PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Xillix Queen of Fools on March 03, 2009, 05:54:51 am
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I hear a lot of QQ and not enough Pew Pew, so tell me how you really feel.
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OMGWUT FIRST POST
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Pwn.
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Snorks man, sniff sniff.
...Hello xillix. :]
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if we are talking about stats alone here, is it possible to make it any easier? I mean its not rocket science. So if you think its too hard... NOOB!!!
:oops: :ban:
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I voted snorks because my answer is not a straightforward yes or no.
I think a distinction between "time consuming" and "challenging" should be made. Right now leveling is primarily time consuming. It's easy in a sense that everybody can do it without having to interact with others or to learn anything about the settings of the game. After one has figured out how a skill works and maybe completed a prerequisite quest the leveling itself is rather straight forward.
It would be nice if leveling required for example more quests to "open up" certain high level trainers. Also it would be nice if leveling depended more on teamwork, strategy or knowledge about the world. I like that we have to find the right trainer that can help you improve further. I'd like it if these 'side factors' become more important. Personally I think that is more interesting (enjoyable!) than repeatedly clicking monsters, dragging ores, or entering /dig platinum. Even though these "mechanical parts" should probably stay in the center of the leveling process, it would be nice if the setting and the social world also play a role to break the endless repetition. The hardest part in designing such a system is probably to find a balance between diversity at the one hand and on the other hand to maintain the comprehensibility for new players.
So:
- more time consuming: no, I think it's about good the way it is (even though I have little clue about this as I haven't maxed a skill yet)
- more challenging: yes, please! (rather a variety of required actions than repetition)
just my two cents... I think leveling in Planeshift is already MUCH more diverse (and enjoyable!) than it is in most other games
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Agree with Hitancrias not easier just less time consuming
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what does "snorks" mean? guess it's not the cartoon series by Hanna-Barbera Productions, is it?
>o)
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I second Hitancrias,
for me, endless time-consumption was the reason mageworld
(a highly original total conversion of dungeon siege by Jim Farris)
was ultimately not what it promised to be...
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If you made the grinding less time consuming would have to increase the levels so people would not max out so fast?
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Well, Since you asked. ;D
I think the current system creates a dicotomy. those who do not want to train, and those who are all maxed out characters. (note, I RP using the mechanics, ie PL to some.... for full disclosure)
Think of lord of the rings, Legolas was really good with the bow, Gimli with the axe, and Gandalf magic (though he swung a mean staff also...)
now imagine it under the current system. Sure, some stay in the shire, being regular folk (and if they RP it as such, I commend thee!, but another thread :offtopic: ) but now imagine our new Frodo:
Maxed on all stats, magic, weapon creation, fighting styles, etc. Our lil frodo would be takin on the orc army singlehanded with magic, swords and inhuman strength. "the fellowship" indeed.
2 ways to address it, make the mobs tougher so still need to group up (for fellowships out of need) OR my suggestion. Limit abilitie acqusition. PS already does this to a small degree, it takes a lot more effort/tria/whatever to get level 50 in a skill than level 1. But there is no cumulative effect other than people taking more time to grind it. (and I LIKE grinding....)
But what if... your skills were based on a different kind of max? so realtively easy to max out STR, if you do nothing except that, forever. You want to be a swordmasterfighter, sure, but if you stop training to work on anything but rudimentary magic, you start "forgetting" levels. Think of some hobby/class you had a decade ago. How much do you remember? Use it or lose it. Become a crafter of perfect swords, sure, maybe even easier than now, but if you then go train on mining and swordfighting and do not practice for lets say, 40 hours of game time, you lose a level in that.
note that is not the same as having a pool of points. The system tracks when you use a skill, at least when you can earn practice points. maybe have every 20 hours ingame you lose 1 level of whatever skills you do not use(maybe only if level over a set point, like 20?, you might remember basics, but forget details), but when you lose one point, you have the training, you just need to practice again. Do not use it for a year, you might lose a few levels. of course you could then run around, ok, need to practice this, then that, then this, just not to lose levels...
then use a pool of points for stats. you can be strongest endurance agility athlete in the land, but youwont have any time for reading and thinking...
So you can be a shire-folk (to return to analogy) or you can be legolas, or gandalf, but you can not be Frodo the most powerful sorcerer, maxed stats, heavy armor fighter with a sword par none, terminator robot ninja pirate. you may have to actually talk to people and get freinds to help you do stuff, and guilds could spread the specialties around.
my 2 tria....
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Max stats to all roleplayers! -- They don't use them anyway.
