fat reply - Change regarding the creature recruiting cost

[Muratus del Mur]

I am plannign a change regarding the creature recruiting cost. I intend to make cost as a percentage of your total Wi/Ve , not as fixed value.

The first one to change is Wi, it will cost like 10 to 70% of your max Wi, like this recruiting costs differently based on player, and is more adapted to how this resource works (it regenerated over time).

If you have anything to say about this, write here and i will consider it, and delay or change this as needed, otherwise i will do the change as soon as i have some time for it.

[Syrian]

i think the problem with this is that it removes the idea of progression, and actually makes having low Wi much better. if it's going to for eg, cost 10% to get an aramor, theres no sense of it becoming an easier process as you get stronger.

 

but let's also say that some creatures use more Wi than you have currently. there are two options: 1 make it a % over 100, so for eg, 150%. or cap it at 100%

the first option would mean that having LOW wi would be more beneficial, because you need to gain less to reacgh 150% , 10,000 > 15,000 means only needing 5k instead of 100,000 > 150,000  needing 50000. this would mean as you get "stronger" and should have an easier time in the world, you actually have a *harder* time

 

if we go with the second option, that would mean that theres no sense of progression and working towards those goals, there would be no reason to fight or train to reach the things beyond you, because everything is attainable with the default amount

[Chewett]

9 minutes ago, Muratus del Mur said:

The first one to change is Wi, it will cost like 10 to 70% of your max Wi, like this recruiting costs differently based on player, and is more adapted to how this resource works (it regenerated over time).

Some creatures in the game are set at rather high values to ensure that they require planning to achieve the totals needed to recruit them.

I wont name the specific creatures, or the numbers (you can ask me for them if you want Mur, but publicly its a spoiler) but its roughly:

 

Action points XXXX needed (four digits)

Value points XXXXX needed (five digits)

Sacrificed vitality XXXXX needed (five digits)

Exploring Points 4 needed (Literally just four )

 

How would these changes factor into those creatures?

 

[Muratus del Mur]

I was refering to percentage from your MAX Wi/Ve (not talking about exploring points yet, i will get to those eventually)

I think the solution would be then, to keep current prices as they are , PLUS a percentage of your total . The percentage can be 30% default to all, so you could recruit just 3 assuming you are at full stats when you start. If you have stats in the range of 7 digits, the crit cost makes no sense anymore, but percentage will.

so

lets say crit x costs now 1000Wi and 2000Ve

If you have WiMax 3000 and VeMax 5000, you could recruit 2 creatures before needing to do something about restoring those stats.

If you have millions, it no longer matter anyway. The change is supposed to make it less trivial to do this, but still fully possible and relatively easy.

If crit x would cost 1000Wi+30% , it would cost someone with 3000WiMax (1000+3000*0.3)=2000, and this value would keep its challenging factor for much higher max stats, while remaining still easy to achieve.

 

What do you say?

[Ungod]

The way it (still) is, the player had to do some efforts to get to some bare minimum values in order to progress. With percentage costs, that effort disappears, so keeping a fixed value apart from percentage would be a way to maintain it - if we consider this approach for new players useful.

'Farming' would be a bit harder with percentage values instead of fixed ones, but vitality is not that hard to regenerate. The (ex) value points were always the problem, though. You could get to -1mil VP from a fight with someone and it would take weeks to get it back to 0. If we had some way to regenerate WI easier, the percentage wouldn't bother us much. Then again, how do you increase world inertia?

[Syrian]

i think a % can work if you making it a scaling percentage. so as you increase your max WI you can recruit a higher number of creatures. maybe that 30% would go down to 25, then 20, then 15, then 10, so it still rewards stat progression.

if you have millions of WI to start with, making it a flat 30% is just going to feel punishing for having put in all that effort to get there and remove all sense of acheivement for putting in the grind. if it's 30% plus a flat number, then you can only ever recruit 3 creatures , however, if you have mililons of WI, it's going to take you MUCH longer to regenerate that 30% to be able to recruit another, than say a newbie with barely any. the solution to that would be to make WI regerenate as a % , but then again, then tha tjust removes the point of farming WI to begin with, and it might as well be the same fixed value for everyone

[Ungod]

