Thoughts for the game

[Laceretti]

I've only been playing for a couple of weeks now. I have a couple tangible ideas and a few themes that I think would be beneficial to the game in the long run.

Themes:

1. MMO - MMO's are all about time sinks. It took me about a week to max my first city, and only 3-4 days to max my second city(would be faster when building works offline again ). There is still more to do and explore, but the "end game" was reached much too quickly. That being said, it wouldn't be fun to have 10day build times for the buildings either. I think there needs to be something in between the two to provide a reason to keep coming back.
2. City Management / Economy - There needs to be other reasons to have your city once it is built up. I know we are on the verge of city sieges, but I think you city needs to be more critical to your game play. Resources should continue to be important even after your city is built up.
3. Armies / Battles - There are some balance issues between the races and compositions. In general, large single unit type armies should be the weakest -- mixed armies are currently stronger but not stronger enough. Merc's cheapen the feeling of building an army when you can buy them fairly high level. Units shouldn't die in combat - people are scared to use their dragons or other expensive units which limits pvp. I hide all my level 10 units in my city just so I can't lose them...
4. Offline play / casual gamer - Most mmo's have created "rested" experience to help casual gamers keep up with the hardcore guys. There should still be a benefit for being "hardcore", but there should be more happening while you are offline to help you "keep up".
5. Breadth vs. Depth - The game has decent breadth in my opinion. My preference is that we have more to do with the current mechanics in the game, and then add more things to do over time. For example, 3 playable races is already a lot. I would rather do more with an existing race than to experience a new race.

Suggestions / Tangibles:
I'm not suggesting that all points be implemented, but there are a number of different options under each suggestion.

• Remove unit / upgrade caps - Required experience for each unit already gets larger each level. Upgrades should be similar (sword upgrade 1 - 300g/2wealth; sword upgrade 2 600g/6wealth; sword upgrade 3, 1200g/12wealth; etc). This would give the main city more purpose for the additional upgrades, and it will allow you to never actually cap out.
• Merc / Trainable units - Trainable units should be better. There really is no reason to build units after the early game. You can buy mercs, and money is extremely easy to come by. There are a couple of different options (there are a few threads on this already). I'm not suggesting to add all of these, but some combination of them.
  • Make trained units tougher than mercs of the same level - This seems to be somewhat popular, but I'm not a big fan as it is already confusing to add units to your army during a quest (which of the 6 level 9 archers to choose from are the mercs?).
  • Don't allow mercs to gain experience - This seems to be a fairly simple way to fix it. This would allow them to quickly fill a hole in an army, but over time you would want to replace the mercs.
  • Make mercs charge an ongoing gold rate - If you go the easy route with the mercs then you should have to pay more upkeep.
  • Cap unit levels for the mercs - along with removing the caps for the other units, I think this is probably the best option. This limits mercs in the end game without hampering their use early on.
• PVE / Quest modes - In general, the NPC armies are far too weak. When I enter a quest, I should be able to choose and easy/med/hard setting that give you additional rewards for each step up. Ideally when I go into the open world with my level 7-9 x60 army, I should be able to fight things around the same level. When used in conjunction with the scaling upgrades, you would need to start fighting harder battles in order to continue leveling your upgrades.
• Increased storage capacity of main city - When level 4 walls cost 500 stone/segment you will need a lot more storage than 5k...
• Training building - Train units locally instead of in the larger cities. You should be able to train them to any level instead of limiting it at 5, but obviously the costs should go up significantly for each additional level. It should always be faster to "farm" the exp than the training building, but this would allow the more casual gamers to keep up. For example, I can put a level 8 archer into training for 12 hours that will make him level 9, but it cost me 1500g. For level 10, it takes 16 hours and 2000g (not sure what numbers or elapsed time, but you get the point).
• Send resources home - Costs ~20% of the total resources being sent and takes time (30 minutes), but allow me to send resources back to my massive storage limit within my castle. Time spent running back and forth is not fun.
• Scenarios - Add various scenarios that are replayable but offer different challenges than just pure conquest.
  • PVE - Wave defense scenario - Defending a postion where more NPCs are spawned every X minutes of increasing difficulty and quantity. Your rewards are based upon how long you last and how many units you kill, etc.
  • PVE - Timed missions / sieges - Give increased rewards for seiging an NPC city based upon how quickly you take it or complete a specific object inside of the 'view' mode.
  • PVP - Objective Scenarios - Instead of only offering straight pvp, add other objectives along the way. Make different capture points that you have to hold. At the end of 10 minutes, the team with the most capture points wins the match, etc. Spread your army too thing and you will lose, but if you don't capture enough control points, you will also lose.
  • PVP - Battle Scenarios - Allow me to select to defend a positon or be the aggressor. The defender gets less reward, but has better odds, etc. Allow me to specify open field battles, etc.
• PvP General
  • PvP Queing - Add a queuing mechanic so I can queue for PVP matches. Along with the other PVP scenarios, this would allow me to PvP on my terms. For example, maybe I enjoy dending more, or I prefer the objective based scenarios. This would allow those who want to pvp a quicker access, and those who don't can ignore it. Let me queue my archer heavy army into keep defense queue, but I can put my balanced army into the conquest based queue. I can queue my siege/quest army into the attach a city queue, etc.
  • Grouping / Friends - Allow me to group up or find specific people to PvP with. Often in chat, people try to go to specific areas and randomly find each other. Let me hook up with my friends and play together.

