I agree that it is interesting, but the important point is that possible extinction is really inevitable and permanent extinction. If the internet has taught us anything, it is that jerks will ruin everything for everyone, always.

I know that sounds pessimistic and cynical, but it's also just realistic. The threat of extinction adds a lot to the gameplay - the actual extinction robs from the gameplay.

I do like the idea of being able to corral some animals, the way there are gemmes for plants and such. Being able to raise some animals/plants and reintroduce them to depopulated areas would be great. However, I'm still concerned that the most desirable areas will be frequently barren. When I log in, I want to be able to do the fun stuff.

True. BUT, this CAN be prevented. Most of these sorts of griefers won't pay to grief. So, perhaps instead of allowing trial accounts to roam the mainland, just have a special area for them and them alone so that they cannot ruin the game world because they don't care if that trial account gets banned.

It isn't just the people who would do this deliberately - if all it takes to extinguish a species is for regular people to hunt them for XP and drops, anyone who lacks restraint will contribute to the problem. Considering how empty the hunting grounds get on a daily basis, just from regular players logging in and desperately searching for anything to fight, I don't see how the ecosystem would last long at all. Also, some people who are simply new and don't know what they're doing will do damage as well - and that is a lot of people.

I'd rather think that the laws-system could help with this.
If they implement some harsh penalty's for trying to extinguish a species, bigger penalty's than the criminality points that are implemented now, people would go to other places looking for the stuff they need because they don't want to end up with allot of penalty's

This post has been edited by gamgam: 30 Jan 2010, 10:43

What kind of penalties can they dish out?

I'm worried that a lot of new players who don't read the forums or wikis won't know what's going on. I remember my Sram (before the wipe) getting this weird red aura and I had no idea what it was or what it meant. It wouldn't have helped much if I had been punished for something I didn't even know I was doing unless that punishment also made it very plainly clear what not to do.

In the long run, I'd still rather not play a game that punishes me for trying to play it.

Ah, yes, I didnt think about it that way...
As penalty I had the following things in mind:
- Not gaining any more xp the monster about to be extinct.
- Not being able to attack a monster if there are less than X in an area.
- Not being able to use a "stasis action".
- ...
the explanation can pop-up if the player does an action for which he gets a penalty(as in dofus with disgrace points)
And even now it is indicated when an action is not legit...

But I agree with you last statement, this must be further looked at... I'm just writing down what I think, maybe inspiring others to give there idea's ;p

You guys are forgeting something very important: a game is aimed to be above all things FUN. The concpet of ecossystem itself is really nice, ok. But lets face the facts, it doenst work. So, what we do in a mmorpg like wakfu? Kill monster for xp/gold/itens. If we cant do this, what we r suppose to do? Chat? Lol no way. Craft? Nah, im not in mood to craft and thus, i cannot be forced to do something i want to do beause its a GAME, it exists for FUN as i ve said before. My entire friends list is logged off and so am I. I wont play till the monsters respawn again.
Another thing: aiding monsters defending them in battles? NO WAY. This is just more room for abuses, u know, there are some kind of people that really love to ruin someone else fun and will clearly abuse of this feature.
To finish, if you want a realistic game, then dont die ok? After all, in real life dead people dont come back into life at a zaap.

Than what would you do to solve this problem?

The only way it can be solved otherwise would be to make the re-spawn time dependent on the amount of players currently in the zone/nation/game

It sounds to me like you would be better off just playing Dofus if all you want to do is go kill an endless supply of monsters. Wakfu has a living ecosystem which requires attentive care from its players, both in the case of monsters and plants. It is the kind of the whole point of the game really. There are 15million other games out there where you can go around killing monsters and getting xp/gold/items. If that is all you want to do then it sounds to me like Wakfu just isnt the right game for you. Its a bit like you are walking into a McDonald's and telling them to make you a Whopper.

