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Development for The West 2.0 started

Hi there,

i am happy to tell you that we already started with the development of Version 2.0 and we make good progress. I want to keep you informed about some states of the development in this post. So i try to make weekly updates, but first i have to secure that i am allowed to give out this informations 🙂

Before you will get a look into the development progress. Here is a list of all related topics for Version 2.0

New Map

The biggest change in Version 2.0 will be the change of the whole map. We will introduce new graphics and we will scale the new map to fullscreen.

Interface Redesign

The whole Interface of The-West will be changed, but don’t be scared our goals are: Get the interface more clear and more harmonious with the new windows. In the same task we will bring all windows into the new window style with Version 2.0.

Get a better start

With Version 2.0 one of our goals is: Bring new players to the game. In fact of that goal we will introduce some changes to the beginning of the game:

  •  New Tutorial
  • First jobs will take less time
  • Movement speed will be buffed until you reached a specific level
  • You are not able to use difficult features e.g. market , until a specific level

Jobsystem

There will be some changes in jobsystem. Make things easier to understand like gain expierence, gain money, find items and make stuff more clear for the player. Every job will have a fixed duration in version 2.0 so you don’t have to choose any duration for jobs anymore. We also recalculate formulas for new durations and  modified the hurt formula with version 2.0. So if you hurt yourself by robbing trains it can be possible to lose much live or even die.

Here some words to the upcoming changes from our Game-Designer Ashock

Jobs
In The West 2.0 the jobs will be fundamentally reworked in both visual representation and functionality. There will be less job icons on the map as up to five jobs will be grouped under one major job-group.  This job-group will be placed on the map as an interactive icon and opens upon clicking a radial-menu showing the five sub-jobs of this group. All current jobs will be represented by 28 job-groups with varying occurrences. In each county there are four common and two rare job-group occurrences, which accumulate to a total of 90 job-groups per county. Not all job-groups consist of five jobs, which leaves us the space to introduce new jobs in the future.

This change to the existing job-system was mainly done to improve the visual representation of the map and better blend the jobs into the map environment. Another aspect of the change was a better usability for the player as he will be able to find different jobs much easier due to an improved job screen, which will no longer only be usable for premium players.
Worktime
The worktime system of the current version will be totally changed in The West 2.0. Each job will offer a unique worktime and the player will no longer be able to select different worktimes for each job. Also the shortest worktime will be drastically reduced to 15 seconds. This means that some jobs require a worktime of 15 seconds, while for example others require 1 minute, 30 minutes or 2 hours. For each range of job-difficulty there will be different worktimes available, while the majority of the jobs switch from fast to slow jobs for higher jobpoint requirements. For example ‘scare birds from field’ needs 15 seconds and ‘free slaves’ needs 2 hours of worktime. To reward active playing we introduce a bonus for jobs with lesser worktime.

The reason for this change is that we want to offer a more active play style, which doesn’t force the player to passiveness especially in the beginning. This change is based on some analysis we made that most players quit the game in the beginning after they are forced into a longer waiting time. Nevertheless we still offer jobs for every range with a longer worktime to still support player who prefer a less active play session.

 

Preview Section – please keep in mind i just want to keep you informed everything i will post below are screenshots and / or  concepts from our development machines, so this are very very early versions. Most of them are not tested, finished or final.

2012-06-13: Some preview from the last week of development

Questbook, Saloon and Employer

We started to get the questbook into the new design

First we have the saloon with just a few changes its a little bit bigger and we use the new tab style, on the second tab your questbook with all quests which are not solved yet and on the third tab there are all solved quests. The saloon graphics has a bit too much light at the moment and the color are to bright. This will be changed in some days.

If you click on an employer you will get a window like that the employer will show you on the left site which quests are available and ready to accept. If you click on one of those quests on the left site you will get the detailed informations on the right site including things like description, rewards, requirements.

