Posts made by OlivePit

Sorry, yes, Vice governor is the term... Lt gov is another short hand equivilent.

Fractured -had- enchanting tiers for weapons/armor which directly increased the stats for them... but it was taken out for unknown reasons... Same with gem imbuing to an extent.

Bare handed skills and talents should not exist... they create the 'naked mage' problem all over again where ability/effect is not tied to equipment.
Switch that to fist wraps that require cloth and some reagent and problem solved. (cloth + cinder pearl = fire elemental fist weapon based on int... or cloth + ingots = brass knuckles for str/dex damage)

Ranged combat is quite a misnomer in this game with such a small field of view and so many movement / cc abilities.
As such why is the mage 'advantage' of range so heavily weighted even tho they can barely get 1 ability off before the ranged combat becomes melee?
Giving mages melee elemental weapon options (which their abilities could also work with) would allow them options and allow the devs to see more of the balance factors as people move from forced ranged mages to melee mages. (we are already a fair way into this what with the battlemage sets popularity)

We already have stances and toggle abilities like crippling strike, fire arrows, striking wounds... why not keep that methodology for other mage based abilities? Instead of fire bolt call it fire infusion ability, which is a toggle and modifies mage melee/range abilities with the fire bolt effect which modify or scale off of weapon damage just like crippling strike or fire arrows work with other classes? so take the base mage staff of 9int damage and the ability converts that to fire damage while adding 4int fire damage and stacks. Have this work more or less the same for all weapons (that channel) and then you can have flaming falchions / bows / staves / fists. If you -really- need to make people specialize their weapon for each ability then fine, that is an easy addition, but the base idea should work fine in each situation.

This is shown in the enchanting ability class and in this picture here:

As such why force mages into some special restrictive situation where they need to have abilities not based on weapons like everyone else?

A good example is the acid breath ability, it has a 3m range cone but roots you for 3 seconds. Meanwhile many melee attacks already have a cone attack just base in them - great sword has a 2m ranged cone attack for example. The acid breath ability could be more flexibly and usefully linked to weapon type and the AOE that they already affect in the same way that other weapon based abilities work with an activation cost and/or a cost per strike or per second. This would allow for far more interesting builds where one may weigh the options of having a lighter weapon for more attack speed and more stacks, or a larger weapon for greater aoe (quartersaff) or base damage (mace/wand?).
As is the acid breath ability is hugely restrictive, more cumbersome, and either under whelming when fighting mobile single targets or overwhelming when fighting static groups (corralled skeletons, stunned)

If it were an enchant ability enhancing base weapon then it would be more useful, flexible, and enjoyable.
Keeping the methodology that works and just giving mages more weapon choices with int damage would make all the difference.
Fist wraps for high speed single target melee (dagger), wands for small range aoe (sword), orbs for longer range but small aoe (spear), staves for big damage (hammer), quarterstaffs for big aoe.

From what I have seen, heard, and experienced all of the really big aoe mage spells and toggles (thunderstorm, cloak of elements, etc) are just so impractical, ineffective, costly, and restrictive that they are not used. As such the question of why they even exist comes up.

The processing time for mage equipment is also all over the place, imbalanced, and problematic.
Linen can be gotten anywhere and everywhere easily and rather quickly, while cotton can only be obtained through 2 days of farming multiple plots that could be used for food to upkeep or rank up cities, and other mob dropped materials are quite erratic in availability and time to harvest as well.
The value and cost of the materials are totally irregular and some how hardly representative in their corresponding qualities given in the equipment produced.
This is the one area where the t2 equipment tree got it right; use of other materials for crafting of the equipment to somewhat standardize the cost in time.

I agree with Spoletta and others that the tanning method should include reagents for the process.
I also agree/argue that the 4hr timer with fuel for one ingot is quite frustrating and taxing on work/life/game balance.
I would argue that cloth could also use some form of processing, call it magical imbuing if you like, which takes a reagent/fuel and time to be completed.
I argue that the 16 hour timer for tanning is best, and requiring some sort of fuel would also be good. Something comparable to coal/charcoal may be gatherable herbs and their enchantment potency. so you need to go out and harvest 60 total potency of herbs which could mean 4 stacks of 5 herbs each with 3 rank 1 enchantment qualities. Or you could use fewer materials of higher potency. This way there would be a use for all the low potency herbs out there while also balancing out the time factor.

