Posts made by OlivePit

Welcome back to the genre ! The down side of alpha games is that they are rough and information usually has to be collected and dispersed by the players via forums and wiki's meaning users need to search for answers there. We have a pretty good group and make posts on the forum and wiki, so the information is available, if not convenient.
The world map glitch is some disconnect between the game programing and the interpretation of some graphics cards, likely to be dealt with before release.
The up side of alpha games is that you get to play them while they are in development and not just once they are completed, which means you can alter the game through feedback.

This is one case where I think that an instanced starting area separate from the rest of the game world would, and only accessible from char creation, be useful.

There the devs could give you access to wheat, cotton, crafting stations, imbuing, allow players to claim a house plot for 30min and build a basic crafting station, tame a horse, build a campfire, experience being knocked down, and death (with traps). You could have mob spawn areas with signs that show different elements or weapon types to cue the fact that you need to switch it up to fight this mob. Have those beginning mobs rank up really fast so that a player can see what a filled bestiary page looks like.

Then when they are done they click on the harbor and choose the connecting harbor they want to arrive at on the continent of their choice which would make it much easier for new players to join their friends and at the same time disperse the population to reduce initial competition. If needed you could even have the characters die, loose all their loot, and wake up naked on the beach after a 'ship wreck' which would then give them the thrill of working up from scratch with no gifted stuff from the tutorial.

This would mean that the cotton and wheat you find in the world would no longer have to be permanently blocked and players could go out and harvest it if they really wanted to.

You could still have the player friendly 'starter towns' for basic crafting, banking, and market.. but after the first few weeks of game play they are mostly ignored in favor of player towns, so why really?. I would be in favor of having no 'starter towns' at all, requiring everything to be player built outside of the instanced 'beginning island'. But I know I am in the minority there.

The crafting discrepancy is intended to create diversity and trade incentives.
Each town gets 1-2 research points per rank, you have to research all the lower connected technologies to get access to something. Here is a much reduced example of a town tech tree:

As you can see it is expensive and time consuming to build up and there are far more techs available than can be gotten by one town. As such each governor has hard choices to make and know that they cannot please everyone, and often not even themselves. This promotes trade and the creation of multiple specialized cities.

Health regen scales with con as do the bandages. There are hints at further 'alchemy' consumables. There are multiple pieces of equipment and talents that help in this as well. As with everything in this game you make compromises and work with them while using gear and/or allies to cover your weak points. You should not expect to be able to tank, dps, and CC all at the same time with one character.

The terrain is absolutely intentional. There are texture cues on the cliffs that show where one can go up or down them. It takes time to spot them but become second nature over time. For everyone else there are the clear brown paths visible on even the world map.

Mages have burst, Archers have sustain. Archers also are more likely to get crits.

The mages heal is a constant gripe I share and ties to the over powered nature of bandages as a comparison. In any case this is not a heal tanking game, more of a careful squad based game. There are much better heals out there, you just have to work for them.

For houses be in the roped area and click the house icon that pops up.

@Bunnygum said in The Dark Convergence:

It was very cool at first but lasted around 30-40 mins and felt a bit too drawn out to the point where I found myself bored about 20 or so mins in and only stayed incase something crazy was going to happen like a resized giant dragon invading the starter town or something along those lines but sadly this never happened.

yup, big hype: 'Demon invasion', then no demons, just mob content that is already available, and just rinse and repeat. Got board, left.

And the fact that the beast world will have more fiber and wood options while the demon world will have more hide options, both similar to the number of metal options humans have, thus creating inter world trade demands.

If the tier 1 imbuing was cheaper, or if gems gave basic properties to items without imbuing, then that would give plenty more variety for new players in their first 24 hours before they get better gear... but really with a developed game there will be plenty of gear available for players to buy at very reasonable prices. For example in the last alphas I regularly sold cotton and basic leather armor at the starting towns for 25-75 gp per piece, it got bought by new players all the time.

There are imbued gems that increase the items durability by 100-300%.

