We all know of the planned major update for Factions, however Factions is an optional part of the system. Leading up to this addition is many improvements on the current system. Some have been released, such as the level server, which provides live updates to the informational menu in-game, so you can see your current XP, DP and more without needing to check the web page.
However, there are still more changes to be made. The current structure of the systems economy works somewhat like this:
PvP | PvE -> XP -> Level -> UP | Item | PDP
PDP -> Shop -> Item
Item -> Shop -> PDP
Shop -> SDP
Item | PDP | Cred -> Trade -> Item | PDP | Cred
UP -> Upgrades
PDP -> Transfer -> PDP
where PDP is Player DarkPoints and SDP is System DarkPoints. It would probably be better with a graphical representation but a text one is good enough. If I have covered everything here, you can see that there is somewhat a progression of actions -> currency -> pay system. The idea is that actions reward a player, the player then uses their rewards, and will then need to take more actions for more rewards. The current system is very limited and has few options.
Features to address the issues.
Market
The Market is a P2P system. It does not give to or take from players directly, it exists for sharing between them. However, transactions will have small fees. A player will buy space to sell items on the market. Any player will be able to view marketed items, as well as their list prices, and can instantly purchase, just like they would the current Shop. The Market will also come with Deeds (formerly Regions). Deeds are purchased from existing House Districts (/house), which replaces the House District with a Region. The Deeds to structures can be then traded, or sold on the market. Deeds will be blocked from being trashed, or sold to the system; doing so would essentially lock land permanently. To further avoid land being permanently locked by other means, Deeds will be taken from players inventories if that player has been inactive for a long time, and will be automatically listed on the market under the players name for the original price paid for the deed.
Real-Time
While the Market will never be used so much as to cause major de-sync of the market’s state without any real-time client-server interaction, the feature is still important. To avoid people attempting to purchase an item that was already sold, a real-time system will ensure the market changes are streamed in real-time to anyone on the page.
Real Estate
Pricing Land is important. People who choose to only build will be unable to obtain XP, and will therefore be unable to obtain DP as well. The Real Estate Deed’s will create a new function in the system. Remember that Housing Cap? well don’t forget that a Deed removes a housing district, which in turn allows you to create a new one. The new concept is that players will be limited to 1 housing district, and will be required to purchase Deeds to make more. The size of a district as well as the fee for obtaining a Deed will also be determined by a players Architect and Estate Agent Upgrade Level. The only thing missing so far is Experience. As shown above, XP is needed for Leveling, which is required for obtaining UP, Items and DP from the system. I did mention a fee for selling items on the market. The reason is because the market will reward XP to players who sell and buy. However, once an item is purchased from the market, it will be blacklisted from being resold on the market (by any player) for a limited amount of time. This is to stop people from simply buying an item from the market, then selling it to whomever was originally selling that item. The largest XP amount will be given out for selling a brand new Deed.
Dealing with scarce unclaimed land
Unlike PvP and PvE, land is not infinite. When it runs out, new builders will have a harder time starting in the system or well, finding a place to build. The builder haven is port 7778, the point of having it is for two reasons: To have a server with relatively low player counts, resulting in less server lag and client lag; To provide building space as the main server’s surface is locked. The only way to deal with space issues is to:
1: Reset the map
2: Open another server with a new map
3: Do some hacky stuff with the server to allow “Layers” of map for essentially endless map layers
1 means making current builders unhappy. They lose their Deeds and structures.
2 means purchasing more resources, which means requiring more donations.
3 means requiring some serious software development with maintainability.
Unfortunately, the only one that seems plausible at this state is 1. It is the least demanding and easiest task out of the 3. However, it will still be a managed process.
It should:
[ul]
[li]Be automated - This is important to ensure the easiest transition.[/li]
[li]Have a definitive interval between resets - this ensures players are ready for the transition[/li]
[li]Allow Deeds to be sold to the system before the reset (which will remove all Deeds) - this ensures that Deeds are a per-map item, and large sums of DP are not lost each reset[/li]
[/ul]
Tasks / Quests
Another important feature is one that provides a meaning for doing something specific. Some of these will be “egg hunts”, that is: find x. Where x could be something like the title Leader. In return for finding x the player can then swap the item for the reward. Others will be simple and aiding in gaining XP, such as “Kill 20 Eye of Cthulu’s”. A rare few will be dependant on the state of the current system, that is, things such as killing the highest rated active PvPer, or killing a certain amount of the least killed mobs. Diversity is key to this feature, as it is to provide fresh ideas on things to do.
Further, these can tie with Challenges. You could get a task like “Kill 20 Players”, there could be no one pvping or maybe you just want a better reward. You can challenge someone with this Task/Quest, wherein both players compete to achieve the specified goal first. Challenging players will raise rewards, but can lead people into doing tasks they may get little out of.
Workshop
The craft page will be changed to the Workshop page. Which will only be accessible by someone who has donated. This page will allow a donator to redeem the gift rewards (such as R11 Cmds) automatically. This page will also be updated to allow donators to also use Credits to combine a colour with a Title or Tag to create a coloured title or coloured tag. This new page will still allow you to Craft an item, but it will now contain a Search feature, that will allow you to search the system for existing items. Colours will also be added as a craftable item. The other features will be dropped in the transition.
Raiding
So, I think people feel too secure in the system. They have nothing to lose, even with pvp losses. So to create more chaos and scare people into subduing, a new feature called Raiding will be put in place, along with 2 upgrades: Offence and Defence. Everyone starts with zero of either. Meaning you can not raid or protect against raiding until you upgrade one of them. It works as such, when someone attempts to raid another, two things happen. Firstly the upgrades are checked, if attacker offence upgrade is larger than or equal to defender defence upgrade, then the probability for taking an item and trying again is %30 + offence(atker) - defence(defender) until a maximum of 10, otherwise the attacker loses some DP. So what stops someone raiding again and again? The raid feature will have a 2 hour cooldown. This is quite low if you consider the amount of people who could be doing it, which is why you should get some defences. A 3rd upgrade is being considered, called counter-raid, it adds a +2.5% per upgrade (to a maximum of 10) that upon receiving a raid attempt that an auto-raid will be done on the attacker, in the case that it fails, no DP is lost.
Further, you can also combine your efforts with other people. A party raid combines all attackers raiding upgrades but splits any rewards between the party. A deadly combination may arise indeed, but of course a counter-raid may be awesome; imagine 4 people raid you and fail, and then suddenly you get 4 free raid attempts.
Moreover, when a raid is initiated there is a gap between when an item is taken again. Initially it is instant, but if an item is to be taken again, there will be a gap. While the raid is being carried out it is possible to request support from other players to stop the raid.
Note, R11 items are immune to raiding.
Please Note: this means that if you haven’t donated, but you have Credits, you will not be able to use them.
The most important part however is feedback and ideas. If you feel you have something to add, you can post a reply. It doesn’t matter if you feel the suggestion may be unnecessary or disliked, it is important that they are shared as I may miss a few things.