AfterWorld Survival Forum

I am finding it difficult to work out how to answer these important questions.

Q. Where can I find <creature>?
A. These have not been finalized. Information available (partial).

Q. Which creature drops <loot name>?
A. Loot has been redistributed between creatures. Information is not available.

Q. What is the loot drop rate of <loot name> (for <creature>)?
A. Loot rate has been changed. Information is not available.

I cannot foresee the required information being available within the next 12 months.
As a result, I suspect that new players will find themselves in a position where they are unable to find satisfactory information about where to go to get what they need.

The result is  a catch-22 situation: need lots of players to get information, however to get information you need lots of players.
I do not believe there are sufficient number of experienced players to gather and share the information required.

I still remember the challenges I encountered all those years ago when I first started as a newcomer ... and that was with the wiki being reasonably up-to-date.


There is less incentive to update the wiki in the new world.
It will be more profitable to keep things secret and milk it until the knowledge becomes public domain.
Hence, newcomers to  intermediate players will face a lack of information (or at least contradictory information) for at least 12 months.


As for players ...
Currently the player base looks like this (vertical=population, horizontal=skill level)



However, the game are usually designed for a player populations like this (vertical=population, horizontal=skill level)



If I am reading Anti's comments right, everything is balanced require higher level players to trade with lower level players to achieve goals. This requires a reasonably high retention rate of beginner / intermediate players (i.e. new players need to find the game exciting enough to progress from beginner player to intermediate player).
Putting large barriers in front of new players progress from the start results in a low retention rate. Hence why games start their game play on the you-cannot-lose level to hook in the players and then ramp up the difficulty level quickly.


I currently do not see the right-skewed chart easily transforming into the left-skewed chart, especially as there will be no newcomers to start with ... resulting in the game needing to be balanced to allow the current player base to exist with no/few new players and gradually rebalanced.

The old player base has some anxiety about losing the thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars they put into the game with assurances from Devs along the way of two things, your skills and assets will never be wiped, and it will be an RCE withdrawal game eventually.

Its understandable people get nervous about this not happening, it is human nature, and under the circumstances its quite understandable.
The threat of a global wipe will be people's worst nightmare in many cases, and would feel like a betrayal.
It is hard not to be anxious, when you're anxious.

Zen

Quote from: Anti "Ether" Danilevski on December 12, 2014, 10:28:04 am

1. Global wipe

Make Players afraid in hope there are quiet?

Do it ... it will not change anything in an un-
playable Game.



Greetings - Zwarky

If stuff keeps going away from inventory isnt that a wipe just slowly ?

I don`t get it why devs can`t see that right now all things what are link to futures updates is only is chasing someone's dreams. With each update game progres going down not because bugs and other alternately in game but because playerers are ar leaving game. Game can`t exist if no one is playing it.
 
Why in future developin game plans prioritates are things like graphics and gameplay sistem  but not things what we always wanted and asked so many times. Is it new loot sistem will somehow increases player numbers in game? When at same time there are nothing new added in game and only cuting old things what we could do in game. In my eyes devs do too much mistakes with anything what are link to new updates.

Will new loot sistem solve simple problems like huting. Is it better better put in first priorities thing that are reducing player number in game and then hope that someday they will comeback or join new one`s. This game have 7 year history and its not just game history its also dev history as well. You just can`t erese history its just not possible if you fail now and in future hope that no one will remember that you are totaly wrong. So maybe its time for give us what we want and not chasing someone's dreams.

 Is it so hard to reduce mob levels or added old kind mobs back. We are asking for E-95 like 2 years and nothing still nothing. Asking for new kind gear and still nothing. Is it better better put in first priorities things like new change in gameplay and then fix old one and then when its too late hoping that things will be better. Global wipe will make game somehow  playable? And no one will remember previous history developing team and its made choices of developing game it?

Speaking about wiki it would be funny to see that you can loot 1gr from one mob kill and to make heal kit you need more then 1000gr loot from mobs. Its kinda spooky to see it at wiki. And Is that rebalaning in loot sistem?