Edit: I added a few more thoughts in there. I have more, but i'm trying to focus this thread on easier to accomplish items rather than big shifts in gameplay.

[Laceretti]

Reserved - If the thread gets larger, I would like to use this space to summarize others comments / ideas into a consolidated list.

[andreicde]

I disagree with the armies that shouldn't be lost. As long as it's not a dragon,losing the army barely affects you because you can easily train them back.Does it takes time?yes but it's achievable and easy. There is no reason why someone would be afraid to use their lvl 10.

Also the storage right now it's fine but I wouldn't mind buying some ''banks'' to store more resources.

[Alex Walz]

Some very interesting suggestions - especially the ability to send resources back to the homeland! I agree with all of them, and most require minimum work. I'll make sure that we toss some of these ideas around.

[Laceretti]

Originally Posted by andreicde

I disagree with the armies that shouldn't be lost. As long as it's not a dragon,losing the army barely affects you because you can easily train them back.Does it takes time?yes but it's achievable and easy.

I think that is part of the issue though. The units are extermely replacable (although some seem to level faster than others). There needs to be some feeling of accomplishment for building your army. If you had a level 25 archer that represents 3 weeks of gameplay, you wouldn't want to lose that unit in a battle. Perhaps 'dead' units are held for ransom and you have to pay a hefty fee to get them back / resurrect them. There should be some drawback for losing the unit, but it shouldn't be something that is insurmountable or cost you significant play time.

[GPS51]

Since level 10 is capped for units atm (not counting heroes) I too am hoping for ways to hang on to high lvl units and get special armor/titles/names for them and I'd support ransoming them back as well.

[Dreamwalker]

Seriously-good ideas! I especcially like the idea of constantly paying gold for merc upkeep; and sending resources back to the city sounds way better than having to run back and forth.

But yeah, if you have more thoughts, go ahead and post them!

[Oratory]

1. MMO's are not about having a time sink, but having a big playerbase, and being able to team up in large scale "events". But i do agree on what you say, building up your town should take longer.

2. Well citys are for training troops, it's a MMORTS, not a MMO-build-your-castle-and-manage-economy.

3. balance issues will get better and better as time goes. And mercs should honestly be removed. Units SHOULD die, thats where the RTS comes in, you have to use your units smart, if you dont want to loose something, dont get it, or have it in a "safe" place.

4. Due to buldings taking time to build, i find this game kinda casual as it is already. Casual players start a building, and logg off. Hardcore players start a building, spend some wealth to speed it up, and go for some PvP to get the wealth back.

5. All i can say is that i agree with you here

"Remove unit / upgrade caps"
Just no, this would make this game more of a hardcore game, instead of a skillbased game, or possibly just split up the playerbase more, as higher tech players would end up getting a even higher army strenght.

"Merc / Trainable units"
As i said above, i think that they should be removed. But your ideas about having an upkeep sounds good, aswell as them not being able to get exp.

"Increased storage capacity of main city"
i kinda like the low storage, this makes it so you have to store some resources on unsafe places. This is a PvP game afterall, nothing should be safe.

"Training building"
I dont even think you should be able to train them at all. Units should get stronger from battle experience.

"Send resources home"
This would just make the game "easier", if you want to get some of the resources to your town, get an escorted cart army to move home with it. If they get attacked they will, as i said before it's a pvp game.

"Scenarios"
I like the PvE ones, but ONLY if you loose the troops that you loose in the scenario.
This means, that in the wave defense scenario, you will be able to pull out troops, if you move them to a specific place on the map, so if you play smart you can save all your troops. And if you play bad, you might end up loosing some.
The first PvP one sounds good, but this should be a coop scenario tbh, where you play 2v2 or even higher.

"PvP General"
Grouping up will, afaik be added sooner or later. Getting the pvp lag and desyncs fixed before is of more importance though.