Clan Dojo - Why The Building Costs Killed My Clan

[taiiat]

Or even making the costs "adapt" to the number of members the clan has, like a bigger clan pays more ( but has more contributors ) and a smaller pays less ( but has less contributors ).

son of a *@##$. give this man an award. this is a perfect solution.

 

smaller clans would technically pay more per person, but be paying less overall. larger clans could theoretically be almost free per person, but be paying more overall.

Edited May 26, 2013 by taiiat

[Icemugz]

It is either you find a clan huge enough to support dojo costs, or make a smaller clan and pay for the formas.

Kinda like DE way of saying: If you cant get to the top, pay to get up there, else you would just stay weak and empty.

[DarkSentinel275]

I really dislike the thought of leaving the current clan I'm in, because everyone is so friendly. However, I find it more beneficial if I join a large, 500+ member dojo. I could find friends there as well, but I feel as if I'm betraying the ones who first invited me if I abandon them.

[GTG3000]

Simple scaling of costs would make it exploitable to some degree. I think that making biger clans build bigger dojos should be the answer, but oh well.

 

 

well another option is to make forma "farmable" for example make the BP that drop from boss not just from alert or daily reward. with that at lest we have an option to get forma even though we still have to sacrifice time to farm it

 

Even making the possibility of getting a void key rise with the defence wave would be quite sufficient. It's all way too rare as it is. I wonder, what happened with "play for fun" Steve was going on about.

[InvdrZOB]

I'm yet another player from the "me and my few real-life buddies only"-bunch. We started the game as it got into open beta and advertised on Steam and i have to say: It was great so far and we all enjoyed playing this group of badass cyber samurai ninja guys. In the last weeks however, we all felt our interest in the game go back a bit, since there was not much late game content. Then came the announcements for update 8 and i was really excited to see all the new features. Building a ingame home for our little bunch of space heroes to research even better stuff to use in missions... how cool is that?!
 My excitement rose as my clan-key was nearing completion more and more. Finally i was able to enter the dojo. The hall looked great already, so i went to the node door to start construction and... saw the costs of it. Man, that really was a downer. I pumped many resources (about a month worth of playing) into the first hallway and wasn't able to get over 20 %. Now, a few days of a weekend later, which allowed me to farm a bit for it, im between 30% and 40% but havent found a single forma yet... which is really disencouraging.

Still, i'm aware (as it is mentioned on the launcher in big bright letters ^^ ) that all of this is still in alpha, so i hope, that it will be overhauled and further thought through.

I think that GTG3000 had all the right ideas to make this work for smaller clans as well as the really big ones as well.

 

1 - Add levels of decoration to the rooms. Sure the new rooms would look not as good, but it would be cheap, even if the final cost would be about same, and smaller clans could have functionality over looks.
2 - overhaul the rooms to make the most utility ones (eg reactor and laboratories) limited in their function, but cheap. So, you could make a reactor room, that provides some power rather cheap, and you could continue to upgrade it as you require energy. Same goes for the laboratories - the oracle system could be used as a base for different research facilities. Or even have the separate laboratories be like the upgrades. This way, if your clan is small, you would build an oracle and only three cheap labs to equip everyone, but it would take way too long for a big clan to do the same without having multiple labs. The system could be used to either have a line of blueprints, or unlimited abmount of blueprints in production, with the research speed gettng decreaced if the amount of blueprints exceeds amount of labs.
3 - research cost overhaul, to make it work with 2.
4 - introduce limit of clan size, based on the dojo size. Of course, giving the big clans a month to build enough member rooms to support their size before culling.

 

Points 1 and 2 are brilliant since they make the make the whole thing simple as well as functional. All the clans can build their dojo, but the bigger ones have the resources to make it all flashy and decadent, while the smaller clans need their time to decorate their walls with weapons, banners, the heads of fallen enemies, statues and so on. Also, upgrading functional rooms such as generators and labs makes it possible for smaller clans to take it step by step. Of course it still means, that those clans need more time to get those new researches but at least it is possible for them. And since those smaller groups seem to be in the game for the fun of playing with their buddys, i don't think they'll mind, as long as they can acces the content somehow without farming mindlessly for a century or so.

Point 4 seems very interesting, although some ginat clans might be offended by that... but still the idea of more rooms doesn't seem so bad.

How about rooms like a library, where people can write down helpful things about the game, the clan rules or something like that (or perhaps store books, filles with lore found throughout missions)? A room that allows you to customize your clan by creating logos, banners or something like that, to individualize warframes or deco-items in the dojo? An armoury to create/research weapon skinns or other cosmetic items? Perhaps a loading bay to allow players to trade mods and resources?...