Actually, go ahead .. experiment somewhat ... back up the current database - then WIPE all current players inventory and skills. Give each of the current player base only the beginner items you plan to give to new players. Watch the result ... even with all players accepting the challenge, and utilizing all that 'knowledge advantage', the game play will grind to a halt as the player find they need "player level 3" resources and all players are "player level 1" so cannot obtain these.
This experiment shouldn't take long, a month at the most should show how 'Survivable' the game is. Dedicated Logic can restore the database afterwards.

this why to avoid some experiments like this one, in many games the new playerbase who start the game have mentoring assistance, and the mentoring has his reward beside the knowledge those new players gain, is a small reward at the end for each of the sides involved, this way the societies or corporations grow, find alliance's, discover things, and some keep the secrets they discover, it's called dynamic gaming.

we did this even if the game didn't had a mechanism for this kind of activity, we all did mentoring in AWS, giving from free picks/items to free tips how to skill or how to gather stuffs, and I don't see a problem when 1000 players join the game, only to have a balanced game + tutorial fixed and I m sure all will be just fine whit ...even whit 1k newcomers
I start to grow an avatar for test and I intend to use all my knowledge I gathered all those years  ( like a mentor and his trainee) and I failed when I was bugged and find misled in NU instead to be in tutorial, so I delayed this until all the things r in place. I had this thought just to prove something here, all data will be revealed from picking to hunting and skilling avoids, even for crafting I have a plan how to grow in 3-4 months to medium crafter
 
regarding the new things we have to discover, well I m sure afterwiki will have those info eventually, so not sure if there's an issue for this.


I just wait for the game to be fixed, and I have some really good tips for those who want to start.

But we have veteran players who got used to the game and who benefit from their knowledge of the game. Furthermore, this knowledge gives them huge advantage against new players that are going to come/return.

Anti do u think the veterans have time to go kill ruds? or slugs? or pick for NU stones? I doubt that, so is in our advantage to share the knowledge in order to have other low middle players to provide us those materials we don't have time or energy to gather ourselves, I even stopped to craft low lvl stuffs a long time ago, I don't have time for those, and I let other soc mates who are at beginning whit the craft to do them, so I m not worried about the huge gap between players once the newcomers start to craft hunt and provide the basic for them, will be hard for us to sell something, and I saw this before the update when were players around and some new crafters start to make picks and low guns/HK I couldn't sell mine so I stopped to advertise and let others sell

I concentrated myself on UG mining witch also a middle player who use an 210 scan can find lots of minerals/metals just enough to put me and Dale on hold...and that is the real economy who toke place in front of us. so from let say 100 possible players 3 provided green scan minerals/metals pretty enough to make me and dale to quit selling and just pile up stuffs in stacks, I think for 1000 players as jane suggested is not hard to find 25-30 more from the new ones if they grow in few months to that point where they can survive on their own.

So if the loot from mobs is well distributed and well balanced I believe the low to middle players are just fine to survive, and a low middle player in my opinion is a player who is whit the basic skills at a fair 15-25 stage in major skills, witch is not a big deal to achieve, 6-12 months of playing smart. and whit that the the so called " huge advantage " is reduced to not so huge,
..big boys whit the big toys and teens whit the medium or semipro ones.


maybe I m wrong somewhere, I wait to see how others see those thoughts.


cheers

basic gaming rule.  If you start everyone in a wipe the game will take much longer to achieve new players then a game with working and mentoring ubas.  I have seen it before I have watched games die because the ubas started over and didn't have the stock or skill to keep the players happy.  the nubas need the ubas to progress.  I am playing a game that is about to go thru its last wipe in alpha.  everyone starts from scratch.  They expect 6 months for the players to get to a good level which for them means the game will be gold in 12 months.  For them wipe is not to level the game its simple to get rid of the testing shite people have in stores.  Also this dev team seems to be able to handle the stats they will game from the wipe.

so I am not making demands or saying we will all leave in a wipe.  But since the game was past a wipe stage, and the only reason it is back to a wipe stage is because of bad code, that most of the players will not put in the 4-5 years work to get to the stage that allows us to maintain the playerbase in supplys.  How many free pics and guns and hk have we all given out?  1000s.  Why cause we understood we needed new players and we gave our awd for free to bring the new players in.

This isn't a F2P or P2W game.  this is a donate to play game (D2P I created a new name).  wiping the skill, items and knowledge simply removes the D2P and sells the game as we screwed the first set of players... please play.

I find it simple.  Fix the game  you might get 50% of the players back.  wipe.  You might get 10%.   I know no game that restarting their playerbase has ever survived the bad press they created.  Ask Trion they are in the middle of such playerbase wipe.