[Ambrose]

THEME CHANGES:
It’s hard to overstate what a jump things seemed to naturally take from H6 to H7. I agree with Miles that the shift from small-town horror to urban fantasy-horror was a smart move. The adjustment period of the first few weeks took acclimating, as we weren’t entirely sure what to expect. Gunning each other down in the streets constantly? A tenuous, uneasy alliance? A generalized hugbox with the edges filed off? Remains to be seen, as it’s fluctuated a bit based on leadership of groups and population of the game.

The removal of Sanctuary seems like less of an issue than initially thought; aside from a few rocky instances early on, Charon coins have not often been necessary. Sanctuary was often clunky to navigate and opened all sorts of victim-blamey drama.

GRID:
Not much actionable for this version in here; more feedback for future versions.
I still think the city is twice (or more) as big as it needs to be, rooms-wise. The number of non-player locations (graveyards, playgrounds, factories, etc) should be halved (or more) in proportion to player locations (shops, houses, brownstones, etc), and the overall area shrunk. It’s just Too Big. The size caused the potential for running across naturally encountering/ambient scenes to shrink to virtually nil in this version. I appreciate that there are plenty of properties to go around, and thus no people fighting over the previously very limited in-town property, but… whew.

More use of verticality instead of x/y. The towers, apartments, elevators, etc are super cool. So are lofts! More of those! Apartment buildings have the bonus of being able to build RP pockets and communities. (On the other hand, mansions and large houses suffered because of verticality; nobody needs 7x7x5 rooms.) And speaking of communities…

The loss of the Nightmare this version also made sense (streamlining systems, removing a very cheap/easy griefing tool), but it also made travel more of a nuisance.

BOROUGHS, ELECTIONS, FAVOR:
I really dig the boroughs in concept, and I like the election systems in concept. Being able to have a theme for each borough that you can style your properties to is cool, and it’s nice to not have the restrictions of districts. Unfortunately, in practice, there’s very little to differentiate living in Highgate vs. living in Northview Park — and also nothing to differentiate living in a Temple-controlled borough or a Hand-controlled one.

The addition of Lieutenant guests and their powers to use on other players gave people a lot more fire under them to take boroughs from the 63rd, which encouraged gamewide cooperation and gamification of the election systems — which, themselves, were initially very opaque and frustrating, an all-or-nothing of your two weeks’ contribution for that borough, dictating whether or not you got any of the Fun Currency until your group took another.

I didn’t care much for Favor payouts being tied to whether or not your group had one or more boroughs, and also REALLY wasn’t a fan of schemes impacting favor payouts. I already have enough of a carrot to run the thwart, I’m getting karma — I don’t also need a stick, telling me I should fuck up this other player’s cool story bit ASAP or else my Fun Currency payout will take a hit.

To piggyback off of what Miles said about territory control — I think perhaps a marriage of the two ideas could be cool. Perhaps the faction controlling a borough could have powers over it, akin to territory control? Raising or lowering taxes (and thus property prices), running schemes/haunts on their citizens at a discount, maybe running city or calendar or lookfor events in the borough they already control gives them a trickle of Favor directly? Raids could lower their control, either reducing the amount they can ‘spend’ on their other actions or making elections happen sooner… I dunno, spitballing.

I think the favor report command is a huge step in the right direction, and that less opacity is a good thing. I know people will just game the system… they’ll do it anyway. At least people with legitimate confusion will be able to see where the disconnect is between what they think they should be earning and what their contributions are.

Personally, early on, I received 0 favor for multiple weeks, despite leading a faction that owned multiple boroughs. Recently, I’v received more favor whilst barely logging into the game than I had the entire time I was throwing my whole ass into it, and it’s hard to not get burnt out or dejected — especially when I’d SEEN others with thousands.

COMBAT:
The ranged weapon distancing changes are great, vis-à-vis optimal positioning and all. It’s much easier to comprehend than previous, adds another layer to combat.

I also agree that the ability cooldown removal might’ve been a mistake. As it stands, the diminishing returns that can be suffered from ability use spill over between combats, meaning that if I used the ‘push’ ability last fight while hunting, the next fight, it might be so depowered as to not even function. ‘Regenerate’ degrades from 20DF to 2DF, and once it reaches that point, it remains there for a significant while. Some abilities don’t seem to do a ‘diminishing return’ — they just don’t do what they should. Landmines, grenades, etc will notoriously sometimes consume the object, use the ability, and not actually fire the effect/leave an armed landmine/leave a functional grenade. As a result, I either spam abilities hoping they’ll work, or I neglect to use them, expecting they won’t.

Gun modifications are cool. The fact that they burn out is rough; the fact that they burn out AND Engineers/Commanders/Underworld Moguls/maybe even Gun Disciples can’t give a discount or duration bonus devalues and deflavors them.

[Ambrose]

Courtesy the ever-incredible emo.

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