So many possibilieties to make the dojo-building easy without letting it run out of options, resulting in people getting bored by it but instead making it more essential for the whole clan play.

 

The next thing is, that the 100-capacity-restriction at the beginning seems pretty inconvinient, too. That makes it hard to plan your layout of the dojo and build according to it, even more, since the Great Hall is the only room to increase capacity. Maybe there could be smaller "storage rooms" in the future, which can then be upgraded furthermore, just as the reactor might be. The great hall of the clan should propably be something special, a room for ceremonies and such... not a fancy storage shed of sorts ^^.

 

To sum it all up:

 

- Lower costs for rooms

- Upgradeble interior and functionalty

- More rooms with special properties for gaming within a clan

- Higher droprates for materials or special ways to get them with clan members

 

PS:

 

It is, after all, a great game. Even greater, considering it's still in beta. Thank u, guys and keep up the good work ;)

Edited May 26, 2013 by InvdrZOB

[SolidAcid]

how about special raid missions to gain chunks of build-requirements ?

[vieuxchat]

Simple scaling of costs would make it exploitable to some degree. I think that making biger clans build bigger dojos should be the answer, but oh well.

 

 

 

Even making the possibility of getting a void key rise with the defence wave would be quite sufficient. It's all way too rare as it is. I wonder, what happened with "play for fun" Steve was going on about.

Only scaling it with member isn't a good idea. Because there would be a way to circumvent the price : get everyone out, build cheaply then re-invite.

Why not scale the TIME with amount spent ? Initial time would be 5 times what they are actually and the costs would be 1/5 of what they are actually, and you could pay the price 5 times.

 

I proposed such an idea :

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/51931-a-proposition-for-the-dojo-costs/

[vieuxchat]

how about special raid missions to gain chunks of build-requirements ?

Or even missions you could get from special room in your dojo !

[ScribWere]

I... have got to agree. Like, I'm not sure how people had so few resources, me and my four friends who regularly play this game easily maxed out all the build requirements but Forma by donating about half our resources to our cross section...

 

But...uh. The Forma? Seriously. We've spent a good ten hours farming high level defense missions without a single void key, which seems to be the only place to get Forma beyond paying for it. I've already put a crapton of money in this game. Hell, far more then I've put into League of Legends, which I've played religiously for two years and tend to grab a skin for every champion I like. Hell, I've spent less on Everquest II, and I've purchased piles of Station Cash for that.

 

It's widely known that the shop prices are a bit extreme in this, but that doesn't bother me all that much as well, just about everything is easily farmable with time and effort, less time and effort them similar 'inflated shops' like DDO. But Forma seem to be the stab in the eye to this. When I've played ten hours and felt not a single percent closer to a goal, it feels eh, bad. Yeah? At least I could finish up four or five quest chains in DDO and be a couple percentile points closer to unlocking Archivist or whatever.

[ShadowPony]

My concerns regarding clan dojos are the same.

Our clan has 4 active playing members and it is very hard to gather those resources.

I do not say lower them, but I agree with Guivena, when he says

 

One solution would be maintaining the costs, but adding a way to gather resources more quickly, like a clan co-op missions

 

What if there are missions you might not even get XP or other advantages from, but resources getting straight to the clans treasure.

E.g. a clan dojo defense mission, where Grineer or Corpus try to conquer it. As a reward for wave 5 there could be 500 nano spores or salvage etc.

 

If you do normal missions you cannot even find  guaranteed amounts of a resource. Even if it is commen and avaiabble an that missions you get tons of the other resources you do not need atm.

[141deltaNERF12]

Price are extreme for any clan below 20 members. The prices either need to be lowered darmaticly or scaled to the size of the clan. Another way to balence it is to make missions speicaly for raiding enemy supply storages for clans only. Its madness.

Edited May 26, 2013 by 141deltaNERF12

[SergeSlade]

Personally I believe the entire thing is in need of an overhaul. Small clans should be capable of providing the same benefits as a mega-clan (not on the same timescale, i'm fine with it taking somewhat longer, but it's ridiculous as is). In order for that to happen without the mega-clans being able to abuse the system, we need to limit the size of the clan by the size of the dojo (if you want thousands of people, you'd best get hot expanding the facilities in order to support them). This would prevent abuse (by reducing clan member numbers until construction is complete, cycling members in & out whilst keeping the costs down), and not penalize small clans for not wanting to be part of a faceless swarm. I don't have a problem with costs staying high in this scenario, because I understand dojos aren't meant to be built up overnight. As things currently stand, it is going to take several weeks/months (depending on individual activity etc.) for a smallish clan to build even a few rooms. Meanwhile, the mega-clans are already sitting on fully completed dojos and are no doubt going to be enjoying the new weapons within a few days (if that). Arguing that these facilities should take time to construct and that we're being impatient is simply a method for the mega-clans to force gameplay in their favor at the expense of those who'd rather cultivate interpersonal relationships and actually have some idea who their members are.