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um,
Premise (of yours): Rpers do not use stats
so you conclude they should be maxed? (maybe you are being sarcastic... if so, :oops: )
I say it would be just as valid then to say RPers (whatever that means to make your primise true) would not need any improvement of stats/skills than they get in character creation.
Reminds me of when I had a member of ISA who claimed never to use our site, never went to anymeetings, never did anything with us at all, bragged about how membership in our org was of no value to him, then demanded we buy him another year of membership in our org. My response? "well, if you claim it is of no value, then you don't need it anyway. If you care enough about it to ask for more of it, then you MUST get some value out of it, even if you did not put the effort into it to get the most out of it."
So, If you do not use stats/skills inorder to be an elite Rper, you should not mind if they just set yours back to char creation.
Yeah, I didn't think so. I would not like that either. For My char, Or anyone else's, not really fair, eh?
(Bonus point:) If you sit in the bar and drink and talk, you will probably not be winning a rhoades scholarship or nobel prize or olympic gold. Nothing wrong with enjoying your life and not training, but I think it is wrong to demand you get a gold medal too, because after all, you have a lot of fun drinking beer with your friends....
Have fun, cheers, but probably no gold medal for you, unless you can multi-task, eh? ;)
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Max stats to all roleplayers! -- They don't use them anyway.
Pardon me LigH, but I thought role players do role play stats. Aren't they sort of, kind of, part of the settings? Or at least part of the in game character anyway? :offtopic:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34841.0
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Okay, it was a kind of lame joke...
Of course roleplayers roleplay their stats. So they roleplay the strong and powerful super hero ... until they get ambushed and killed by a mob (e.g clacker or consumer) in one hit. Or by falling from the tavern roof. How embarrassing... :-[ ;D
Also it was a little sidekick on the whining "Roleplayers have no time for leveling". :innocent:
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/me grins and hands LigH a beer to counter the dry humor. :innocent:
edit: Oh, and I voted snorks. Becoming perfect in something should take a lot of time and work.
But I think the work should be less repetetive, maybe involving a special quest every 10 or 20 levels, very
much like the starting quests for the crafting skills.
Another issue is the balancing (*kicks the dead horse*). Training crafting e.g. should be possible
without hours and hours of hunting and/or mining. Sure, many students irl work to finance their
studies, but most of them have "normal" jobs, very few of them are bounty hunters or pitmans. ;)
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I am sorry LigH
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The biggest problem with the grind is the amount of available levels, with more to come apparently. You say max out character but from what I understand (possibly in error) is that ultimately stats will be extended far beyond what is currently available. Anyway I do not understand why anything over 100 is needed. Reminds me of a system a guy I know designed for a table top rpg He wasn't satisfied with a system that used percentile dice (2 10 siders) He required Permillage (3 10 siders generating a number from 1-1000). It seems excessive. At any rate you can have any number of graduations between 1 and 100. That is another thing why not slide the character stats so that the lowest score possible is 1 and grow from there? The highest possible to generate through CC could be no more than 20. the numbers here seem inflated as well.
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I think leveling shouldn't have so much focus on it.
Also, I agree you should be able to level up without a trainer. Training should simply speed it up.
I don't like the idea of requiring players to complete quests in order to open up trainers. You can solve quests without caring about the settings or interacting with other players. Also, the players who care about leveling so much will just use spoilers. For players who don't use spoilers, sometimes quest solutions are so unexpected (or they need to be worded so exactly) that they're really difficult to solve or can't be solved at all by certain players without help. Look at the tutorial as an example of that. You wouldn't think anyone would have trouble with the tutorial because the quest solutions are very straight forward, but countless people have needed a spoiler for it.
I agree with Bilbous that the benefit doesn't seem to increase as you get to the highest levels, so maybe that can be looked at as well.
Max stats to all roleplayers! -- They don't use them anyway.
I've known many roleplayers who level their characters.
If PlaneShift is going to leave the door open to players becoming as poweful as they want to be, then you'll have to have enemies that are as powerful as the players. What I see happening is PlaneShift becoming a typical rpg game where you have different towns that players migrate to as they get more powerful. Each town has more powerful enemies to face.
If players are allowed to max out, but are less powerful by levels alone, then they'll need to WORK TOGETHER in order to take down tougher enemies. I think that would be wonderful, if the main focus of PlaneShift was teamwork rather than soloing and grinding.
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Mostly I ignore most of your posts zanzibar, but this was well thought out and well written. I applaud your efforts here.
What I see happening is PlaneShift becoming a typical rpg game where you have different towns that players migrate to as they get more powerful. Each town has more powerful enemies to face.