5 minutes ago, Syrian said:

if you have mililons of WI, it's going to take you MUCH longer to regenerate that 30% to be able to recruit another, than say a newbie with barely any

So the vets will beg for newbs to recruit crits for them. Power to the people! (the new people)

yea, regenerating WI as a % might not be the way

[Syrian]

8 minutes ago, Ungod said:

So the vets will beg for newbs to recruit crits for them. Power to the people! (the new people)

yea, regenerating WI as a % might not be the way

or get friends to reroll alts to do it for them

[Shemhazaj]

52 minutes ago, Muratus del Mur said:

If crit x would cost 1000Wi+30% , it would cost someone with 3000WiMax (1000+3000*0.3)=2000, and this value would keep its challenging factor for much higher max stats, while remaining still easy to achieve.

What do you say?

 

if you can actually make it relatively easy to achieve for those who have high Wi I think it's a good idea,
but at this form, in my case 1000Wi+30% would make more or less 140k.
It'd require more than just walking to gain it back, especially with so few people training in a manner that'd give high Wi.

Plus it'd be especially hurtful if one realised that all shop credits spent on items that increase Wi were actually buying a disadvantage

[Chewett]

2 hours ago, Muratus del Mur said:

If crit x would cost 1000Wi+30% , it would cost someone with 3000WiMax (1000+3000*0.3)=2000, and this value would keep its challenging factor for much higher max stats, while remaining still easy to achieve.

Fixed + Percentage is certainly a step in the right direction. I would be a little concerned about those with high values given that current combat mechanics give a "fixed" amount of Value points and vit you can get (based on the current maths and general stat trends)

[Chewett]

1 hour ago, Syrian said:

or get friends to reroll alts to do it for them

Probably very likely...

[Ledah]

If you want to do a % value, which I think is a bad idea, add a hard cap like some of the shop items give. So either 1000 + 50% or 25,000 total. I don't think it is a good idea though, balancing on percentages is impossible, check out any looter shooter....

[Muratus del Mur]

You have some very valid points, i might change my mind about the change. However i would still like to fix the original issue that made me want this change, maybe you have ideas how to.

The creature prices for old players are meaningless, this allows absurdly easy farming of crits. Filling your creature slots should be increasingly difficult, not easier. The advantage given by Wi and more creature slots should mean you can grow more crits, but not faster or at basically zero cost. 

The way it is now, it takes away the challenge, and creates exponentially faster growing creature farms, so to speak. 

[Mallos]

You could add an exploring point cost to recruiting all creatures. I get maybe 100 points to spend in a day, so if recruiting took 5 or 10 points each time I could get 2-4 creatures immediately or 10-20 creatures across the day. This will be much more limiting than creature recruitment currently, VE and VP values can be gained easily through fighting in good circumstances, this will not change with percentage value costs as multiple fights can get you back to 100%.

Yes an issue is that people can stack up 30+ trees a day and train them/sacrifice, get 60 more for the next two days and be able to get wins for all of them if there is enough people around.

[Syrian]

14 hours ago, Muratus del Mur said:

You have some very valid points, i might change my mind about the change. However i would still like to fix the original issue that made me want this change, maybe you have ideas how to.

The creature prices for old players are meaningless, this allows absurdly easy farming of crits. Filling your creature slots should be increasingly difficult, not easier. The advantage given by Wi and more creature slots should mean you can grow more crits, but not faster or at basically zero cost. 

The way it is now, it takes away the challenge, and creates exponentially faster growing creature farms, so to speak. 

add a scaling percentage recruitment modifier to the current recruit cost based on how many creatures that player already owns. so for eg,

0-14 creatures = 100%

15-29 creatures = 120

30-49 creatures = 140

50-79 creatures = 160,

80-139 creatures = 180%

140+ creatures = 200%

 

so have each "bracket" of creature cost, have more creatures allowed than the previous, and eventually cap it out.  when you consider how much the rarer creatures cos,t having a ton of creatures is going to be very punishing and promote more planning.  the numbers i suggested arn't really something i would think to suggest, just an example to show the kind of scaling i had in mind.

