Total Character Wipe

Citan never actually responded to the storage thing:) All I know is that he has plans to improve it and in more recent blogs I saw there will be improvements.

"Please note, this is subject to change as we progress through development" - also this. Exactly what I said, the part about keeping characters skills is subject to change (see level 1 cows naked on Anagoge) so starting a thread based on the assumption he intends to keep ALL the skills and complaining it's unfair is only that, an assumption and a whole "unfair" scenario based on a decision that is not final.
In all the threads I made about storage you will never find me saying "X Y and Z players have been playing way longer than me, they have more storage therefor you should wipe all our storage so we can all start fresh". I am critical of the storage system, yup, but for all I know all the storage and favor could be wiped anyway so why care about what others have?
Of course people are free to give their opinion but they should be able to accept other opinions without resorting to personal attacks.
I mean everyone is entitled to their opinion but in the interest of a civil conversation (and for the sake of giving actual feedback) make it about the game and not about other players. When one stops bringing logic to the table and discussing a game feature and instead starts spewing insults towards other players there's when we stop having a civil conversation.


P.S. to understand better what I mean about a change of tone, check pages 3 and 4 of this thread. "This reallllly sucks, that is garbage" are not really valid arguments.:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

There will be *something* that "all" the alpha players got easily that will be made hard.

Most things actually got easier as the development progressed I find. We get a lot more materials in general these days, more mobs implemented that drop materials, more stuff to gather and the WO really help with buying skills. More zones, larger dungeons, way more gear drops. We have never had dungeons that had so much in the way of drops as Lab and GK (which are relatively newly added). Cotton yields extra harvest, stomachs are really not that rare anymore, we got music buffs and dancing buffs now, fire mats drop a lot better etc. (that's why I'm baffled when people say "stomachs are stupid rare, that's broken" because they drop so much better than before).
Overall I find it's way easier to progress now than a year ago for sure,I started a new character with completely new skillsets and even with the reduced exp rate she had a less harsh upbringing. It's easy to imagine older players had some sort of advantage in the past (because newer players don't have anything to compare with) but judging by the majority of my game friends the only advantage is understanding how the game works better than new players.

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bat poop is easy to get now...

If they don't do a full character wipe (except names) then I think they should offer a new server. Not doing a full character wipe is probably the only decision they've made that I would say is really bad. They've sort of dug a hole for themselves by essentially promising it in all but the most dire circumstances.

A benefit of existing characters with powers is that it fleshes out the world in a more realistic way for a role playing game. It's a much more organic way for an RPG to be populated with characters of varying power levels. From that perspective I think it's a rather clever approach to that dilemma.

On the other hand this is a very community centered MMO and the importance of community to should take preference to the RPG, not much but it is the defining factor in reference to other RPGs. It's been my experience that not fully wiping is more detrimental than not.

It depends on what type of community you want to create as a foundation really. Do you want to create a community with a stratified social structure, or are you okay with that? It can create strong social bonds, but it can also create an atmosphere where newer comers are always treated that way. In the end I think that hampers inclusive adoption.

The other reason I have is that not wiping, keeping testing progress, goes directly against the spirit of the testing outline. If anyone read the "Testing" thread a common theme in that is not to play the game as if it were released and yet the core of character progression is already in release state. It's not consistent.

But in the end it's their decision and I'll roll with it because it's not that big of a deal. If I were making a game (the DM) then I would be making the rules. I'm not the DM so I'll take the rules as they come and it will be okay.

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Originally Posted by chill

I'll just throw out a "middle-ground/compromise" idea that popped in my head to add to the discussion, and of course I have no clue if it's actually technically feasible at all.

1) Do a wipe, but save and backup everybody's skill levels/progress right before the wipe.
2) Launch
3) After X amount of time (a few days, a week, a month, whatever), let everyone jump ahead and return back to their old state skill-wise if they want to.

Result: Everyone starts out fresh and everything is rolled back to create a new server experience for new people, but *eventually* alpha testers get their progress back. Vets can choose to play along with everyone or I imagine some would sit out and just wait.

P.S. I'm against a full wipe. I think people are definitely exaggerating how many people won't play without a fresh server. It reminds of Asheron's Call when the new server Verdantine was introduced ... everyone claimed they would come back to the game only if there was a new server where everyone was equal. They introduced the server. Then a few weeks/months later everyone went back to their old servers and this new server was empty. It's a short term problem but wiping everyone's progress is a major and permanent action.

