“Update: Logging out is back!”—discussion

[PenguinPosts: 2]

The new update takes back a staple element of the game, the permanent login. Whether better or worse, it will undoubtely make this a different game. As far as I can see this changes fits well with a long-running list of rules-of-the-world changes that aim at quite a paradigm shift away from hardcoreness.

Gone are the days were there were really high stakes. The update notes mention the stress of perma-login, which was actually a thing. It’s quite liberating being able to log in for 10 minutes and then not play for days, and nobody is going to kill me in my sleep and steal a good part of my equipment.

My suggestion in this regards is that the 1 minute lapse to disappear should be counted since the last damage event, otherwise I suspect stronger characters could log off while under attack by weaker ones and survive.

Characters can probably be usable as item storage. If you have some precious items you don’t want to risk, create a character, have him pick them up, and log him off. I wonder whether this exploit has been thought by the developer—but it’s not an actual exploit, it’s a witty utilization of the rules by which the game world abides.

The new gold-protecting-items-under-locks will be a further improvement of security. Possibly this is not going to be that impactful.

If the log-off vanishing wasn’t enough, the further decrease of item drop upon death is basically the developer encouraging us to be more bold in attacking each other. There isn’t really much to lose.

My opinion on this is that a long term problem with this game is that we have not witnessed any truly smart gameplay. Game mechanics haven’t been fully exploited. We don’t know what kind of political landscape would take form after a WUOTRBWTGWA (Witty Utlization Of The Rules By Which The Game World Abides). So the fine-tuning of game mechanics is probably based not on the optimal gameplay, but on the actual one. An interesting instance of this is that people didn’t use the locks, that could have been super-useful in protecting items! At present people can take easy advantage of some aspects of the game, for instance the ghost treasuring technique I just hypothesized (which should work fine unless I missed something), or macroing, which basically is an advantage to people based on how much CPU per hour they can run.

[GoblinPosts: 94]

Ghost treasuring sounds like a legit problem, especially with the new infinite inventory sizes.

It’s probably good to draw attention to it now before it becomes a problem, especially before release.

[GoblinPosts: 99]

At this point, it’s basically lost any form of unique identity, with broken mechanics to cobble together a grinding simulator. I look forward to future improvements.

[Polar BearPosts: 45]

My opinion on this is that a long term problem with this game is that we have not witnessed any truly smart gameplay. Game mechanics haven’t been fully exploited. We don’t know what kind of political landscape would take form after a WUOTRBWTGWA

You haven’t, but that’s only because there’s no need for smart gameplay in such a casual setting. Things were different when the game was hardcore.

[SkeletonPosts: 119]

Tiltan is an alternative account of mine. My claim is that even when there was full loot and a ìhigh experience loss, the game culture wasn’t at its full potential.

For instance there was a time when if you put an item in the same time as a door, the door wouldn’t decay. As far as I know only a person took advantage of this.

Then, even without this unintended lack of decay, putting items inside doors would still be a super smart thing to do, because eventual thieves would have to break each door to reach the items. Still, I don’t think people have been doing this very much.

As another example we witnessed some griefing, but it wasn’t very optimized.

[Polar BearPosts: 45]

As far as I know only a person took advantage of this.

It was actually fairly common, but like most “smart gameplay” it wasn’t done openly, because information is power, and the stakes were high.

Other examples of smart gameplay that were common at the time include macros and botting, various exploits (on both sides of bloody tuesday, firing arrows through the corners of bases, one that H1K1, I think, used to amass something like two billion copper, tin, and bronze, the one that was allegedly used both to kill Robin and invade FL during the ban), spam crafting spinning needles to level crafting because the exp per item was static, attacking walls with daggers instead of hammers because they were faster even in spite of the destruction bonus, altaring, clever base design (you should have seen the attention to detail that went into FL’s base, and likely Robin’s as well), data collection and analysis, espionage, and of course the chrome extension.

There was a lot happening behind the scenes that was deliberately kept secret.

[Polar BearPosts: 45]

I was very smart about the game too. Smart hakku, I approve.

[GoblinPosts: 64]

Oh yes, I remember the days when you’ve needed a good and high stake to see what happens under the walls of one of that smart, mysterious barns.

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