Monthly Development Update: March 2012

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Originally Posted by VAUGHN2006

So the disabled outdoor cities then become cookie cutter instanced cities on the new server with no character no shops and no individuality. How boring...

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Because they have so much character and individuality now.

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Originally Posted by Tanisthonus

Because they have so much character and individuality now.

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Mine sure does.

Whenever I flew by PBF's cities I could always tell by the decorating. :D

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Originally Posted by VAUGHN2006

So the disabled outdoor cities then become cookie cutter instanced cities on the new server with no character no shops and no individuality. How boring...

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All cities were almost identical, where was the diversity? Also they all had that "metal" look which did not match any RK architecture at all. There was no real "individuality", there was different plot sizes which limited the number of buildings... but the structures themselves were "cookie cutter" regardless of which faction owned it.

By removing the player cities, we get back the pre-AI Rubi-Ka landscape which I feel fits the game better.

Once the RK player cities are gone, there is potential for new things. New locations for dungeons, quests, new areas where froobs can level, etc.

It was mentioned (I believe) that they'd look into an alternative for the convenience that player cities provided with their whompas, so there is a possibility for something new to the added to the game regarding that as well.

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Originally Posted by Kron

wind - is that a response to me or someone else? please state to whom you are responding.

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Was aimed at MajorOutage, and anyone else who states in general that there are other options, but don't mention them.

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Originally Posted by Windguaerd

Was aimed at MajorOutage, and anyone else who states in general that there are other options, but don't mention them.

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Derp again

also, can I get a cool hat....ya know like an engineers hat?

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Originally Posted by lindelu

2) We are removing auto attack.

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Only removing auto attack on monsters correct?

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Originally Posted by VAUGHN2006

So the disabled outdoor cities then become cookie cutter instanced cities on the new server with no character no shops and no individuality. How boring...

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God people actually liked those ugly as sin outdoor cities ruining our view of rk?

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Originally Posted by Notcrattey

Only removing auto attack on monsters correct?

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Which one you think it would be?

Biggest issue with it was how it was enabled by default... Still, fair game, next is auto-target I believe ;D

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Originally Posted by Windguaerd

Once the RK player cities are gone, there is potential for new things. New locations for dungeons, quests, new areas where froobs can level, etc.

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Do you really believe that RK player cities are the thing that's been stopping them from introducing such areas?

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Originally Posted by BytEfLUSh2

Do you really believe that RK player cities are the thing that's been stopping them from introducing such areas?

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I never said that was the reason it stopped them from doing that, I think the Devs have had their plates full for quite some time.

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Originally Posted by Traderjill

- A suggestion on the whole 'org city building replacement' issue for server merge. I'm not sure how complicated this would be to implement but. When its time for the server merge/migration/whatever you could do the following:
* Change it so that only the President (top tier rank) can delete building in an org city
* Upon having the President of an organization blow up a building, the building item would automatically spawn in their inventory. In other words, I go to the org city, delete my grid.. a grid building appears in my inventory, I delete the Sauna.. a sauna appears and so on.
* Upon deletion of the org HQ by the president, not only does a HQ appear in the president's inventory but also a bounty item appears in the president's inventory as well (one bounty item type for instanced and a different one for non-instanced).
* This bounty item can be turned in to a NPC for either a static credit value or for a new city. Obviously the credit value for an instanced city would be equivalent to the purchase value of a new instanced city (maybe +1 months upkeep) while the credit value for a non-instanced would be more than that (maybe value of instanced city purchase +5/6 months upkeep) to represent the investment many put into player to player purchases of their cities. If you turn the bounties in to the NPC for a new city you'd get an instanced city with 1 free month or (in the case of the non-instanced city bounties) you'd get 5 or 6 months free upkeep.
*I would also suggest making the city bounty items tradeable.

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I want to bump something I said early on in this thread and also provide some additional explanation why I feel the above makes sense.

