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The possibility to negotiate for additional cultural goods via the merchant should offset this.
At least during our internal balancing tests, it worked out nicely. But of course we will look at your feedback and the data in a few weeks - that should provide even better insights.
And based on that, we could still make adjustments!
I dont know, it seems that this settlement may need less expansions in total. While i'm not there yet but by some early calculations I think 4 x shoin house would be enough for the settlement, plus 2 x tea house for coins and that leaves enough population for one of each goods buildings. It is looking like 4-5 expansions may be enough for it and with a bit of luck that will come from the merchant. Unless there are some crazy quests at the end
So no one knows when it is going to come to live servers? I am not asking for a date, I just wanna know wether it is going to be a month, 2 months, 1 week etc?
So no one knows when it is going to come to live servers? I am not asking for a date, I just wanna know wether it is going to be a month, 2 months, 1 week etc?
It will be at least 7-10 days before the first round of settlements is completed bu the majority of testers. I guess they will want us to go through a few rounds before they release it
The possibility to negotiate for additional cultural goods via the merchant should offset this.
At least during our internal balancing tests, it worked out nicely. But of course we will look at your feedback and the data in a few weeks - that should provide even better insights.
And based on that, we could still make adjustments!
Then maybe you should try the merchant and complain afterward. It is actually a little bit to easy and maybe also kind of lucky what offers do you get in the beginning. If you get a lot of Instruments you can buy expansions for 8 of them until 7th or 8th exp (it increases like the vikings. so 2 times first good and the second will stay on 8 until you buy the next expansion)
Then maybe you should try the merchant and complain afterward. It is actually a little bit to easy and maybe also kind of lucky what offers do you get in the beginning. If you get a lot of Instruments you can buy expansions for 8 of them until 7th or 8th exp (it increases like the vikings. so 2 times first good and the second will stay on 8 until you buy the next expansion)
I was not complaining, just telling about my impressions on my day 3 and how I feel players om life servers will feel, some of them are very fast to give up.
I believe first impressions is one of the thing they ask for from us testers.
We are sorry to hear that you're not fully enjoying the new settlement, Umbrathor. So what features would you change in order to enjoy the Feudal Japan (or other settlements in the future)?
Dear In.My.Control, I'll gladly take up the gauntlet.
The easiest fix I see is to remove the drag: the elements in the settlement building process that make you feel that you are being slowed down, hindered, not progressing much. Or even going backwards.
For both vikings and Japan, after the intial coin stash is used up, I have to cut down from 2 axes smiths or soy gardens to 1. That feels like a step backwards, instead of forward. Having an axe smith that you can't always start up, for lack of coins, or even having to delete it since you just can't earn enough coins for it.
I assume that not being to get the settelement finished in time is another such demotivating factor. Luckily for me, I always managed in time. For vikings. Doing your best, within your circumstances (a job, a life), and still not being able to finish in time, and thus missing out on the greater part of the timer reward, is porbably quite a demotivator.
Those are two easy fixes in my view. It still means that the settlements are repetitive (a grind), but a less frustrating one.
A completely different way of solving the feeling of having to Grind, is to remove the repetitive element. Starting a new settlement means that you get one of a numbrr of different assigments. Maybe you need to build up a settlement, maybe you need to fight a campaign against an outside threat, maybe you need to negotiate peace and a trade agreement with a potential ally. Maybe the settlers have discovered an ancient temple close to the landing area, and need you to unearth it secrets (based on the FABULOUS archeology mini-game from the event). Maybe your mission is to rescue a prince or princess who becomes your emissary.
Or maybe the results from your previous assigments change something about how the new settlement progresses, instead of starting at the exact same point. Maybe you start out with some of the goods and coins you had left at the end, though you will also need more of those, to meet the challenges of the next stage.
Or the fact that you successfully negotiated a trade agreement, means that you can exchange some of your axes for another type of good. (I regularly had buildings giving a x4 at their last harvest, whoich wasn't enough for an expansion and thus was wasted. Being able to exchange it would be more fun).
