ENGLISH:
Dear Blue Byte,
I'm taking some time here to just post some suggestions and critics that - probably - won't be read at all.
First of all, let me give you a brief introduction about who is posting this:
I am Briosheje, known by some as Marco, an expert TSO player playing since 2013 and, in "real life" a professional developper.
As a programmer / geek, I've always studied what is behind TSO, either from what was available on forums, either from what I could get from the SWF source code, by eventually gathering useful resources to help other people developing useful tools for the game itself.
I've helped and even contributed (or.. well, discovered, to be honest) to the discovery of some -still- unknown mechanics (that either are bugs or intended hidden features) that I won't really even publish, because, again, these are unknown to many, just some guys know about these (and I won't talk about who knows these).
I've contributed, in general, to the community by providing tools, guides and helped other amazing persons to keep track and provide valuable guides for the most important adventures in this game, and I keep fetching data for those who are really interested in this.
That said, I've actually decided that it's a good time to take some minutes to write down a few lines, hoping that these will not get forgotten by everyone, as it is actually what it looks like.
As an "Old school" player, I know what is important, what was important and what currently is important in this game, and I perfectly know what is currently terribly wrong and what can be done to increase the current behavior of the game, so here are my little 2 (hundred) cents about this, showing exactly what I think is wrong, eventually with some screens:
- Experience points:
The main goal of the game (apparently) is to level up. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing the little popup saying "Yo dude, you're great, you've just leveled up, go yelling to your friends that they are n00bz", but here is what happens:
1) The amount of experience needed to level up is exponential, which is okay, as long as you allow me to level up.
2) It takes AGES to level up.
3) It is satisfying.
4) It gets annoying after level 56.
5) It gets terribly annoying at level 57.
6) It gets insanely terrible at level 58.
7) At level 58 you realize that you're leveling for no reasons at all, and that if you took an entire week to get from level 58 from 57 you will take about two to three weeks for 59, and about a month for 60, and another month and a half for 61, and two months for 62 and.. WHAT? about 4 months for 63. WHY this. just WHY.
In a nutshell, there is no way to level up faster, once you reach level 56 or 57 or whatever it is just an endless run which gets more annoying while you move on, and here is why this happens:
1) Adventures experience points are NOT enough to level up: it takes too much traveling to reach an adventure, start it, finish it, get its point, wait the troups to come back to start another identical (or very similar) one.
2) Adventures that are actually worth to play are just a vague minority, I can foresee as a very valid experience adventure the young woodcutter, third thief and treasure of wisdom. These may be worth the time you take to do them (both in resources and experience), but.. you know, after the 129319039210 time you're doing these you're tired already.
3) After beating the adventure once, there is no challenge to beat it once again, and every single adventure in this game is static, hence it doesn't really prompt you to inform yourself about whether the losses can be decreased or what, it's just a copy and paste from other people's guide to level up, you don't even know why you're using these units, do you?.
4) A mechanism to increase the difficulty of adventures and to decrease the recruiting times does not exist: you can either be level 57 or level 75 that your recruiting time, moving time, troups amount and adventures amount and difficulty will be the exact same thing.
5) Quests are ridicolously easy compared to how they should be. I'm a level 58 and the quest is asking me "Yo dude, get 10k wood from ali adventures, you will get like 75k xp by doing this". FINE, and what happens after that? I still have about 5 more millions to level up, give me something to do..
6) (Again) static adventures are so annoying after the second time that you're doing that that you would rather go playing with a yo-yo instead of repeating them again, unless you really need beans or something like this.
So, after saying what is wrong, here are a few ideas I would personally consider:
1) After you beat an adventure, give a chance to drop the same adventures with more enemy units, something like an higher tier adventure. A valid mechanism can be something like this:
- Young woodcutter::
: Tier 1 -> 340k xp, normal loot.
: Tier 2 -> 680k xp, increased loot (proportional to normal loot, but do not increase resources by 2x, just increase by a 15% let's say, by doubling enemy units and camps).
: Tier 3 -> 1360k xp, increased loot (proportional, again), increase bosses in the area, leader camps, give a chance for an epic building.