With a server merge, we will probably see a lot of changes in organizations. I would expect to see quite a few org mergers or at the very least a lot of restructuring (some orgs have multiple off shoots). I think that allowing people to easily make the choice of whether or not to setup a new org city (versus an easy 'cash out' option) would facilitate people doing something new on the new server versus falling into the trap of the same old thing. I really hope Funcom considers something similar to the above.

as the leader of one of the older orgs on RK1, news that the player cities are being removed is a tad disheartening to say the least.
Several years ago, our org bonded together and worked diligently to gather the funds necessary to purchase and build our city. this is something that drove our org together for a purpose and still rings as a fond memory to those of us that were part of it.

anyway, since we have little input on this, I won't waste time in ranting, but I'd like to add a few suggestions though based on the notes shared

1- City issue: simple. give each org an instanced city, rates the same as their current city, will all buildings and benefits

2- Since we're losing a commodity, as in the city wompahs used by many in their travels, why not add strategically placed grid access points for accessing the grid, not exiting, to help compensate for this.

3- loss of the player shop. the 2 week timeout should be nerfed. some players are not daily gamers and this could lead to them losing revenue they expected to earn while out of game.

Disabling cities should be like a major story arc where the aliens break through and blow them up :p

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Originally Posted by Mastablasta

Disabling cities should be like a major story arc where the aliens break through and blow them up :p

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We should settle for nothing short of a medium-sized apocalypse where aliens suddenly invade the entire RK.

ICC and Omni-Tek have to appeal to Unicorns and Vanguards to pacify things with all player toons being collateral victims and instantly sent to reclaim (nothing permanent) whether they're in AI cities or the cities/outposts spread over the map (main cities come to mind - Borealis, Athens, West Athens, the 3 Rome cities, Entertainment and Trade).

This is due to aliens using a moon-sized energy frequency resonator to disrupt AI city electronics. However, this will generate a giant backlash that will spread through all whompahs and travel in Shadowlands as well.

This is most unfortunate since the backlash will be further amplified by the Xan technology creating a huge notum-enhanced shock wave. The wave will spread from Jobe throughout all discovered Shadowlands areas. This temporary disturbance will affect all biological life forms and all players caught in the backlash will be reclaimed.

...In time, this can be further expanding into modifying the mobs to make them meaner or replacing some of them with other kind of creatures as well...

While all outdoor cities are completely wiped, the aliens manage to get a hold of some former city plots and create outposts. These are pocket zones where they being to reverse or alter the previous terraforming work.

Unicorn starts investigating these areas and discovers a variation of the aliens found in the Neretva canyons or Arid rift. Alien scout waves are regularly sent towards the terraformed areas in an attempt to reverse the process and prepare it for alien colonization. Unicorns are somewhat overwhelmed and ask all factions for help thus collaborating with Omni-Tek, Vanguards and ICC.

These sites are quarantined and players could go there and stop the waves from reversing the terraforming efforts. Limited playfields with escalation spread across various TLs - example:

- TL2 players could go together and enter such pockets where they'll fight mobs starting from level 20 up to level 80 - the alien level will gradually increase as you progress through waves and advance towards the objective.

The main objective would be to either kill some specific mobs (Engineers that operate the distorter) or the field distorter itself.

Also, all AI cities are relocated in Serenity Island.

Yep - that need a story. I agree.

What bugs me with cities at first: what will be with city adventages? Most twinks are based around them, especially low/mid lvl ones. Those need to stay or there must be somekind of reinburse for that (like Alien Device for Abilities, CL, Nano Costs for Utils/HUDS/Wrist option)

Besides I LOVE that cities are gone - Rubi-Ka lost so much of it feel when player cities were poping on landscape. To bad that some orgs WASTED so much money to pay upkeep (some orgs lost over 3 bils, which aint that low...)

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Originally Posted by Pomidor

What bugs me with cities at first: what will be with city adventages? Most twinks are based around them, especially low/mid lvl ones. Those need to stay or there must be somekind of reinburse for that (like Alien Device for Abilities, CL, Nano Costs for Utils/HUDS/Wrist option)

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Instanced cities - you still can use them for benefits.

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Originally Posted by Pomidor

Yep - that need a story. I agree.

What bugs me with cities at first: what will be with city adventages? Most twinks are based around them, especially low/mid lvl ones. Those need to stay or there must be somekind of reinburse for that (like Alien Device for Abilities, CL, Nano Costs for Utils/HUDS/Wrist option)

Besides I LOVE that cities are gone - Rubi-Ka lost so much of it feel when player cities were poping on landscape. To bad that some orgs WASTED so much money to pay upkeep (some orgs lost over 3 bils, which aint that low...)

