I do wish people would refrain from 'speaking for the majority' on this thread, or making assumptions that are based entirely on their own experiences. I'm getting just a tad sick of it, and it's making me want to stop wasting 20 hours a day coding this damned game.
I also don't want to hear any more "we ain't coming back until there is major update, drastic this, super that, Altis the other.' Especially when 'we' really means 'I'.
We (as in the development team) have worked EVERY SINGLE DAY to bring new features, fix old Altis bugs and exploits (yeah, Altis is FULL of exploits, and we all know that some players LOVE using them and think they are something special because they know how to glitch and cheat vs the noobs - but that does not make it great gameplay). We bring you new economy re-balances almost every other day, or as soon as we have had time to observe the effects of the last re-balance (there is no point trying to fiddle with a spinning fan - you sometimes have to leave it to settle before you can really tell whether changing something had the desired effect).
In short, I am so fed up with the moaning and whining, and the ultimatums. If you really don't ever think you're ever going to visit Tanoa, because you just want to play Altis, that is fine - but please don't feel the need to contribute here in this thread. My intention with building Tanoa is NOT to make all Altis players feel 100% happy and enable them to just keep trucking along with the same old tricks, glitches, methods and powerbases that they had before. Tanoa is a new place - a different place - and it will doubtless evolve differently, assuming that we are able to make traction and garner enough of a playerbase. Initial observations do indeed indicate that we are turning the corner and getting the balances right. We always knew (and indeed I said) right at the start that the numbers balances would be off, and it galls me to see so many people whining so hard about this in completely unhelpful ways - when I did explain that the game engine was constructed from the old RPUK AltisLife core in EIGHT FUCKING DAYS. Far from feeling like I have achieved something quite marvellous, I am feeling like I wasted four hundred and twenty hours solid, banging the keys, and my head, to bring us a Tanoa server after Noms did a runner. I'm almost beginning to think I know why he ran.
Now... before anyone gets rude or twitchy about me making ultimatums (I am not), or running from a fight (I'm not)... I do want to make it clear that right now, I am ONLY interested to hear CONSTRUCTIVE feedback in a politely-worded form, or I shall be sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling 'na-na-nah' whilst asking the forum-admins to kick some arse. I don't want to hear a single word about 'on Altis this is xyz much we need it on Tanoa', or 'We don't like an XP system and we don't like it that drugs are considered bad on Tanoa' - because the 'realistic' economy is a core part of the game on Tanoa, as is the system which regards illegal activities as 'bad', thereby causing you to have to THINK more about what bad things you do, and how many of them, in order to maintain access to your hardcore gear, or your convenient spawns. The XP system works like an 'automatic ASBO'... drug-dealers and crummy hobos have to work much harder to get to the big towns where they will murder, rape, mug and kill - that is INTENTIONAL, and derives very much from the mayhem we see in Kavala, and a desire to do something different in Tanoa. We *want* it to be tougher for the VDMing first-spawn hobo to get to Georgetown and ply his trade of pointless, inconvenient, non-RP death. That shit will (hopefully) stay at the airport, and be dealt with by airport cops (if we can gather a force together - either from old Altis cops, or new ones, if it has to be). The big towns are intended to be like more realistic towns - not warzones. We do not want you to have to wall-scrape your way around town like a ninja, as you do in Kavala, if you seek not to be killed or robbed at every turn. We want you to be able to walk to the shops to get a tin of beans, or catch the bus, like a NORMAL human being - to meet people and say hello, to make friends, or have fisticuffs and make enemies... which of course will roll out into much bigger fights or friendships when you are OUT of town and on the road, or in the jungle.
We have already made some far-impacting changes to the economy, and the spawn-system - and even created a whole new Hobo Town, which enables those hobos who *are* proving themselves as early workers and developing starters to have a place to call 'hometown', once they have done a tiny bit of grind. It ain't Georgetown, but it's a nicer and safer place than the airport, for sure! Cars are cheaper, by far, and there are many more vehicles showing up on the island now. Roleplay is developing nicely, and people are beginning to form teams or gangs, and - just as we predicted - some of the early adopters are becoming kings and princes here, and are controlling a lot of the underworld action.
Neo, I, and the rest of the dev-team are still very interested to hear feedback - but the kind of stuff we really need to know is 'how long XYZ took' and what you started with and ended up with. What the 'total loss' risks are, and how that affected you, if you ended up broke. Whether you were able to recover from that (this is so we can work out if we need to add a Welfare Desk at the Town Hall where utterly broke hobos can get a Government Grant in return for some sort of busy-work task or challenge, or even some humiliating RP that makes the citizens of Georgetown laugh - we'll see.
The hardest part of economy balancing is discovering how long every 'task' chain that we create, actually takes for a player to do. That, as I have said to others on TS, is the real 'currency' in the game - the player's time. The numbers for cash can be £1 or £100 or £1,000,000 - and really it all makes no difference at all, if the relative price for a tin of beans or a car is on the same scale. It all boils down to 'how long did it take to earn enough dosh to get a tin of beans, a bike, a car, a jeep, a boat, a heli, a GUN' - because these are the critical reward points that we know the players seek. We don't expect, nor would we honestly design it intentionally so that it took four hundred hours of gameplay netted you one tin of beans and a hat... but on first cut, it's very, very difficult to predict (especially in less than EIGHT DAYS) how long each job would physically take to achieve, or what the draw-down in terms of quadbike outlay or losses from crashes, map-glitches or simply pisspoor driving might actually work out at. Now, we are getting to a point where (thanks to a lot of helpful players who have given us their experiences in a less hostile, less entitled form of words) we are making the right kinds of tweaks and bringing the right 'risk-reward' profiles that we always hoped-for. I'm sure this will continue, especially as we add more features that are planned, and finally squash some of the longstanding exploits and glitches that existed in Altis.
So, please feel free to come to Tanoa, if you are brave and willing to try something new. Don't expect it to be Altis. Altis isn't going anywhere, so if that is the game you love most, and want to stay playing, nobody minds, and we still love you for being our Altis players. In fact, we would not want everyone to just 'ditch' Altis for Tanoa, because that would then mean our Altis servers were empty. We want Tanoa to be an alternative - a different pace - something else to play when you feel like a change. And we want Tanoa to attract NEW members to the Roleplay UK community, as well. There are still many thousands of ARMA3 players who have never tried the 'Life' experiences, or who may have found Altis too oppressive and dangerously imbalanced from the hobo point-of-view. Maybe they will prefer Tanoa's different slant?
Remember, then - on this thread, we're looking for QUALITY feedback. Not necessarily suggestions, and certainly not ultimatums, threats or whining entitlement and harsh criticism. Just honest feedback on how hard things might be - and put in terms of the time things took, the money it cost, lost or gained, and whether it was exciting, dangerous, too slow, too fast (please avoid emotionally charged words like 'boring' or 'shit'). Help us to find the right balances, and pretend for a moment that you are game-design engineers, and do a bit of honest deconstruction and analysis. If you don't feel you can do that, or if your idea of 'honest feedback' is to start telling the devs "what you NEED to do is this", or "this is crap because...", or "your server will be empty forever unless you do...", then please, don't bother posting at all. We will know your feelings already, simply because you are not present on the Tanoa server.
And to everyone who takes the time to give us feedback we can really take on board, judge, analyse and compare with other sensible feedback we're receiving, I thank you - from the bottom of my heart. We *will* make Tanoa a place that is as attractive as - but different to - Altis, with your help and support.
