Topic: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

I’ve dropped back in periodically over the past year to see how PO was doing (Thank you AC for listening to my suggestion a year ago and implementing ICEs), and while the research changes sound promising, too many other things look to remain the same in the future.

Steam is Perpetuum’s best (and maybe last) real chance to finally get some traction and grow instead of shrink.  The problem has never been attracting new players; the trouble has always been keeping them and at that PO has failed miserably.  I have the highest respect for what AC has accomplished technically.  It awes me that a group of 8 guys, with no backing to speak of, can accomplish as much as they have.  But, while they are clearly very good at making a game, they also clearly don’t understand what makes a game very good.  There are lots of little things they did wrong, which in and of themselves wouldn’t have driven people away.  But there are a few big things they got seriously wrong and these need to be fixed ASAP if AC expects to keep the people that Steam brings in (and avoid a repeat of the influx-followed-by-exodus from EVE 2 years ago).  Not all of them will be easy to fix, but most, if not all, need to be if PO is to succeed.

What makes me worth listening to, as opposed to the dozens of other voices each making different suggestions, most at odds with each other?  I’ve been playing mmorpg’s for 15 years and I’ve been studying/analyzing them for equally long – I can’t help it, I study/analyze all kinds of odd things besides my specialization because I’m an academic. It’s what I do with my life. I study things and try to understand them.

So here are my constructive criticisms:

1) Never, ever, ever, EVER prevent a player from advancing their character and PO does just that.

An MMORPG is about the journey, not the destination.  Character development is everything.  Once character development can no longer be achieved, the player leaves because the game is over.  In a skill based sandbox with no cap (level or otherwise), the journey may slow down but it theoretically never ends.  Even in games with level caps, raiding for ever better gear keeps advancement going past the cap.

On this score AC screwed up the mission system (and its real reward – faction standing), by forcing players to go into pvp zones in order to advance.  The rewards for greater risk should be easier, faster, or better rewards, but never anything that can’t be gotten by a risk-averse player some other way (as from the market, by paying someone who took the risk to get it).  By structuring missions so that there is a standing cap by mission level players who choose not to pvp (e.g., someone who prefers to manufacture) hit a lower hard cap to standing that compounds their disadvantage from using lower efficiency facilities.  They usually don’t even wait to hit the cap.  They tend to leave because they’re discouraged as soon as they understand it’s there.  Yes, the actual effect of the standing difference is minor, but that misses the point (it’s a psychological issue).  Perp prevents them from advancing.  EVE got this right. Perp got it wrong.  In EVE one can grind out max standing doing lower level missions. In Perp one can’t.  There is no good reason why someone who is foolish enough to try shouldn’t be able to grind out max standing in Perp doing even level 1 missions for some miniscule fraction of a point of standing for each mission.  If they want to take 3 years to get there, who cares. AC gets their subscription fees and those who inhabit beta and gamma will always have the major advantage of more efficient facilities.  To those who will no doubt scream “it’s risk vs. reward,” I say: Don’t be greedy.

2) Never, EVER make a boring game and PO is boring after any length of time. 

What makes a game boring or addictive is not pvp. It’s loot (broadly defined as anything that drops/spawns in-game).  It’s what pvp fights are over.  If the loot is boring, the pvp is boring and needless to say, so is the pve. 

Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) in the past as well as present for high risk (dangerous) low chance of very high reward (large game animals, being viewed as heroic, etc) behaviors.  If the loot lottery is good, the game is addictive. If it’s not, the game is boring. The loot in PO is too predictable and predictable = boring.  The loot lottery (table) badly needs to be improved.

Back when isotopes were first introduced I suggested (and others added their suggestions) that the isotopes, in combination with new categories of very rare drops of various other kinds of components be necessary for crafting particularly useful items.  Without such rare drops (and they need to be available to everyone in all zones (though perhaps not in alpha 1 and at higher rates in beta & gamma) there’s little point in killing except to GRIND out more cash (and grinding is boring).  On the other hand, if there’s a chance (however small) that you’ll hit the lottery on the next try, then the game turns into a case of ‘one more try (nothing), another one (nothing), another try,…’ and the next thing the player knows it’s 4 AM, but they had a good time and they can’t wait to log in again and try again the next day.  AC did something like that with the Anniversary/Christmas specials, but those were overkill (a flood of T4 items). They need to make a rational version of that a part of every-day game play.

