NEStalgia v1.15 update this evening

ID:94374
 
Apr 16 2010, 3:57 pm
Keywords: nestalgia
Tomorrow will mark the 3rd week since NEStalgia's release, and I'm very pleased with the steady progress we've made since then. Tonight's v1.15 update isn't a landmark release, but it does have a few cool new features. As always you can read the full update notes on the wiki.

As if there weren't already enough ways to customize your look in NEStalgia, v1.15 adds items called Masks which are used to permanently change your hairstyle/head wear.


A Mask in my inventory
The mask has been applied!

The Anime Mask is one of many new looks
The Pigtails Mask applied to a female


Masks are subscription-only items in the same loot table as dyes. Like dyes, different masks drop in different areas.

In addition to masks I've also added the option for all players to customize their character's skin color during character creation.




In other news, the arctic content is going up on the testing server this weekend, and should be ready by late next week. Between now and then we have another PvP Tournament planned for Sunday. Last weekend's tournament was a lot of fun to watch and even more fun to participate in. This week's winners will receive the exclusive Viking Mask, as well as an incredibly useful item that you currently can't get anywhere else, as pictured here:


The mask of champions
Use it for yourself or sell it!


It looks like both of the winning teams from last week's brackets will be returning to defend their titles. This is going to be a very competitive tournament, so don't miss it!

NEStalgia Hub: http://www.byond.com/games/SilkGames/NEStalgia
Main Server (Shrenwold): byond://cablemonkey.game-host.org:2045

Learn all about what an optional subscription to NEStalgia gets you!
Apr 16 2010, 4:21 pm
As soon as the semester ends I'll be back. School comes before work, which comes before NEStalgia :\
Apr 16 2010, 4:31 pm
My fellow African brethren and I demand that we be able to change our skin color to black after our character is created.
Apr 16 2010, 4:59 pm
Detox Crystal eh? Solemn will like that one for all his solo grinding.
Apr 17 2010, 12:04 am
Are you going to add PvP flagging? Getting 1-shotted by some guy for no reason isn't my idea of a good time. It's the kind of gameplay I'd expect in an anime game, not NEStalgia.

As a soldier I don't have any healing spells. Since my bag is full of stuff I'm already wearing, plus one or two quest items, I usually only have a maximum of three bag slots available. Usually these slots are filled with (expensive) potions. If I travel anywhere I'm most certainly going to be using most of the gold I make just staying alive chugging potions.

It feels as if I'm tethered to towns with banks, forced to grind in the immediate area surrounding them. In one instance I was literally stranded on the world map with 8HP after leaving a dungeon. I was out of potions and another step would have surely killed me. All it takes is for some random person, even many levels lower than myself, to come up an initiate combat and just take half of my hard earned gold. I'm then left to grind the surrounding area to get the gold to buy some potions to explore elsewhere. Entering a town isn't any better. Sure you're safe from monsters, but the same guy can just walk up and take your gold anyway.

Something is fundamentally wrong here.
Apr 17 2010, 5:01 am (Edited on Apr 17 2010, 5:26 am)
From the v1.10 notes:

* If there is greater than a 7 level difference between anyone involved in a PvP fight, no gold will be won or lost on either side. Logging out in the middle of PvP battles will still cause you to lose gold regardless.

* If a player is killed repeatedly in quick succession, the length of the 'No PvP' timer will increase in order to give them a reprieve.


SuperAntx wrote:
Are you going to add PvP flagging? Getting 1-shotted by some guy for no reason isn't my idea of a good time.

You get angry pretty easily, so my guess is that you're in the minority of players who just can't deal with any form of open PvP. There's nothing wrong with that, but NEStalgia has never been designed to cater to the PvE crowd.

The fact is that no matter how fast I as a hobbyist developer work, there is no way that NEStalgia is going to have enough PvE content at any given time to keep players from getting bored in between updates. Open PvP is part of the solution to this, because it creates a lot of interaction between members of the community. Also to note: against my better judgment I offered a PvE server and no one was interested in it.


SuperAntx wrote:
Something is fundamentally wrong here.

Thanks to the No-PvP timer that starts up after you've been killed, players can no longer be PKed repeatedly. That said, if you're the type of person who is fundamentally opposed to the possibility of being attacked by others when you're not prepared for it, NEStalgia probably isn't for you.
Apr 17 2010, 7:24 am
SilkWizard wrote:
The fact is that no matter how fast I as a hobbyist developer work, there is no way that NEStalgia is going to have enough PvE content at any given time to keep players from getting bored in between updates. Open PvP is part of the solution to this, because it creates a lot of interaction between members of the community.

What I was getting at is it's difficult to enjoy the PvE content at all while being ganked. That "interaction between members of the community" is mean people making the game miserable for others. You can still have player interaction without forcing them to fight each other.

I've seen people engage in friendly forms of PvP. They make sure they've both put their gold in the bank then they go and fight. It's something I think is pretty awesome, but you know what's wrong with it? They're dueling without a proper mechanic to do so. They can't just say "LETS GO" and fight without setting aside their gold or items, fighting, then having to go spend some gold healing back up in an Inn.

Instead there are people who game the system by waiting near town entrances to easily pick off returning adventurers. It's an easily abused system and the No-PvP timer you created is like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound.

