Posts made by Yalah

We just has a discussion on the discord about, in my own words to make it brief, "giving Arboreus unique PvE rules to dissuade player trolls in a PvE environment." Specifically, rules that are not needed on the other two planets because you can simply kill trolls.

A lot of different examples were given of possible troll situations and how to reduce them. Some people obviously said no changes were needed, that's just what you have to deal with in PvE. For the people that said some change would be better than the current system, a "tag" system seemed to be a consensus (first tag, most damage, summoner, etc). The realization I had during this discussion was some kind of tag system might actually encourage people to help out others more often and more freely - totally separate from "tags" dissuading trolls.

In the current system, if you come across someone, think they might be struggling, you might not want to help for fear that they accuse you of trying to steal their kp/divines/loot. Even if you know you're not wanting to steal anything, the other person has no idea and can't even know if you do in the case of Divines. If you're the one fighting, do you really want someone jumping in, when you didn't need help, and possibly taking your loot or would you rather they didn't and just risk dying?

I feel like people are more likely not to help a random stranger and to not want the help themselves, which seems kinda contrary to the spirit of Arboreus. (A world without doors on their houses because no one would come in and do anything bad to you anyway.) If there was a tag system, you might end up with a lot more helping of random strangers as you ride down the road. You can dismount, pew pew, and ride off into the sunset having helped some random person without even the chance or suspicion of something nefarious.

I'm not totally sold on the need for special PvE rules for Arboreus, but I do have to admit player trolls could become a problem and that with my realization, it might actually make sense within the lore/balance of the three worlds, to have something special for Arboreus.

This is not really a specific suggestion, more of an observation and thinking exercise.

@spoletta

Overall, it's an interesting idea. Maybe more importantly it is standalone and could be added on top of other systems. Meaning you could use this with the current system or say the one proposed by Goreth (or whatever new system the devs came up with).

The one big change I would like to see with this idea is that, in addition to the passive regen, there should be some way for active players to restore their crafting points by in-game play so that their entire progression system is not just passively controlled/limited. Without time to really think about it, some things you could do would be:

1. Require a player to gather and then turn-in X amount of resources to regain Y crafting points.
2. Require a player to go to a location, do B, get C item, bring C back to restore Y crafting points.
3. Require a player to use J skill to "gather life force" from a target that must be killed in K seconds. After L gathered life force, restore Y crafting points.

Any of the in-game means of replenishing crafting points should require active play of some kind. i.e. Not anything that would allow a group to just feed more points to the crafter. The crafter should need to be active in the world to recover the points. (p.s. i don't think the devs should allow account sharing.) The starter quest system shows that the game has the ability to track some of the suggest actions (kill, gather, make) already.

If you take the above idea, you could tie these "active regen methods" into player cities. Make them start/stop in the cities, give the cities some kind of bonus to the city for people doing these events, and create some kind of city tech that has an effect/bonus on these events. There are several options that could allow cities to become, "hey we do this, come to here instead of there."

This idea or some kind of active crafting regen method prevents dedicated crafters from hitting an artificial wall in their progress. Guilds or groups can still help a crafter by helping the crafter complete their active regen method, but they cannot just feed materials to force advancement. It requires a real person being a real player in the game. Let crafters no life if that's what they want to do.

Some questions and comments about the suggestion:

Under this system would increasing proficiency with T1 still give a mastery bonus for T2? Or how would this change, if it was kept at all? Would you need to fully master T1 before moving on? (My concern is with feeling the need to burn crafting points on T1 just to be more efficient at T2.)

Would crafting experience/mastery gained be directly proportional to the crafting points used? Weapon smiths would probably be upset that they get half the progress.

On restoring points, I think it would be a lot better to have points restored every hour or every X minutes rather than at a set time (once per day). So rather than you get X points at server restart, you get X/24 points every hour. That way you're not waiting for an arbitrary time of day. (I also think you should be able to remove resources from processing as they're completed rather than only at the end - under the same logic.)

I am a little concerned that a 5x5 city plot would give more crafting points regen than a 4x4. A 5x5 has ~50% more area as a base value and then you have to figure the extra room you have to place other bonus effects). You can make an argument that it rewards people for the risk of being in a city and gives more benefits to be in a city, but that's a pretty big difference.

I don't have any idea, but since cities on Arboreus do not require walls is their size reduced to make up for the difference? If not, you could be giving a passive crafting bonus (by allowing more 5x5 plots) to all Arborean cities because they just have more room (read as opportunity) for larger crafter houses. I'm not sure I like giving Arboreus more incentive to be "crafting central" over Syndesia.

