As part of our effort to better communicate what is that we admins are doing all the time besides watching you vanished, I'll start posting these State of Loka posts whenever there's time for an update. So on to the first one!
As a little update on what we're doing. We've decided to focus first (in terms of Capital vs Sieging) on the Capital side of things. Sieging is a pretty big system that will take some time to implement. In the meantime, everybody's left having (mostly) useless TGens lying everywhere and only a few people are attacking just for fun. We can't really have a stagnant system like that lying around with no purpose so our intent is to focus on getting the battle for Capital back to working with some revamps.
The ideological problem with Capital was how to make it attainable to more than just an extremely small subset of very skilled (and often-playing) PvPers. We had batted around ideas of making things like gathering contribute to capital or even have capitals be decided by vote. All this seems to really end up doing, from our frequent discussions, is just add another requirement of grinding to a system that still just benefits those who play most or just make it a popularity conquest where what you do doesn't really matter if you have bff's everywhere.
All in all, in terms of "What is Loka?", we've previously said it would be Conquest but then we veered off course with stuff including the New Map (although that's awesome). I think we still need to focus Conquest as being the defacto greatness of Loka. Now, that's not to say we can't excel and be best-in-class at a LOT of other things (as we already are and will continue to be
), but we need that one unique thing that really brings people to the server. Most everybody has their preferential servers for Factions, Skywars, Pot PvP, yadda yadda. Conquest, we think, can be our unique thing.
So we're refocusing Conquest, of which Sieging will still be a part, but an added, and not necessarily 100% vital part. Once we polish Conquest, Sieging will just be an added part of it that contributes, but does not lie as the framework for the system.
We don't have finalized numbers or data on what's changing on the Capital side of things, but at least here are some of the things we're addressing/changing/looking at:
Go Forth!
As a little update on what we're doing. We've decided to focus first (in terms of Capital vs Sieging) on the Capital side of things. Sieging is a pretty big system that will take some time to implement. In the meantime, everybody's left having (mostly) useless TGens lying everywhere and only a few people are attacking just for fun. We can't really have a stagnant system like that lying around with no purpose so our intent is to focus on getting the battle for Capital back to working with some revamps.
The ideological problem with Capital was how to make it attainable to more than just an extremely small subset of very skilled (and often-playing) PvPers. We had batted around ideas of making things like gathering contribute to capital or even have capitals be decided by vote. All this seems to really end up doing, from our frequent discussions, is just add another requirement of grinding to a system that still just benefits those who play most or just make it a popularity conquest where what you do doesn't really matter if you have bff's everywhere.
All in all, in terms of "What is Loka?", we've previously said it would be Conquest but then we veered off course with stuff including the New Map (although that's awesome). I think we still need to focus Conquest as being the defacto greatness of Loka. Now, that's not to say we can't excel and be best-in-class at a LOT of other things (as we already are and will continue to be
), but we need that one unique thing that really brings people to the server. Most everybody has their preferential servers for Factions, Skywars, Pot PvP, yadda yadda. Conquest, we think, can be our unique thing.So we're refocusing Conquest, of which Sieging will still be a part, but an added, and not necessarily 100% vital part. Once we polish Conquest, Sieging will just be an added part of it that contributes, but does not lie as the framework for the system.
We don't have finalized numbers or data on what's changing on the Capital side of things, but at least here are some of the things we're addressing/changing/looking at:
- Barrier of Entry | We actually handled this earlier by doing stuff like having keep inventory on for territory fights. This seemed to help people be less afraid to go out and attack. Overall, while this is lower, it's still not low enough. Conquest, in its current state, still pretty much begets world, pot-pvp. You can't attack somebody without them knowing about it, which means if you're awful at pvp there's no reason to attack somebody unless you know you can win or you're willing to attack them while they're offline. We need to add more to Conquest so that there is a metagame and not just a TGen attack system.
- Incentives to Play | This is also a big problem. It's fun if you're good at pvp and maybe if you wanna be Capital. But even getting Capital isn't that big of a deal, the policies kind of suck and there's almost no recognition for even BEING capital. We're going to overhaul this so it's both rewarding to become Capital as well as everyone should know that you are the Capital and that you live in the Capital. We have a variety of ideas for this.
- The Numbers | How do you win Capital right now? Have a lot of Tgens, be a top-pvper and wait. Nobody will attack you, you win by default. This is ridiculous! If it's gonna be a pvp game, shouldn't you have to at least, you know, play?. We think so too. The idea is to turn the game of having Tgens into the game of actually attacking Tgens, etc. The proposition that we're currently messing around with is similar to our arena ratings, so, ELO. In short, everybody's equalized and you get points by actually attacking and defending your turf. You don't win by sitting around and you don't win by destroying the weak either. You earn points based on your skill level vs the enemies with some added modifiers like battle participants, tower defense, etc. The reason we can do this now is that previously there was no real point to having lots of TGens other than JUST to earn capital. Now your TGens are actually protecting resources that cannot be found elsewhere. Additionally, TGens contribute to your Industry output and capacity, so the incentive for town production is greater while not requiring that you max tgens just to earn capital.
- More than just TGens | There should be more to the game than just these territory protectors. Other buildings, perhaps ones less protected that guerilla tactics and individual players can actually eat away at. It's nice that you have a heads up when you get attacked, but this works heavily for players who can both play whenever they're needed as well as are top PvPers. You need only arrive by yourself to defend your turf and you have upwards of an hour to plan to do so. The game should be more organic, perhaps even less structured. Maybe you need to inspect your turf to really know what's going on? Maybe you can setup alert Towers to know when people are in your territory? Little extra buildings like these could add to a bigger metagame as well as give everybody, be it 1 person, or 10 people something to do either in their own turf or in the enemies' rather than setup a group, notify your opponents you're coming, and then die.
Go Forth!