Hi Residents,
I just want to quickly chime in to talk about the reasoning behind the Emergency Event and why it came to be. Some of you hate it and some of you love it. That is why it is such a hard thing for us to balance. In this upcoming patch, Patch 1.2, there is considerable changes to it.
Why We Implemented the Emergency Event
First, the Emergency Event is a randomly occurring event based on certain rules that I will get into later. It requires people to split up and fix the oxygen supply or the Personoids would win the game.
Secondly, let’s talk about why we implemented it. In the early days of First Class Trouble there were no emergency events, however we did see that an unwanted pattern emerging quickly in the game. People started turtling and running together. Whenever someone (i.e. a Personoid) would run away from the group to prevent the Residents from winning the game they would automatically be killed when returning to the group. This led to lot of undesirable gameplay as it would simply be no fun for either faction. The only way a Personoid could win was now by sabotaging the Oxygen Supply and doing so round after round after round. Likewise, the residents could only win by running together killing every straggler.
The Emergency Event was a way for us to force the players to split up. Of course, the Emergency Event is not needed for every player groups. Some love to split up and roleplay a bit, but with a game such as FCT where it is easy to find players then it leads to frustration as people come into it with different expectations and thus, we need to guide them a bit. Unfortunately, that means that it will impact some of you who doesn’t think they need this mechanic. A lot of players have called for the total removal of this feature, but we refuse to do so as we have observed the past and that outcome is simply worse than keeping the Emergency Event in. What we will do however, is that we will tweak it.
The Future of the Emergency Event
To know the future of the event we need to inform you of the past as we kept that deliberately secret so we could test it. However, in its new state it is fine that you know the rules governing its activation. Below are the simple rules laid out.
Past Rules:
50% chance of it appearing within 1 minute if the following are true:
There are 5 or more alive.
There is still above 40% Global Oxygen.
80% chance that it will appear within the first 6 minutes if the following are true:
There are 5 or more alive.
There is still above 40% Global Oxygen.
New Rules:
60% chance that it will appear within the first 3 minutes if the following are true:
There are 5 or more alive.
There is still above 40% Global Oxygen.
Why These Changes?
Simply put: because you asked us to change it. We still want the event to happen, but we understand that it can be annoying to die within 1 minute because people are confused about what happens. Now it will happen less frequently, but when it happens it is because it is needed. If no one has died within the first few minutes we expect the Personoids to need a helping hand, and this is the way for us to force their hand and prevent grouping together.
We hope that overall, this will be a welcome change to Emergency Event/First Class Trouble it is another testament that we hear you and we actively try to address your concerns. We read everything even if it breaks our heart 🙂.
Thanks a lot for reading this little blog about one of many design considerations.
David
Invisible Walls