 

each "type" of creature can also have a different modifier, so shades maybe don't get much more expensive, but an aramor would get much more expensive very quickly, up to maybe, say, 500%.  creatures targetting at early new players or new accounts would have a much moer punishing modifier, whereas the creatures intended to be "late game" would have a much less of a modifier

Edited January 22, 2020 by Syrian

[Shemhazaj]

19 minutes ago, Syrian said:

add a scaling percentage recruitment modifier to the current recruit cost based on how many creatures that player already owns. so for eg,

0-14 creatures = 100%

15-29 creatures = 120

30-49 creatures = 140

50-79 creatures = 160,

80-139 creatures = 180%

140+ creatures = 200%

 

 

Perhaps rather than total crits count the scaling would be set to count of a specific crit type.
For example if I have 40 Walking Trees and just 1 Chaos Archer the cost of recruiting another tree would be significantly affected while archers still remained low cost.
Ofc, the % scaling could be higher in such case.

That way collecting different types of creatures wouldn't be affecting recruiting, while farming would indeed be lot harder to do. Especially if the scaling referred to % of player's max Wi. Even to a point where binding another creature of a specific type could cost over 100% of one's max Wi.

Edited January 22, 2020 by Shemhazaj

[MaGoHi]

my first thought was NO, my second thought was if you want to restrict creature recruiting you need to make it very complex, shems idea seems the most reasonable, but i still think it needs more detail and that it has to be thought through VERY well, chew raised a very valid point as well.

i dont want to see any half assed solutions.

[Aia del Mana]

14 hours ago, Shemhazaj said:

 

Perhaps rather than total crits count the scaling would be set to count of a specific crit type.
For example if I have 40 Walking Trees and just 1 Chaos Archer the cost of recruiting another tree would be significantly affected while archers still remained low cost.
Ofc, the % scaling could be higher in such case.

That way collecting different types of creatures wouldn't be affecting recruiting, while farming would indeed be lot harder to do. Especially if the scaling referred to % of player's max Wi. Even to a point where binding another creature of a specific type could cost over 100% of one's max Wi.

A simple mathematical method of scaling would be to make the WInertia required simply scale with the power of the number of creatures of that species already possessed.

 

If one should set the modifier such that WInertia required = 1.2^x, where X were the pre-existing number already possessed by that player, this should allow for very significant scaling, and diminishing returns on larger values of WInertia.

For example, if a creature were to cost 2000 base points, the second would cost 2400 - a slight increase; but the tenth would cost almost 12400 points, and the twentieth a little over 76000 points. Thus, increasing of these points were still of benefit, and more were always desirable, but one thinkst that she must vary of her ensemble.

[lashtal]

I must say I like both Shemhazaj and Aia's suggestions.

[Muratus del Mur]

I like this too, crit cost will be dependent on how many of that type you already have, you will have to pay the price for all similar creatures already in your inventory for each new crit you want to get of that type.

 

Thank you for your suggestions

[Demonic God]

A bit late to reply, and just adding a few comments on how the change happened from a perspective of a half-way player. I was a returning player, with stats so insignificant, which had then grown to a reasonable numbers through farming.

In short, the progress was painful at first, not to train, but to grow the necessary inventory slots and the prices of the more costly creatures.

I have but a single commentary on the process: You are not gated by the creature costs, other than early on. You are instead gated mostly by free slots, and the efforts required to train these crits.

The changes struck me as odd: the result being far, far from intended. There could have been more, much more methods that isn't so terrible as one you had chosen. Let me be blunt: The change had little effect to long term players, who could proceed to farm as much as they are willing to spend the time to. Further down this reply, I shall demonstrate this effect with simple graphs illustrating my points. In short: this update effectively make training extremely unrewarding, boring, and bad for those without the stats to start recruiting.

Let me start by commenting on the intended purpose of these change: To gate the process through which a player gain new statistic. The intention is clear, but there's no sense of direction of how you wish to approach it, nor any efforts to envision what results you wanted.

First, the rates through which an account may grow its statistic. What should have been the question, is to ask how fast people are acquiring them, at which stage of the game they were, and then deeming it acceptable or not. The rates for Vit, more likely than not, correlate directly to how frequent one is, whereas Vp, how frequently does one bother to purchase eggs. While the number of eggs one can keep and grow their Vp could grow beyond reasonable, the rates one may grow their Vit is almost dependent on their efforts in the realm. Both of these, however, are linear, unlike those provided by the shop, which is exponential. A linear growth is the very least, desirable, and does not propels out of control. From then on, there should be a question of how fast this rate should be.