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What if the folks that chose to "reset" got an optional title? Like in Call of Duty where players can reset to level 0, after getting max level, for "prestige"

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"They've sort of dug a hole for themselves by essentially promising it in all but the most dire circumstances."

I'd like to detail this for people who are fairly new. Note that by comparison I'm new next to others.

Imagine an indie game developer who started creating a game. There are no money to develop it fast and do a launch, no money to buy an expensive graphic engine, no money to hire more developers, no money for testing (not sure these days but a while ago testers were paid). All you have is probably some family members and enthusiastic friends who want to test it.

What do you do then. You make it free to play, call it "alpha" and see if people are actually interested in it. This way you get to test your game in all its aspects. See how the servers behave, identify bugs, identify balance issues etc. However if you tell these testers "dude I'm gonna wipe your char few times" they might not play/test consistently. It would be impossible to keep people motivated to play for years knowing that's ONLY to help test the game. You have to understand there are many free to play games (not all bad) and there's competition. So knowing that their characters would be wiped people would only pop once in a blue moon to check out game features added. Then they leave again. Some do that even now.

So how do you motivate players/testers to stick with it for 2,3,4,5 years. I agree it's fun but it's also aggravating in some aspects. Playing a finished game doesn't involve 50 % of a player's time sunk in non-working features, testing bugs or helping others. Honestly, let's say it was a finished game I was playing, it was buy to play and subscription based. I would never put up with so many non-working features in a finished game, I'd complain to customer service and cancel my subscription.

My point is the "your reward for testing was the fun you had" doesn't really stand , realistically speaking. It was not all fun, it takes a lot of time to actually write reports, make suggestions etc. I won't go into that again. Things that you wouldn't bother to do in a finished free to play game. So again, from the developer's perspective, how do you keep people involved and motivated? Offering older players perks after launch would be unfair , what else can you offer them for being loyal and sticking with your game? Exactly what Citan offered (in theory) - the hope that not everything will be wiped so people have an incentive to keep logging every day even when they get frustrated with not-working features, bad UI or crappy graphics.

Not sure it all made sense but short story - I think that's the only way for Citan to create and retain the player base we currently have. At some point the average of people online was 10, you can't have a kickstarter with 10-20 people so how do you market it? Exactly how he did imo.

About this wipe at launch potentially not attracting new people. The kickstarter campaign and indiegogo numbers brought around 1k contributing players (maybe more, I don't have the precise count). As a developer what do you do? Risk alienating these existing customers in the hope that you get new ones? Or go the safe route, try to keep these 1,000 people and risk losing 50-100 people who would maybe buy it off Steam (I have my doubts many would, most people here are either former AC players or nostalgics of the genre so to pay 40 bucks on something untested that has pretty old graphics is hard to believe many would).

Although many might think this is selfish reasoning (cause I want to keep my chars) I'm just using facts and logic. Not from my point of view but thinking of the financial reasons above everything else. I don't think many think of this but the dev has to pay for the servers even, bandwidth etc, how much could he stretch 100 k or less (from ks and indiegogo). How would he even support a legacy server with about 50 people on it. He'd have to put up a 100 monthly sub to even keep the server.

Just my thoughts on the topic anyway. After all it's not about what we want but about what would keep this game going and profitable for the future. To me the answer is - you got 1k paying players already, do what you can to keep them and keep them interested.

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Originally Posted by chill

That's an interesting one. But I don't know if just a title would compel someone to voluntarily roll back hundreds or thousands of hours of progress

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CoD had like 9 levels of prestige and some people made it all the way to the end...

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

You have to understand there are many free to play games (not all bad) and there's competition.

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Many of them are PvP. When I looked for a PvE game that was new, P:G was the only one I could find. Granted, I didn't *really* look, but still.

Neverwinter is PvE and it seems it's still in top, the graphics were a bit better but it didn't catch me, PoE is another f2p decent game with optional PvP. I joined PG after I saw the old TheHiveLeader's video, it just looked funny but many older players seem to be here due to playing AC or EQ. There are alternatives anyway, many people are actually put off by the fact that there's no PvP (I was anyway and I see that question popping very often, much more often than the wipe question).
It's beside the point anyway, the point was that Citan didn't have many options to keep us playing PG instead of Rift, Archeage, PoE, FF etc . Many would call these games cash shop trash but it's a matter of taste you know, when you have to choose between a finished game and an unfinished one any perk counts and honestly I don't think I'd play daily anymore if I knew there was a wipe at the end of it. I'd most likely still play sometimes but not as active. I don't know if most would do the same, just personal choice here.

edit - Not intending a debate about other games, I only mentioned them as examples.