The Gods Must be Crazy!

[Donari Tyndale]

  Finally something to stabilize the economy, the rate of inflation was terrible. I do hope that this change will make people more creative, so that new ways of gaining money will show up. I am tired of those "WS 11 gold", "Selling 20 steel stock".
To those that complain about getting less ores out of the ground: Don't worry. Your money will be worth more, so not much will change for you. Except if you are spending your time training 24/7....but hey, this game is not all about levelling.

[Waylander]

Huh. Millions of mommies and daddies must love each other very much to create -that- many baddies. Creatures, I can see. The crystal creates a high rate of reproduction and extreme growth. But humanoids? Though... I guess they just come back from the dead too, don't they? But... then how can you loot them, and they return with a full supply of goodies...

They get out of the DR and then adventure for a bit then go back to their spawn point.  It's a constant cycle

[bilbous]

Either that or stop off at the "thieves guild" to resupply with whatever equipment might happen to be available on their way back to their post.

[Jeraphon]

No, I think UtM has a point. And I think we should be addressing it.

In the name of realism, settings is now in discussions as to whether to change the spawn rate of all "humanoids" to once per hour, or possibly longer, and I must say, the talks have been pretty positive. Sure it'll cause scrambles in the arena until all the NPCs there're dead, so people can get the loot of their bodies, and sources of income will be decreased (at least from player-to-npc merchant)...but hey! That's realism for you.

We'll keep you posted.

[neko kyouran]

a future game design idea then. 

for the glads in the arena, since you can talk to them and what not, it would make sense long term wise that the character must first talk to them to engage them in combat, and it acts somewhat as a duel thing.  and long term, perhaps the glad doesn't die if they lose and then upon winning, the character receives a little prize thing for besting them.  could go hand in hand with the long term but everyone wanted duel system that doesn't have the character die upon a loss.

thugs, bandits, angry critters in the wild and whatnot, would just be fight to the death as the are the more barbaric/ shady mobs. 

[Roderyck Slywolfe]

MOBs respawning once an hour is the WORST idea I've ever heard. If that is implemented, you can certainly count me out of playing PS. 

[steuben]

MOBs respawning once an hour is the WORST idea I've ever heard. If that is implemented, you can certainly count me out of playing PS. 

why? there is so much more to ps then hunting critters. there are quests, crafts, and actually talking with other players. i for one welcome our new hour long to spawn overloads.

[Roderyck Slywolfe]

It's simple. With any forethought, anyone would see that the number of players will be increasing. Imagine trying to get those last few PP to rank up and not being able to be the ONE player to able to attack a MOB. Then having to travel to the next MOB spawn point only to have it not be there, etc, etc.

If PS is at all successful in the future, MOB killing will be absolutely POINTLESS, as they will all be gone before you have a chance to get there.

Trust me on this one...DO NOT be concerned about realism as much as fun. I have designed many a roleplaying game in my day. My biggest mistake was making it too realistic at the expense of fun.

[steuben]

Trust me on this one...DO NOT be concerned about realism as much as fun. I have designed many a roleplaying game in my day. My biggest mistake was making it too realistic at the expense of fun.

really. then maybe it is time to step forward and be counted. http://www.planeshift.it/recruitment.html

[ShadowKat]

In the name of realism, settings is now in discussions as to whether to change the spawn rate of all "humanoids" to once per hour, or possibly longer, .....

    

holy crap! realism or no ... that has got to be one of the worst things I can think of to happen.  I can name several different spots right now where people are standing several deep waiting to get their shot at killing "the bad guy".  you change it to a "once an hour" deal and you'll have so many people standing around with their thumbs up their butt they'll eventually stop playing PS all together.

DO NOT ... I repeat ... DO NOT implement that. 

From table top game to electronic game ... if you don't give people enough bad guys, you'll bore them to tears and they'll lose interest.

yeah yeah ... I know there's plenty of other things to do.  But the fact remains that there are a large portion of RPGers that love the hack-n-slash.  Even if it's just for a sitting or two because they're trying for something specific ... ya gotta keep the hack.

[Jeraphon]

DO NOT ... I repeat ... DO NOT implement that. 

What are you, a powerleveler? Come on, people clearly want realism to reign supreme in PS.

Under the moon, back me up on this one.

[ShadowKat]

What are you, a powerleveler? Come on, people clearly want realism to reign supreme in PS.

good lord no I'm not a powerleveler!  If I were I wouldn't have spent the last 11 hours playing PS when for 8 of those hours you couldn't fight anything.

my point is that you've already got people that are standing knee deep waiting for a chance to kill something.  you implement an hour regen time and you're gonna kill a good chunk of your player base.  you want them to do other things, want them to become crafters, miners, magicians, priests, herbalists, etc etc etc ... how exactly do you propose they get the money to pay for training (which is gawd-awful expensive) if they have to wait hours and hours for the hopes of getting something off a dead bad guy?  and please, don't tell me they can go mine something.  if you're working your PC towards being a priest or a wizard or any other "bookish" "class" ... you certainly aren't going to have the skill necessary to go dig ore.  fighting is something that can be done irregardless of the number of skill points you put towards it.

and for the record ... the reason I was able to play all day with this particular character is because I'm working this one towards being a miner/smith/crafter.  had it been one of my other two, I would've been SOL today.

[bilbous]

Perhaps instead of a once per hour respawn rate make it that you may not attack the same mob twice in a row. I think, however, if you are going to make the respawn rate once per hour you might as well scrap the progression system as no-one will be progressing in combat anyways. A better solution might be to have half a dozen spawn points for any given mob and then have them randomly appear at a different one from where they last died. That way you could at least pretend they are different individuals and combat progression would not be crippled as badly.

So are you going to limit the amount of money npc's have to spend on buying things from players? I mean if Harnquist is rich enough to buy all the gold that can be delivered to him how come his shack is such a hole? Why does he not have a dozen apprentices doing his work for him and where does he keep all his product? Someone with enough money could fill the plaza with picks, a million tria would buy 10,000, where Harnie would get them is another story.

Why do I get the feeling Jeraphon has tongue firmly in cheek?

[Donari Tyndale]

Another great thing! I'd love it if the mobs weren't spawned every few seconds, first of all it increases the realism of PS and, more important, shows people there's more then levelling.

[Fethrin]

I stood for 15 mins by Percival to see how many Elves popped in. 3 came in, in 15 mins. That's just elves.
Lets say of all species just for the sake of argument that 100 a DAY come into the game.
That's only 3650 a year. That's still quite a lot of players.
Saturday afternoon in the UK, dads asleep in front of the telly, mums doing dinner, kids upstairs playing games. Peak time for gamers.

How many were playing PS online?
103

out of possibly 3 million gamers in the UK, a similar number in France, probably more in Germany - and I have no idea of the population of the States.

103

People like the game, but they hate being messed around.

The guy down my local shop asked me the other week what game I was playing now. I told him PS.

Can you guess what he said?
Yup. He said it's too frustrating because it doesn't work.
Last time he played it was a year ago.

Not much has changed.

If an engine isn't broken. Don't fix it!
Set aside times, just out of courtesy, for maintenance & upgrades. Make only small changes.
And at least think about the players rather than just development.