trollsroyce
Seraphim Initiative.
CRONOS.
527
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Posted - 2013.05.30 13:55:00 -
[1] - Quote
The balance of
- ISK availability
- player availability
- management stress
- victory spoils
is a hard one to get right. I'll list some issues to discuss here.
PROBLEM 1: skill versus planning
The fight between Orion and EoN shows to me, that a highly skilled alliance like EoN can easily mop the floor with a larger and supported entity. Likewise, the skilled groups are sitting too tight behind a scary appearance: "I don't want to fight those guys with my hard earned clones!" Because of the mechanics immensely favoring the 16 vs 16 victor, the average player is not going to ever be welcome in a PC match. This is a core problem that may keep the PC sandbox from ever growing in conjunction with the next issue.
PROBLEM 2: player taxing and retention
The PC is a grind. Every day, every night, players need to do the same thing over and over again. Leaders need to pull the players in over and over again. Especially combined with losses, this grind burns players out of PC. This further adds into the spoils of the victor on the morale front. Dust cannot afford its main feature - the sandbox - to struggle with player attrition. A part of the current constant pressure comes from over inflated ISK, IMHO.
PROBLEM 3: ISK availability
ISK abounds. It fuels the conflicts in PC. The availability of ISK causes PC fights to be constant and the stress on players, especially leadership, to be extreme. If ISK generation was much less - say 25% of what we currently have - PC campaigns would not be a war of player attrition, but a war of economic attrition. Attacks would be much more planned, and economic warfare would play a more significant role. This would even give an edge to numbers versus skill - I think it would be good for the sandbox to allow average players in due to the ISK earnings of large numbers.
PROBLEM 4: Sandbox division and overexpansive alliances
The sandbox was divided into megablocks. Corporations are holding at average 5-10 districts off the top of my head. This was a natural outcome of the mechanics, and this will not change with time. The same blocks will go in and out of land, but will always hold the majority of districts divided into few entities. Partial reason to this are the isk generation mechanics incentivizing big land ownership. Now here's a suggestion: economic governance costs and diminishing returns from land ownership. Civilization IV does a very good job of governing over expansion by making it cost too much in maintenance, exponentially increasing the more land you take. This mechanic should be in Dust.
Discuss the balance of these factors from the point of view of the sandbox. Bias is always easy to have: Negative-Feedback would naturally favor a system that grants the victor with all possible spoils. CRONOS would favor a removal of Genolution packs in any form due to our defensive positions. Be objective! What would really benefit the sandbox? What would make Dust514 flourish? All input is valuable.
The current implementation of the sandbox won't be sufficient for Dust to survive until the end of the year. Player made stories and functional PC is the only chance of Dust living on.
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