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Mclavin

Making Elevation Great

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With confirmation that if mechanics fail to spice up the current elevation map, an oversize, flat, stagnated map with no areas of interest then we can revisit the idea of a new map, I figured ok let's put some brain waves towards the current map.

A few ideas here listed but hopefully will be expanded with help.

The map is too big so include a tier 2 for home servers.

Elevation is huge and the biggest problems players have when coming to elevation is you enter the wild west, there are no laws there is no mercy, it's the black zone of epic, pirates rule here and your loot is as much yours as the enemy outside looking to take it.
To encourage more population over from the saftey of home servers, we need to help new players get setup in an environment they are use to living in. 
With this i think a zone around the starter town, 5-6 locals in all directions where rules of a home server applies. No griefing with alts, CR nerfs to enemy and no KoS if you're the same kingdom without penalty. 
Population on elevation is the only way to have the map itself become interesting, players need to go out and create the areas of interest but when much of the end game relies on hota and it's moon metals, 85% of the map becomes unused.
New players and their little settlements dotted around could help this but first we need to help them get on the map and they should be encouraged with mechanics to do so. 
Make tower guards in this area more fierce, 25% stronger than they are outside of the zone.

Hota and the 85% of the empty map and battlecamps

Hota is the biggest focus on any map we will ever get. You can give us an Xanadu sized map but if hota is only 1 local wide, you will have population condensed around that as much as possible.
Battle camps should become the new hota. We've long stated that hota Has to change location in order for a map to get same focus all over. 
So hota should spawn around battle camps. Again, elevation is massive there is room to do this. It doesn't have to be the current size of hota we have right now, but the same no deed zones which already apply around battlecamps could be made bigger.
Battlecamps could be on MR side: JK side: BL side and Centre. It will spawn the game randomly between all. Battle camps can be capped by an enemy kingdom, this will take 60 minutes but the camp itself will move somewhere else within a pre-defined location/set checks. 

I feel im still light with the possibilities of this still and will expand more as ideas come to me.

Outside of that change: Make battle camps more, and make battle camps more important. Battle camps should spawn resources that you can only exchange at the token for, but battle camps should also only produce these rewards in crates which can't be picked up. You enchange them by unloading them within 3 tiles of a token - This will mean no grab and runs like the current depot but more load in a wagon and slowly ride away, giving chance pf pvp/risk to be cut off. If the item is unloaded to a kingdom in which the battlecamp was set to, then there are either bonus rewards or a better % chance at better rewards - Battle camps can only be capped Prior to sparkles/it spawning or after a crate has been handed in, crates will decay within 2 hours, so you can't stop future caps by holding a crate at deed. battle camps should spawn supplies every once a week [?] with a total of 7 battle camps. 

The depot we have now should also work like this. 

Hota: Pillar spawns need to change to one at a time, it's annoying when you hold a pillar and the enemy can go cap 3 others to win. Make it so you can contest pillars properly.

GM spawned bridges and Swimming hell horses

Without seeing Gm's trying to dirt the ocean and giving us a repeat of old ele hota-crater fill in attempt, the biggest issue of elevation is the fact you can't go to each mainland easy. Animal cages will change this but each trip must start by boat? this isn't going to work. Most access points have deeds around them and it just isn't viable to use these, with a new mission system coming out, players will be locked away from any mission not on their side of the map. Spawn GM bridges and use Wand of the Seas to create islands between large distances connect different islands and places, then plant a no deed build zone around them the same current size of battle camps. 

Also swimming hellhorses

TOWER CHAINING

Dropping a deed anywhere as long as you can fit a tower into an empty area of influence is lame, you should be forced to cap / build towers into enemy lands giving enemy a greater chance to stop your expanding!

FIGHT FOR IT.

 



We basically need to fill the map with interesting mechanics and reasons to go out and fight for areas, Archaeology could play a roll on pillars built by players or old mission buildings built too, making areas like this more important to go visit. 

-more as we think-





 

Edited by Mclavin

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you have them on home servers already.

Guess what, home server players don't want to jump to a map and be forced to setup on that map with no protection. Half the battle is getting them on the map, after that, they will roam OUT of the zone.
You're talking as if raiding on home servers never happens - This CR-zone will not make it impossible to get kills. But then again im not going to be looking in a new player zone for kills. :ph34r:

Also, if you +1 the map as being too big, why don't you want want servers basically put into the areas, this will make the actual pvp zone smaller.