The new duel screen in tactical overview

Npc duel screen

Several other Windows were changed to new design but with no or less modifications:

Fingerboard, Buildingpages of fort, ranking, town overview, sheriff other town, ghosttowns, town invitations, found fort, you have no town window

Technical Development:

We have already completed some parts of the backend implementation of the new map this includes kind of caching systems, distribute systems and data structures. There is still a lot work in progress of course. From the graphical view there are round about 15 people at the moment which generate the map with our given editor. As soon as they finish their work we can bring it all together. I know this will be the most interesting part. Please stay tuned i don’t know when i can show you some preview of the new map.

Next big tasks for our development team: new job window, get new map backend working with new interface and on fullscreen with any resolution, modify backend for the new job system (fixed duration, new formulas), clean up a lot of old code in backend and frontend

I hope to hear from you and stay tuned for the next update from my site next week

P.S. In the next days i will post some more details about the job formula changes with another quote of our Game-Designer

13 Comments

  1. butcher pete
    butcher pete June 13, 2012

    1-how exactly will these new jobs work?? will the energy cost be related to the time needed.
    2-will the duel system be fixed for 2.0?? as it is its like playing darts with a blindfold, no matter how skilled you are its reliant on luck and thats KILLING the game. so many great duelers already left 🙁

  2. Gerwain
    Gerwain June 13, 2012

    In general everything seems great and forth-leading improvements. However, some questions did arise.

    Firstly, did I understand right that there will be 90 “job-dots” in each county, or only six? (Sorry but am not native English speaker so that part was a bit flurry for me.) It’s just that I’m a bit afraid that if there are only six places to do jobs in each county some people find the traveling time too long.
    Secondly, how do you think players not so willing to spend all day long on TW to be able to do jobs which have short working times. You justified that that is better for lower levels but higher levels need those products too and sometimes the prices are insane! And for the market, you said yourself that beginners dislike waiting and yet you want to make them wait for being able to use market?!
    Thirdly, I hope the game won’t become too heavy. There are lots of players who have slow Internet connections and/or computers, you had better remember that (add different graphics settings or something like that).
    Fourthly, working time and energy. Currently 10 minutes cost two energy points, therefore 15 seconds would cost (15*2)/(10*60)=0,05 points??? And two hours 48 points???

    And one more thing, you told in April that “World Migration coming soon …”, how long a time is soon? 😀

  3. Good_Feather
    Good_Feather June 13, 2012

    Will the West 2.0 ever be ported to smart phones in an app store format?

  4. FantasyGhost
    FantasyGhost June 13, 2012

    Nice new changes getting along. Will it be html5 enabled, without flash, so we can play it from our tablets and smartphones?

  5. ketjatekos
    ketjatekos June 13, 2012

    Umm, I don’t really understand this too:
    In each county there are four common and two rare job-group occurrences, which accumulate to a total of 90 job-groups per county.

    If I know it correctly, 2+4=6 and that’s not equal to 90. So to make some sense to write: will there be only 15 county, and you want to write 90 in the whole world, or I (and as I see Gerwain) am not good about understanding English sentences.

    I like the idea, that there are not so lot jobs. It will slow down a bit the fast game… (well it depending on the 6 or 90/county stuff)

    But I want to ask something… If it’s not in the developing queue please make something with the Fort-battles. After 2.0, you will have some free time 😀 (I think there are some West-community ideas, but if you ask, there will be some player, that give you more ideas too)

  6. smiggy28
    smiggy28 June 14, 2012

    can i just say that the new duel screen in tactical overview looks damn nasty!

