Why I believe Era fails
 

Since the beginning, one of the great things about Graal is that much of it is about skill, not how much you play. Someone who logs on for the first time can kill someone who has been playing for years because of skill.

This is harder to accomplish on modern servers, and servers where there are items that you can gather, as opposed to Unholy Nation, Classic, and other classic-themed servers, where the main goal is, for the most part, questing and PKing.

Era used to be better than it is now. Remember when sparring was about skill, not your gun? I remember when there were people who had the most expensive guns in the game that I could defeat with an Uzi. It used to be based on skill. Now, after several years, I get on and the only thing I can do is grind and grind to make money. Once I've made money, I can buy a gun. But why should I even bother buying a gun? Why don't I just keep making money until I get enough money to get a gun that is good enough to actually defeat someone?

A while back, the highest difference in gun damage was somewhere around 4 or 5. Now it's up to 10 or so (yes, there were guns that did significantly more, but they shot slow). Somehow, in the transition from 100 HP to 10 HP, guns started taking less hits to kill people. Then, in the transition back to 100 HP, it took even less hits to kill. The term "lossy compression" comes to mind.

No matter your skill level, there is almost no way you can defeat someone who has a gun that does 20+ damage, shoots as fast as an AK47 or faster, and reloads in very little time.

And, while I'm describing how Era fails, I'll bring up quests. If you've done any of the quests on Era, you'll know where I'm coming from. First; what kind of prize is one extra HP out of one hundred? That would be absolutely fine if there was only 10 HP, but not out of one hundred. Why should I do more than one quest? 101 HP is generally enough to give me one extra hit, so what good do the extra 3 HP do for me?

I'm sure there are many other ways that Era fails, but these are the ones that really hit me after logging on for less than ten minutes.

Please don't turn this in to a spam thread about Era, Utopia, or any other "Era clones"

In before flame war.

Hopefully people can manage to keep this sane. I doubt it.

Why did they go from 100 to 10 to 100 hp?

I have no idea. But, guns used to do 10/100 damage. Now they do 20/104.

I can own with one handgun, :D No lie,

When did it become 100hp?

You obviously haven't been on for a while. You can no longer own with one handgun. Guaranteed.

The secret is you calculate where they are going to be, and then shoot that way, they run into it, never waste a bullet, never spam to keep them down, every bullet should hit.


But if what you say is true thats probably not gonna work anymore now is it :(

We went from 10 to 100 again to have more variety with gun damage. The problem with this idea is that we introduced it before we changed the damage of all guns to fit nicely with this system, I guess the plan still is to do this after the reset. We also plan to get rid of the "gun > skill" problem.
About the quests -> there will be more.

Edit: Oya, you can actually own with a single handgun, it still works.

Why do you reset era monthly anyways? Insane... I bet everytime you do that, you loose players.

We dont reset monthly, and this time it's because of the duping issue which has been around for several months.

If you can own with a handgun how come when I go on Era I see 25 people with these bigass guns?

I think a market, which introduces controlled supply and demand of items, adds a different level of interest to the age old "skill" game. I personally enjoy games with markets - I've always been good at selling and buying, and I love the challenge of making connections in your own favour.

If the problem is people who have a higher "market skill" which allows them better guns then seperate them - not forcibly - give them a reason to seperate. Make a new area which is harder, either because of tougher players or another factor (NPCs) but also has better lewts than the previous place.

This gives the new players room to grow and the old players a continual challenge.

Yes, you can, if the other person is not moving and is not shooting. Or is shooting the wrong way. But basically, any ***** who knows how to walk and shoot could defeat someone with a hand gun if they have a better gun.
Not really monthly, but a lot. This is the problem with a lot of classic servers; they reset a lot. The first time they reset (a year ago?) it was needed, but now they're going to reset again .... not needed.
Era doesn't have a market. You work, and buy a gun. That's really all there is. If you want to be good, grind and grind.

You wish -_-

Yea it does. http://theugcc.com/forums/images/smilies/dunno.png

Not a stable one.

Your opinion of the market doesn't make it any less of a market. Besides, "stable" is very relative. It's hard to say there's such a thing as a "stable" market to begin with. It may very well be stable and healthy by Era standards - especially since it's a developing market.

Era fails because of bullying!!!! >: (
Dammit, the let little man with a knife actually get somewhere without everyone on the map running at him with AK's!

We are trying to balance the weapons, but it's much harder than it seems.

20 damage weapon with 100hp: 5 hits
20 damage weapon with 101hp: 6 hits
it actually makes more of a difference than you think. I think we have plans to create more quests that give 1 - 2 hp instead of having 4 quests that give 10 hp.

It was actually 50 -> 10 -> 100
and we did that because of gun damages. With 10hp, you can really only have damages like .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 (anything past that is ridiculous)
With 100hp, you can have like 10.. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20... etc It lets us vary with damages.

Era has a unique economy.. It's very hard to keep it stable. I could write a book on it, *****. The last reset was over a year ago.. and with the huge duping problem, we're going to have to reset again. Sorry, but if players want to abuse glitches and screw up the economy then we have to reset.

Blaming players for glitch abuse is not very responsible; you create a system for players to compete with one another, as such they will do what they must to get an advantage - including the abuse of glitches which are the result of either poor planning or poor coding. >_<

Create a system that tracks the economy. Catch this stuff before it gets so out of hand that you have to reset. It's a lot easier to just reset one person than it is to reset the whole server.

