Planeshift is getting to hard to play.

[Zytorr]

Mining is not the only thing that seems to be worse when maxed. My maxed character will need to rest time to time, whereas one with half that or a noob can run BD to Oja without stopping, does not make sense. Part of the exploration as a noob was having to rest often and not getting long distances fast and wondering what was there (and it took an effort to get there.) Now it seems ridiculous that the higher conditioned character has to rest more.  Note that I ignored this issue when rejuvenation could be cast while moving.

It is hard to get pp IF one is limited to certain activities, otherwise it is fairly easy to get them. However a character should not be limited to advance in a limited direction as it is not consistent with a variety of RP scenarios.

Also I do not believe it necessary to "balance" everything. Players should be able to chose different paths for their characters each with differing ramification and advantages and disadvantages. They can discover uncommon ways to achieve tactical or strategic advantages, this is a big part of the fun.

Is the game too hard? I say no, but it needs to be more diverse.

[Sarva]

Xoel and Vakachehk

You might be interested in reading the thread mining in the General discussion topic. Specifically the last post on page 1 from Lanarel which reads in part.

" The important thing that everyone did not address is location. Mining veins (as settings will probably describe them) are implemented as a number of locations with a radius. If you are exactly at the location of such a spot, your chance to find something will be maximum (f3=1). If you are halfway the defined radius, your chances are a factor 2 lower. If you are outside the radius they are 0. So if you are at a wrong spot in between locations, your chances may be really low. If you have a spot that you feel more lucky, try to remember it
There is a fourth parameter, Probabillity, which will determine how rich the vein is to begin with."

So just as I said there are hot spots in the mines. The quote was taken form a post made on Feb 23rd 2009

[Bonifarzia]

My maxed character will need to rest time to time, whereas one with half that or a noob can run BD to Oja without stopping, does not make sense.

I would say the drain of stamina is definitely one of the points that have greatly improved. Keep in mind that it depends on the characters weight load, which has become much less of a problem with the storage system.

Saying it is not necessary to balance everything sounds contradictory to me. Planeshift is a project that takes its time to grow, indeed a long time so far. And achieving a good balance in a complex system that is subject to fixes and additions seems a very time consuming task. In that sense, I would say PS can afford to be ambiguous about ending up with a flexible, well balanced system of rules that give the character great freedom to progress and evolve. It will be a long way to go, though, and I expect there will be some intermediate stages where some changes in the mechanics look imbalanced or unreasonable until another area of rules is revised.

[LigH]

By the way - for the fighters out there:

The balancing of the combat and the NPCs continues. Recently the algorithms for blunt and pierce weapons were equalized with the slash impact. Also it should now be less probable to face NPCs with randomly generated super-durable armor - so we should get more expectable opponents.

[khoridor]

Xoel and Vakachehk

You might be interested in reading the thread mining in the General discussion topic. Specifically the last post on page 1 from Lanarel which reads in part.

" The important thing that everyone did not address is location. Mining veins (as settings will probably describe them) are implemented as a number of locations with a radius. If you are exactly at the location of such a spot, your chance to find something will be maximum (f3=1). If you are halfway the defined radius, your chances are a factor 2 lower. If you are outside the radius they are 0. So if you are at a wrong spot in between locations, your chances may be really low. If you have a spot that you feel more lucky, try to remember it
There is a fourth parameter, Probabillity, which will determine how rich the vein is to begin with."

So just as I said there are hot spots in the mines. The quote was taken form a post made on Feb 23rd 2009

Yet, the real skill of a miner lies in finding the veins, not in digging; that is, if you guys do aim at realism.

[RlyDontKnow]

Yet, the real skill of a miner lies in finding the veins, not in digging; that is, if you guys do aim at realism.

it's the main factor, sure, but there's always some luck involved. how big that factor is depends on what you mean.
surerly iron for instance is usually easy to dig if you know where you have to look. on the other hand if you dig for platinum, there's not as much to get even if you dig pretty near the vein, so it's fine the way it is ingame atm as that reflects this difference.

[Shatterkiss]

With regard to Weapon crafting, I think that the long time investment is somewhat balanced out by the profit you can make with the skill.  I wouldn't mind it taking less time to gain a level (estimated 15 hours of training for level 74 to 75) but I think it should be hard to get to a level where you can pump out 300q items regularly.

I also think metallurgy is very easy to train when you consider that it makes at least as much money as item crafting.  A sabre sells to a merchant for the same amount of tria as you'd get for selling the stocks and ingots required to make it if they're of the same quality.  I've been keeping track of how much I make per sabre, and even with 50 sword making and 61 Blacksmithing, I'd be making more money in less time by just making 300q stocks and selling them to Harnquist.  It's much easier to raise metallurgy with ingots than it is to raise item crafting skills, so there's really no need to be an item crafter when you can make the same or better tria  just making stocks and selling them to a merchant. 

Just as a comparison: At 50 SM and 61 BS working with 300q kits only, the average sell-to-Harnquist value of swords I make is 6283 tria per sabre, which works out to 5236 tria per stock.  300q steel stocks sell for 6075 tria.  If I assume that I sell the 300q sabres to players that goes up to 7427 tria per sabre or 6189 tria per stock.  That's slightly higher that the 300q stock price, but each item takes far more time.  I'm just not sure why an intermediary step like stocks and ingots has the same value by quality as a finished product.

[LigH]

Balancing is a hard and long process, and each time you tighten a screw to the left, another screw to the right loosens.

