VP reset coming

[rob]

Hey all,

Tim is building a new system for unlocking tank classes based on spending victory points. We are hoping to roll it out on Thursday. At that point we will reset everyone's victory points and augments to zero. There are two reasons for this: 1) we want to see what the process is like to build up your account from scratch under the new system, and 2) we want to eliminate the skew caused by previous gridshard and VP bugs.

We understand that nobody likes to lose progress, and we try not to reset too often. Thanks for bearing with us. We appreciate your help.

Rob

[hypevosa]

Estimated arrival?

This'll make it easier to fairly evaluate the tanks anyways.

[gorigami]

Time to get super range on hornet!!

[bejkee]

Makes sense. Not as if I've got much progress to show. But unlocking all your tanks with the first deposit was kind of silly anyways...

[quicklite]

A new system, eh? Looking forward to it!

Though I gotta say, this is probably the first time I've ever 'looked forward to' having my account effectively wiped

[fsm]

Thanks for letting us know Rob.

[sven]

Nice, a refreshing start.

Probably this might be self-explanatory but I'm unsure...

Does this mean under the new system, leveling interface is dispatched from the latest build?

[rob]

Mar 19, 2013 11:16:24 GMT -5 sven said:

Does this mean under the new system, leveling interface is dispatched from the latest build?

I've been so sick this week that I don't know what anything looks like. But I'm thinking probably the old level indicator will be removed.

[bejkee]

If you will now have to pay VPs for unlocking tanks, I am curious if the tank upgrades that you make could apply to all tanks?
I don't think it would be broken since the exponential growth of cost of upgrades is very limiting anyways.
as it is, you would need 1 million VPs to level one stat to 20% bonus. And 10^12 VPs to level to 40% bonus

[tarbomb]

I don't know whether having augments apply to all tanks (encouraging switching tanks a lot due to situation) or reducing the cost of augments and having them apply to individual classes (encouraging specialization) are better, but I do agree that augments as of right now don't really give any noticeable boost. Either augments need to give more variety to play (new triggers/guns/modules, possibly with tradeoffs), or they have to be made more effective.

[hypevosa]

I think the idea of a player being able to make the absolute best tank of a class due to infinite possibility of specialization, is great for player retention. However, I think giving a straight % improvement isn't ideal for betraying the improvement. Is it more satisfying to see +2% to damage, or see that your damage went up from 400 to 420?

Also, do we know if bonuses are all added or if they are multiplied? 100 damage * (50%+20%)) is 170 damage, whereas 100 damage *50%*20% is 180 damage.

[pfiffel]

Bonuses are added.
Most tanks start at 400 HP, so with full Pulch, being in a Quantum region and having level 6 augments for health you will end up on 400*(1+(20+20+50+3)/100) = 772 HP.

I definitely prefer augments per tank. This way specializing for each tank is possible - Trailblazers with offensive bonuses don't make much sense, for example. Otherwise they don't leave much space at the moment, though (see below). But it also adds to the goals in the game (completionists like me going "Augment ALL the things!").

I think Rob already mentioned that there will not be something like skill trees, but I would love to see some changes made to augmentation. The exponential cost increase encourages players to even out their levels, rather than specializing. Progress slows down rapidly and as a result, player progression becomes stale quickly.

This is also a reason why augmentation per tank is good: once having unlocked high levels on one tank, it encourages you to try other tanks because every time it is sort of like a "fresh start" with cheap upgrade costs.

The low influence of augmentation helps in this case, because it is not really a huge setback to start with level 0*6.
Unfortunately this negatively influences the overall feeling of accomplishment, too. While I know this serves the purpose of not making players too OP compared to new players, it also drags the motivation to play the game down.

Although it's a shame about my progress (apparently I accumulated over 33k VP in total, without OP gridshard bonus stacking), I'm looking forward to a fresh start. Everyone bustling about on Silvers will probably be quite hilarious. :D

[quicklite]

pfiffel I know you said that rob stated that skill trees are definitely not a thing, but I was thinking, and I thought it would be awesome if victory points went in to a system vaguely resembling this one:



(I did not make this. I ripped this off another game which is nothing like this one, but had a nice, simple, skill-tree ish thing. I'll be impressed if someone can name the game I got that from ^^)

It would be a pretty unique way to spend points that doesn't require boatloads of new skills for each tank, and would work in roughly the same way as the current system is, but with a nice, interesting twist. Besides, couldn't be too hard to program, right?
_{I know nothing about programming so please don't call me out on this :3}

[sven]

When purchasing tanks with VP, do we still get a special popup for unlocking them?



Or receive confirmation message from purchase through the chatbox?

[hypevosa]

Mar 20, 2013 10:01:35 GMT -5 quicklite said:

pfiffel I know you said that rob stated that skill trees are definitely not a thing, but I was thinking, and I thought it would be awesome if victory points went in to a system vaguely resembling this one:



(I did not make this. I ripped this off another game which is nothing like this one, but had a nice, simple, skill-tree ish thing. I'll be impressed if someone can name the game I got that from ^^)

It would be a pretty unique way to spend points that doesn't require boatloads of new skills for each tank, and would work in roughly the same way as the current system is, but with a nice, interesting twist. Besides, couldn't be too hard to program, right?
_{I know nothing about programming so please don't call me out on this :3}

I actually kind of would like a system of tree upgrades, at least initially, and then in you fill the tree you get to the current upgrading system where it's percentage based. This would also allow for further possibility of augmentation by adding branches to the tree - for example, we could have each branch of the tree end with the player upgrading an actual ability, or something else like: OverDrive +1 second, or Turret Turning Speed + 0.5 and the like.

Then you have your universal augment menu be the endgame distinguisher between tanks.