30JUL15 - 1WK NOTICE: NPC AI & DIPLO CHANGE

Having recently listened to some of the recorded livestreams, one of which was on the release of the Broken Lands, it seems to me that this might be another occasion on which a live chat with GMs Stormcrow, Thundercat and Cerberus on the mechanics and future plans may be very informative?  

mjc2: the devs WILL be playing the game once factions go live!  The very fact that factions can now attack players is just the beginning.  so unfortunately (for you) I do see the AI playing the game (within certain parameters)

dung, i would have to disagree with you on the mechanics being the same.  if they do change the mechanic to allow players to destroy/build hubs then it could be argued that the Devs are indirectly playing the game through the factions and that is one thing that i never want to see.  basically i see factions as an underlying part of the environment on where you place your city, if you dont look around to see what factions are nearby and they destroy your city that is on you and not the game all that info is readily available to anyone who reads up on the factions or looks at the map.

With the addition of Foment Unrest earlier in the year, will factions be able to attack and remove player sovereignty, just like warring alliances?

This will make the popular newbie statue quest mystery MUCH more frustrating and long to finish. What (for new players in broken lands) might already have taken a couple weeks now might be forced into months.

Honestly this diplo change just seems like a bad idea to me in that it reduces the non-war activities people can do. A limit is fine, but a limit low enough that it seriously hampers one of the basic and very fun early activities for new players seems extremely bad.

Investigating many other mysteries often involves sending dozens or more of scout groups out for weeks on end as well. It takes a lot of time and organization if I want to scout a 1,000 square area across the map from me for some mystery related thing. What might have taken a lot of organization over months has with this change pushed the timing into potentially years plus (again) made it much harder for small players to do these types of fun peaceful activities.


The diplo change also makes it very hard to get the tentacles needed for the crafting quest. The average large 10 city account (most people don't have many foreign offices since they are small and expensive) will still be able to send enough diplo groups to at least get 10 tentacles. A small player might only get 1 or 2 or none with this limit. Tentacles used to be a fun thing even very small players could try to get on the rare occasion Audrey wakes. If sending too many scout groups kills the server that could easily be fixed by having drop rate be based on how large groups are rather than number of groups sent (e.g. send a group of 5,000 rather than 500 groups of 1).

Sorry to be negative. I am excited about the npc change, but I feel like the diplo change is very negative without any obvious positives.     


I have nothing against the 5 second pause if it is needed--that might be frustrating occasionally but it sounds like a acceptable minor annoyance if the devs think it is needed for the server stability.

Fundamentally the problem with the server spiking with tons of diplos is because people are having FUN using tons of diplos. Fixing this server issue by eliminating those ways to have fun seems like a bad idea all around to me. Ways to get around it being a problem (such as the 5 second pause) without fundamentally limiting our activities seems like a much better option--why not extend the pause idea and say (for example) only x many diplo groups can be sent out 'per hour'. That way if you have a many week project for many diplos you could work on it some every day rather than waiting 3 weeks in-between sending one group out and the next.

Hey, the server is laggy because people are playing! I know, let's make it so people can't play, that will fix it.

Edited by Alcie - 01 Aug 2015 at 07:36