Or the fact that you defeated a foe means that you get some extra starting population. Or coins, from a tribute or loot.
Continuing the train of thought from my earlier post: currently, the things that change from one settlement to the next are the obstacles, the timer length, the reward option and the chance to get x4. None of those are the result of our actions. We are not making that happen. If the changes from one settlement to the next are the result of our actions, it may feel more as if we are actually working towards something.
That would fit better with the feel of the game: we are building and expanding a city, a guild, progressing through maps, researching, conquering territories that we defend against other guilds. None of that we just give up, to restart from scratch.
Well, except for GE. Which is interesting: why does that NOT feel like a grind? Perhaps because it has no drag moments? It is fun enough to go through, you can do it mostly at your own pace, the consequenses from missing the timer are less big. Hmm... I'll think on this a bit more.
Continuing the train of thought from my earlier post: currently, the things that change from one settlement to the next are the obstacles, the timer length, the reward option and the chance to get x4. None of those are the result of our actions. We are not making that happen. If the changes from one settlement to the next are the result of our actions, it may feel more as if we are actually working towards something.
That would fit better with the feel of the game: we are building and expanding a city, a guild, progressing through maps, researching, conquering territories that we defend against other guilds. None of that we just give up, to restart from scratch.
Well, except for GE. Which is interesting: why does that NOT feel like a grind? Perhaps because it has no drag moments? It is fun enough to go through, you can do it mostly at your own pace, the consequenses from missing the timer are less big. Hmm... I'll think on this a bit more.
Well I mean GE didn't feel like a grind at first. Once you have it on farm though, it very much does. But it's a fairly flexible grind - I can put it all off til sunday night, or get it all done tuesday morning. I don't have to religiously check in 4 times a day to do well at it.
Settlements otoh have felt like a grind since the very first time I started one. They are SO dumbed down and tedious - by the time I'm doing my 15th run of vikings, they've moved me to the point where I may finally quit this game Especially with another 13 runs of the same exact crap that I know I'll keep doing if I don't quit because the reward is amazing. I'd really hoped (though should've known better) that the 2nd settlement would provide more depth. Wish me luck in my escape!
Fully agree with Umbrathor. The settlements are mind-numbingly boring. The prize is not worth the time invested, because the time invested is totally devoid of any fun. I spend all day at work enduring tedious, meaningless administrative hurdles to achieve those golden nuggets of real accomplishment. Why would I or anyone want leisure time to echo the same mis-balance between pleasure and tedium that the work day already has in spades?
Seriously, find a way, quickly, to make the settlements entertaining and fun. Challenging is fine, welcome in fact. But make it fun above all.
You won't be attracting any money with mediocre offerings like this.......
We are sorry to hear that you're not fully enjoying the new settlement, Umbrathor. So what features would you change in order to enjoy the Feudal Japan (or other settlements in the future)?
I strongly agreed with all what @Umbrathor posted. I would like to add an suggestion
wich your team could work on relative quickly. Or maybe not for the current 2
settlements.:s
War or peacefull or strategic minded?
Give us next to the option for negotiate for extra culture goods, an option to fight
with cultural units. This cultural militairy buildings could be unlocked at the same
time in the same way. Giving us the option to rather 3 times peacefull negotiate
by the trader or 3 times strike with cultural units. This can be done by giving us
3 dailly ''actions'' wich would only be payed by succesfull attack or negotiate. The
catch for keeping the challange of fighting equel to everyone. The units bonusses
of the main city won't work on this fights, units stats aren't increased, Kraken and
TVP have no chance to strike and AO shouldn't work in this fights. Only spoils of
war since that doesn't affeact the difficulity of the fights.
Affeaction for the future
Avrage 3/3 negotiate
If you almost only negotiate you should get a small discount on cultural
goodsproduction during the next round or/and slightly extra increased
chance for x4 production.
E.G. 5% discount for each time in a row up to 25% discount
Avrage 3/3 fighting
If your an warrior and got most of your (extra) culture goods from looting. The
settlement will become more war minded. Wich might give a small bonus to
the culture units with the next playthrough.
