Now that MO2 is Officially a 200 Pop Game

[Emdash]

I agree with everything but the weight lock. The food system itself is a frivolous waste of time as is currently implemented. I don't want a frivolous system to be more arduous waste of my game time. It literally exist to be a burden. A burden that most players like myself simply don't care about at all.

Furthermore, the food system and the weight class system that it is linked to has created toxic extremes that break the attribute system creating super powered attribute combinations that break the games foundational attribute limitation and control mechanics. The under-leveling of attributes is yet another blatantly obvious balance issue that SV continues to ignore.

They removed the HP buff from eating, too. Like going almost to the next weight is nothing anymore.

They can keep the weight lock in regards to not going over weight, but you should still lose weight and you should still take debuffs from hunger. In MO1, you'd not even be able to rest at too high hunger. That is a proper mechanic for a sandbox hardcore game.

You should also get a benefit from eating well. The fact that dudes can just lock their weight is stupid because you don't need to do anything. I stay on 1800 hunger and use OP food so I end up with about 1300 hunger that I can use at any time and max reserves. So I can just pound whatever food I need. That's not working as intended.

If anything, I would say being able to grab a low level horse is ok, but the higher level ones should require taming. But nah the weight lock thing is a massive nub mechanic. More nub than anything else because it was only due to people going overweight by eating. They could have easily made it so that it stopped you heh. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. The game stops you eating and is like ok, you are about to go overweight, start eating again if you want to. And then after any amount of time, like say 10 seconds, put the guard back on.

The whole idea of weight classes is based on food. If you are a skeletal mage, you have to be careful about going overweight. I was lean on Maltie since the game dropped and I drank a lot of boiled water haha. Why, because I would have gone over weight if I ate massive fatfood. It felt good, it was meaningful.

I hugely disagree with your take, and I urge you to reconsider. It's not that hard to eat and not over-max your reserves. It creates a need for stuff like 0 fat gain foods. Makes people drink water, etc. It's more important than you think.

 

[Teknique]

They removed the HP buff from eating, too. Like going almost to the next weight is nothing anymore.

They can keep the weight lock in regards to not going over weight, but you should still lose weight and you should still take debuffs from hunger. In MO1, you'd not even be able to rest at too high hunger. That is a proper mechanic for a sandbox hardcore game.

You should also get a benefit from eating well. The fact that dudes can just lock their weight is stupid because you don't need to do anything. I stay on 1800 hunger and use OP food so I end up with about 1300 hunger that I can use at any time and max reserves. So I can just pound whatever food I need. That's not working as intended.

If anything, I would say being able to grab a low level horse is ok, but the higher level ones should require taming. But nah the weight lock thing is a massive nub mechanic. More nub than anything else because it was only due to people going overweight by eating. They could have easily made it so that it stopped you heh. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. The game stops you eating and is like ok, you are about to go overweight, start eating again if you want to. And then after any amount of time, like say 10 seconds, put the guard back on.

The whole idea of weight classes is based on food. If you are a skeletal mage, you have to be careful about going overweight. I was lean on Maltie since the game dropped and I drank a lot of boiled water haha. Why, because I would have gone over weight if I ate massive fatfood. It felt good, it was meaningful.

I hugely disagree with your take, and I urge you to reconsider. It's not that hard to eat and not over-max your reserves. It creates a need for stuff like 0 fat gain foods. Makes people drink water, etc. It's more important than you think.

The game stopping you when you’re about to go overweight is a great idea. Food served its purpose. MO2 if anything should have been an expansion of the survival mechanics not contraction. I would have even liked to see a drastic pivot toward survival genre, resting, thirst, hunger, hell even macronutrients would be cool. Of course then the world would have to be dangerous, outside of just hive minded npcs that pop up from the ground and chase you for miles.

 

[Xunila]

We even had the "sophistication" value in MO1: It was planned to allow talking to some NPCs only with a high sophistication value. And to get the value up, you had to eat food of good quality. Just raw meat is bad, just poor water is bad. The profession of cooking had been very useful in MO1 to get the right food to hold the weight and also to get the sophistication up.

 

[Ibarruri]

I warned about this in a post years ago. Nobody listened.
It's happened just as I predicted.