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I am certain that instanced cities will still be available, so all the twink stuff from cities will continue to exist.

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Originally Posted by Khlin

We should settle for nothing short of a medium-sized apocalypse where aliens suddenly invade the entire RK.

ICC and Omni-Tek have to appeal to Unicorns and Vanguards to pacify things with all player toons being collateral victims and instantly sent to reclaim (nothing permanent) whether they're in AI cities or the cities/outposts spread over the map (main cities come to mind - Borealis, Athens, West Athens, the 3 Rome cities, Entertainment and Trade).

This is due to aliens using a moon-sized energy frequency resonator to disrupt AI city electronics. However, this will generate a giant backlash that will spread through all whompahs and travel in Shadowlands as well.

This is most unfortunate since the backlash will be further amplified by the Xan technology creating a huge notum-enhanced shock wave. The wave will spread from Jobe throughout all discovered Shadowlands areas. This temporary disturbance will affect all biological life forms and all players caught in the backlash will be reclaimed.

...In time, this can be further expanding into modifying the mobs to make them meaner or replacing some of them with other kind of creatures as well...

While all outdoor cities are completely wiped, the aliens manage to get a hold of some former city plots and create outposts. These are pocket zones where they being to reverse or alter the previous terraforming work.

Unicorn starts investigating these areas and discovers a variation of the aliens found in the Neretva canyons or Arid rift. Alien scout waves are regularly sent towards the terraformed areas in an attempt to reverse the process and prepare it for alien colonization. Unicorns are somewhat overwhelmed and ask all factions for help thus collaborating with Omni-Tek, Vanguards and ICC.

These sites are quarantined and players could go there and stop the waves from reversing the terraforming efforts. Limited playfields with escalation spread across various TLs - example:

- TL2 players could go together and enter such pockets where they'll fight mobs starting from level 20 up to level 80 - the alien level will gradually increase as you progress through waves and advance towards the objective.

The main objective would be to either kill some specific mobs (Engineers that operate the distorter) or the field distorter itself.

Also, all AI cities are relocated in Serenity Island.

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This is a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Khlin

We should settle for nothing short of a medium-sized apocalypse where aliens suddenly invade the entire RK.

ICC and Omni-Tek have to appeal to Unicorns and Vanguards to pacify things with all player toons being collateral victims and instantly sent to reclaim (nothing permanent) whether they're in AI cities or the cities/outposts spread over the map (main cities come to mind - Borealis, Athens, West Athens, the 3 Rome cities, Entertainment and Trade).

This is due to aliens using a moon-sized energy frequency resonator to disrupt AI city electronics. However, this will generate a giant backlash that will spread through all whompahs and travel in Shadowlands as well.

This is most unfortunate since the backlash will be further amplified by the Xan technology creating a huge notum-enhanced shock wave. The wave will spread from Jobe throughout all discovered Shadowlands areas. This temporary disturbance will affect all biological life forms and all players caught in the backlash will be reclaimed.

...In time, this can be further expanding into modifying the mobs to make them meaner or replacing some of them with other kind of creatures as well...

While all outdoor cities are completely wiped, the aliens manage to get a hold of some former city plots and create outposts. These are pocket zones where they being to reverse or alter the previous terraforming work.

Unicorn starts investigating these areas and discovers a variation of the aliens found in the Neretva canyons or Arid rift. Alien scout waves are regularly sent towards the terraformed areas in an attempt to reverse the process and prepare it for alien colonization. Unicorns are somewhat overwhelmed and ask all factions for help thus collaborating with Omni-Tek, Vanguards and ICC.

These sites are quarantined and players could go there and stop the waves from reversing the terraforming efforts. Limited playfields with escalation spread across various TLs - example:

- TL2 players could go together and enter such pockets where they'll fight mobs starting from level 20 up to level 80 - the alien level will gradually increase as you progress through waves and advance towards the objective.

The main objective would be to either kill some specific mobs (Engineers that operate the distorter) or the field distorter itself.

Also, all AI cities are relocated in Serenity Island.

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Woot. Nice thinking.

Re player cities. I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that the rents on a great many cities will be over DOUBLED when forced to go instanced. Some of use chose our cities wisely, for those kind of reasons. Any word on THAT little gem FC?

I see it now on the last pages. Still a valid concern over rents tho.