Launch of Strongholds

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Kandarin
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Joined: Sat Aug 07, 2021 12:10 am

Launch of Strongholds

Post by Kandarin »

The Nexal Struggle has entered the next phase!

Game Mechanics:
*Strongholds have been enabled!
*Faction Level calculation, Renown Gains, and Renown Costs have changed significantly from previous breaths
***See below for more details/discussion of this change, also please see the wiki page https://wiki.nexusclash.com/wiki/Factions
*All fixed and one-shot renown upgrades have been refunded
*Renown Will Not be wiped
*Unfortunately renown hyperinflation has siezed the nexus, who put Marquai in charge, this was a terrible idea
*Renown for all current factions has been set to the greater value of 1000 or your current renown
*There is now a daily renown income that scales inversely with your faction level. Your SH must be up at the daily tick for this income to occur.

Major Bugs:
* Pet phase is now properly factored in whether or not an aoe attack successfully hits them.

Discussion of Faction Changes:
Hello this is Fellis and I'm the one to direct any Criticism, Complaints, or Comments to about the faction changes.
please keep hands, feet, and any other appendages inside the ride at all times
When I looked at the faction and renown systems, something I was struck by was the lack of granularity that it had and the breakdown of rewards. This is a bit rushed, it's the last thing I'm writing before this update goes live.
First of all, how do we determine the threat level of a faction? The previous system was just Character Level = Power and then Power was compared against a table of values to determine level. The new system accounts for the Tier of a character in addition to the character level.
  • Power = Character level * Tier
Which looks like:
Image
There's definitely some issues with this versus the old system, but I think it is a much better approximation of what potential a character brings to a faction without having to get real messy about accounting for class/build/etc.
would you rather fight 90 level 1 mortals or one level 30 Behemoth
Next we determine the power value for each level. These values are arbitrary values for the first 10 levels (so new factions of mortals have a sense of progression) then the power value is determined by an equation
  • Power Requirement = 25 * (e)^((Faction Level ^ 1.5) / Faction Level))
did he just say e what the hell
This all looks like:
Image
are you enjoying the tour of the dev sausage factory, ignore the inconsistencies pls
In my opinion, this all provides a lot more granularity and accounts for lower leveled characters properly. It bothered me that a faction in B4 could be twice the size and only like 2-3 levels higher. Now ~6 levels higher is double the size, and you gain a faction level about every +3 maxxed characters. This also has some parity with our level system in that a level 10 faction is really the precipice of getting into the raid game, and a level 30 faction would be the biggest faction in the game right now. The equation might need to get re-evaluated if we get massive population growth, but that's one of those good problems and I will happily do it. I hope there will be some self-correction with other mechanics and general distribution of population across all sorts of factions.

Next, Renown:

Propose changing our renown rewards to something like this:
Image
(Pet kills by Aura are also granting renown in this new system)

Wow those values are a lot! Lets look at a case study:

Faction A attacks Faction X
Assume Fac A scores 25 player kills and 50 pet kills, Faction A is level 22 and Faction X is level 20

Image
ahhh what these tables aren't labeled properly aaaaaaaaaaa
In our old system, direct player kills were worth the majority of this total, and the flag grab was less. There are pro and cons for the flag being worth more or less. If the Flag is worth less, then the reward being weighted towards kills means that not grabbing the flag isn’t terrible (if you fail the raid). However, this also means that there is more reward for raiding factions smaller than you as you mostly care about kills, the flag being worth less is meaningless (EXCEPT PRIDE). I want to tip the scale a bit the other way and put more weight on the flag, this way smaller factions can feel a greater reward from raiding up, rather than it being worth relatively little, and remove some of the reward for raiding down.

There is also some reward for clearing the pets, which means that tanks/alchemists contribute much more towards the renown gain of the faction, not just the kills that are earned. I think that clearing the pets should be a lot more than 10% but making this any higher means that you can get farm-y about it (which was done a lot in B4 towards then end when the raid meta had died out but people still wanted to get stuff).

The other thing is that one-way hostility cuts your renown gain by more than half. This gives a tool to factions who are being over-raided by someone, you can set them to neutral and remove a lot of the mechanical incentive for them to raid you. (This is a bit awkward now, but eventually will be better when we expand faction politics, something that I am developing now.)

Also inflating the renown values also leaves some room for:
Renown rewards for infusion tile flips to come back
Minor renown rewards for whatever other thing we can think of
Badge renown rewards to be a bit more significant (and want to give a # earned in the reward message so people know it did something)

Next, Renown costs:
hopefully enough people got bored and quit reading before this
FIXED UPGRADES
Image

Flavor upgrades - 100 renown each
Bulletin Board - 100 renown per upgrade
Planar Screen - remains 25 renown

TEMPORARY UPGRADES
Image
(income is round down, so might be slightly different than this table which rounds up)

ONE SHOT UPGRADES
Lead paint- 25 renown * (Faction level / 5) - limit of 3 at a time can be stored
Spelltrap- 15 Renown * (Faction level / 5) - limit of 3 at a time can be stored
Emergency Bunker - 10 renown * (Faction level / 5) - limit of 3 at a time can be stored
Homing Beacon - 12 renown * Faction level - limit of 1 at a time can be stored

All temporary upgrades and one-shot upgrades are subject to change as we find the hard edges in this new system together! :)
coward didn't explain this one very much wowow :toptem:
Katerina Hasheen - Necromancer Advocate, champion of a better Hashaa
Serena Hasheen - Gun ES, Macro Hunter, Freedom Array booster
Isabel Hasheen - Gunwizard Councillor, infusion's #1 fan
Kandarin - Lightning Elementalist, Crusader, fontnet architect
Erduhr-Khazai - Fire-breathing Dragon DO, Evil Overlord, pillager of planes
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