To compound the problem, AC negated even the rarer, higher payoffs they did put in game (T2,3,4 items).  When you already have 50 of a t2 item and you get another one it’s a non-event when you can’t even recycle it for more than a T1 item yields.

3) Never, ever, ever, EVER make a game tedious and PO is most definitely unnecessarily tedious.

If anyone in RL ever designed a TP system such as the one in PO they’d be fired on the spot.  Imagine a RL situation where every train line is very short and every train has it’s own station no closer than 1 km from any other station leaving the need to walk between stations.  That’s PO.

Here again, EVE got it right (autopilot) and PO got it wrong. The highways helped, but the whole system still reeks of an artificial (not integral to the game) attempt to make players spend time traveling.  I don’t remember how many new players I heard grumbling about the system at various times and who were all gone after a few days. It’s probably too late to change that now, but at a minimum the game needs autopilot routes between all TPs and stations (if someone is dumb enough to use it on beta and gamma islands that’s their problem).  When you TP into an area, one should be able to click on either the nearest TP or nearest station and have an autopilot take them there over the existing highway system.

4) Never, EVER make a game frustrating and the research system in PO was most definitely frustrating.  Grinding out another 2k kernels just to unlock the last 1 or 2 tier 3 or 4 prototypes @~2% per 50 kernels utilized was an exercise is acute frustration (and doubly so after that last one unlocked yet 1 more that required yet another 2k to research).

Hopefully this is already on the way to being fixed.

5) Without players in PvP zones, there is no PvP.

If you want PvP to be successful, you need players to be able to hunt others solo or in small groups (not just in when they’re in blobs).  To do that you need potential solo targets and to generate potential solo targets, players need to feel/think they actually have a chance at getting in and getting out again in one piece.  Nowadays pvp zones are deserted so it’s somewhat doable (there’s just no one around to actually do it), but back in the early days (when there were actually a fair number of players) not so much.  The problem here is that the islands feel small (no place to hide and no way to hide).  The smartest thing EVE ever did was introduce cloaks about 9 months after it went live. 

This whole issue opens a can of worms I’d rather not deal with here and now.  Possibilities for ‘opening up’ beta and gamma include making scanners inoperable for seeing other players, cutting their range in beta and gamma (perhaps proportionally), cloaks (and countermeasures of course), and some that others can no doubt suggest.  For those who complain that it would make rooting out invaders harder, I say: that’s right, it would, and it would give you something to actually do besides grow potatoes and mine ores.

Anyways, that’s my take on the major problems and my suggestions for solutions.

2 (edited by Celebro 2013-07-16 21:11:22)

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Good post, mostly good points that the Devs are aware and fixing them. The problem is its taking some more time than what most players thought.

Advancing a character is a good point , but I don't take this as a theme park mmo where grinding never ends, and players 'eat' the content after every new update. Ultimately end game arrives to all and what keeps it interesting is the PVP, be it politics, economic or combat, Eve has done this, but the missing factor here is the large number of players needed to keep it on going. Eve PVE is not that much better.

Your other main points I am strongly in favour of , specially the TP system topping it all as the most frustrating. With all this back and forth walking for miles with nothing particularly interesting going on. Yet it's hard to balance and make a game world look large without this.

Number 4: is being addressed and looks like research will be much simpler , and see the fruits of your work, with much more enphasis on specialisation. I still find there is a need for a much friendlier version so you can get on research from day 1 playing. It's seems as a good hook that new players should want from day 1.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

A lot of what you said is well thought out but here are a few things to add.

1~ The mission system for it to be as expansive as many want it to be there needs to be many more areas to do missions in. This includes instances and changing the relation to a pure point based system where the level 1 mission grants the same amount of points always and you total amount of points determines the level of missions you can do.

The missions system like EVE like PO was junk for a very long time .. they had to do some pretty extensive over hauls including the LP store in order for it to be a attractive part of the game. In the early years of EVE the main goal of standing was to throw down a high sec pos.

2~ Although a bit slower than EVE, PO is about on the same time line as EVE was in releasing new ships/bots/modules. I think AC would be wise to now push to much content to fast with out fully understand its impacts ( like the hybrid bots that were promised a long time ago), its better to design and tweak in the development phase instead of the live server.

I crave more content just like everyone else, I demand it faster just like everyone else but I think that there are many "loot ables" in the game that are not predictable such as T4+ items. There are many items in the game that should be open to players that arnt like faction Heavy Mechs. but now that proto type bots are in the game I can see a combination of Prot Bot + Faction standing + Rare one time use CT + Gamma facility to create some of these Faction Heavy's <~~~ HINT DEVS .