 

TL;DR - Clan size must be limited by dojo capacity in order to balance construction costs in such a way that small clans can hope to have access to the current content in any reasonable length of time, preventing the current trend of clan consolidation into mega-clans, and ensuring that the time & resource sinks hit everyone equally.

[InvdrZOB]

I do like the idea of having "baracks" added to the dojo, maybe even customizable rooms for ranked members or such... but i have the feeling, that we can't proclaim "our" way of playing (having a small clan with only a few friends) and on the other hand dismiss the way of, what SergeSlade called, the "faceless swarm".

Imo, one way of playing/enjoying the game has to be as legit as any other. Therefore i think that, if it really came to restrictions for bigger clans such as required dojo housing for members, it all would end up in just another discussion on the forums just as this one here, having a part of the community complain about not being traded equally/not having the possibility to play the game "their way".

 

But how about this:

Having a "baracks room" allows a certain number of players, let's say 5, to gain a buff for 24 hours, which allows them to gether more materials per pickup or something like that.

This way, all (or at least a lot of) the members of a small clan might gather ressources more quickly. A bigger clan has the same benefit, but it doesn't make such a large impact unless they build enogh of those rooms for everyone.

I also like the idea (did i mention this before?) of having special defense missions or clan-missions accessable through the dojo, where you get certain ressources awarded or raisd enemy supplies. This might even work in alert missions. Also the idea of "take back your dojo"-missions is really exciting, fighting enemies on your own turf.

If a dojo would then not only start as a entrance hall with two doors but already had one barack and the mission-room (or at least some computer consoles to gain the benefits) connected to it, everybody would have the possibility to get right into it.

[Dr._Thrax]

I agree, the costs for building a dojo are Tremendous, and either need to be changed in some way.

[GTG3000]

Having barracks wouldn't cripple bigger clans like the prices now cripple ten-man-clans. We can easily assume that big clans would be able to build out everything they need rather quickly, after the initial slow down. I think that the barracks, or whatever the room should be called, should only limit how many members can enter the dojo. This way, the bigger clans can still stay huge, with their warlords gaining the ability to give out keys to members (as opposed to current "be in a clan -> get a key" system. Of course, all this implies lowering of the prices for everything as well.

 

I'm not diminishing the way of >500 man clans, I'm just really not sure that the system should be as broken for them.

 

I'm not exactly sure that having resource missions specifically for dojo is the way to fix it all, but it would sure be nice to have some dojo-related misions.Although resource price overhaul is required for sure.

 

 InvdrZOB, having more utility rooms would be, indeed, awesome. As well as decorating the room ourselves, although that might take another three weeks to implement.

[InvdrZOB]

Then i'll take the necessery changes as soon as possible and the additional rooms three weeks later xD

[ZigomatiX]

I simply don't understand why DE wants people to join huge clans since WF is a 4 men coop game. There is no real advantage to have thousands clan mates as you'll only get to know few of them and most of time end up playing with the same people.

Small/medium clans seam to be perfect for this game, but the new requirement for Dojo's room will tear them appart.

 

I'm in a really small clan with only 2-3 very active players, and we find fair to spend weeks farming to improve our Dojo. But i saw some videos of massive clans who already built 15-20 rooms and started researchs and i'm feeling a little downhearted..

 

Tbh regarding the costs of Dojo's room, it's even unfair for huge clans as they "only" need 5 to 20 Formas for each room, so in a 1000+ clan, only 10% of the members will effectively give Formas, the others will just give few credits/resources from time to time.

 

Scaling the costs to the clan size could be a good solution.

 

Another one (that someone suggested in another thread) would be to give some kind of farming buff, depending on the clan size, which would allow players to gather more resources that would directly go in a room currently being construct or in a clan treasury, instead of the players foundry (in order to prevent exploit from this buff).

But Formas will still be a problem.

 

For the moment our little clan only try to gather as much resources as he can and wait for things to change...

Hopefully Dojos are still in Alpha :-)

[InfernalEnigma]

The fact that every room costs the same amount of base materials is a little off-putting. Why would the only difference between a tiny corridor and a reactor be a few rare mats? It would be awesome to build sprawling bases, but not with the high cost of the simple building blocks.