Just because you are able to do something (i.e. hunt nonstop) in a game doesnt mean there wont be repercussions. In this case the people have killed off the wildlife to a point that there are next to none left for hunting. Now the game is less interesting to the hunters so they all leave and the animals have a chance to recover a little bit. All that really needs to happen is if you see dead monsters laying everywhere and you have to search for 2-3mins to find one alive then Don't Kill It! Go do something else for a little while. Maybe help out with the severe overpopulation of trees and some plants in certain areas. Or go challenge some one to some friendly PvP. Or invade another territory for some not so friendly PvP. Maybe team up with some of your friends and run a dungeon. There is a lot to do in this game other than mindlessly killing Gobballs for hours on end.

This post has been edited by Priz: 30 Jan 2010, 19:09

Priz, you said everything that I was about to say xDDDD Plus an "I told you so!".
You're my "Today's hero", Priz xDDDD

1. I'm playing Wakfu, if I wanted to play Dofus I wouldn't be here.

2. As I said, in theory the idea of ecosystem is pretty nice, in practice it fails.

3. A game where KILLLING monster is VITAL for lvl up as much craft anything, no monsters around is kinda stupid.

4. I don't want to plant trees.
*I don't want to PvP
*I don't want to invade another territory
*I don't want to chat around.

I hate stupid people who like to tell other people what they have to do. Mind your own life and don't try to force others to like and do the same things you do.

5. My whole friend is offline to make a dungeon run.

6. Your analogy with McDonalds failed so bad.

7. Who are you to tell if a game is right for me or not? Another fail.

8. Repercussions in a game? LOL LOL LOL. Ok, here is the deal, let's talk about repercussion.. if you face a monster and you get killed, that's the repercussion for your act.. and, oh, so you can't go back to life, ok? So gg and create another char.

9. A lot of thing work in games and other don't, that's a fact. If any game starts to get boring, the people leave it. I'm so glad you aren't a game developer.

So, before telling other people what to do, try to think as a game developer ok? We can't recreate everything from real life in a game, that's why its called a GAME. Understood or do you want me to draw it for you? I'm in a game because I want to have some fun, not to worry about the same issues from real life.

This post has been edited by [Knonaut]: 30 Jan 2010, 19:46

Then this isn't the game for you, Niambooh. Ankama wants to have a semi-real ecosystem working on the game and just because some people don't like it they don't have to change tons of codes and delay their development.

They want to give us a different game, you want the old style mmorpg. Stay if you wish, you are aware now of the kind of gameplay Ankama wants to give us. Then again, you can play Dofus and forget about ecosystems and extinction.

I doubt that Priz is telling you what to do forcefully. He's mentioning what other stuff you can do in Wakfu. If you wish to try them or not is your problem.

People are free to leave a game if they don't like it, and I suspect you won't like this game soon.

Niambooh, sorry to say this, but you are the kind of guy that ruins the game for everyone else...

And the rest I wanted to say is already been said by Dharymel and Priz

It's no ordinary MMORPG, if you don't like it, leave it!

No believe me I understand the statistics of it. My point was that enu prospecting would not proliferate sets as drastically as the post I was replying to implied. An enu generally wouldn't reach the number of fights to fully leverage its prospecting for any given rare item simply because one tends to stop hunting after completing a set. So while there would be more rare gear on a server with enus than without, it wouldn't be the full four times more (given our random example number) suddenly flooding the market but rather the number of items slowly increasing towards the enu prospecting difference, reaching it only after the long term.

Whereas with common drops the threshold is reached pretty much every fight meaning you would see a nearly immediate 4 times more supply.

I dont want the same old fashion mmorpg, but just because its a new idea doesnt mean it gonna work. So funny to see the point ppl become stupid to say if im the kind of person who ruins the game for everyone else, just because i want just to kill monsters for now. Do u know if i agrro ppl all the time, do u know if i cut trees without replanting them? No, u dont.. so u assume im a bad player just because i want to LEVEL UP MY CHAR and i there is no monster around to do it.
Btw, u suspect i wont be here soon? LOl, im here sicne the beggining of the beta, ive made a lot of suggestions etc.. so dont try to act like a pro for me ok? I cant say the ecossystem didnt worth a shot, but it need changes. Ankama is a company, so they need profit and sure, the people need to enjoy its game, thats why this is a BETA phase. They can spot what is working or not, and im pretty sure a real ecossystem leading monsters into extinction making wakfu a boring experience wont bring them a lot of players neither keep them in.
Btw, ijust because i disagree about the ecossystem both of u just tell im a bad player, i sux, i ruin everyone else game.. grow up, learn to respect another suggestion and point of view.