In exchange give cloth armor -some- area of value.
One argument for why cloth armor is so cheep and easy to make is that it is tissue paper and practically worthless, while in contrast metal armor provides huge resistances as well as variety of bonuses to choose from.
I think that everyone would be happy with expensive cloth armor if it also had comparable stats, if in just different areas.
For example: plate armor has the best physical defenses, but no elemental defenses, leather has a good balance, and cloth has the best elemental defenses but no physical. or plate is best vs piercing, leather vs slashing, and cloth vs crushing.

As a final plug I would like to advocate for the return of imbued gems for adding qualities to weapons/armor/jewelry instead of the current system of imbuing each piece separately.

In the current system farming is necessary for city ranking and upkeep.

Frankly it is extremely easy to do this what with only having to worry about 2 crops and having 60 free fields outside of (most) towns. Alone it takes at most an hour a day for watering, harvesting, and rotation of these fields. I know, I have done it every test the last 4 tests and am doing it currently in Zenith. Yes you have to up this time commitment if you plant rice, but lets leave that aside. As long as there are no outside influences, and you dedicate the time, then there is no problem.

Introduce the outside influences - citizens.

Cities -require- citizens for them to exist. Both a minimum of 20 or face de-ranking and practically for placing houses in town to up the prestige of the town to then rank up. Because houses outside of town don't count, duplicate city buildings don't count, and even some city buildings just don't count... which is totally sustainable and reasonable what with everyone only getting 1 plot per account -sarcasm-.

Citizens get full access to the crafting facilities inside of town and at a seperate tax rate than residents or transients. This is great and a good incentive to join a town in of itself. They are also allowed to buy a plot in town at a special rate with no rent, also good hurrah hurrah.

But then we get into the marsh.

Citizens get access to all chests/smelters/tanning tubs/ and fields. And this is where the trust problems come in.
Ever since city population requirements went from 5 to 20 there has been the required need to make unknown people citizens, just to make things possible. And ever since then there have been people who steal from chests, replace -your- tanning warg hide for -their- animal hide, and replace the wheat growing with cotton (cuz they want cotton armor and this is the only way to get it).

The consequences of this theft and undermining activity have been felt by just about every group. Bussy infiltrated multiple towns and stole grain, opportunists take city resources and sell them in the market for personal profit, crops that are hours away from harvest get replaced thus wasting -days- and causing a town to loose ranks. We have been begging for activity logs for these stations in order to help separate the good people from the asses. It seems this will never come.

Instead I propose that access to these very sensitive and necessary functions of towns be limited to the lieutenant governors.

This way cities can be more generous with their recruitment, creating bigger and better communities, while also being secure in their huge investments. It is much simpler and more reasonable to scrutinize 5 than 25. By removing the temptation the environment will also be more pleasant. By raising the bar it makes the successful infiltration and betrayal all the more satisfying for those who are motivated by that stuff.

Thoughts?

huh, wonder why I dont see it when i use it then : /
thanks for the pic

I have never seen it work for bows.

@spoletta
let us count...
1 t2 light armor option for 20+ skills. If you want to use any of those abilities you have only 1 armor choice... And since there is only 1 weapon type -mage staff- that does 9.6*int damage, slow attack speed, you are also limited to 3 of 4 (and more coming) staff damage types, which have absolutely no real effect as they give no stacks and have no impact on abilities. -how i wish there was a difference between using a magic staff when casting magic missile vs using a fire staff- so when going out to fight you only are able to account for 3/5 of the enemies resistances to find that right match- This also is the case with fighting mobs or pvp.

Meanwhile Melee casters have : 1 light armor set, 3 medium armor sets, and 2 heavy armor sets (T2) not counting hunter and warlock.
And -so sad- out of 153 skills they only get to mix and match 133. what a sacrifice for the greater options of equipment and the greater protection they all give.
And weapons? well they get to pick their stat of choice between Dex OR Str for their weapon and many of them not only have spell channeling but ALSO do two different types of damage ! meaning they can be used for 2/3 of the abilities available to them if not more since many are -not- restricted. And to top it off there are only 3 physical damage types so you can easily carry all 3 at the same time, thus always have an answer to the enemies build, whatever it is.
Let us not forget that they have 13 weapon choices 4 of which are spell channeling. Also note that their two handed, slow attack speed, weapons -without channeling- do str * 14.8-18 per auto attack and in an Area of Effect ! Before they even take one skill ! Note too that their skills do STR*20, to that AOE while -sometimes- also applying meaningful status effects ! (yes this is presumably temporary and eventually elemental stacks other than acid and sometimes ice? will mean something)

Why give more options to the already bountiful melee fighter when the mage is so massively crippled in choice?