  7. Petee
    Petee June 14, 2012

    As for the job group numbers, to me it seems like this: there will be 17 common and 11 rare groups of jobs, *a location* for each common group can be found 4 times *in each county*, a location for each rare group 2 times. That gives 17*4 + 11*2 = 90 locations in the county, where you will be able to do a job. Also remember that each location enables you to do 1 to 5 different kinds of jobs, according to the group they are in. That still means that all the common jobs will have 4 locations in each county, rare jobs two locations. Yes, that’s not that much, as long as the speed doesn’t change…

    My questions soo far:
    * Is something going to happen with speed also at higher levels? You see, it would be pretty against logic if the player had to buy riding animals or boost their speed in other ways only to keep the same speed as they had in lower levels. The slow movement speed of productive worlds made me leave them and only play on beta worlds, where it’s 3.33 times faster.
    * What technology will be used for the new map and jobs screens? HTML of Flash?

  8. Bluep
    Bluep June 14, 2012

    rainy :…You are not able to use difficult features e.g. market , until a specific level…

    In my opinion, that’s a most contraproductive decision.
    I dare to say that most new players join TW because they get invited by friends. And it’s most logical that these friends want to support the Newbies – and the market is the first choice for that. (Every advanced player has tons of the stuff a new player desperately needs..)

    So if you really want to get new players an easy start, don’t lock them out from the market!
    Instead, clean up the market window a bit…omit the consumable/usable choices
    make the level selectors all “up to level x”
    let the town/alliance/all selectors include the more restricted options (eg alliance = alliance and town
    redesign the selling window!clarify the difference Amount vs Auctions!
    make it possible to enter the single prices for multi-item auctions (Amount > 1)
    change/add useful, self-explanatory tooltips!
    (Very bad example, mentioned a million times and constantly ignored by you: Usable → “Show only items that your character can equip.” and Consumable → “Show only items that can be used.”)
    add an additional tab “Help” with the basics of the market. Explain the tabs, instant buy vs bidding, use of the watchlist, the need to visit the seller’s location to fetch the bought items, the use of the selling window, …
    Oh… btw, these ideas are anything but new. They’ve been posted over and over in the Ideas/Suggestions and Feedback forums since the invention of the new market.

    Maybe you’ll find the time to listen to your customers for the start 😉

    And another question – what will haben to the job/task queue?
    Still the 3 (8 with PA) slots..?
    That would be a pain in the ass when you have to a lot of the short time jobs.. or even worse, when you start a new character and you’re condemned to stick to the easy jobs.
    Quick and easy start for new players? Yes, but only if you can afford the time to stay at your computer for hours, just to enqueue a new job every few minutes.

    (Oh, and does WordPress have a plugin for a more convenient way of formatting comments..?)

    Regards,
    Bluep

  9. Bluep
    Bluep June 14, 2012

    (Damn. I had nice lists in my posting… now it’s quite a mess. So much for formatting.. *g* – I hope it’s still quite understandable…)

  10. rainy
    rainy June 16, 2012

    Bluep :

    rainy :…You are not able to use difficult features e.g. market , until a specific level…

    In my opinion, that’s a most contraproductive decision.
    I dare to say that most new players join TW because they get invited by friends. And it’s most logical that these friends want to support the Newbies – and the market is the first choice for that. (Every advanced player has tons of the stuff a new player desperately needs..)

    So if you really want to get new players an easy start, don’t lock them out from the market!
    Instead, clean up the market window a bit…omit the consumable/usable choices
    make the level selectors all “up to level x”
    let the town/alliance/all selectors include the more restricted options (eg alliance = alliance and town
    redesign the selling window!clarify the difference Amount vs Auctions!
    make it possible to enter the single prices for multi-item auctions (Amount > 1)
    change/add useful, self-explanatory tooltips!
    (Very bad example, mentioned a million times and constantly ignored by you: Usable → “Show only items that your character can equip.” and Consumable → “Show only items that can be used.”)
    add an additional tab “Help” with the basics of the market. Explain the tabs, instant buy vs bidding, use of the watchlist, the need to visit the seller’s location to fetch the bought items, the use of the selling window, …
    Oh… btw, these ideas are anything but new. They’ve been posted over and over in the Ideas/Suggestions and Feedback forums since the invention of the new market.