The enchanting system is new and being tested/ballanced.
Before it was just the 'imbuing' system, but with no gems. Tons of complaints about the complexity and requirement to farm mats too high a barrier to use. So they made it easier for the players with a simple direct coin system.

Navagation is a learned skill. Play for a week and you notice the texture changes that indicate you can go up an area of cliff. This gives players a 'home turf' advantage as they know the area around their homes better and can use it to escape or ambush.
There was a teleport ability that you could use to go over cliffs, walls, mountains. It was crushed and stated that it would not happen. The navigation learning curve is totally intended.

There was two ore / stone per node, they reduced it. More noise and we might get it back to two.
Harvesting is not going to be for everyone, that is what gives life to market economies. I did a bunch of it and was happy to take peoples money for my labor and their lack of interest.

Wooden bo staves are very much like a 'channeling spear' as would be a rapier. They exist.

Animal leather is cheep and accessible, warg/dire wolf/ troll leather is not. I would never use the better leathers in place of the animal leather i can get from the ubiquitous wolf packs that plague the world. Maybe it is just a preference thing?
There is a similar complaint about needing linen weave to make bandages, why not cotton? Their answer there was that 'alchemy' would be using the higher tier stuff for better consumables.

getting on and off a horse or logging out and back in works for unstuck in most circumstances. Creating a mechanic that tracks player location all the time for a rewind, just for alpha/beta, is asking a bit much.

Many classes have no equivalent to the second wind skill at all, it is not a norm, but an exceptional thing. There are other charisma or int based healing skills that are useful, or the ubiquitous over powered bandage (no cast time, no animation interruption, can use on a horse, no mana cost, no knowledge point cost to learn, no memory point cost to memorize, etc...)

If they had cure KO health on the spot then that would greatly increase the amount of mob spawn camping and thus greatly reduce the availability of mob spawns to the rest of the game population. Forcing players to return to towns to learn skills, switch talents, and recover max hp is a good, and thematic, way to keep players moving. The other alternative is moving as a group for security and acting organized, which the developers are absolutely encouraging in a number of ways.

Gathering resources is not going to be for everyone. With higher population the markets will be there to give players who dont like to harvest a place to get what they want.

The limitation of the hot bar is absolutely intentional. It makes choices matter and creates variety of builds while encouraging group play.

Mana is a limited resource that needs to be carefully managed in this game. This is why there are metal armors, and imbued gems, that can increase it at the opportunity cost of not getting a different benefit. Choices matter, there are pros and cons to everything.

Players can steel carts, would you want them to be able to steal you horse at the same time? Also harvesting in pairs greatly reduces this 'inconvenience'

the restricted terrain is absolutely intended and have been repeatedly reinforced through the nerfing of abilities that used to bypass them.

Can increase durability of items with an imbued gem from 100-300%. it is there.
There is a thorough automated imbuing tool available here on the forums and linked in the wiki. They may put it into the game later.

Melee already have the highest armor, the highest sustained damage, the highest crowd control, the best self heal. sounds like you are getting greedy.

Friends lists would be nice as would party locations, and your last body, on the world map.

so something like this:
To claim a house plot, be in the roped area and click on the house button.

This is a cut down version of the town tech tree, each town rank only gives 1-2 research points, this town is rank 2 and spent it all on these three basic technologies. To get access to tanning tubs the town would need to be a minimum of rank 5 and invest 3 research points. To get mage apparel it would need to be minimum of rank 5 and invest 5 research points.

As such there are seriously hard decisions to make. Not possible to please everyone at any one, or even two, cities. Thus giving value to specialization, creating niches for inter town trade, and giving players reason to travel to different towns.

The area inside the blue lines are the territory of the town. (toggle on map view).
The red circles are places where people can claim plots and get access to that towns tech.

Turning down the graphic settings, and the thick grass, help finding small stones.

