Build 50

[rob]

Greetings Brave Testers! Today we hit the half-century mark!

Tim's on vacation this week, so I pushed build 50 to production all by myself. Changes include:

* Reskin the town teleport and tank menu buttons
* Add storage space items
* Add tank unlock items
* Add item melding

OK! That was a short list. But there is much that needs more explanation.

Storage space items drop infrequently in the world. When you use one of these, it increases your number of long-term storage spaces by one. But, you can't use a storage space item unless its level is larger than the number of storage spaces you already have. Also, be careful not to use a level 7 storage item when you have only 2 spaces.

Tank unlock items also drop infrequently, but they are about twice as common as storage. Each one has a level which corresponds to one of the unlockable tank classes. Use these items to unlock classes. If you've already unlocked the class in question (with VP, maybe), you can't use the unlock item. But you may want to save it, to sell to another player (once we implement item selling, that is).

You can also "meld" two identical level N items to make a level N+1 item of the same type. One of the melded items must be in long-term storage, or else there must be a long-term storage slot free, because the resulting level N+1 item will land in long-term storage. If any of these conditions aren't met, the meld button will be greyed out.

I'm considering implementing augment items next, but maybe I should skip those and go right to the item marketplace. I'll have to think about that.

In the meantime, please post bugs & comments here. Thank you very much for your help! Also, I topped up all the two-week active accounts to 5 invite codes.

Enjoy!
Rob

[lights]

The melding reminds me of pet fusing in realm.

[quicklite]

Being the sadistic little prick I am, I'd suggest that you do another full tank reset. Because many people (me included) have already gotten all of the tanks through VP, and won't be able to exprerience how this new system works, as well as if said system is better or worse than the old one. I wouldn't find starting again pootling around in my silver to see that.

[Radecut]

I'm sure no one would mind a tank reset. Go for it!

[Ood]

May 15, 2013 13:13:29 GMT -5 rob said:

I'm considering implementing augment items next, but maybe I should skip those and go right to the item marketplace. I'll have to think about that.

Please keep augments as low impact 'status/activity' features. They don't do much, but for people who play one tank or have played for a while it sort of differentiates them from everyone else. Augments as they are makes the game: Play however you like > get loot > gridshard > get VP > get augment. Augments as items makes it Grind X (with X being the most 'profitable' thing in game > get augment > trade augment for something better.

Right now players get to augment things eventually with enough play-time. Augments as items opens the door to trading them and otherwise destroying (in my mind) their value: showing how much a player has played the game.

(This all assumes that tank resets will be very infrequent when the game moves from alpha to beta stages)

[hypevosa]

I'd really, really mind a tank reset, sorry guys. I may love testing the game, but I didn't pour all that time into earning every tank to lose them all. I don't need to "experience" the 2 click process it would take to use a tank item.

[gingerbear]

Yeah, I don't think a tank reset would be neccessary either.

As for the first 1 hour - 1.5 hour experience in the new build:

AWESOME.

I got slot extenders dropped up to lvl 7, and already crafted one to lvl 7. Tanks dropped from lvl 1 to lvl 8 so far, a killed convoy dropped a lvl 11. If this rate stays for production, then getting forward in the early stages will be indeed fast, and then getting forward later on will be exponentially harder and harder... I'm not sure how I feel about that. In Realm there was a cap (8/8 full top/UT) and without worthwile content it got stale, so the new craze is maxing pets to have a sense of progression... In Grid, being able to gradually craft better and better stuff seems to be - although a bit senseless - a worthwile cause: it shows good resource management, time and dedication spent. And yeah, it stinks "grind".


I don't think putting augments to drop would be a good idea yet. Since tanks now "drop", VP have lost probably half its appeal. If even augments will be dropped then VP will be practically useless. Which means there won't be a reason to collect them, which means building up cities would be also pointless time-wasting. (Since people still don't like building up buildings due to its clumsy mechanic.)

So after sorting out the market (do we need it already?) the next priority should be the redesign of the building system, along with the overall game goals and victory conditions, imho.