And you are saying that Melee is more limited than mage? Please, illuminate how.

As a side note:
I think everyone would love to see a elemental damage scythe that has no spell channeling and does int *18 damage in a aoe cone like the monster great sword.

The biggest disadvantage that mages have is due to their long casting time/animations and the small field of view.
In the time between starting to cast an ability to finishing that melee who was at the edge of your screen has already gotten into your face and hit you.
When compared to the instant abilities afforded all the other classes these two factors are hugely damaging to the playability of mages.

Just go back to the more restrictive gem imbuing and socketing system.
since you could only imbue certain enchants on certain gems you had no real problem with unwanted enchantment overlap and in the rare case where there is overlap you have not permanatly damaged your equipment, just wasted a gem and the reagents.
Then you take the gems with the enchantments you want and put them into the equipment, thus getting what you want.
This would also create a market, and demand, for pre-enchanted gems made by crafters which people could buy and socket instead of having to go to all the extra busy work and RNG of enchanting a piece of equipment.

A warning showing up in your mail to warn you that your property is low on funds would be good.

@DarthJafo
Meele has the option to use moonsilver for their armor to get cold resist, which is a defense against stacks while solo (and on a horse).

the governors are supposedly able to tax the market... but it is not working right now.
A timer is needed, but longer than a week as the time it takes to go around to every town and update your items for sale is not insignificant and having to do that weekly would be really annoying.

Mages have been sad for quite some time, over a year, since the 'naked mages are op' fiasco. Just looking at the damage multipliers of abilities in the warfare tree and comparing them to the damage multipliers in the mage tree show the stark difference.

I certainly would not mind some more care and thought given to the big mage spells to make them more viable.. Right now -no one- uses them as they are just not worth it.
The situation is also not as unbalanced as you depict it is as a lot of those mage spells are element specific and thus useless against many mobs or any player with the immunity up, while the effect of battle abilities will always be viable in far more situations -concussive strike, battle jump, decimate, etc...-
note that you do not need spell channeling for many of the archer abilities already and thus are free to use longbow.

I have been testing and building a unarmed monk esque mage, and they are incredibly underwhelming, even with the talents, high dex, high int, and elemental fist abilities. Considering the versitility and use of weapons (enchantable, crafted with special materials, etc..) I again call for the use of fist wraps as unarmed weapons.

@THH

The problem there is that you are not paying 'repair' costs for the enchantments you have placed on the armor.
Unless you -also- have a system where enchantments degrade off of armor and have to be re-applied after a time. -if doing this system it might be good to bring back gem imbuing and have those socketed gems take damage-

@spoletta said in Limited uses for recipes:

@Logain I agree on some changes being potentially good in that area.

Material KP should not be obtained by finding them only once, it should have a 0-100% gauge like mobs have and offer a lot more KP in total. This way a player can start as a gatherer and get rewarded with KPs for his activities. You balance this additional amount of KP by having additional crafts being unlocked with KP, and masteries indeed being more like a crafting talent tree (non easily respecable) than a simple grind of materials.

This encounters the demand of those that want to be able to specialize in crafting. A crafter player would invest more points in crafting than in talents/skills. As long as the crafting talents offer only modest bonuses (no more than+10% damage/armor/resistances/durability in total), it would integrate well in the game.

In the end the KP would still be balanced, so a character would still be able to get everything in the long run, both combat and crafting.

Yes ! give KP mastery for farming crops ! need to farm 100 of same crop to become master !

@Mudz said in Limited uses for recipes:

Trying to structure my thoughts to maybe be alittle bit easier to read the suggestions:

Knowledge points and resource/material bonus unlocks:

Harvesting:

• Initial exploration Knowledge Point bonus for finding a new resource type through harvesting, including bonus resources when found.
• Entry into the book of knowledge for that resource or bonus resource with some general information (no knowledge percentage gain at this point).

include KP for us poor resource/crop farmers ! to the 100% limit of the crop/resource.