Overall I like the idea and with my suggested "active crafting point regen" idea added in, I kinda love the idea. You can prevent the "one person does everything" scenario while still letting people really dedicate themselves to pushing their skill. You also give a distinct choice between more house or more processing. (And in the best way that I've seen anyone suggest.)

I have one fundamental concern with any idea that puts a direct limit on crafting:

My concern is that legitimate dedicated crafters will be directly negatively impacted by attempts to limit the mythical, "one guild crafter does literally everything," fear. If someone wants to no life craft for 12 hours a day, they should be allowed to do so. This game has no explicit limit on any other activity, why does crafting need to have one? Imagine adding a limit to how many monsters you could kill/loot in a day, how much knowledge you could gain in a day, how many people you could kill/loot in a day. Heads would explode.

"It's a sandbox for everyone but crafters," is not a game philosophy that I would support and I honestly don't think the developers want that either. (As seen in their three world design.) Again, imagine saying, "this guild feeds all the best resources to these 5 people and they can dominate everyone else because of it. We need to limit <insert any aspect of PvP> to prevent them from pushing out others."

To be clear, I'm not saying there should never be any limit. I'm also not saying that it is good to be able to feed everything to a single crafter (though I don't think this will be as bad as some seem to think). I'm saying that if a limit is introduced it should not directly hamper legitimate players solely for the fear of preventing otherwise legitimate play. For example, if a legitimate crafter hits a progression wall (i.e. the limit, running out of points, etc) in 90 minutes of gameplay, that's an f'ing terrible system and it should never see the light of day. I can't think of anything that would make me that sort of cap would be ok.

(This isn't meant to be a direct response to anyone's suggestion(s). I just happen to feel very strongly about limits to crafting.)

First, I too want a name on ever crafted item. This could even open up political stuff. i.e. "why is X using your crafted items, you were only supposed to craft for us.) Maybe the politics wont go that way, but it is an option that having crafter names encourage.

On making the different qualities (colors) mean more than durability... I'm on board, but making those items more or less powerful is super tricky and might lead to more "race to the bottom" than the current system. But... You did say all these go together...

If crafting was changed to where each quality required the previous, you could end up with newbie/lowbie crafters making what would be considered "throw away" items due to their lower power, but those items could be sold to the better crafters that would want them to "skip crafting steps" when making the better items. White crafters feeding Green crafters, feeding Blue crafters, etc. Best case, you end up in a system where there are no "throw away" items because the newer people are always feeding the older ones.

I don't know that this is "less complicated" than the current system. Worst case you end up having to make and store a bunch of stuff all on your own just to make the same items as the current system - and that certainly sounds like more of a pain in the ass to me. I think the idea is worth considering though. Might take a while for it to get added since it's such a big change and there's definitely other stuff needed more.

One thing I do like in the current system is that different materials have an effect, I'd like to keep that.

I am dead set against any town tech being a limiter to crafting. i.e. City must have bow tech 4 to make gold bows. A limiter means that crafters either need their own city or they're totally and completely at the mercy of wherever they live. It was not fun during the Gamigo EA when I helped build up a city in exchange for them unlocking certain crafts and having them just ignore me later. (A city that started after my house was totally complete.) I want city techs to matter and for them to give a bonus, not be limiters.

Rather than, or maybe in combination, item quality could also impact the imbue/enchant quality able to be applied to the items. i.e. Whites can have one T1 imbue. Greens could have one T1 and one T2. (I think it's a good option, but also makes it much more complicated for newer people.

I have no idea what you mean by the trophy system. >.< Do these give buffs to your crafting? Are they just prestige items for your house?

TLDR: I think it could be a good system if the devs wanted to change it all.

I completely agree that crafting will become a, "race to the bottom." I only half agree that making items easier or harder to craft has an effect on the "race to the bottom." I think the race to the bottom is caused by two main reasons:

1. People that want to grind out levels as soon as humanly possible instead of crafting -> selling and leveling skills as the market demands more goods.

2. The balance of how easy it is to craft new gear versus how frequently that gear is removed from the economy.

The first reason has happened in every similar game that I've played with similar crafting. It happened in this game a year ago during the Gamigo EA. It will take very little time before someone is spamming, "will craft for mats." I would love to see some kinda change that would prevent this from happening, but other than, "you can only get exp X times a day," I don't see the devs coming up with a system to stop it. Players can stop it, but it takes everyone deciding not to do it/buy from those people.