: Tier 4 -> 2720k xp, increased loot (again as above), even higher chance of an epic building, dramatically increase enemy camps and bosses.
: Tier 5 -> 5440k xp, same as above, but give 50% chance to drop an epic building. Again, dramatically increase enemy camps and bosses.
How to get the higher tier adventures: Set them as a drop from the same adventure, with a 15 to 25% chance of drop, along with the other adventures.
How to even make it better: Allow the LOWER tiers adventures to drop buffs for the barracks that allows the player to DECREASE the recruiting time of its barracks.
2) Give daily quests that are proportional to the player's level, by giving him at least the 25% of the adventure's experience points if the quest gets completed. This would be a very good (and, afaik, EASY) implementation that I would like to see.
Are you seriously expecting me to do that:
http://image.prntscr.com/image/bc81e...6298882d58.png
DUDES! I'm level 58, I don't care about 25 iron, I can handle much more than that, give me an ali to do and reward me with 25% of its Xp, I would be prompted to do that.
3) Fix the adventurer's adventure bonus thing. Seriously, check this:
http://image.prntscr.com/image/89865...80f17a0d46.png
.. Are you serious? 5k xp to complete secluded experiments? and just a couple of salpter and bad stuff? is this supposed to be a bonus? HOW did you come up with that, that's terrible.
Considering that such search costs MANUALS, give me the chance to get a quest that is worth the adventure. Give me a rarer resource or an higher amount of XP (again, because I've spent much on it, it would be nice to get the 50% of the loot, seriously), give me SOMETHING out of it, I've even spent my own money to buy the scouts, give me something WORTH it ;).
4) Quest chains:
Ok, is it so hard to think about this? From level 1 to about 48 as far as I can remember, there always is a chain quest to do, there always is something or someone who wants you to complete an harder adventure (I remember asking to complete a fairytale at level 44 or something, that was an AMAZING challenge which was not rewarded that well, but it still was a challenge), while once you reach level 54 you're done, the quests are so ridiculously easy that you won't even take them too seriously, while the should be rewarding you with XP and resources to give you a chance to level up faster, not "slightly" faster, the proportion should be 25 to 35%, not 2%, fix this, I know it's easier than we may expect.
5) Traveling times:
There are no excuses here. You're terribly wrong with what you did there. Not to mention that generals are extremely slow when moving, the travel times in general are too slow. If you seriously want me to level up until 75 you have to allow me to do more than one adventure each day. I can't foresee how an average player can handle more than one to two adventures per day, it's ridiculous, I can't wait 15 minutes for a general to reach the adventure, 2 minutes to place its tent, 14 minutes to move to the area I want him to move, 5 minutes to reach a camp, 5 minutes to come back.. What is this? a movie? I want to play, not to stand in front of my monitor by looking this terrible dude taking AGES to reach the desired camp. It just must be reseen, period.
What about a permanent buff or AN EPIC BUILDING (here we are again!) that decreases the times of each general to reach an adventure island? these times should be highly decreased either using buffs or manuals on generals, enhance this system, it will be something that people will definely enjoy.
6) Economic chains:
What about those players who doesn't really like to level up? and what about the guys and girls who have some of the strongest economies in the game, some of the strongest military power but have their stockpiles full?
Give some economic goals, allow people to get XP by SELLING resources to the game, I would pay 400k bronze sword for 50 to 75k experience points, many can handle that, and many have their stockpiles exploding, just give us a building that allows us to convert some resources to experience, even with some ridiculously inconvenient ratios it would be perfectly fine to me.
- General senseless stuff that needs to be addressed:
Again, being an old school player, I remember these bad times selling lootspots for map fragments.. Seriously.. Map fragments.. yeah.
What about now? Map fragments are close to useless, they are worth NOTHING. Scouts are only worth to get young woodcutters out of searches, and maps can be produced everywhere or bought for a couple of resources.
And what about epic buildings? are they worth the effort for being called EPIC? Are they cool? No. they are just pointless most of the times, and some of them are sold because they takes too much space compared to the bonus they actually give.