3~ EvE has some of the longest grinds in MMO history, PO is one in the same where you are ICE mining for POS fuel or Liquid mining for Cryo. there are very very tedious parts in these two sand box games .. which is the nature of the beast. Travel in PO is not even compairable to EVE because EVE is space and PO is terrain. Auto pilot needs to be fixed (you are correct) but the ability to drop a teleport is very easy to make travel fast.

When it comes to alpha islands the tele ports need to be moved closer to stations to make travel more convenient but other than that the current system does not need much improvement as far as beta and gamma islands. to much change there would make it to easy to move from terminal to terminal making it less likely to catch pvp.

4~ This is basically fixed with the new research changes .. but in this arena PO has a much better system than EVE ever had. the BPO lottery was a joke at making strong corporations even stronger in EVE. If you were around when they were doing this you would have seen the rage first hand that 90% of the game population had that CCP continually have the highest value BPO's to a specific class (group) of players.   

5~ There is growing player made content around many of the gammas. I can assure you, the problem that I agree with you on is that there needs to be more options for that player made content. There have been many changes that have made gamma and beta more livable and unsecured at the same time.

The islands feeling small is a contradiction to travel time being to long in your #3 argument, I think the islands would feel much bigger is there few fewer tele ports on them but then travel times would be increased ... its impossible to achieve both. At least you dont see all the players on island in vacinity chat as soon as you inter the island right ? smile

Good thoughts & point of view ... I trust the DEVS to keep working at making this game the best it can be because honestly it has way more potential than EVE ever will. .. ...

Tux ~ Kill the messenger, he was part of it all along.
Euripides ~ Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
Bertrand Russell ~ War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Tux wrote:

The islands feeling small is a contradiction to travel time being to long in your #3 argument, I think the islands would feel much bigger is there few fewer tele ports on them but then travel times would be increased ... its impossible to achieve both. At least you dont see all the players on island in vacinity chat as soon as you inter the island right ? smile

you're right about vicinity chat wink and I admit, I haven't played in over a year (just logging in to add to skills), so I'm not fully aware of what's changed.

But you misunderstood what I meant by "feels small."  I meant that it feels like you can't hide anywhere.  One person with an amped scanner can see you from half way across the island (OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration - but it FEELS that way).  The truth is I'd prefer vicinity chat (i.e., you know someone is there, you just don't know where) as long as people actually had to search for me in order to actually find me and there were places I could go to (safe spots) where they would have trouble finding me.  An alternative would be a cloak that would require them to be very close before they could spot me (i.e., if I saw someone coming I could run and stay out of spotting range unless it was a coordinated search or a very skilled player).

5 (edited by Homer J Simpson 2013-07-17 00:52:04)

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Vicinity chat should not be an intel gathering tool like local is in EVE. PO devs have done its the right way.

Also this game does have cloaking of a kind with masking.

Cloaking is a very powerful mechanic. that most times favors the aggressor not the defender.

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

I was promised sex






"Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) "

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Gunner wrote:

I was promised sex






"Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) "

Post reported for saying a bad word.



















































promised.

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Homer J Simpson wrote:
Gunner wrote:

I was promised sex






"Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) "

Post reported for saying a bad word.















promised.

haha, this reminds me of something that happened in TS today, though im sorry, its not a bullshit story time. go home already

Reading this signature fills you with determination.

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

BeastmodeGuNs wrote:
Homer J Simpson wrote:
Gunner wrote:

I was promised sex






"Human nature makes people inveterate gamblers, and males particularly so due to high evolutionary payoff (in the form of sex) "

Post reported for saying a bad word.















promised.

haha, this reminds me of something that happened in TS today, though im sorry, its not a bullshit story time. go home already

im at home?

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

You're hitting quite a few points that are probably negatively affecting retention of new players.

I agree fully with your first point. As far as assignments, it'd help to be able to stay on alpha (just make your relation go up a lot faster on beta), and this would go nicely with indicating how much your relation would go up for doing an assignment.

Fact is, assignments need a lot of work.

11 (edited by Shadowmine 2013-07-18 00:20:14)

Re: Some constructive criticism concerning the game (long)

Seemed like a new list of old forum topics.


And you should check out spark teleportation. It was a game changer IMO.

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