Trapped: Can we please change storage a bit?

Sadly, we are planning to make this worse, not better, in two ways. First, we are instituting an additional death penalty: when you die, items in your short term storage will lose 12 hours of time. Secondly, we are going to introduce six new item types (corresponding to the 6 kinds of augments), so the pressure on your long term storage will be even higher.

The new death penalty means that items with <12 hours of time left are vulnerable; they'll go poof at death. And, if you have items with >12 hours when you die, then you'll need to spend a few moments melding, storing, or using (or eventually selling) your newly-vulnerable items before getting back to the fight. We added this penalty as further disincentive for death, particularly for reckless repeated deaths. We also want people to treat short term storage more as a way to keep the battle flow going (to avoid stopping during battle to inspect/reject loot) and less as an extension of storage that lasts from session to session. The idea behind short-term storage is that you fill it as you fight and you empty it just before logging off. [We may consider other rules in the future to enforce this, such as: short-term storage gets emptied if you are logged off for more than 2 hours.]

The new augment items will work in a very similar fashion to the storage items. You use an augment item (say, shields) to add one to your tank' shield augment level; the augment must be of higher level than your tank's shield augment level; identical augment items can be melded. Having 8 different item types (6 augments + storage + tank unlock) will mean that nobody will have enough storage space to collect and meld every type of item, and because of this we'll be implementing trading as soon as possible.

Hp is just max hp; cooldown is just RoF; speed is just max speed.

The other things you talked about would make great installable "modules". Maybe Mustang has 3 module sockets on its hull, and 2 turret sockets on each turret (plus a third on the main turret) and one gun socket on each gun. Other classes would have different socket configurations. You would install modules in these sockets to affect various stats, like turn rate and regen and other things. Modules would drop as loot, and you would meld, craft, buy and sell them as well.

hypevosa

I'm the optimistic sort, so I may be wrong in saying that I don't think that marathon gaming is encouraged except insofar as more time=more results.

It remains to be fully realized as to what constitutes the "early game" because the game is still growing, but I'll mention that in three hours, I had ~half of the tanks unlocked and 6 inventory slots or so. With a greater population and even considering some droprate nerfs, I doubt that my experience will be so atypical. It's during this period that advancement comes quickly, since any old item will level you up. The little accomplishments fit well enough into the schedule of casual or curious players. It's understandable that loot loss by any way it comes will be upsetting, because of how much this small change is worth at the time. But you can get it back pretty easily and actually put it to permanent use. And because of how easily it comes, the marathon danger is found only in the "hey, this is fun/easy!"

Later on, when advancement slows, marathoning might be tempting if you haven't yet learned the virtue of item specialization, or if you are of the mindset that you simply MUST get an upgrade every session. It should fit fine into small sessions to just pick up some basic meldings and longstore them, leaving the rest to poof. What's that? You found something else that's nifty? Well, you have a choice now. Abandon your current project; let it go poof; or trade it away. That's one's own value judgement, but because of the limits melding places on your longstorage, multitasking is hard, and so marathoning loses some effectiveness. Limited to one project, you also have convenient stopping points; even if it pains you to throw away that one different component, there's nothing to be done.

In conclusion, hype, I believe that there's that risk of the marathon, but through an avenue acceptable in any MMO, similar to a fetch quest. It's the marathon in pursuit of a single upgrade, but with stopping points, which isn't so bad. As I understand it, progress isn't quite so subject to loss as you might think. Perhaps I don't have your perspective? You must have some point I've missed, since you started a thread about inventory limits and it's only storage units you could have reason to seek.

rob

I think that your system can work quite well if players can be made to learn a throwaway/charitable attitude toward items they can't use. The two hour poof is harsh, but may be helpful to this end. (Two hours though... scary.) Some attention might need to be paid to rate of progression so that players aren't still bewildered by the implications of inventory and upgrade mechanics when the time for slowed advancement comes around.

The ability to break items down into some small amount of gridshards be a good way of "teaching", or some other item that seems important to a new player. Of course, then there'd be no reason to let them poof...

delsy - how does deleting progress made towards upgrades not encourage people to marathon until they can get rid of items about to be lost? How does limiting items to 24 hours of real time not tell the player they better come back to play or else?

I love the temporary item storage idea, I really do, that's why I'm trying to work with it instead of saying we shouldn't have it since it essentially just introduces giving the player a spanking for not playing every 24 hours (unlike normal drop systems which just limit the player's capacity outright so players work within it). I like grid 12, but the current system I find to be rather unethical (as much as I also resent feeling forced to play). Punishing players for not playing daily, beyond them not getting to enjoy the game, is something that distinctly feels like underhanded manipulation to me. I've never played facebook games because of the abhorrent practice, I would not like to see Grid end up in the same boat for trying to abuse people who easily fall into such schemes.

Just because someone else does it, doesn't make it right. A game should survive based on how enjoyable it is to its audience, it should not have to survive on cheap tricks and manipulative tactics.

Billy has tank levels 14-9 in his long term storage, and only 2 slots left. Billy has a level 8 to level 6 item in short term inventory that are going to expire. If billy doesn't get either 2 level 3 a level 4 and a level 5, or that rare level 6 tank, before he goes to school tomorrow (since he played during sunday afternoon) he'll lose all that progress and have to try and build up to level 9 again in short term slots to get his meld up to level 15. Billy is fucked unless he marathons the game, so he does.

This has already happened to me 3 or 4 times in the last few days. You can't put everything in long term storage, and you end up readying melds in short term for when you finally get lucky and can do that serial melding (and free up more long term in the process). The more and more junk you have to hold to make progress in melds, the worse this will get.

I would rather see temporary storage based on in game play time.

Also, I'd be for temporary storage completely disappearing on death. Your tank does explode after all...

As for which is better for not punishing players. Definitely based on actual login time. Having it so also will detract from people afking and taking up server space. Why take away people's things because they can't login every day?