesn't matter how many you are using. On average, this means about 1 EP per minute."  (1EP base times multiplier)

The only way to improve the 'rate' of ep gains is then only to decrease your cycle time, if it is truly just a random roll every time a module cycles.

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

As I expected - a "update" did not bring us online. But now, developers have lost money since it makes no sense to buy ice. We are waiting for the release of new robots and see what is important for the players: new content for veterans or free EP for beginners...

It is a pity that this update will be released in a year or two. By the time the online again will fall to 3 people... sad

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

logicalNegation wrote:

...
The only way to improve the 'rate' of ep gains is then only to decrease your cycle time, if it is truly just a random roll every time a module cycles.

reminds me of the mission item drops... i took my harvester, maxed Rate-of-fire with harvesters, but tried to keep the yield as low as possible to not have to destroy to much stuff in cargo to often... just to get the mission items.

i remember how fast i had removed patches of harvestable from alpha1 islands.

1EP per minute doesn't sound right (1440 per day)... unless thats the base generation rate, and when you take Gekko's screenshot into consideration, he is at the lower end of the dimishing return scale, and makes about 120 000 per day. that sounds like that 100% multiplier mentioned in that blog

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

logicalNegation wrote:

A riv gets the same EP as a Scarab.
Number of modules gets factored in and divides the chance so the likelihood of a EP bonus from a mining cycle is the same 1xmodule vs 5xmodules.

Documentation from Patch Notes:
"The chance is divided with the number of active modules, so it doesn't matter how many you are using. On average, this means about 1 EP per minute."  (1EP base times multiplier)

The only way to improve the 'rate' of ep gains is then only to decrease your cycle time, if it is truly just a random roll every time a module cycles.

Cycle time doesn't matter too.
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … or-mining/
As well as mining amount of the module.
The roll is the same for everyone, and there's no way to increase the number of rolls, their chance, and the amount of EP gain.
You participate by having active miner module, or not participate, and that's all. Everything else is a waste of time, mining charges and liquid fields smile

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Gekko wrote:

Cycle time doesn't matter too.
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/topi … or-mining/
As well as mining amount of the module.
The roll is the same for everyone, and there's no way to increase the number of rolls, their chance, and the amount of EP gain.
You participate by having active miner module, or not participate, and that's all. Everything else is a waste of time, mining charges and liquid fields smile

Oh wow, thank you for the correction and your research on the subject.  I guess that does totally balance the effect across skills, and module tech levels. 

Maybe the patch notes could just be more clear on these things as there seems to be a good bit of misunderstanding.  But I suppose this is a relatively trivial matter.

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

I've rechecked it in all the possible ways - Zom knew what to do. It's really well-balanced and bugless, no matter how will you mine, amount of EP will be the same. Good job, mr. Zoom!

Have a productive day, runner!
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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Line wrote:

I've rechecked it in all the possible ways - Zom knew what to do. It's really well-balanced and bugless, no matter how will you mine, amount of EP will be the same. Good job, mr. Zoom!

Just out of interest have ypu checked what happens if you mine with all three characters on an account at the same time?

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: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Jita wrote:
Line wrote:

I've rechecked it in all the possible ways - Zom knew what to do. It's really well-balanced and bugless, no matter how will you mine, amount of EP will be the same. Good job, mr. Zoom!

Just out of interest have ypu checked what happens if you mine with all three characters on an account at the same time?

how would you do that?

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Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Annihilator wrote:
Jita wrote:
Line wrote:

I've rechecked it in all the possible ways - Zom knew what to do. It's really well-balanced and bugless, no matter how will you mine, amount of EP will be the same. Good job, mr. Zoom!

Just out of interest have ypu checked what happens if you mine with all three characters on an account at the same time?

how would you do that?

There are a couple of combat mechanics that keep you logged in even if you log out

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: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Jita wrote:
Annihilator wrote:
Jita wrote:

Just out of interest have ypu checked what happens if you mine with all three characters on an account at the same time?

how would you do that?

There are a couple of combat mechanics that keep you logged in even if you log out

but for how many years do modules stop cycling once your connection was severed?

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100

Re: Ok DeV's, it was too much =)

Annihilator wrote:
Jita wrote:
Annihilator wrote:

how would you do that?

There are a couple of combat mechanics that keep you logged in even if you log out

but for how many years do modules stop cycling once your connection was severed?

Its supposed to but did anyone test it?

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."