[rob]

We may not need the market yet, but I think we'll definitely want it if augment items are added. The reason is that melding high level items takes a lot of inventory space -- so much that you can only work on melding one type of item at a time, say, cooldown augments. If you find some other augments (say, shield augments), you'll have no room to save enough to meld something good with them -- you'll want to sell them instead. Likewise, since you are focusing on melding up really good cooldown augments, if you want to use high level augments of other types, you'll need to buy them because you don't have enough inventory space to meld up good ones.

TLDR: Inventory space is too short to meld up every item of every type, so people will specialize and trade.

Also I agree, the building system and overall game goals need a revamp and rethink. I'm thinking maybe VPs should get eliminated entirely.

Edit: Gratz on the convoy kill!

[fsm]

Are protomodules still supposed to drop? I got 1 today.

What difference does the level of a tank unlock module make?

[tarbomb]

fsm: Different levels are different tanks. Level 1 is corsair, level 2 is mustang, 3 is trailblazer, 4 is avenger, etc.

For perspective: a fury is level 15. That makes a wildfire unlock drop 16 times more valuable than the highest one that drops right now (level 11, from the convoy), a difference that is on the order of (pre-economy-collapse) a realm WC/UT top character from a T10 one. That means tank unlocking becomes the main form of progression. While I love the fact that progression opens up different forms of playing the game instead of providing diminishing power boosts, I wonder whether that kind of progression would be better served with more tanks, more customizability to suit the personal tastes of veterans, or both.

Overall, I'm very fond of the new drop system. Looking forward to seeing more drops! (and please, market before augment items.)

[quicklite]

One last thing: rob, is there any way that you could make shields visible on enemies? Because as harder enemies (possibly with good shielding) starting to become more common as this game progresses, you're gonna want to know what to target/what segments are weak, etc.

[gingerbear]

rob:

I'm not against putting augments to droppable loot, all I am saying that it would indeed change the current (meta)game, so might leave it for later.

There is nothing wrong with the elimination of the VP, but you might consider finding another use for it. For example RotMG has "fame" as a quasi-currency and a sure sign of progression (even as a top list meter, even if it's flawed). When everything will be craftable / upgradable / buyable, people might want to "measure" themselves by something that could be only recieved personally, and Victory Points would be fine for that.

---

I like crafting stuff, even more if it's not something doomed to fail. PLEASE keep melding a 100% chance to succeed! It's nothing more annoying when you save up / buy high grade stuff to be able to create something better, only to end up with a failed (and crappy or destroyed) item, and a lot of expenses.

---

About Unlocking Tanks:
It's a fine idea to be able to unlock tanks through drops, but it has 2 obvious pitfalls:
1) There is no linear progression between the tanks. A lvl 2 might not be better from a lvl 1, so making a higher grade a lot rarer than a lower grade is not making too much sense.
2) If you wish to add new tanks to the system, it will be troublesome to insert them properly in the hierarchy chain: How do you decide where should it go, and how do you balance the drop rate? (As with every new element, reaching the top will be even more difficult.)

I'm proposing the following method for tank unlocks:
1.) Make only 4 level of tanks. Each level would consist of the 4 tanks that belong to them currently (based on their VP cost)
2.) You can meld only tanks of the same level.
3.) Melding 2 tanks of the same level would allow you to select which tank you want to recieve, from the same level.
4.) Melding 4 tanks of the same level would give you a random tank of the +1 higher level.

This system would keep the non-linearness of the current tank setup, with the support of the sense of "hierarchy" between them, along with the relatively easy implementation of new tanks.

[rob]

We have always wanted visible enemy/ally shields but we never really came up with a high-performance, easy-to-implement, good-looking way to do it. Someday!

[amitp]

What I did for visible shields on this demo was to draw the shield for each integer thickness. Then at runtime I round the shield thickness off to the nearest int and draw the corresponding sprite. However I'm not using Stage3D for this and it's quite possible that's not enough for high performance.

[gingerbear]

You could use different "impact" effect when an enemy is getting shot on the different sites.
(Just like it is now, but a bit more visible)
- strong shield colored "wobbling" when a weapon hits a 100-75% shield
- medium shield colored "wobbling" when a weapon hits a 75%-50% shield
- faint shield colored "wobbling" when a weapon hits a 50-25% shield
- no special effect below this.