If the current game is how they actually want the ecosystem to run, then that is Fail. Just corpses everywhere.

If you can't fight any monsters, you can't gain XP... You can't gain XP, then PvP is limited to level ~5 (assuming you just repeatedly farm incarnum bunnies)
You can't fight monsters, then you can't get dungeon keys.
Wakfu doesn't have any alternatives, the game becomes Harvest Moon.

The basic issue is that it's unrealistic to think a "real" ecosystem will survive an artificial game environment... Players can spawn in by the thousands... there is no limit placed on the human population in the same way as the real world. In reality, most of the humans would've starved to death in the current games environment.... the ecosystem would've killed the players because it cannot support a population of such size. Instead of Wakfu characters starving of food, they're starved of XP.

I've actually stopped playing because of the current nonsense.

This post has been edited by GoldfishGod: 30 Jan 2010, 20:54

(I will comment some of the posting here, sorry but i just don't know how to quote lost of posting yet )

(P.S.: Also, when i wrote this post, Niambooh and GoldfishGod had already posted theirs, so sorry if i'm repeating things they said...)

(P.P.S.: And i'm trying to take off the here, so read it as b ) )

Doing a quick analysis of the game as it is now:

4 islands populated with players, one huge central island. The ecossystem is there, and so if the players take out lots of plants, it will be harder to find more unless they take the responsability and start planting. It already happened before, and it is happening, of people extincting some plants, usually the most low-level ones. But getting seeds we can undo the damage.

There are monsters in the five islands. In all five they grow in number through respawn, nothing else. There are nothing we can do to protect them, or to make them grow. In the four populated by players islands the monsters have levels varying of 1 to 50 the most. Since monsters give kamas, exp AND items, everybody tends to fight against them, their number diminish and... eventually there aren't enough for everybody, and so it's hard to level up enough to start fighting in the central islands, where monsters have levels varying of 15 to... 80, more perhaps(sorry, only went there once, in the last update). The central island only have monsters, monsters and more monsters.

The way it is, the system is broken. Not because of ecossystem, but for some reasons in the way ecossystem is being now:

a) As takewithfood mentioned, the monster's population ends TOO FAST. In one day we go of overpopulated to almost extincted, and the cycle repeats everyday. Until we can actively help in mantaining the number of monsters, the respawn should be higher, or according to how many monsters are being killed.

The main place that can be used to go hunting without caring, the central island, is too high-level for starters. Starters need to level up, and so will need to fight against monsters and you know what happens next.

c) We don't have much information about how exactly the damages in ecossystem are happening. Strangely, we have MORE information about how the weather is going than how the number of monsters are in each area, and the weather, until now, don't do much(but if someone could post here the translation of what can be done with weather with the protectors, it would help a lot!). Graphs showing how the monsters are growing or reducing would help a lot into protecting them.

By now, the problem will continue. As iamisaacqwerty pointed, there are other things we can do instead of going to kill monsters... but even that things need changing:

a) Encourage groups/guilds to go on dungeon runs instead of monster slaughters. - To do a dungeon run, you need a dungeon key. Dungeon keys are only gettable... killing monsters. WAIT! It would help if some keys could be crafted. Also a Piwi Dungeon, for starters, would help a lot.

BUY stuff at market instead of going to kill it yourself. I know you lose way more money this way, but it saves time and who knows, the time you save might get you the money back from some other renewable source. - The only direct renewable source of money is... monsters. Getting things to sell ends with you or having to log off, or shouting to sell stuff. Considering not everybody here knows French, it's a hassle both ways.

c) Send Amakna suggestions that give players more power to keep other players away from monsters. - That we are discussing here! ^^ The "players fighting to defend monsters" is a good idea... but Niambooh pointed well, this system can be very abused. Imagine you, a LVL 5 Cra, trying to hunt some Piwi for making Healing Potions. The Piwis are overpopulating, so you are helping the environment, and gaining Wakfu.