There was lots of 'mobs inside of rocks and under the floor also in the heartwoods ruins"

Heh, I also had no player protection, I thought it was my fault tho XD

I think the 'find 4k gold and buy one' is more about encouraging players to join guilds and invest in towns and gain access to the resources that way. The towns can give players a small spot to build a house while they work toward building up the town and later the town can help them move out to the residential area to help increase the towns resident population which they need to go up ranks. In past tests towns were happy to pay people the 4k if they would join and help the town get past the hurdles.

There will always be tanner and smelter lots. Inside and outside the town. Players want everything now, and the only way to get that is to make lots. Until there is an active market place where they can get what they want they are stuck with this. I believe that with a longer test (a month or more) the market will fill out and stabilize and reduce the number of industrial lots.

The scaling lot costs is an idea. Not sure how much of a hassle it would be to program.
And it would not stop towns from making a whole lot of them inside the town walls, thus giving more power to large guilds/groups.

note that using your own crafting facility in your house is not taxed, just the ones in the town.

Have un-imbued gems give some basic mild bonus?
I did not test imbuing this alpha weekend as I usually rely on my guild to collect the mats as byproducts of hunting trips. I dont remember it costing 500 for a chipped tier 1 imbue, if that is true then it is too much. 100 at most. Giving players one as part of the tutorial should not even be a big deal as their first weapon / gear will be replaced within 24 hours once they kill some animals with better skins (dire wolf / warg).

I dont think that the gems need to be more common, I got plenty from just mining ore. If I had wanted more I would have put up a buy order for them at 5-10 gold each (chipped) and would expect it to be filled by people who get them and would rather have the gold.

The problem would be locking players out of the starting town imbuing table after the tutorial is over... and making sure they can only use it for one enchantment... Tricky...

Inside the roped area and house icon pops up.

The ability to fight with an open inventory and thus access the consumables there is a issue that is going to be patched.

Presumably the other continents in each world will help with the enviromental variety.

yea, cosmetic gear would be fun, but likely done from a in game store and lower on their priorities at the moment.

Mob bosses and world bosses do drop higher tier imbuing components for adding custom bonusses to any weapon or armor you put the gem into and is a major facet of the game that has barely been touched. Every item (even the stone and rock weapon you make) has one socket, enchanting items add sockets, using these sockets with top tier imbued gems is how you get to the point of being able to solo dragon and other bosses. Sadly most do not have the patience to gather the materials, and play with the imbuing system to create the desired results. I hope that some players will love this puzzle and make lots of money selling gems on the markets.

Mail system is only for text messages and notifications of triggered sales or purchases in markets, so you know to go back there and get your item. There is no indication that there will be any 'mailing' of items.

The FoV limitation has been argued over for some time. If it is too large then ranged players have the advantage and can kite melee forever, if it is too small then ranged combat is meaningless. I am on the 'it is too close' camp, but the devs have shown no desire to expand it and seem to be happy as it is. More complaints are welcome !

Attacking / ambushing from the south was regularly used by pvp gankers and players in the big test with pvp. It is anoying. Supposidly this is countered by playing in bigger groups or using allies to watch the edges... how? i'm not sure.

I think the big issue is that they dont want to make some sort of active fog of war and that the limited FoV works instead.

Any player can add gold coins or food bags at the town hall to aid the town growth.
Locking a public crafting station has lots of issues, at the moment many of them can be used simultaneously without interference. The exceptions are tanning tubs and smelters, and there is really no answer to that problem. It has been attempted multiple times and each time there was an exploit or problem. Bigger guilds accepted that they have to restrict access to the town chests and crafting things to only the trusted higher rank people in the town, which is time consuming and can be frustrating but at least greatly eliminates the griefing thieves who take your ingots and put them up for auction at your own market for 4k each. In a real game there should be enough ingots and tanned leather that a player who refuses to buy a house can still have access to the materials from the market. The scarcity in this test was mostly due to the low population. Try putting in some buy orders in the future.

Hot bar ballance is a hot topic that has been discussed at great length and heavily tied with the ballance between items that replicate skills but do not require the effort of hunting the mob for the skill, and spending knowledge points for the skill.
There is talk about there being more consumables as part of the 'alchemy' system that is not yet implimented which just increases the debate.
The devs have never weighed in on the discussion. As such it is unlikely to change.