I would personally suggest these:
1) Well, you already came up with a great solution, and I truly can tell you GOOD JOB for this:
http://image.prntscr.com/image/d21c4...0caf2e02a8.png
THAT'S AMAZING. Why can't you replicate this to other buildings? Look at this:
http://image.prntscr.com/image/a18b3...48d38ed43c.png
That's an epic building. Takes 2x2 space, gives 50 population. PERIOD. Can't you give epic buildings some DAILY buffs? And what about allowing epic buildings, like other buildings, to get UPGRADED, ask thousand of resources to accomplish such, I don't care, but DO THAT. And add daily buffs to them, either consider military buffs (let's say 3% attack damage permanently for a dark castle?) or economic ones (majestic manor could give a permanent 10% population growth, white castle could increase motivation by increasing some building outputs by 5%, something like this).
That would make epic buildings actually better, and would justify the rarity of some of them.
2) As suggested above, make epic buildings upgradable, and give them very high upgrade costs according to how important the permanent bonus they provide is. I would suggest to give up to level 10 for these buildings, because they are EPIC, so give them something more epic.- Military system:
There definetly is something wrong there. Check this:
http://image.prntscr.com/image/8de8b...6289b370a6.png
http://image.prntscr.com/image/c58eb...611da80948.png
You're asking me TEN bronze swords to have a recruit, while you're asking me 1 platinum sword to get a swordmen.
That's 10:1, are you sure that the first one makes any sense at all?
Besides, the whole military system is pretty screwed up, I've got your military files dudes, I know what I'm talking about, either change mechanism or just apply the above solutions I've posted to make this hell a playable universe, some enemy troups are just too powerful and some player troups are useless. Take a look at the web, you will find people yelling that some troups (AHEM MARKSMEN) are useless, and that some other are even more useless (like ES that can be replaced by recruits against units that deals > 120 damage with no splash damage, lol).
Also, that thing that I cannot use newer units combined with older ones and that thing that I cannot use them in older adventures makes no damn sense. I've level up, I've got the power, let me destroy these bears, you're just giving me a huge limitation here, let me farm stuff if I want to, damnit.
Also, please clarify your position: You've always expressely declared that blocks are not officially supported by TSO, hence they either are a bug or and intended hidden feature (or something else), so please try to calculate loots proportional to how a player would play WITHOUT blocking, or just don't clone that mechanism in "PVP" by making it not only regular and supported but also mandatory in most of the cases, with a tutorial.
Moreover, because you know that the military mechanism is screwed up, provide official valuable tools to actually allow players to KNOW what they should be doing. It's not a guessing game, it's a strategy game, you cannot pretend that anyone knows that RoyalMilitia have, let's say, ID 84 (WOOOPS, not that casual!..) and that WolfPackleaders have ID.. Let's say.. 80??? (Casual, once again?) and that, so, wolfpack leaders will be attacked first while royal militias last. How can they know that? you don't even order the units properly when you display them in the camps, how any single human being supposed to know how the units will attack if he doesn't have these informations? he MUST use a simulator.
Provide a unit or a general in the game that, taking resources, will actually tell you who will attack, what will happen and how the battle will end, giving you every single battle out of it. That's how it is meant to work with such complex mechanics. What where you expecting after seeing that simulators were become more popular? black magic? are we still supposed to fetch data until you will someday (maybe) decide to find a solution?- Out of topic questions
About the last point above there, as a programmer, I'm kindly asking you to PLEASE provide a public REST API available for developers to actually fetch your data without needing to do black magic. Please, give us some tools, informations, allow us to HELP you doing your work for free. Allow us to build a for fun map editor, many already have developed some kind of for fun map editors, but they cannot gather all the resources they need.
Give a hand to your fellows players and eventually developers, PLEASE.
That said, I personally just want to point out that I've decided to take my time here because I'm just tired of TSO, I'm tired to play in this way and I don't care if I can get infinite granite at level 60. I won't move up from 58 where I'm stuck since about 5 months already. I won't move on until something new appears, either recycled (but harder) content either some quests that are worth my time and effort.
Cheers,
Briosheje.
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Ita: Coming soon, forse, se mi gira.