On the second point, the balance, This last test bad a big bump in the difficulty to make T2 items, but not a corresponding change to how quickly they degrade. As of this last test, items were too hard (time consuming) to make and or degraded too quickly. I think they might be able to find a good balance here without needing a major overhaul. (Reason 1 is still an issue.)

More on your specific ideas shortly....

In that image it is the Pledge/Founder Pack. (Founder Pack: Champion)

Well, the first thing is that there is way more activity on the official Discord than anywhere else. That would be a much better place to see what people thought.

I don't know what stories you've heard about wipes and rollbacks, but there's only been one unscheduled wipe that I know about and that was due to issues with the previous publisher and discontinuing working with them. All of the rest of the time the game has been various alpha/beta tests with wipes intended. Meaning an intentional testing/wipe process to make the game. The upcoming Steam EA is different from that testing and they've said they don't want to do any more wipes, but if there are serious issues they may need to do rollbacks or in extreme cases a wipe.

In my opinion, that's just being realistic/honest with us. Look at New World if you want to see a much larger company having to deal with some pretty bad bugs/exploits. In fact, I think Blizzard had to shut down trading today in Diablo 4 due to a bug. It happens.

Is it worth it? Currently the game is 15 Euro as a B2P title. The meme on the Discord is, "it's a pizza to find out." I think it is. The game's quality is good and it's design goal is specific and something that not a lot of other people are doing. It's not perfect or feature complete, but I enjoy playing and chose to support their efforts.

(But no really, Discord is much more active than anywhere else.)

@Hraezlyr You need to buy the game and there is no monthly fee to play. There will be an optional "VIP" that you'll be able to pay cash for or buy with in game currency.

@HolyAvengerOne They are already down to prep for the EA launch.

I don't know how much time they have for what, but Jacopo did mention they wanted to "rework those damn primal forms," which is what made me think of this idea. (Edit: His comment was made in relation to Demons and the remaining Wildfolk races coming sometime in EA.)

@Prometheus said in Steam Relaunch Day Revealed:

I hadn't heard for the 3rd crop request for a while, I was starting to get worried We're going to introduce that together with the new tech tree and city bonuses - one big update to make city specialization a thing again but in a different way from how it used to be.

I hope you realize that because of this comment I will continually ask you about pets/summons/necromancy so you don't get worried about people not wanting them ;D

@spoletta said in Stacking Passive Skills:

I'm kind of the same idea, the new toggle skill system is too permissive.
I would just increase the maxMana cost on them though.

Using the mana cost to balance how many skills you could have might make the Concentration talent more useful/appealing. (Though I still think the 8 slot cap is a pretty serious limiter on how many someone might use.)

I think it might be neat to untie Primal Form from specific Wildfolk races and instead make a set of Primal Forms that any Wildform race could pick from. For the lore, you'd just say that the Primal abilities come from something specific to Arboreus rather than a specific race.

Primal Form options:

1. Regeneration
2. Melee speed
3. Crit
4. Caster
5. Movement/runnning away
6. etc etc etc

You could still only have 1 Primal power, each primal would have it's own duration, and maximum stored uses - all as the current system use. If you then tied these powers to specific events/locations/"quests" around Arboreus, Wildfolk could choose/change their Primal Form by going there, doing whatever, and getting a new power/Primal "affinity." Maybe to change your Primal Power, you take X energy crystals to Y location of a/b/c/d/e Primal Power and sacrifice those crystals to change to that power (an Energy Crystal dump).

Changing Primal Forms to me more generic and tied to the nature of Arboreus would give Wildfolk better specialization options (while still being balanced around having less total stat points). Each race would still have it's own distinct focus because of the stat limits and secondary racial bonuses.

In my head, you could be a caster deer that could double up on power by getting a "caster" Primal or maybe get a "tanky" primal to help them in those emergency situations. Or maybe you're a big plate wearing bear and you could choose to get a "regeneration" primal to help with the lack of casting or maybe a "movement speed" primal to help you overcome your slower speed.

Just an idea that I thought was neat and might make it easier to balance the Primal Forms by tying them to Arboreus rather than each specific race.

For what it's worth, abilities that have a toggle effect do have some current limitations. Mana reservation is one. Another is that each ability has a "group" and you're only allowed to have one ability from a given group active at any time.

I would disagree with this suggestion because of the above limits plus the fact that there are only 8 ability slots. Each toggle you use takes up one ability slot. It's a clear choice and limit. If toggle abilities were outside of the 8 ability slots then I might agree, but with them included in those 8, I disagree with imposing an additional limit to them.

I believe that the intent is respecs are currently allowed because the game is still in beta and that they eventually will stop being an option. That being said, I wouldn't mind a reset timer or maybe just a day/time of when you last respec or when it would be available again.