Also to note: against my better judgment I offered a PvE server and no one was interested in it.

Did you consider it could have been because nobody was on the server? Nobody wants to play an MMO on an empty server. Even if it's just to sit and chat, more players makes the game more enjoyable.
Apr 17 2010, 7:57 am
SuperAntx wrote:
It's an easily abused system and the No-PvP timer you created is like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound.

What you call a wound/abuse is 100% calculated and intentional game design. You may have valid reasons to disagree with it, but it's all been done purposefully. I'm very much aware that there are a percentage of people who will be turned off by this, but I'm willing to lose the hardcore PvE players.

Once I start promoting NEStalgia there may be enough players around who are interested in a separate PvE server to make it worth trying again. Apart from that, I generally despise PvE MMO servers and I won't be making NEStalgia's primary server PvE. I think that the PvP protections that we've put in place have been more than enough to satisfy the vast majority of players, and I'm happy with the balance we've reached.

So yeah... agree to disagree I guess. I'm sorry that you don't like the current PvP setup :(
Apr 17 2010, 8:35 am
Also to note: against my better judgment I offered a PvE server and no one was interested in it.

You made it subscriber only, and then never asked if people would play if it wasn't. Saves didn't carry over either. Your own taste is the only factor that ever went into deciding if there should be one. Everyone who would have been interested in it probably quit after putting up with open-PvP.

Looking forward to that test server!
Apr 17 2010, 8:47 am
Nesso wrote:
You made it subscriber only, and then never asked if people would play if it wasn't. Saves didn't carry over either. Your own taste is the only factor that ever went into deciding if there should be one. Everyone who would have been interested in it probably quit after putting up with open-PvP.

Before it was officially a PvE server, that second server was the place that people who didn't like PvE went because it had a lower population, and therefore no PvP happened there anyway. That was all of about 8-12 people at any given time, and that was when the main was running 70-80 online.

I offered to transfer saves from the main, but most people did not like the idea of pure PvE. It also wasn't due to it being subscriber only, because by that time (roughly one week) I already had 70+ subscribers. There wasn't any shortage of people eligible to play there.

Finally, while I certainly prefer open PvP myself, it's also made NEStalgia a much more interesting game. There have been guild wars. We've had highwaymen robbing people only to be hunted down by bounty hunters or do-gooders. All sorts of interaction between players has been generated that could never exist in a PvE-only environment.

All of this type of stuff factored in to the decision early on to make NEStalgia open PvP. This decision is no different than my choice to add quests to the game, or to put in only 6 classes so far. It's as much a part of NEStalgia's design as anything else.
Apr 17 2010, 8:52 pm
SilkWizard wrote:
There have been guild wars. We've had highwaymen robbing people only to be hunted down by bounty hunters or do-gooders.

I really wonder how many of those I had a part in, I can think of at least one instance of each.

So yes, the Open PvP works. And to the Soldier down there, you know what your problem is?

NEStalgia is based around PARTY dynamics. If you solo, it's harder. MUCH harder. Sure you can do it, but why play an Online game if you are going to solo? I never understood that line of thinking.

In any event, the open PvP is what draws me, and made me subscribe, to NEStalgia. And I know of at least a dozen others whose names I could throw down right now, also subscribers, who feel the same way.

100+ people liked it enough to pay for it.

Probably another 30-50 liked it enough to play with it.

And about 10-20 or so hate it enough to cry about it.

You tell me what you would do with those numbers?
Apr 17 2010, 9:50 pm
Lumino wrote:
NEStalgia is based around PARTY dynamics. If you solo, it's harder. MUCH harder. Sure you can do it, but why play an Online game if you are going to solo? I never understood that line of thinking.

Nope, NEStalgia is balanced according to your party size. By grouping you fight more enemies so it evens out. You should be just as effective solo, just less versatile.

As NEStalgia ages more and more people become bottlenecked at the top level bracket. This means there are less people out questing and more people out ganking. Just like with any old anime game where you have a bunch of powerful players standing around bored, they're going to go kill lower level people because they're easy pickings.

SilkWizard wrote:
What you call a wound/abuse is 100% calculated and intentional game design.

That may be so, but that doesn't mean it's the best solution. Lots of developers design things which sound great on paper but turn out to be not so great in practice. I'm not even what you would call a "hardcore PvE player," I just wanted to enjoy the game you made. If a game is frustrating I can't really have fun, if I can't have fun I don't really see the point in playing.

You're pretty much just turning your back on a segment of NEStalgia fans. You're perfectly fine with a flawed PvP system because it's the way you intended it to be. You don't have to completely eliminate PvP just to protect players focusing on PvE, just make it a system you opt into so you get the best of both worlds.
Apr 18 2010, 2:51 am
SuperAntx wrote:
You don't have to completely eliminate PvP just to protect players focusing on PvE, just make it a system you opt into so you get the best of both worlds.

But that's not the best of both worlds - that's a PvE server.

And that's my point. In order to please players who think like you do, the only solution is put up a PvE server. Either I alienate my established playerbase and just make the primary server that way now, or I wait until I market the game and draw in enough people where a separate PvE server becomes viable.