No, I've worked on Utopia, where we had FAR more guns. They were all very balanced, actually. I know it is hard, but the first step is to just lower the damage of everything.
I was referring to why do more than one quest?
20 damage weapon with 100 hp: 5 hits
20 damage weapon with 101 hp: 6 hits
20 damage weapon with 102 hp: 6 hits
20 damage weapon with 103 hp: 6 hits
20 damage weapon with 104 hp: 6 hits
I know. I'm saying that when you started, guns did very little damage compared to what they do now.
Fix the glitches?
Agreed, though players should try to report things since glitch abuse really is a bannable offense on most servers.

Right, so players feel pressured to report it or at least not abuse it. Dusty's suggestion was the correct answer.

We have to reset, but I already got some ideas to "watch" the economy afterwards, yes.

I think one of the things you need to do is just listen to players.

I PMed the owner of Era before the first reset and told him that the economy was getting too bloated. He said "no it's fine". Two weeks later, they reset.

Era wouldn't fail with that newspaper thingy that you can read, and also post ideas.
A poll NPC would be welcome for players

Wow LOL

This is pretty why I didn't play Era for more than 3 months

the first time they resetted I was like wtf... oh well I can still play

Then they resetted like a month after, I was pissed.

So I quitted.


The fact is that job changes alot

Before mining was giving you lot of money, and working in a business was fine.

Now picking flower is too boring, and its the only way to get lot of money.

I think that system to make bouqets should be less boring, more attractive anyway.

Let's do an exemple

Just reduce the price of each composition of flowers and create something else

Why not a window with each type of flower and an arrow next to them then you just hit the arrow for how many flowers you wanna put then make the bouqet by clicing on a "Create" Key ?

It wouldn't change anything with getting an ammount of money, but I guess player would like to do this more longer, and then finaly get more money by getting more flowers done.

Then the economy would get bloated since it's easier and faster to get money.

This would happen anyways if everyone picked flowers. I don't see anything wrong with making the process a little more flashy. (Maybe all era really needs is to stop to killing and to start handing out flowers) :P

If all you had to do is get flowers then click something, it would be too easy, and everyone would do it. Then, now that it's easier and quicker to get money, there is more money. Therefor, prices go up.

i get killed when i try to pick flowers on era ):

Ya, like I posted before, Era isn't really newbie-friendly. You have to have friends to get anywhere.
Whenever a newbie logs on, you can literally see everyone on the minimap start coming towards you, then you're being showered by bullets.

and then, when youre in the hospital and you FINALLY get to full hp, you walk outside and theres hospital dwellers just waiting to kill you

I find that perspective very frustrating; you have to understand that this sort of "high pressure" situation is what makes the game competitive - people aren't going to lie to themselves and say "Oh yes, it's competitive". People want to actually feel the need to compete, it's part of the fun.

When you're shot down by some snot with rifle you think "I will eventually have a truck, and I will run that little **** down." >_<

if they want to shoot someone down, go to zone

Wherever there is shooting-style servers that they may shoot on it is their own decision where they would like to shoot.

If you want to pick flowers go to UN, or Zodiac - crazy how that door swings both ways, eh?

crazy how you cant pick flowers on un

We've had numerous people try and help fix the duping bug but nobody could figure out. Just "fixing it" was not an option, so sorry.

This will appear relatively long, I'm sorry for that, I'll try to break it into pieces:-

As far as the duping issue goes, it's a matter of how dedicated to screwing things up for a server someone is to find such a glitch/bug. Think about how long the current Item System and all of it has been around, and not been changed. This was always possible, it's just that Player A finds it, tries it over and over, no one is aware of this, then Player A realises he/she was able to do it again and doesn't want to stop, so he/she tells Player B, but also tells Player B not to tell anyone... Well, of course Player B is going to tell all his/her friends, as it would greatly benefit them, and before you know it, no one of the position to stop these few players has found out until it was too late.

The problem with what Dusty said is the fact that it is easy to say "Reset the player, not the server", but you need to know which player did it, and reset them before they spread what they duped around, and you would also need to know what it was they duped in the first place. Logs are a great tool for figuring most of this stuff out, but tracking it down to specific players, then saying "Oh, sorry, I know you paid thousands for that weapon, but I'm going to have to remove it from you and reimburse you" is another thing that makes player quit, since they wanted such a thing so badly, then it turned out there was no point at all.

Frankie said something about the players, which Stephen replied to with something about it not being responsible to pin whatever on the players, but you do have to think about it: Player A is found out, you seriously think he/she's going to give up what they know about it to someone who could probably fix it? Hardly likely. I've been down that road hundreds of times, already. Even tried bargining with some of them, but once they have their end of the bargin, they're right back to it, knowing they've completely lied to your face.

Which brings me to the attitude of Era, which was also mentioned as a concern, I think by Elizabeth or Dusty. It amazes even me that oh so many of Era's players are rude, arrogant, racist, foul mouthed snobs, even though we have a filter, while other servers can go filter-free, and around 90 percent of their players are well-behaved, well-mannered, well-spoken characters of the population. Personally, I'm sick to death of punishing people for it, but all it takes is one person to hang around with someone like that, and monkey hear, monkey say. Recently, we had a sweet young kid start playing, and he managed to get caught up in the wrong crowd (Obviously easy to do on Era), and now he's a rude, annoying, foul-mouthed scammer. Sadly, that's human nature, and even more sadly - most of them are concentrated on the one server, which spreads it within itself. I could spam the heck out of words that will just appear as *'s on here, but it doesn't change the fact that I said it, and all it would take is an impressionable newbie to see it, think it's fine, and then repeat my action thinking it's the acceptable thing to do.

I don't know why whoever renamed this did; the thread title was relevant and correct.

In any case, hopefully the reset will help.

It is a shame how some players ruin it for everybody.