Edited by Mclavin

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-1 for map is too big, it may seem big now, but the population wont always be freedom alts waiting for twitter alerts to login... when/if more people come it will seem smaller :)

 

-1 for gm spawned bridges or w/e your crying about... raid those deeds till they disbanded and build your land bridges if they are annoying you... thats the freedom of pvp :)

 

+1 for nodeed zone around starter towns, chaos has a 100 tile no deed zone around its starter towns and that seems to work well... my first jump to epic was like "WTF this is stupid we have hobos living right on the starter town perimeter.... isnt this a pvp server.... grow a pair of nuggets and leave noobtown alone so noobs can learn :)

 

Edit: battlecamps +1 this is a beautiful idea but your over complicating it, just make them provide a reason to maintain them and boost their nodeed zone

Edited by Evilreaper

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first point of -1. map was big even at reset day 1. Population just couldn't flow free and the newer players got hit.
Once population settles the map is still too big and no points of interest or reasons to conquest. Infact, the map being over sized is just one of many reasons I've stated in previous thread and now.
The point of the matter is, the MAP IS TOO BIG and these ideas are here to make the map feel smaller and put more emphasis into moving around the map.

second point of -2. we raided enemy deed 5 times, there isn't no garuntee a deed will disband after x drains so you pump money into it. 
Choke points will never fall and choke points of this kind are bad for the whole map, hense the #3 reason for a new map.
And this still doesn't help the fluid-flow free movement on elevation, if i raid a deed to disband then remove it, I then have to deed it myself to secure that route. 
Guess what, they aren't going to come pass my deed either. 

Refer back to my more emphasis into moving around the map.

Last point: I never said no deed zone around starter towns, i said to put in a zone for home server mechanics so they can plant deeds and get setup with a small protection bonus. You either have different ideas or miss read my post.

Edited by Mclavin

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there was a really nice system where you had homeserver "zones" instead of servers on desolation 4

@Armycoded that, and it worked perfect

 

people from enemy kingdoms in those zones had the same CR debuff as on home servers and such

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Quick question, do you mean there is 1 pillar at a time on the map or after conquering one the second will spawn and the first will stay? 

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Possibly have Hota SPawn randomly around the map.  so people are just building safe deed outside the local of it. Have it spawn on Water tiles and land tiles..... a light starts 1 hour before Hota start to show you where it will spawn.

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I'm of the opinion that map resets don't do anything to help long term. Sure, they gave Affliction and Elevation a short term boost, but that eventually trickled off and left us with the same, if not lower, amount of people than you started off with.

 

Map resets are incredibly risky. You destroy peoples work in the hope that more people will come to the server. The past times this has been done, it hasn't worked out.

 

If we get to the point where we absolutely need a map reset, bring back to old Elevation map! The new one is too big.

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thing is, this freedom to epic transfer would be so good along with a new map, since without one you really have nothing to do.

everything is built up already, hota is pretty much set, choking points or landbridges are deeded...

 

i think we are just trying to say, it would go really well along the freedomers being allowed to try out epic.

to just say "hey, go over to epic, every kingdom is already established and there is not much breathing room at all, but have fun!" isn't right in my opinion.

 

i don't know if others feel like that, but at least that's my concern...

 

also, all the above, map too big, flat and w/e

Edited by Quicktor
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I think it'd go better if we spent time improving the mechanics to a point that discussion of a reset would make sense.

 

Resets are a nuclear option, in a persistent world game you want persistence and you want people to feel like their mark on the world stays. 

 

In order to get toany point where we discuss or look at a reset, we want to spend time working on the mechanics and balances first. don't put the cart bedfore the horse 

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Just a note, Affliction reset was a huge success and still is. It had 90%+ yes votes and the affliction 1.0 map was totally destroyed by Valrei events.

 

Elevation reset was an utter fail, it had not even 65% yes votes and many many loyal epic players voted no. Also the map wasn't destroyed like affliction 1.0 was.

 

So a reset isn't always a no go.

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

I think it'd go better if we spent time improving the mechanics to a point that discussion of a reset would make sense.

 

Resets are a nuclear option, in a persistent world game you want persistence and you want people to feel like their mark on the world stays. 

 

In order to get toany point where we discuss or look at a reset, we want to spend time working on the mechanics and balances first. don't put the cart bedfore the horse 

 

sadly these "fixes" and balances are taking so long that we have to put the cart before the horse, because w/o the cart the horses will be long gone as soon as you log off for the night...

