And... because of the lack of this... distraction, there were people that made 400 CP in Crafting Tier 3 for 2 months of game time.
Establishing a monopoly and dictating the crafting gameplay.
We are even thinking about cutting the crafting chances in half, because a disciplined guild has managed to ruin all the gameplay in 2 months... what are we going to do when we have 40 000 players trying to do that?
This game is the most complex project we have started so far.
There are a hundred more things that must be balanced, compared to IO, GI and GW.
And... the moment we allow one player to gain a significant advantage over others by exploiting a rule or a bug we didn't think of, is the moment we will lose all our players.
Because they will not feel equal in this world.
It must be clear that our desire is to make the game both as much hard as it is balanced.
The mobs will get stronger.
The crafting will get tougher.
There will be more and more restrictions.
Team play will be more and more encouraged.
And the players will struggle for each crafting or experience point.
Only this way, we presume, we will be able to make it enough entertaining and playable for a long period of time.
Unbalancing or taking advantage of something that is not well developed will ruin everyone's fun.
Same goes for playing a game in which you can have it all in 2 months and then go some place else.
You obviously don't get my point, Isolde.
We have to balance the gameplay in a way that there will be no guilds that would be too powerful, Isolde.
If there can be a player, no matter what guild is he in, (no matter how he got those points) that can make 400 CP in 2 months, that means we have a gameplay problem.
It means we have to balance the game.
We are not punishing anyone.
We are trying to make the game better and enjoyable for all the players.
If there are players that can beat our gameplay... This should be a matter for concern, not a matter for bragging.
is this or is this not a beta? this isnt the real game, we are accelerating the final outcome of the game by reaching limits quicker than you had forseen. is this bad in a beta?
you can change the gameplay as much as you want cause someone else will just find a way to accelerate that also. start with making higher level guild administration way more expensive. either that or the game will be so slow people will lose interest cause it will be years and years before achieving the following tier and if your target audience is 12-17 year olds, attention is difficult for prolonged periods of time.
to slow the game down more you would need to allow 168 aps to accumulate or so, cause logging in every 48 hours to make sure i dont lose ap is fairly unbalanced if the objective is to slow down the game, but there will always be a group of people willing to work together to exceed your expectation, human nature.
what we are doing by being organized is getting faster than expected to where everyone will get sooner or later in a beta. once we are tier 5, i would imagine all the effort put in will reduce significantly as i am unaware of anyone who wants to actually spend 5 years of their lives playing one realm in one game, but the internet brings out the crazy in people.
One question comes to mind, you state, "
Team play will be more and more encouraged." yet you blame for ruining the game a group of 30 people that do just that, play real well together and use basic economic strategies, such as specialized skills and production, to achieve things faster. It is unjust to make this statement, nothing illegal is being done, perhaps
I do not think much slower than atm would be reasonable for an audience that you are targeting, fix the easy things...
i think there are real easy ways to avoid whats happening atm, real, real easy ways, but rather than ask those who are excelling due to these reasons, it´s easy to accuse a few of ruining the game for others? that´s called shifting blame...
making the game take longer is understandable monetarily, but if the objective is to make the game more complete, start another realm, make it slower from the start, close beta to new players, but things like this... "Same goes for playing a game in which you can have it all in 2 months and then go some place else." makes me sad as i thought the objective was to acertain whether things work well in this beta realm, not scold anyone for doing what you allow...
besides, someone with money to spend will always be willing to spend more than someone else and you will always have a balancing problem and complaints that they are/he is/she is cheating. i would think this would be good to a certain extent...
i did not write this to anger anyone or insult anyone (especially Oton, maybe a bit Krum), but i think the solution is so so so easy if the objective is to slow the game down, dont change anything until other, easy things are done first...