At least MO1, with a reasonable map suited to the game's nature, offered us more genuine fun. I'd even dare to call it a moderate success. It wasn't a fun game, but it was a good game. MO2 was a disaster from the beta. I had some hope in the alpha. My hope was lost very quickly.

This is what happens when you betray an idea and turn it into pretentious nonsense with absurd mechanics, empty promises, and many bad decisions.

In my opinion, it hasn't hit rock bottom yet. We have to wait until it has 50 active players.
By the way, is anyone up for going back to MO1?

 

[Ibarruri]

They catered their game to game hopping Discord carebear tourists that we all knew were going to leave anyways... We tried to warn them...

sad, but 100% true.

 

[Ibarruri]

We even had the "sophistication" value in MO1: It was planned to allow talking to some NPCs only with a high sophistication value. And to get the value up, you had to eat food of good quality. Just raw meat is bad, just poor water is bad. The profession of cooking had been very useful in MO1 to get the right food to hold the weight and also to get the sophistication up.

In old days in mo1 be a good cooker, not was bad option. was interesting and nice.

 

[Ibarruri]

Counterpoint:

Many of the changes (seige windows, no walls, no stat loss) were called for repeatedly in mo1.

Not saying thats why pop is down but in hindsight, those suggestions clearly werent the "more people would play" solutions.

Im sure in 5 years after sarducaa and f2p when the pop is at 250 peak, we'll be having the same conversations

I don't think the game will still be around in five years. Sarduca is the worst idea I could have come up with to revive the game.

 

[Ibarruri]

This is in my opinion the real issue. Where is the guild politics? What great crusade has happened, who is locking down territory that we all hate, and what guild is taking huge L’s and getting blasted in videos, which guild disappeared overnight, where’s the drama. This is why it could never be as simple as a “oh the flagging system sucks”. There is no game! Seriously what Great War has occurred and where’s the footage? It will probably be some failed keep siege or just elementalism everywhere that everyone regears after and has no consequence

That kind of content died in MO1, you know that well, Teknique. Those days are long gone. The old lords are long gone.
When I recall the rich and epic history of MO1 and compare it to MO2, I only feel pity.

Where are the new legends? The new great stories, wars, and legendary adventures? Where are the great characters? MO1 was fertile ground for generating stories and creating interesting characters for the community; we all had our favorite duelist, a legendary merchant, a renowned warrior, a great warlord.
MO2 had none of that. No big names. That's part of its tremendous failure as an MMO. There was simply no passing of the torch, no community.

 

[finegamingconnoisseur]

The game stopping you when you’re about to go overweight is a great idea. Food served its purpose. MO2 if anything should have been an expansion of the survival mechanics not contraction. I would have even liked to see a drastic pivot toward survival genre, resting, thirst, hunger, hell even macronutrients would be cool. Of course then the world would have to be dangerous, outside of just hive minded npcs that pop up from the ground and chase you for miles.

I actually made some of the suggestions about survival, liking having to drink and sleep, in one of Henrik's livestreams a number of years ago. But from what I remember him saying was that he didn't want MO2 to become "that type of game" (survival). It's rather odd, considering MO1 had sleep which blacked out your screen and you could only hear what is around you while your long-term fatigue bars slowly went away.

 

[Xunila]

In my opinion, it hasn't hit rock bottom yet. We have to wait until it has 50 active players.
By the way, is anyone up for going back to MO1?

Yes, I'm (and have been all the time) active in MO1. The MO1 discord channel is full of discussions, and there are more and more players coming to MO1 and even subscribe MO1. Of cause the activity is low compared to MO2, but most keep spots are taken and you find houses and structures all over the map. Those houses and structures are staying and are paid for long time.

 

[finegamingconnoisseur]

We even had the "sophistication" value in MO1: It was planned to allow talking to some NPCs only with a high sophistication value. And to get the value up, you had to eat food of good quality. Just raw meat is bad, just poor water is bad. The profession of cooking had been very useful in MO1 to get the right food to hold the weight and also to get the sophistication up.

It's quite a wasted potential that for years, we've been posting very good ideas here on the forums, but sadly I feel that many of those ideas have either been ignored or implemented in a very different spirit to what we had in mind.