Processing:

• If purchasing a resource and not learning about it by harvesting you gain the initial Knowledge Point bonus from processing the resource instead.
• (Any type of processed material that is created by combining several base resources gets the initial Knowledge Point bonus from processing or crafting using that material.)
• Entry into the book of knowledge for that resource/material triggered here instead with some general information (no knowledge percentage gain at this point).

Crafting:

• If purchasing a resource or a processed resource and not learning about it by harvesting or processing you gain the initial Knowledge Point bonus from crafting with the processed resource instead.

• (Any type of processed material that is created by combining several base resources gets the initial Knowledge Point bonus from processing or crafting using that material.)

• Entry into the book of knowledge for that resource triggered here instead with some general information (no knowledge percentage gain at this point).

• Resource knowledge increases with crafting using that specific resource, gaining Knowledge Points up until 100% knowledge and unlocking bonuses like unlocking abilities from monsters.

• Information regarding bonuses to be updated in the book of knowledge once learned.

• Smaller bonuses initially and then slightly better at the end.

• This would mean that you don't know everything about a resouce from the start and will only be able to craft items with the bonuses you know for the resource used.

• <Resource> (Main component used in crafting)
  <Bonus1>: Unlock at 25% knowledge of that material
  <Bonus2>: Unlock at 50% knowledge of that material
  <Bonus3>: Unlock at 75% knowledge of that material
  <Bonus4>: Unlock at 100% knowledge of that material

Crafting masteries:

• Gain mastery levels like now by crafting a specific item.
• Unlock new specific masteries using Knowledge Points when you have reached high enough level in the previous mastery.

yea, need 4/4 plate mastery to unlock slayer set.

Recipies:

• When you reach a specific mastery level for an item you unlock the possibility to spend Knowledge Points to learn new mastery specific recipes from that Tier.

Like it. Need to have 3/4 mastery of iron to unlock plate armor.

Drops:

• If anything should drop as loot it could be "forgotten knowledge" or "lost techniques" that can be used to gain some progress in knowledge of a specific resource/material or a crafting mastery.

Kp boosts to mastery path for each resource. Find a scroll of plate armor, read it and it gives 20% towards plate mastery.

@Triop
THANK YOU FOR SAYING SO !!!
If I had pointed it out ppl would just write it off as Olive being crop obsessed again.

Instead of using some new mechanic to deal with environmental conditions and stacks, new material properties which greatly reduce the options of playable equipment type, do what i suggested earlier and have stack decay tied to elemental resistance level. the higher your resistance the faster stacks decay.
This allows for elemental resistance enchantment to have a purpose. It allows players to wear whatever armor material they want and then compensate with enchantments/rings to adapt to the environment.

It prevents the awkward situation of having 80% cold damage reduction, but frozen into a brick since resistances have nothing to do with stacks. And for what reason?
Stacks already have a decay mechanic and we already have the damage reduction curve for resistances, just stick them together such that at a elemental resist of 50% your stacks decay 50% faster.
This would make it so some number of mages/elementals/severe weather would still have an effect on the player, but it could be moderately mitigated such that it is playable and maintains the ambiance.

Currently the only real option is to run with an ability sucking 10m/s to be totally immune to the entire system. at which point why even have it?. this is not an interactive play feature of the game. it is an arbitrary tax that only sucks fun and choice from the game.

Brining back gem imbuing, socketing, and unsocketing would also help the situation.
For a cost, say 1k per gem level?, you can remove a gem from your T3 arch mage gown and swap in a cold resist gem for your trip to Aerhen instead of having to craft and enchant a whole new set of armor.
It would allow for that lateral progression and flexibility that the game was championing and reduce -some- the new vertical progression grind we have now.

nothing would be a very sad case of the cost of the summoning being paid, the killing of mobs -all that possible- done, and all for no boss for you to kill !
it is not like flawless sapphires grow on trees you know.

can confirm this happens to fire shamen

Mobs spawn in the closed off area behind chief untabog alter.
What would happen if the boss spawns there?!?