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Resetting is a nuclear option - But also a a good one when times are right. Barely anybody likes this map, if it was a poll you'd see 90%+ without trolls and alts.

The last reset was a failure not because of the fact it was a reset, was because of the mechanics, dr, mm, tomes and OTHER PVP issues. They were all PVP related, a lot of these issues came because the more we all gained mm and tomes, the more it became the new average and meta. 

People quit because of these reasons - Sotg was still 50% back then with mm armor and the right tomes nobody who wasn't sotg stood a chance and a lot of the new guys brought in by the map reset, saw that and we called for nerfs and speed in skilling back then becuase we were being told, all kingdoms, from new players that they dont want to spend x time doing x things to get 3 hit by a mm sotg truestriked player...

Now you gonna tell me MRC quit because chaos reset? no. the 'hack' was the nail in the coffin but they were leaving 85% due to mechanics and changes devs were and were not making, same issue was on elevation.

Now that core issues are fixed and new mechanics are coming, a new map will not only bring in new population, but secure them with the new skilling system and effective changes, something we been calling for, for 2 years.
So pls, if i keep hearing staff say the map reset was bad, no, it wasn't, the fact that we had 30 new players in JKE telling us that they cba with the 10 month waiting time to just enter pvp was bad. Facts.
The fact returning players quit because x mechanic still wasn't changed, sotg was OP, Truestrike was making others worthless and other DR stacked/player god issues. 
The list goes on, but you want to say the map was the reason? no. it wasn't.

This thread was made to avoid the request for a map change and focus on how to make our current map better. If nobody wants to take Drastic action to CR nerf, home server friendly zones on ele, reasons to go out and explore and reasons to go out and conquest, then just go ahead and hit that nuclear option now, because even tho the troubles I posted are planned to be fix, post the poll and that % are still unhappy about the final thing, the map.

 

Quote

in a persistent world game you want persistence and you want people to feel like their mark on the world stays. 


In a persistent game you need a persistent map that can support persistence, otherwise you end up with a new elevation map which is over in less than a year.
On chaos we're still fighting over x spots and land, it's been 7+ years? This is persistence.
Give us a map that can support a 5+ year conquest campaign.

Edited by Mclavin

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towers need to go back to being chained. Enemy should be able to see towers being built towards a objective and stop it. Not this drop a deed in a middle of nowhere bs.

@retrograde changes like this require a reset. And it's better for the game.

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Mclovin, would a complete reset at this point be out of the question if a epic to freedom transfer is now actually on the table?

 

Keep your work essentially on freedom, start new on epic? IDK

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It could be done now, but I think if we're struggling to get a bad map changed, they won't change the 3 others + reset us

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@retrograde @budda Please reconsider the new map issue. If not reset Elevation then put in a much smaller new island next to Elevation where the battle rages as well. With time I suspect the people with deeds etc on Elevation will move to the smaller island if their focus is truly on PVP. They will want to be where the action is.

 

With the changes you are making to encourage a more active PVP environment it makes sense to couple them with a new map where people are much, much more likely to encounter each other leading to combat more often, which in turn increases the intensity of the experience.

 

Listening to people talk about old Elevation, many of their stories share a common element of being surprised or surprising someone unexpectedly. Small spaces have a lot to do with how often this type of thing occurs.

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The most fun I had was on the old epic map. It was small enough that enemy would pop local and scare the hell out of you. But also fairly safe to go roaming. Ive personally never understood why elevation was made into such a huge map with a small population. With such a small pvp population you would be better off having one well developed map, with smaller islands for the home servers and the main island for main pvp all in one map. I think there is a post about that somewhere.

 

Also I don't think most experienced pvps will go out of their way to destroy a new players first deed or small house. I hear a lot about this on freedom and its one of the things people are scared about when asked about trying pvp on epic.

 

 

 

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remove hota

 

it's been causing a ton of issues on new ele and pretty much forces everyone to focus around the center island, preventing people from freely deeding and expanding where they wish

It turns roam pvp into this forced version of pvp where people show up for a scheduled event

You pretty much need a presence on center island to participate, it's near impossible otherwise since you need to pass controlled chokepoints

 

increase chest spawns to encourage more roaming maybe, idk

 

 

rifts are already basically a moving hota so we don't need that old static relic from the past anymore

thx

 

 

 

Edited by Worksock
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