 

[Teknique]

It's quite a wasted potential that for years, we've been posting very good ideas here on the forums, but sadly I feel that many of those ideas have either been ignored or implemented in a very different spirit to what we had in mind.

The problem is there are way too many ideas floating around and most of them are not just bad but worst case scenario horror shows like turn caps, or siege windows. Henrik in some cases is the origin of the noise but in all cases is unable to parse out the noise. This is the real problem.

I do not think there is a singular mechanic that has preserved the spirit of the original game whether it be bow draw speed, the way attributes work, anything. I can’t think of a single thing that hasn’t been fucked with by this horror show of a community.

Henrik to his credit was trying to implement a lot of the ideas from the community. For example “make every class dogshit so I can just parry hack and speed hack with no counters like mounted combat” Henrik was like yup agreed let’s make it so you can’t even move your mouse. Mo2 is hacker paradise because all natural skill was meticulously removed by very short sighted players. That crowd has always won the larger narrative. There was one famous mo1 player that everyone dick rode. I won’t name names to avoid breaking rules but I saw their faceit counterstrike profile and it was immediately banned for hacking and I’m supposed to believe these people when they make balance suggestions, laughable.

All of that to say is that it isn’t as simple as Henrik listening to the community. The community is itself the origin of the problem in many instances and when it isn’t then yes sv is going to implement the idea like shit anyway.

 

[Leehart]

The remaining MO1 community and true MO2 fans are talking about the social game, exciting territory wars, and the additional continent "Sarducaan," hoping for a new surge of excitement and an influx of new players...
But as statistics show, the time to attract new players to the community was lost at the game's launch (precisely those who were eagerly awaiting this game for its boundless potential and beauty, willing to pay for it at least twice a month).
46% positive reviews on Steam over the past month! A game with the best character leveling system, a wonderful non-target combat system, an amazing crafting system, excellent graphics, and complete freedom to express yourself in an MMORPG!
The journey of a new MO2 player consists of 5-20 hours in Haven learning the initial mechanics of the game, the excitement of the upcoming game in Mirland... and that's it. All this will end with endless sacrifice of your body and bandit heads for players who need to realize their accumulated PVP potential. Because the game has nothing interesting to offer veteran players. There's no point in sieges or dungeons (of which there are fewer than the fingers on one hand). The entire world has already been explored, all points of interest are either controlled by your clan or inaccessible to you. A new player needs many hours to grind for a level 20 gift and gold to learn crafting. A new player either goes through this or Alt+F4 – MO2 is a hardcore game.
And then, they go on to realize their PVP potential, becoming a common griefer.
And then, the whole point of a social game ends with every departing player or unpaid Discord clan. There are no people who can gather a group of players for an interesting arena tournament, no duelists in the arenas to practice their 360 skills, because these people simply leave.... There is nothing interesting except an empty, beautiful world and the equally empty "Sarducaan /with theft mechanics/ 2026-2028"...
Empty new assets and trinkets do not attract new players to MMOs, especially with a subscription.

 

[Teknique]

The remaining MO1 community and true MO2 fans are talking about the social game, exciting territory wars, and the additional continent "Sarducaan," hoping for a new surge of excitement and an influx of new players...
But as statistics show, the time to attract new players to the community was lost at the game's launch (precisely those who were eagerly awaiting this game for its boundless potential and beauty, willing to pay for it at least twice a month).
46% positive reviews on Steam over the past month! A game with the best character leveling system, a wonderful non-target combat system, an amazing crafting system, excellent graphics, and complete freedom to express yourself in an MMORPG!
The journey of a new MO2 player consists of 5-20 hours in Haven learning the initial mechanics of the game, the excitement of the upcoming game in Mirland... and that's it. All this will end with endless sacrifice of your body and bandit heads for players who need to realize their accumulated PVP potential. Because the game has nothing interesting to offer veteran players. There's no point in sieges or dungeons (of which there are fewer than the fingers on one hand). The entire world has already been explored, all points of interest are either controlled by your clan or inaccessible to you. A new player needs many hours to grind for a level 20 gift and gold to learn crafting. A new player either goes through this or Alt+F4 – MO2 is a hardcore game.
And then, they go on to realize their PVP potential, becoming a common griefer.
And then, the whole point of a social game ends with every departing player or unpaid Discord clan. There are no people who can gather a group of players for an interesting arena tournament, no duelists in the arenas to practice their 360 skills, because these people simply leave.... There is nothing interesting except an empty, beautiful world and the equally empty "Sarducaan /with theft mechanics/ 2026-2028"...
Empty new assets and trinkets do not attract new players to MMOs, especially with a subscription.