E.G.
+5% att/def cultural units for each time in a row up to 25%?
Or
+5% chance x2 loot up to some cap Inno fits best
Avrage 2/3 fighting or negotiate
If your a bit of both it also should have some influence. Maybe an decreased
chance of spawning impendiments or decreassing the ammount of impendiments
and decreassing the chance for ''big'' impendiments. In this way you can make
the strategic chooise to try a bit of both.
In this way it will become much more of an strategic chooise to rather negotiate or
fight with unique units of that settlement. Since baracks also required space I would
like to suggest that this would be payed off by giving loot 20 extra culture goods
compared to negotiate. Since your sacraficing space for a culture goodbuilding for
getting culture units. Wich slows you down at first.
Even while I think this would favor the option for players giving more freedom to
picking up their playstyle and bringing it also to the settlements.
I also believe that making realy each next round an unique expirence would be nice. Maybe
something as an level based minigame? Up to lvl 15 after wich you unlock endless mode wich
is pretty much what we already got.
Each level may add something new. The first lvl might be like settlements are now. Just getting
introduced to the settlement and culture. After wich the fun begins. Every new level may brings
something new to the table. For example the option to negotiate for extra culture goodis as now
introduced by the Japanese. After wich maybe the first culture units will be introduced. Wich you
can chooise to use for obtaining extra goodies instead of negotiation. The fights should be like
Age-locked GvG locked to culture units. After some levels may some conflict or quest begins
like Umbrathor suggested.
Lvl 1 (first settlement)
Just like it is now, just introducing an ''new'' culture
lvl 2 (second settlement of that culture)
Introducing the option to negotiate for extra culture goods afeter unlocking it
Lvl 3 (3th settlement of that culture)
Introduction to culture units for fighting and obtaining culture goods as loot
Lvl 4 (4th settlement of that culture)
Affeacton of prev. actions (discount on culture goodsprod / or some benefit for getting extra culture goods with force)
Lvl 5 (5th settlement of that culture)
You can build off this through diffrent ''levels'' up to lvl 15 after wich you ''unlock'' endless
mode for that culture. A bit of what we already have but with all the good stuff and extra's
unlocked. Yeah it would make cultures a bit more complicated but more intressting
======
Next to all of this I would also like to said that impediments are just annoying, rather
giving an ''intressting'' extra challanging puzzle element to the settlements. Afterall
dealing with limmited space and coins are proven to be already challanging on it's
own. The impediments just adds nothing to the fun puzzle elements, just making
me more annoyed while playing settlements.
If I could change one thing or adding something to the settlements. It would be
rather a way to remove inmpediments of chooise or maybe some way to decrease
the chance of spawning them. Effective making the computer spawning less of
them in the next round.
It does appear they made a diamond entry fee to skip the worst of it more pronounced with the merchant. (45 goods = 225 diamonds + 1 minute building runestones(sorry japanese runestones don't remember nor care the name for them) gets you to gallery and unlocking the merchant; which then is at least 3 expansions from your first day's negotiations most likely.) I didn't have the diamonds on beta since I hadn't logged in in over a week before its release to test that out - but by the time i made it to Merchant I was still on zero expansions and with a stroke of luck from getting a quad-instruments I've now added 7 expansions from the first day's negotiations. Still not enough to make me ok with doing 13 more settlements though
click on the viking boat and then the right arrow in the full panel display to switch to japanese before you hit start. the boat will then be a japanese boat after you've started as well.
Excellent Questions! I am currently only in HMA on Beta, so it is only asking me for HMA Goods...so the question is whether or not Special Goods would be needed fo Negotiations once you hit AF, OF, VF or SAM...hopefully, a more advanced Beta player, currently testing out Feudal Japan, will be able to confirm this!
The first merchant offer today was 10 armour and wanted one of each good, the other 2 were 13 armour and 12 soybean and wanted 2 goods each, is that because it was over 10 goods, or because I had taken all 3 offers yesterday.