TLDR: I think the Knowledge extract should be natively available on both worlds because the brand new Proficiency imbues all require the Knowledge aspect. I'd suggest removing Knowledge from Azurite and adding it to Sulphurite because that has the least amount of changes needed to maintain the balance of all other systems.

Reasoning:
The current extract system is set up so that every aspect has two different sets of crystals/oils that can be used to make an extract. The current distribution of crystals between Syndesia and Arboreus make Chaos, Air, and Knowledge exclusive to Syndesia and Transform exclusive to Arboreus.

I like that materials are exclusive to either world, but I do like seeing some sort of balance between how many or how important exclusive materials are between the worlds. Currently, every single Proficiency imbue requires materials exclusive to Syndesia and none require materials exclusive to Arboreus. Based on how the Proficiency imbue requirements are balanced between needing a wide range of Aspects, I don't think changing the Aspect requirements make sense.

Making Knowledge available on both worlds would result in all but 6, of 22 current, Extracts natively available on both worlds. That still allows some exclusivity without one world absolute control over such an important/widely used resource.

In terms of world exclusivity, making my suggested change would also: have no overall exclusivity change to smelting, hides, tanning, and weaving. The Scholar set would go from requiring materials from both worlds, to only requiring materials from Arboreus. The Hunter set would lose it's requirement for Syndesia materials (it has no requirements for Arboreus materials).

FYI, the current balance of material exclusivity has Syndesia with probably 60 to 70% of the exclusive materials. (Outside of reagents, because it's too much of a pain for me to manually do all of that and certain tools are not accurate to the current game).

@spoletta said in T2 Sets - Material Requirements and Durability:

The true problem though, is not that imbalance in durability values.
It is that a melee build will trash its armor and weapon very fast.
An archer will trash its bow quite fast but not its armor.
A mage will keep both its weapon and armor for far far longer than the other 2.

I don't disagree, but as you insinuate, it's not super easy to classify a set as specific to one of those categories and adjust durability to fit. Plate can't be a mage or archer set, unless you consider auto attacking to qualify for those, but all of the other sets could be any category. (Except Ranger?)

Maybe you could adjust armor wear based on the weapon you're using. Most reduced wear to least reduced wear:
Melee and Shield -> Melee/Unarmed -> Bow -> Staff

That's probably a pain in the ass to implement. Maybe reduced wear based on frequency of being hit or some kind of cooldown between possible armor wear. Any one piece cannot wear more frequently than x seconds.

I'm not sure what a good solution is, I just don't think they feel right currently.

@Maltos On all examples, I gave the numbers for the raw materials needed, not any stages of refinement.

For the quoted example: 8 crystals refines in 4 batches to make 20 oil. 20 oil can be converted with 60 reagents to make 20 extracts. Each refinement of hide/cloth/leather is 5 material plus 2 extracts. You need 10 refinements to make the 50 required refined materials for a complete set.

Since I was directing it more at the devs, I went for the shorter/easier version

This is not a post about the difficulty of making T2 sets. (yay?)

TLDR: I feel like the base durability of each set type/category should be re-evaluated in consideration to the changes to time and material investment to make them in recent patches. This is less, "I have an idea," and more, "maybe the devs should look at this and see if they're still comfortable with it."

I know that some of the increased material cost is reflected in higher defensive values and it's not all about durability, but the durability just seems off to me.

T2 set durability:
Cloth - 250
Leather - 300
Hide - 350
Chain - 400
Plate - 400

T2 Set material requirements (see notes below):
Leather/hide/cloth (any advanced material) takes: 60 reagents, 50 "light" material, and 8 heavy items.
Chain (Mithril) takes: 45 Reagents and 38 heavy items.
Plate (Mithril) takes: 60 reagents and 48 heavy items.

First, cloth/hide/leather sets all have the "same" material cost, but leather is the gated behind a processing time while the other two are not. Yet it's only in the middle on durability/defenses of those three.

Second, chain and plate seem to make sense relative to each other, but their durability seems low relative to the investment versus say hide.

So yea, the durability just seem off. Maybe it's ok and maybe some need tweaked. Just pointing out an observation.

*Notes:

1. "Heavy items" are anything that requires a wagon. I single them out because they should take noticeably more time to collect and refine versus "light" items, except leather.
2. I assumed 3 reagents per extract.
3. All T2 sets require the same amount of materials (120 reagents and 16 heavy items) in addition to the specific material the set is made of. I've removed this cost from the above totals to more clearly show the time and material cost of each different set.