Hi everyone,
I wanted to gather some feedback on a subject we're discussing within the committee. I understand that asking the greater community as a whole isn't always the best idea, since generally votes trend towards what's best for players personally in the moment, rather than the game itself over the long term. But we're at a deadlock, and need to find a way to proceed.
Currently factions can unset any branch upgrades they wish without a penalty in 100 hours. This means that any faction can entirely change all of their upgrades within short notice, which has created a meta where many factions jump between 'war modes' and 'training modes' for optimal efficiency. This practice was unintended, and seems tedious having to do this whenever a faction wants to 'war' or 'train'. Ranked warring will see factions fighting up to once per week, which may exacerbate this - I expect factions will have to have upgrades continuously rolling in and out, which just doesn't seem viable.
Originally the intent was for factions to choose a good mix between branches - where they rarely entirely switch them out, they just upgrade what's most important to them in the long run. A faction's upgrade tree was meant to cater to its unique requirements and members, setting them apart from others, and being slowly built upon step by step over time. Factions weren't meant to be able to just grab the best branches for whatever they wanted to do at any one time, regardless of how much respect they have. They weren't meant to feel forced to frequently reset their branches in order to be competitive with others.
Instead of remaining with this half-way '100 hour unsets' system, I would like the opportunity to correct my earlier mistakes, and make faction tree upgrades long-term and inflexible as originally planned.
I would like to do the following...
1) Strictly limit the ability to continuously switch branches around, so factions will no longer feel a requirement to do this in order to be competitive with others.
2) Halve all respect costs for upgrades. This 50% reduced requirement will be applied to all specialization branches.
3) Give factions the ability to unlock two more specialization branches, at the x64 and x128 levels. This means it'll be theoretically possible for a faction to have all upgrade branches at once.
4) Create a system that automatically orders branches by 'most respect spent' to ensure the respect cost modifiers are always optimized, in the best combination.
If this plan is not accepted and the majority of you disagree, then we will instead go in the opposite direction, forever embracing flexible short-term faction tree upgrades. Factions will continue to be able to quickly recalibrate their faction tree to whatever branches they want within a matter of days. It's expected that we'll reduce the unset timers to 96 or 72 hours, and make no further changes.
Hopefully there will be a clear and obvious result, showing what's most desired by the community so we can implement a final solution and bring this matter to a close.
Thanks.
I wanted to gather some feedback on a subject we're discussing within the committee. I understand that asking the greater community as a whole isn't always the best idea, since generally votes trend towards what's best for players personally in the moment, rather than the game itself over the long term. But we're at a deadlock, and need to find a way to proceed.
Currently factions can unset any branch upgrades they wish without a penalty in 100 hours. This means that any faction can entirely change all of their upgrades within short notice, which has created a meta where many factions jump between 'war modes' and 'training modes' for optimal efficiency. This practice was unintended, and seems tedious having to do this whenever a faction wants to 'war' or 'train'. Ranked warring will see factions fighting up to once per week, which may exacerbate this - I expect factions will have to have upgrades continuously rolling in and out, which just doesn't seem viable.
Originally the intent was for factions to choose a good mix between branches - where they rarely entirely switch them out, they just upgrade what's most important to them in the long run. A faction's upgrade tree was meant to cater to its unique requirements and members, setting them apart from others, and being slowly built upon step by step over time. Factions weren't meant to be able to just grab the best branches for whatever they wanted to do at any one time, regardless of how much respect they have. They weren't meant to feel forced to frequently reset their branches in order to be competitive with others.
Instead of remaining with this half-way '100 hour unsets' system, I would like the opportunity to correct my earlier mistakes, and make faction tree upgrades long-term and inflexible as originally planned.
I would like to do the following...
1) Strictly limit the ability to continuously switch branches around, so factions will no longer feel a requirement to do this in order to be competitive with others.
2) Halve all respect costs for upgrades. This 50% reduced requirement will be applied to all specialization branches.
3) Give factions the ability to unlock two more specialization branches, at the x64 and x128 levels. This means it'll be theoretically possible for a faction to have all upgrade branches at once.
4) Create a system that automatically orders branches by 'most respect spent' to ensure the respect cost modifiers are always optimized, in the best combination.
If this plan is not accepted and the majority of you disagree, then we will instead go in the opposite direction, forever embracing flexible short-term faction tree upgrades. Factions will continue to be able to quickly recalibrate their faction tree to whatever branches they want within a matter of days. It's expected that we'll reduce the unset timers to 96 or 72 hours, and make no further changes.
Hopefully there will be a clear and obvious result, showing what's most desired by the community so we can implement a final solution and bring this matter to a close.
Thanks.
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