A picture to go into the beast book would be nice.

The cliffs and terrain funneling are absolutely intended. The best guess is to make player ambushes possible which would also encourage traveling in groups. There are paths up and down the cliffs that are minor changes in texture and take time to get used to. The windy maze into the bone yard, ogre city, and bandit layer are also absolutely intended and will be kept. Plan on gearing up, gathering friends, having plenty of consumables and moving as group when going after big targets like dragon. I got lost three times trying to find the path to him two alphas ago but finally figuring it out was worth it.

Camera zoom is likely tied to wanting to keep ranged combat characters from having too much of an advantage. I and others have argued that the zoom means that any character is always just a step and hop away from melee which greatly gives advantage to melee players. The apparent response is that we should be moving in groups deliberately with melee in the front and ranged behind them. Rogue stealth ability helps a lot by the way.

There is a fair amount of diversity in the regions but can be hard to see until you go through each and discover the resource variety of each. Some small stones are common, others have no flax plants at all, some have purple mists, some verdant growth, some heavily restrictive hilly bits. It is there but hard to notice in this short test.

They have armor skins advertised already, same with furniture (dont know about functional tho).

There are lots of places where a player could set up an atmospheric hunting lodge or witch hut (with building skins) already in the game. The brown squares in the picture are such places:

With higher player count more of these spots will be occupied and could be used for that.

Mounted combat would be totally OP and yet another unbalancing factor in favor of heavy armor melee who already have the most advantages in the human world... at one point in time your characters movement speed was tied to your dex, there were players that could move faster than horses. It was totally removed. As such I do not expect to see it come back at all.

guide player movement to make it possible for other players to set up ambushes in known bottlenecks. Thus increasing pvp posibilities and encourage group play to counter it.
Note that some cliffs you can still go up and down if you know the trick, but it is a hassle. Easier to just ride a horse around to the right side.
Also there are many hidden ways up and down that are only noticeable by a texture difference in the cliff. thus benefiting people who know the lay of the land over those who are new and just follow the clear cut roads. Play for a while and it will start to stick out.

There is a good bit of land scape and enviroment variability. You just have to travel there.
The small stones problem is partially enviromental. Go to the Creeping or whispering woods and they are littered everywhere, while they are less prevelant in other areas. Just as certain trees / plants / animals / mobs / ores are regional.

Developing the habit of carryig 10 stones and picking them up when you see them generally fixes the issue.

Having low strength definatly makes this harder ! but that is all part of the stat and equipment/ talent choices which have consequences mentality of the game. As the tank I would carry 20 stones for the party of 4 to compensate for the weaker allies.. Again, the game is group oriented highlighting how diversity of allies is valuble.

As a past solo mage I feel the pain, but even back then was able to keep 10 stones on me when adventuring... I just didant get to keep as much loot as everyone else XD.

The cliffs are very intentional. Probably to guide player movement to make it more predictable for other players to set up ambushes - like bandits- and further encourage group actions for defense and offense. We had a teleport spell that you could use to go over mountains... it was patched fast, repeatedly, and hard. You can still go up and down some of the cliffs if you know the trick, but is a hassle.

Right click attacks are your friend.

There is a modest amount of player support from players via the wiki and the forum. We were hoping that Gamigo would pick up the work and make it all shiny and nice... they have not yet... Mostly people are unwilling to look, which is sad.

the practicality of being able to leech of of towns is too high to instead have some hermitage.
Also many towns have house spots that are far from the town, like in this picture:

each of those brown squares are potential houses, all connected to the city, but all a good distance from it.
Want to be part of a comune out in the mountains? try this location:

or here:

country or 'wild' housing has been mentioned and used in past, not much action.
The governors dont get to set the house price outside of town, or the upkeep price (1k/week currently). They just get half of the proceeds.

AI 'guards' have been talked about a lot, said they would be implemented, but not high on priority list.
Mostly as gate or mining node deterrents.