    Maybe you’ll find the time to listen to your customers for the start ;)

    And another question – what will haben to the job/task queue?
    Still the 3 (8 with PA) slots..?
    That would be a pain in the ass when you have to a lot of the short time jobs.. or even worse, when you start a new character and you’re condemned to stick to the easy jobs.
    Quick and easy start for new players? Yes, but only if you can afford the time to stay at your computer for hours, just to enqueue a new job every few minutes.

    (Oh, and does WordPress have a plugin for a more convenient way of formatting comments..?)

    Regards,
    Bluep

    Hi Bluep,

    i am sorry that you dislike our decision with locking market untill some higher level but fact is we have to do it, because new players will gain a movement buff on starting levels to travel faster if they are allowed to also trade on markets, every player will use this as slave chars because he can easy pick up items on different markets with a higher speed. Another problem is that the market and is a very complicated feature and we should get the player slowly to the market.

    With the new starting phase people will get new Items through new tutorial and will easily complete the first short jobs, so i am looking forward that they will reach higher level very soon and also had already a lot of knowledge about the west at this point he can be pushed from higher player friends hope i could make it more clear with my mess of english 😀

    Edit: I forget to tell you that the slots for tasks will mostlikly the same as now. But don’t understand me wrong there will be only a few jobs which take a few seconds most of the jobs will take longer i would say the average job time of all jobs together is something like now on new worlds 1Hour. But there will be also jobs with a duration of 2Hours and other with just 15 or 30 minutes.

  11. WigWamBam
    WigWamBam June 20, 2012

    Howdy,

    the idea sounds good.

    There are already some changes in illustrations that are very nice. But for people with eye problems the old ones are better because the symbols are clearer, morecontrast with the white background and bigger. You can’t make images endlessly bigger with the PC so it would be great to let also people with worse eyes than normal play together with the others and myke symbols good to see or let them as fine as they were before. Thanx a lot – I really love the game, am playing in 2 English spoken worlds and several German worlds.

    Huch, WigWamBam 🙂

  12. the black penny
    the black penny June 23, 2012

    full screen ?
    🙂

  13. HelenBack
    HelenBack July 28, 2012

    Sorry… But I’d rather have the choice of job times. Sometimes you only have a few minutes to try and get one item for a quest… For instance, about an hour before midnight server time (when the daily quests reset), you need one more craft material to complete your third craft… So you want to queue 15 minutes and hope you get one. If the job times are all set in stone, then your screwed if you can only work the job you need to do to get the item for an hour. Not everyone can be at their computer to set the next batch of jobs…

    Also… if some jobs currently require 24 hours worth of work to complete that portion of the quest (Peace Negotiations for The Treasure), is there a chance that this job may wind up getting a set time of 2 hours? That would make the quest time 48 hours!!! (Like it is on w1 which I absolutely do not want to do and have put it off for a while because of the time it will take… 24 hours was bad enough!) Some people like the 2 hour jobs… others hate them. I know peeps that have migrated from w2-10 to w1 and can’t stand the 2-hour jobs.

    If you force a set time on peeps then they may just get completely frustrated and leave. Set the minimum time as the default, but please give us the choice of selecting a longer time.

    As for the Market… Please don’t lock any level out of using the Market. I’ve helped many noobs when they first begin the game… that includes teaching them how to use the Market. It isn’t that complicated except for when you try to sell something… You really need to clarify the number of items vs the number of auctions… line them up better so they make more sense… Maybe… Sell # of items for $ Price Each = $ Total Price multiply by # of auctions. Have the cells for # of items and $ Price Each automatically fill the $ Total Price. Have the labels lined up in one row with the input cells directly below them. The defaults would be 1 for the quantities and maybe even the minimum price (Cost or Sales) for the item in the “Price for Each” and “Total Price” fields. That would make it easier to sell 33 items at $17 each without some folks having to open the Calculator on their computer… It also just makes more sense than the backwards way it is right now.
    😉

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