I agree. Nothing could save this game short of divine intervention. This is mainly a retrospect conversation at this point. Under no circumstances am I expecting correct decision making to even occur let alone actually reverse the damage.

The dungeon lock down that you’re referring to. At least guilds in the first game were genuinely vulnerable to collapse. Poor organization, poor morale and selfish leadership could bring a seemingly powerful guild to its knees with shocking speed. It often mirrored actual historical conflicts where one or two major battles decided the conflict. This made acquiring territory and content that is locked down to you at least always on the table, because you were always one battle or one emotionally unstable individual away from collapse. In mo2 the permanence of guilds is too great.

I would think on paper that if you pitched two ideas for a game one would sound obviously better.

Great battles that will decide the future of the world, who reigns, and shape history for ever.

Or

Great battles that will decide nothing but be kinda fun.

 

[Locke]

None of that will ever happen. Henrik has stated multiple times that he believes the main reason why guilds quit MO1 were sieges, and I mean meaningful sieges. He's given in to the carebear mindset and will never ever allow any kind of "meaningful content" (with real risk of losses) to take place in MO2. This is now a generic "carrot on a stick" MMO, where they try to make the stick longer and longer with every "content" implementation (Clade -> trinkets -> Mastery -> Orbs), focused on progress you can never lose and assets you can only risk at your own will.

 

[Ibarruri]

Yes, I'm (and have been all the time) active in MO1. The MO1 discord channel is full of discussions, and there are more and more players coming to MO1 and even subscribe MO1. Of cause the activity is low compared to MO2, but most keep spots are taken and you find houses and structures all over the map. Those houses and structures are staying and are paid for long time.

Sounds good, what if we all just go back to MO1 like in the old days? That would be fun, right?

 

[Emdash]

None of that will ever happen. Henrik has stated multiple times that he believes the main reason why guilds quit MO1 were sieges, and I mean meaningful sieges. He's given in to the carebear mindset and will never ever allow any kind of "meaningful content" (with real risk of losses) to take place in MO2. This is now a generic "carrot on a stick" MMO, where they try to make the stick longer and longer with every "content" implementation (Clade -> trinkets -> Mastery -> Orbs), focused on progress you can never lose and assets you can only risk at your own will.

It is oversimplified thinking.

Not to go too deep, but it is true that people quit over sieges. However, you have to understand how game play develops.

Nothing is easier to being part of a zerg unless you get zerged by a bigger zerg and lose everything.

If you are mining and you want to get the lowest amount of loss, you buy a pick and walk back and forth to a bank. If you get a horse, you have made it easier on you, but you have increased your investment and potential loss. You put a house down with its own bank, then you can mine into that bank, then you can mine into a horse and put it in the bank, etc. Each time the game gets easier for you, but you have an investment.

That is just one side because that doesn't count the amount of gating that people who would quit the game over TC do. The key becomes then to boost the lower end of the pop so that there are always new players coming up to take their spots.

And if you are in a mega zerg and you don't put any mats in a perma bank, you are dumb. If you are, you should have mats, even if you get sieged out of the game. Enough mats to pay someone to build you a village where-ever.

Lastly, the game moderates itself. There is skill based moderation where bad players get removed, there is a willpower erosion, too, but character is a big thing. Despite what people think, it has always been my experience that the most toxic shitters are in the game when it's dead. In a thriving game, those people are supposed to be pushed downward, at least. If they cause too many problems, they should be removed.

Then, people behave for awhile until someone gets aspirations to do something big and steps on someone's toes and good gameplay ensues.

Without siege, the game can not function. You get what we have now which is a damn shame, even discounting all of the memey mechanics.