General Feedback on Assassin's Craft

[brayden2003pig]

Hello, This is likely to be a long one, and a little un-categorized, but I hope some general feedback can help.

Getting straight into it:
Loot & Economy
Here I'll be addressing what I think are the most concerning things, particularly Loot, Progression, and Balancing across the Economy of Assassins Craft.
For an Overview, the main points are:
-Loot Balancing between Locations
-Item Cost vs. Utility

To start,

Loot Balancing between Locations
This part will go over how disjointed loot is across the many chests and dungeons that dot the map.
The main two Issues I have are:

-Imperium vs. The rest of the map
Imperium upon its introduction was probably a very cool idea, and in hindsight, it probably was or at least could have been.
The problem with Imperium is that the loot tables there are so rich, so good, that one chest's worth could easily be equal Tens if not HUNDREDS of chests elsewhere, like Camelot and The various smaller towns around the map.
This leads to the idea of "Why would I go anywhere else when Imperium is not only close, but extremely profitable?"
On top of the raw resources Imperium gives you, there are also the special dungeons in it which give you items you can exchange for even MORE loot, just outside of the city with its vendors.
Issue established, there is a fairly simple solution on paper, but it might not be so simple in practice.

Apply the same loot incentive and accessibility to the rest of the map.
How? Well, it's relatively simple (on paper.) There is already a "Special shop" within the spawn of the server, which could quite easily serve as the Equivalent of the "Treasure Trader" In Imperium, except in the main city.
With this, Rare items could be implemented across the Desert City similar (or equal, it doesn't really matter;) in value to the things like the "Soldier's Sword," or the "Miner's Pickaxe."
The clear purpose of this would be to equalize the loot vacuum that is Imperium, and give people more reasons to hunt down chests in the Desert City.
This kept in mind, I also think that in order to actually "equalize" the loot, Imperium's loot needs to be nerfed.
However, I think the way to go about this is not to nuke the whole of Imperium's loot, but rather to tone it down relative to Distance.
(This is kind of a point within a point,) but referring back to the "Loot Incentive and Accessability" phrase, the "Accessability" part plays a large part in how good Imperium is relative to the rest of the map.
The gates of Imperium are ~200 or so blocks away from spawn. Let's compare that Carnia, with an ASTOUNDING 1300 BLOCKS away from spawn.
Who in their right mind would EVER travel 1300 blocks to Carnia, only to find a half a dozen AT BEST Iron ingots in the chests there, when they could get 4x that at Imperium? Unless someone is colossally bored, nobody.
However, I understand that the Grapple Hooks and Elytras both exist making such a distance trivial to traverse, so I propose that the distance be made more dangerous. Monster spawners should dot the forest path, and the ceiling of the map should be lowered (with barriers,) such that Elytra flight cannot be so greatly abused without risk or knowledge of slamming headfirst into a barrier wall.
 And so, I propose that Loot amount & value be balanced relative to distance from spawn.
While maintaining the value of Imperium, but bolstering the value of other places, I also suggest that the rare items such as the mentioned "Soldier's Sword" be reduced in commonality among the loot tables of the chests, and be increased in value.


-Why does coal exist?
Given the giant brick of Text above, I'm going to attempt to keep this section the smaller of the two.
Coal, in its current state, is nearly entirely useless. Everything you would seek to buy both early and lategame cost literal thousands of coal to purchase. When the loot tables that do contain coal almost exclusively contain coal, (Such as the current Desert City's chests,) It ends up leaving said chests not even an afterthought to open when that is all you can expect to get, and will EVER get.
To use an example, (and this will be extreme, but it will serve the point;) A diamond helmet currently costs $153600 ingame currency.
Each piece of coal is equal to $1. That means you would need 153,600 pieces of coal to buy a diamond helmet. Putting this into perspective more on how bad the loot is in the chests across the world, Let's say you got 16-32 coal per chest (Which you currently typically don't.) The average of that is 24. Dividing 153,600 by 24 nets you 6400 chests (on average,) to be opened in order to get a diamond helmet. The reason this is an important comparison is because coal is almost entirely useless as a loot reward from a chest as a result of it.
And so, I propose coal be Entirely removed from loot tables.
Coal still has an opportunity to have a place in the world and its economy - Villager Trades. We already have trades that require coal, such as potions and food.
Simply relegate coal to the banker NPC, so that when people DO need such trades with villagers, they can simply take however much $ they have out in coal, and then use it to buy what they need.


