Trapped: Can we please change storage a bit?

[hypevosa]

I like playing Grid12, alot but, as much as I love hunting down convoys with a bunch of you in tow, I like other games too. I would like the chance to finish Demon's Souls, Dishonored, or Bioshock infinite, or the other games I've gotten and not finished yet.

However, I find myself trapped into playing Grid12. Why? Because any progress I get towards progression with regards to items is reversed if I don't continue within 24 hours. Having an 8 hour job means I don't have enough free time to really devote enough time to multiple games, and so I am compelled to play the only game currently punishing me for not playing it, which is Grid.

I don't find this very ethical, and I don't like the idea of keeping a mechanic that encourages unhealthy marathon gaming behavior. We shouldn't make anyone feel like they're being forced to play the game every, single, day.

I love temporary storage - I like expanding long term storage. I love having items be infinitely upgradeable, and I absolutely love how luck is still your lady, but no matter what you can still ALWAYS be progressing to the next size item, no matter how small that increment is. I am not a fan, however, of the items lasting 24 hours of REAL time. This should be based on in game time, maybe only lasting 4 - 8 hours instead (maybe this could be an upgrade too?).

This keeps all the awesomeness of the current system, without bending the player's arm behind their back to try and get them to play every-single-day.

I can't be the only one who feels this way?

[gingerbear]

Yeah, I find having equipment for only 24 hours a bit annoying. People not helping to kill convoys so I could build a larger storage is not fun either. Maybe if permanent storage would be a bit easier to obtain, then it didn't seem that big of a problem.

[rob]

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.

[gingerbear]

Just be careful not to make temporary storage "too short", because that would make big melding chains impossible. Looking at the recent drops, people already have to build their way up from low drops, and if it's even shorter then aside from "big hunting" players noone will get a chance of making something good.

I can't say I like the way this will go, but it is certainly an interesting concept, will see how it will work out.

Question:
Can we get an exact description of what the 6 kinds of augments are doing, namely:
- Does HP augment increases only max HP or HP regen too? Same goes for shields.
- Does Cooldown increases only RoF, or trigger recharge too?
- Does Speed increase only moving speed, or turning speed too? What about Turret turning speeds?

If augments do not increase any of these things, will there be a possibility to make those better?

[rob]

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]

So you're deliberately choosing a system that will encourage people to sit down and play your game for potentially entire days at a time, rather than supporting being a healthy individual who has the game simply be an hour or two of their daily routine?

You would abuse the same real time mechanic that turns farmville users into game slaves who play long after they've stopped enjoying the game, but log in every few hours simply because they feel they have to?

I'm all for you wanting people to play your game, and I really understand the desire to give them a reason to do so over other games, but this is wrong. You are choosing to abuse people with this kind of system. You are abusing children whose parents won't have the sense to rip them from the computer after a few hours, because they won't stop playing with a system like this. You're abusing those who have a compulsion to complete things (like melds) before they quit playing, as they'll always get that extra item before they get the one they needed. You're abusing the general player base by making them feel they have to play just a little longer to get that next meld item (and we all know how playing just a bit more turns out).

It is not your job to make people be healthy, to parent children, or to slap people in the face and tell them to move on when they stop enjoying a game. However it is your responsibility as a game creator, a person who has dedicated their life to making others enjoy theirs, a person who creates experiences that allow people to escape the potentially drab or dark life around them, to not encourage this kind of behavior - to try to not hurt people in your effort to make them enjoy their life more.

If you're really going to choose to make it so people aren't choosing to play your game because it's fun, but because punishment is making them feel they have to, I'm going to lose alot of faith in you and alot of the wind in my sails for this game. There is already enough unhealthy gaming behavior, and encouraging marathon gaming and discouraging a healthy lifestyle by having short term storage equate to IRL time is unethical, and cruel. You wouldn't rig an electric collar to someone so they get shocked after not playing your game for 24 hours, would you?

The introduction of new items to encourage specialization is fine, same with a death penalty. Risks IN GAME increase enjoyment of the game. Please though, change the short term storage mechanic to one that's based on in game time.

[delsy]

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]

Double post gives delsy coal for christmas, apologies, I just think it should go here with the change of tone.

of course, now that ive written all that...

I'm not arguing against in-game timing at all. Actually, I'm wondering why that wasn't the original idea. So that the server doesn't need to remember the state of someone's items until he logs back on three months later, perhaps?

[hypevosa]

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.

[delsy]

Meaningful progress can't be lost like that, because melding (progress) pulls items into longstorage automatically. Therefore, if you have an item still sitting in shortterm, it's kid stuff you picked up in the world, and can be regained quickly. If anything, I'd say marathoning (especially without good inventory management) is punished because it leaves you with junk in shortterm that nobody will buy, and you are left with limited space to meld it, especially if you're trying to multitask.

[hypevosa]

May 21, 2013 14:24:17 GMT -5 delsy said:

Meaningful progress can't be lost like that, because melding (progress) pulls items into longstorage automatically. Therefore, if you have an item still sitting in shortterm, it's kid stuff you picked up in the world, and can be regained quickly. If anything, I'd say marathoning (especially without good inventory management) is punished because it leaves you with junk in shortterm that nobody will buy, and you are left with limited space to meld it, especially if you're trying to multitask.

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.

[hypevosa]

I also can't log in to grid 12 for some reason, which brings up another major issue with tying items to IRL time I'd not thought of. Now I will lose my protomod meld I'd been saving up so I could get a level 7 protomod before they disappeared

[Ood]

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?

[rob]

For the situation where long term storage is full and you have a bunch of stuff in short term and you need to log out, I think the thing to do is sell the stuff in short term. You'll get coins for it, and coins don't expire. Alternately, just buy the one thing you are missing, meld everything up, and you're fine.

I considered having all of short term storage go poof on death. The problem with this idea is that there is an incentive to always meld, sell or use every item as soon as you pick it up, because you could lose it at any moment due to death. This defeats the purpose of short term storage, which is to allow you to autoloot everything and sort it out later, thereby preventing disruptions to the flow of battle (remember lenses?).

So we settled on a 12-hour penalty. If you die once, you'll probably want to meld/use/sell your remaining items before heading back to battle, so that you won't lose any if you die again. But newly-acquired items are always safe, preserving the "loot 'em all and sort 'em out later" idea.

As for real time vs game time, we settled on real time because if you have a lot of short-term items with only 5 minutes left, you'll maybe not want to log in, because each minute is precious. I don't want to have any incentives NOT to play.

I think most to these concerns will go away once you can easily empty your short-term storage before logging out. This is not easy to do today, but once the market is working you can just sell stuff that you can't meld or use, or buy the few missing items you need to complete a recipe. Once your short term storage is empty, you don't worry about getting back to the game every day.

[gingerbear]

This idea has been formulated by Sir Null, I'm only voicing it:

Make "dropping" loot possible with the following conditions:
- Every item is droppable for a maximum of 20 minutes (maybe less).
- The item is not visible for a player who recieved the same item from a teamwork loot.

Why would this be good?
- The short time limit will make black market neigh impossible.
- The ability to drop stuff is good to help out low levels, or some people who need something badly for crafting but out of money
- When someone misses their loot (died in last second at convoy, or has been out of kill range), the others could share with him.
- Prohibiting loot share from the same drop would make "cartels" work a bit harder, so they can't immediately meld it into +1 level. Of course, this can be circumvented by an alt account, but yeah.

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Unrelated: Please increase the range from where loot from convoy can be get. It has happened many times that someone lagged behind or had to make a tiny detour and BAM! no loot, even if he has been active and useful in the convoy chase. Alternatively, grant loot after having done certain amount of damage.