 

I would suggest that the varius corridors be very cheap, while the useful room's cost be scaled to the clan's contributors.

[vieuxchat]

I simply don't understand why DE wants people to join huge clans since WF is a 4 men coop game. There is no real advantage to have thousands clan mates as you'll only get to know few of them and most of time end up playing with the same people.

Small/medium clans seam to be perfect for this game, but the new requirement for Dojo's room will tear them appart.

 

I'm in a really small clan with only 2-3 very active players, and we find fair to spend weeks farming to improve our Dojo. But i saw some videos of massive clans who already built 15-20 rooms and started researchs and i'm feeling a little downhearted..

 

Tbh regarding the costs of Dojo's room, it's even unfair for huge clans as they "only" need 5 to 20 Formas for each room, so in a 1000+ clan, only 10% of the members will effectively give Formas, the others will just give few credits/resources from time to time.

 

Scaling the costs to the clan size could be a good solution.

 

Another one (that someone suggested in another thread) would be to give some kind of farming buff, depending on the clan size, which would allow players to gather more resources that would directly go in a room currently being construct or in a clan treasury, instead of the players foundry (in order to prevent exploit from this buff).

But Formas will still be a problem.

 

For the moment our little clan only try to gather as much resources as he can and wait for things to change...

Hopefully Dojos are still in Alpha :-)

Or prices could be a lot lower and time raised a lot. Then you could pay the price several times to speed things up.

The devs wouldn't need to change anything more : small clan could build their dojo but with more time. Big clans could still build things fastly.

I wrote a lengthy post about that idea (with some maths inside) : https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/51931-a-proposition-for-the-dojo-costs/

[topoftheyear]

I personally think that a good fix would be have rooms increase in price per member in the clan. Start with a base amount for at 5 or 10 members on rooms, and then add +5,000 ferrite, + 10,000 Nano Spores, + 1 Forma, etc, for each member, that way small Clans aren't screwed out of the cool stuff and large Clans will get there slower. It might encourage small Clans to start building and large clans (300+ especially) that they aren't the rulers of the world.

[vieuxchat]

I personally think that a good fix would be have rooms increase in price per member in the clan. Start with a base amount for at 5 or 10 members on rooms, and then add +5,000 ferrite, + 10,000 Nano Spores, + 1 Forma, etc, for each member, that way small Clans aren't screwed out of the cool stuff and large Clans will get there slower. It might encourage small Clans to start building and large clans (300+ especially) that they aren't the rulers of the world.

No, please no. Don't punish large clans for being larger :)

The best solution is to give a fair amount of time for small clans and advantages to bigger clans.

[Laika]

I would like to see rooms cost significantly less, but require a personal investment for a keyholder to access those rooms.  In this way, larger clans can still build a full base quickly, but if any individual member wants to enjoy the benefit of those rooms, they would need to pay a small fee to unlock access.

The larger clans still have an advantage (the initial build cost is spread across 1000 people instead of 10), but it no longer feels like the smartest way to play the game is to join a 1000 person clan, since you would still have to make significant investment to progress.

Small clans would be able to pool together enough resources to build a dojo without grinding for months, and each member would likely already have contributed enough to bypass the fee.

Setting this up on a keyholder by keyholder basis would allow players to tour the full dojo and make informed decisions about what they want to work towards unlocking next, while still giving a sense of personal investment in your guild (even when your guild is enormous).

Ideally, the cost of research would be dropped to match, but require a resource investment to generate individual blueprints.

[Zarrazheno]

Also in 7-8 man clan. Also killing us apart. 

 

I really think there should be another way around it. 

 

I'd agree with the making it a lengthier process for smaller clans perhaps. I'd be okay with a five day build time. I guess. Or a bonus to resource gathering when clans go together. 

Edited May 26, 2013 by Zarrazheno

[topoftheyear]

No, please no. Don't punish large clans for being larger :)

The best solution is to give a fair amount of time for small clans and advantages to bigger clans.

It's not punishment for larger clans. It will be more like a ratio, an even percentage given on resources. It should take the same amount of time for a large clan to gather the resources and for a small clan to gather the resources. It supports being in a clan of any size, and if anything right now, the small clans are being punished for being small. Myself and many other people just want to see equality for this, and I'd be surprised if you didn't want that too. Or maybe you are just a large clan looking for a larger one?

[Forevener]

There is easy solution.

Once you have created a clan, you should select a maximum amount of members. Costs of the rooms will be adjusted accordingly to this limit.

And you can't change clan's member limit after that (without spending some Platinum, maybe?).

Edited May 27, 2013 by Forevener