Second, the cost growth of recruiting, compared between Aia's measure, and the solution implemented by Mur. I shall provide two graphs, one of the individual acquisition cost, one of the total acquisition cost:

• Unit cost
• Accumulative cost

The unit cost shows that Mur's formula is outscaled by Aia's during the 16 crit range, while the cumulative cost is taken over at around 21. This implies that Aia's formula is far superior to the desired goal, which baffles me as to why the alternative was chosen.

However, this does not interfere with the fact that the cumulative cost to recruit a number of creatures is still a static number, a number which does little to gate those with far superior status, but a lot to deter those new to the realm, nor simply possess inferior numbers. Had it been the case where not only one's stats, but also their free slot, and their utilization of these free spots, to increase, which implies an exponential growth, the solution would be much deserved, but alas, it isn't. One may aim to grow 15-20 at a time, which then is simply the question of if they are able to reach the now elevated cost to acquire such creature in a single batch. What would happen, however, is the march toward such goal would become much, much slower. On top of which, if one choose to own a few of said creature for usage, would bump the starting cost even further, and the resulting final cost much, much further as well.

I must suggest that a proper goal to be set, and a carefully engineered solution be present. Directly related to the issue, perhaps it's the reward of each individual creature that should be tweaked to yield the desired outcome.

[Mallos]

I would like to point out that such features of growing costs for creatures would be easily avoided by asking someone to recruit them for you, transferring between each recruitment. edit Syrian also points this out

I don't think we should be making them cost more for each, as stated this really just affects players that have little stats to begin with. Also this is quite inconsequential if the values are not very high after each recruitment, what does it matter when max creatures in a ritual is 6 or less. Of course stat farming comes into play, but this is exactly in opposition to the main point you are trying to prevent. You want them to be able to stat farm less, although the stat farming will allow them to circumvent your restrictions.

A set limit of how many you can recruit in a time period is my solution as I have put earlier, maybe not the best idea but that's my opinion.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Mallos

[Tissy]

Actually I doubt the appropriateness of being rewarded from sacrificing  creatures trained by you and fighting for you. At least it shouldn't be rewarded fully positive things. 

I suggest a figure scaling the relationship between one and the creatures. (or maybe you could call it friendship or intimacy, I'm out of my words stock)

the longer you keep accompany with your creatures, this figure accumulate gradually. while sacrificing the creatures will reduce it drastically. And in the end, recruiting creatures requires that figure to show that you're not recruiting for sacrificing.(maybe yes, but it's better you keep it longer to calm it down)

[No one]

On 1/22/2020 at 4:35 AM, Muratus del Mur said:

You have some very valid points, i might change my mind about the change. However i would still like to fix the original issue that made me want this change, maybe you have ideas how to.

The creature prices for old players are meaningless, this allows absurdly easy farming of crits. Filling your creature slots should be increasingly difficult, not easier. The advantage given by Wi and more creature slots should mean you can grow more crits, but not faster or at basically zero cost. 

The way it is now, it takes away the challenge, and creates exponentially faster growing creature farms, so to speak. 

Why would stat farming be a problem ?

BTW, as this is a long forgotten topic, I can add some updates:
for my 22nd bird, it only asks me for 900 AP

 

[No one]

Some time later and this time only the 11th bird

 

On 1/22/2020 at 4:35 AM, Muratus del Mur said:

You have some very valid points, i might change my mind about the change. However i would still like to fix the original issue that made me want this change, maybe you have ideas how to.

The creature prices for old players are meaningless, this allows absurdly easy farming of crits. Filling your creature slots should be increasingly difficult, not easier. The advantage given by Wi and more creature slots should mean you can grow more crits, but not faster or at basically zero cost. 

The way it is now, it takes away the challenge, and creates exponentially faster growing creature farms, so to speak. 

Well, I would like to hear how others see this change now that this "update" is more then 2 years old.
But what I would like to know is how any of you is handling this change and how is the creature farming comming up for you?