Repairing weapons became a lot harder recently, and the required level seems to be related to the NPC sale price. That means you may need cheapest weapons to start your repair training - which are probably clubs now - which are not at all common weapons yet, especially close to the starting area of newcomers. That means: Now that the economy could make clubs more attractive to new chars, they should get available much easier in an area close to them. Traveling to the Bronze Door fortress to buy one would be an "unreasonable demand" to those who are still afraid to get lost in Hydlaa.

[RlyDontKnow]

Traveling to the Bronze Door fortress to buy one would be an "unreasonable demand" to those who are still afraid to get lost in Hydlaa.

and again: you get them in gug and several quests, too

anyway, another issues is that sometimes engine bugs heavily influence balancing, e.g. the spell bug that was fixed yesterday pretty much hided an aspect of spells, so that this doesn't seem to have balanced before making it appear rather wrong now.

[mikeloeven]

the biggest issue i have with the new planeshift is the fact that the duration of dakkru's curse lasts entirly too long. a good death penalty needs to be either severe but short or    longer but with less of a kick   the curse is way too long and the fact that the timer stopps when you log out is totally unacceptable.

[Illysia]

And to think, the current version is the nerfed version of it.

If You play on EZPC then yeah... maybe that is too much to ask. But on the RP server, one shouldn't be PLing all the time anyway and the character should have the sense to be cautious.


Leave a margin for error and train more than you think is necessary. One doesn't get an "it's stronger than you" when they look at an animal in RL. And even with the margin for error, one has to accept that they are taking their life in their hands. Don't believe me? Try hunting a lion in the wild with a bow and arrow and see how that goes if you don't take all these precautions. Not that a game has to be exactly like RL but some things make sense if you don't think in terms of generic MMO mechanics. The idea of PS isn't to continuously level up so you can beat bigger mobs but, to be apart of a continuous world... opps, my bad... that was the old expectation... Nevermind, PS is a generic MMO now so yeah... I guess you make a valid point.

[novacadian]

the biggest issue i have with the new planeshift is the fact that the duration of dakkru's curse lasts entirly too long. a good death penalty needs to be either severe but short or    longer but with less of a kick   the curse is way too long and the fact that the timer stopps when you log out is totally unacceptable.

The minimum amount of time that my character remains in the DR is 2 game days. Although game time is a bit fuzzy my character takes it to mean 8 hours of real time. Once out of the DR there is, then, a 20 or so minute real time curse.

This has had the effect of my character trying to stay out of the DR as much as possible. To date she has ended up there 5 time. Two of those were by player kill. My game play started about the middle of June 2010 and has remained a daily activity to date, pretty much.

My personal feeling is that the DR is too meaningless in the game instead of what you suggest. That is just my opinion and should be taken in that context.

- Nova

 [Edit - P.S. My character is always ready to RP yet when that is not happening she will be out there training and raising stats and skills. So one could call her a RPleveler.  ]

[Vakachehk]

@Illysia OK RP is great but you need some states to kill a clacker for some clacker meat, you need some better stats to run to Oja faster than stopping all the time. Etc.

[novacadian]

@Illysia OK RP is great but you need some states to kill a clacker for some clacker meat, you need some better stats to run to Oja faster than stopping all the time. Etc.

In such context "RP" seems such a stolen term. Who, for the love of Talad, would consider it non-Role Play to not develop an RPG Character's stats? Those same characters sit around local taverns share tales, engage to be married, plan robberies, etc., etc., etc..

It seems to me that those which have stolen the term RP here on PS (or now off of it as the case may be) are those that had, at one time, no game mechanics or rpg like Game Masters and played a game that we used to call as childern... 'tend'. The term, of course, derived from the term pretend. Those were great times as a child; as, no doubt, they were great times chasing around the map looking for crystals. Yet we all must grow up and move on sometimes.... that is if our childhood has not left us too bitter to do so. We are like stars in motion... nothing remains the same. And so it is up to the current PS Community to bring to the game what we want it to be.

The dev team does enough to allow that potential. If one cannot find what they are looking for then continue the search. If they find it, then welcome home.

- Nova; who is sooooo tired off out of game oldbie whiners

[Illysia]

There nova goes with that passive aggressive stuff again. I know you lubs me.

Leave a margin for error and train more than you think is necessary.

A computer: $500
Glasses $150
Actually reading the post through... Priceless


For those that think they have thought up so many more great ideas than at least 8 years of other people playing the game, go ahead and make the best of what you have... It can’t be anything that hasn't been tried or suggested already (to no great effect). Give other people credit for intelligence. But if you are silly enough to think their ideas never occurred to another soul then go for it while I crack out the popcorn. It’ll be a good show.

I will make the concession, however, to the people that are going through the motions for the sake of keeping things going. I applaud your determination to keep at it but I just can’t go along with it anymore. I tried it myself but all paths lead back to the same realization… The change has to happen from the top down and not the other way. Until the dev team puts more emphasis on RP and imposes some sort of common direction PS will from this point always be a game that is needlessly mediocre…



@ oldbies: I tip my hat to the olbies that came before me. I understand now... I still don't agree with everything you said but I do understand the frustrations... in the course of 8 years only so much has changed in terms of improvements and it takes more than graphics and mounts to make a good RP. But... C'est la vie... We'll let those more wiser than us run their head into that wall too. Bets on who’s head makes the largest dent?