Item Cost vs. Utility
This section will go over and compare the difference between an item's cost and the actual effect it has.
To start, Items in the spawn shop cost WAY TOO MUCH for what you get out of them.
A single, Unenchanted bow costs $32768! EIGHT GOLD INGOTS for an UNENCHANTED BOW! Seriously, it's too high.
I propose it be changed to $16384.

Sword cost scaling I actually think is relatively fine, though.
Armor
Armor price scaling relative to the actual improvements you receive is pretty ludicrous, and has no consistent scaling.
For reference, the line helmets goes from $128, to 2048, to 20480, to 153600! That's a 16x, then 10x, then a 7.5x increase in price!
This price inflation scales similarly with the other options;
Chest - 512, 5120, 61440, then 409600! 10x, 12x, then a 6.6x.
Leg - 256, 4096, 51200, then 307200! 16x, then 12.5x, then 6x.
Boot - 128, 1024, 20480, then 153600! 8x, then 20x, then 7.5x. 
I don't believe the items themselves should be this expensive, Enchanting should simply be harder to access or more expensive to use.
Enchanting as a whole could be made more part of the economy than it currently is - Lapis could become a currency you care about obtaining, that is either bought from shops or found in particular dungeon chests.

Crackshot Plugin Guns
The damage on these are either extremely terrible or way, way, way, way more than it needs to be.
Take for instance a decently rolled Rifle, which does 20+4+15 critical damage. 39 damage in one hit! 39!
This is simply too high. On top of being a ranged weapon, Rifles both make bows entirely irrelevant, but they power creep the rest of the guns by miles.
If it is meant to be this way, then the reload speed of the alternatives must be greatly increased to accommodate it.
Considering all of that, the lower damage and speed, objectively WORSE crackshot weapons need to be made cheaper, and ammo more expensive.
I propose these changes:
Hidden gun - $1024, increase reload speed to max it can be
Flintlock - $20480, increase reload speed and range
Musket - %65356, Icrease reload speed
Rifle - Keep price, greatly reduce damage reduce damage (Greatest should be like, 25.)

Grappling hook
If the idea is to give all players a grappling hook for free at the start, why is the grappling hook still $40960?
I get that you shouldn't be able to lose it, considering you can't drop it; But.. its still entirely possible to lose.
I propose reducing the price to $16384.


Concluding
This is a really long post I'm sure, but it's better to get out at one point than never.
I can probably think of a few things to improve, we can always use more dungeons, more loot, more things to do and more gear to get.
Anything I think of after the fact I will comment under this post.
Thanks for reading, I hope this feedback is well heard.

[BabelUno_]

I totally agree with you.


Thank you for taking the time to make these types of posts. 

[MiniTermi77]

Imperium has recieved a nerf. All the loots have a cooldown increase. About the item cost we'll continue taking a loot for it, just give me time to finish 2 units of the uni xD.

About the idea of putting some items as Imperium (swords, etc) in the rest of the map that can be sold in the spawn, i'll take for it, i have to think a little bit of lore about that.

For last, the most probably thing is that the guns will be nerf too.

[brayden2003pig]

2 hours ago, MiniTermi77 said:

 All the loots have a cooldown increase.

 

I should note, Imperium still has the issue of having loot be way better even if the cooldowns are increased.
It just means people have to wait longer to go to imperium; they still won't go anywhere else.

Again, I am calling for the rest of the map's loot to be brought to at least par with Imperium,
not for imperium to be nerfed without the rest of the changes.

 

[Jimmel]

Good points! We're going to be working on all of them during the next couple of months and we'll post an update once we're done

Thanks for taking the time to write up such a detailed feedback thread.