You found two Piwis! You engage in battle... and a LVL 30 Feca enters in your fight and kill you. You get back to lifethrough a Zaap, take out the dust of your clothes and go again to search for Piwis. You find THREE! And enter in battle. Then a group of four LVL 7 players enter in your fight, "defending" the monsters... and kill THEM.

Conclusion: the system HAS to be thought before being implemented. Perhaps to do it a law has to be put in place, perhaps you can enter in only some fights, perhaps only if the monster population is low...

Takewithfood also mentioned that "The threat of extinction adds a lot to the gameplay - the actual extinction robs from the gameplay." And that goes to the final part, as Niambooh well pointed:

"a game is aimed to be above all things FUN." No one here is liking of having lots of effort to find a monster to fight against, to see a barren land of dead bodies and running players. The problem here is: everybody loses when the ecossystem is destroyed, and when it is, nothing else comes. Of course, players of the beta will be concerned with HOW to defend the ecossystem when the game is ready, we've be seeing enough ot it's destruction and it's effects. But... i guess the game should be playable even with a destroyed ecossystem. What could happen?

Perhaps the spirits of the monsters decide to fight against the players who destroyed it, perhaps the islands starts being invaded by lots of sucking-Wakfu robots, perhaps the level of the sea increases with someone crying because of the destruction, perhaps demons start invading, perhaps the land changes itself...

...this MMO is different, since it give us the responsability to take care of the world, and give us the power to write it's history. But bad things happen and this is not real life, it's a MMO, and usually if people aren't having fun in a MMO, they jump to another. So, in good or bad times, having fun it's the priority. What have to be thought is: in the worst, we should have fun and fight to make things again as they were, or have problems, and fight to make things as they were... or survive in the new world?

This post has been edited by WindVagrant: 30 Jan 2010, 20:49

Anyway because of the extinction i have to remain in incarnam until lvl 20?(cra)it works but it`s very boring to beat only wapins and the woodcutter,plus that i have to keep dropping the useless things(got 7-8axes in my invertory right now)
Someone said that extinction will never be possible, well here we are into a crisis because of the fauna is 99% destroyed,new characters can`t be evolved,materials from the monsters are almost gone,new kamas barely reach the system(because monsters are producing the kamas),and our last source of hope,money and material are the dungeons,the keys from these dungeons!Why do i find it so similar to the economic crisis, because the rich will become richer,the poor will become poorer(keys are expensive, those that missed the first few days won`t have creatures from where to get the keys,neighter money)the only thing that they`ll have will be resources.And then ... a stroke of light!The weekly rollback that resets the ecosystem.Slowly the necessity of leveling will be lesser as rollback after rollback will allow many players to level until ... disaster strikes again,another mass wipe...and the cycle begins again.
Everything is going to be ok after a week of two.It`s just the begging`s rush.I`m concerned about what will happen when the game is released

Now i'm curious about two things: the reset of the ecossystem is weekly?!

Also, how much is a key in the markets?

Finally, even if a zoo gemme is created, the lowest priced gemme i've seen was a decoration gemme... for 24000. If defending the ecossystem will need so much money, it will be VERY hard.

This post has been edited by WindVagrant: 30 Jan 2010, 20:57

I really would enjoy playing in a game where you have to take the ecosystem into account - I like choosing whether I want to build up my Wakfu or go Stasis. I like checking on an area to see how it's doing and then thinking about what I can do to help out.

None of that is my gripe.

My gripe is that, while I sit back and try to let a population of monsters recover, 99% of the other thousands of players will be out there slaughtering every one of them because they don't care. You can't tell them all to go play Dofus, and you can't make them play Dofus. You'd have to come up with some very, very harsh in-game penalties to keep people from farming every last scrap of available resource - basically, you would have to make the game so unappealing to them that they would just stop playing and quit the game entirely. That's too high a cost for a game with a fun ecosystem. It doesn't feel right.

Someone will ruin the game.. all it takes is a few people who either don't care, or don't know what they're doing to ruin the game for everyone. Sure, if there are no monsters, maybe I can find something else to do.. but if they monsters never come back, then the game is broken. It is not a fun design feature, it is an inherent flaw.

I love that so many of you have such high faith in your fellow human beings, but I don't. The current state of affairs supports my view, unfortunately.