Best posts made by drakelow

There's a huge wiki and lots of online content (including gameplay videos) that show you the essence of the game.

I'd say the price is pretty low if you like the genre, but if you don't like sandbox games (meaning that you need a line of "quests" to enjoy a game) it will probably not be worth it.

And it's still under heavy development, so there is always the risk they will introduce mechanics you won't like at all (for me that happened when I "experienced" in-game taxes: if you don't play often enough they wipe everything you built).

I bought it during the Kickstarter campaign when it was sold as a grind-less MMO, and they definitely changed the approach on that... but who knows what will they create at last?

I mean, I'd rather have a functioning game without bugs and decently balanced than the furry black cat following my character, but that's me the time developers dedicate to the game is limited, if they focus on something they don't focus on something else

That happened to me too and that's the main reason I stopped following the game for a long time, and even now I just poke it out of curiosity once in a while to see what changed (I loved this test btw, keep up the good work!).

A couple of simple solutions:

• When the game erases plots where upkeep wasn't paid, it keeps in memory its items and buildings. If and when the inactive player comes back, when he buys a new plot "of the same kind" (to avoid free relocation) he's asked if he wants to recover its previous stuff. If he says yes, the game copy-pastes the data of the previous plot into the new one. If you really want to punish inactive players, add a fee for this.
• Allow for instanced housing. So if you know you don't want to play very regularly, you can use a plot there.

Some damage reduction possibilities if you really want to keep it:

• put no limit to the gold you can sink in advance so that if I know I want to take a break of three months I can just pay it and that's it.
• if the buildings are destroyed, give the resources back as "credits" the player can spend on blueprints so that the grind of rebuilding is reduced. Or if you really like the heavy material mechanic, spawn the materials in a storage building (there used to be some for wood and ore, but I didn't see them during this test) when the new player gets a new plot.

I don't think the number of players they are losing out of this is worth the decision; punishing the players that want to come back to the game after a long break with hours of pure grinding doesn't seem very smart to me, but I might be missing the point of the mechanic altogether.