If this happens to PS I think it would be a total shame. I hope it does not. Though there has to be quests and leveling to even keep the interest of even the best role player. How that system works in game is an important part of PS so it stands out as a game like none other.
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It takes no effort to post like I always post.
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I'm not going to get drawn into the back and forth over this, and so have not read any responses so far. My thoughts are my own, and as follows:
1. Stats - are fine where they are. It takes a bit of time and trias... but the level of effort is fine as-is. There are several tweaks that could be done to make the effort more enjoyable or meaningful, but really... the level of effort required is fine.
2. Skills - These need a LOT of work. Some skills, like combat skills allow for a fairly good cost/benefit ratio and are not too difficult. Crafting... where to start... one level took me over 1.5 hours to train (level 14 sword making)... gave almost no benefit over the previous level... and gave me no way to recoup the cost of training. Magic is similarly expensive without any real benefit per level and takes forever to train each level.
I think that skills should be broken down into roughly thirds. The first third is reasonably easy to obtain... factor cost in if you want it to be more difficult, but the time for the first third should be 10 hours or less of actual time to train. The second third should be more difficult... maybe 15 hours to train. The last third could be 20 - 25 hours to train. This is per skill, time dedicated only to training. What the first 10 hours represent would be apprenticeship, learning basics of an art/skill. The second bracket would represent someone trying to make a living by their trade... so once they get into the second tier they should be able to make something of value that people will want to recoup the cost of their apprenticeship, and be able to earn a living or further their art/skill. For those that really want to excel at their skill/art there is the third tier where they attempt to master their art/skill. This again should have a whole different level of ability to bring in money, perhaps being able to train an apprentice too.
I've said my piece... If anyone wants clarification of anything i've said, please ask via PM. I've said all of this before in different other threads and do not want to get drawn into another argument.
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If leveling becomes easier, that doesn't mean that your character is the best it can be once its levels are maxed out.
Power / expertise could be further determined by the items your character has, knowledge provided through quests and books, and values that haven't been added to the game yet but have been thought about. At one point I started a thread about a stat that would give your character a general bonus and was determined by the age of the character.
Also, a big big thing to keep on the table is the idea of stats becoming worse over time if the skills they're connected to aren't used. So if you grind crafting until you're maxed out, and then you decide to take up the sword, by the time you max out your fighting skills your crafting skills will be rusty. This would force players to think about their strategy on which stats to work on instead of simply maxing out everything they can. The one downside of this might be that even more attention would be placed on leveling rather than less, however the good thing about it would be realism and making play more strategic. It would also be a way to make leveling an ongoing thing without the levels themselves being without limit. (So even after characters max, they would keep leveling as their skills get rusty or as they decide to explore different professions.)
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I chose Snorks, but I kind've want to see more reward between the individual levels and a near-impossible to reach max. For example, take Castle of the Winds. Every time you level you you are rewarded with more HP, more mana, and a new spell unless you know them all, and the max level in the game is 30. But reaching the max means killing the final boss 31-78 million times depending on difficulty level, and the final boss gives the most experience. Although you can learn every spell in the game before you get anywhere near 30, it is unlikely you will max.
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I've posted on this before. Basically, grinding is not fun and has no place in any game as far as I'm concerned. HOWEVER: I still think there should be levels and challenges to increasing one's abilities, I just don't like this mechanism, or at least not having other options. In the past I've posted ideas for using quests to gain levels, and there are many ways this could be implemented. I want to see role-playing and challenging and interesting tasks required to level up instead of boring repetitive tasks that are simply not fun, not interesting, not conducive to role-playing, etc.
I only gain levels because I want to explore the magic system. Very small gain for much pain right now. The idea that the few and mostly low-effect spells that we have are going to be impossible for me to get without buying into the endless grind makes me sad, and will probably drive me from the game.
That said, I'm excited to see this thread because I know the developers do listen, and there are several people giving similar feedback on this request from Xillix.
Here's my post on possible ways to make leveling more fun and roleplay-oriented:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34319.msg393861#msg393861 (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34319.msg393861#msg393861)
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First, good luck in balancing not only the game mechanics but also players' opposite expectations.
My answer: No.
Reasons are given by many people already. To keep it short, to me, a player should feel very happy already if he manages to max one thing, and to keep it maxed.
I'll just insist a bit on the stats: contrary to skills, you can go from a wimp to all maxed out in just a few seconds. All it takes is money. Big oddity IMO. (Sure, it takes a bit of traveling to the trainers as well, but you get the idea.)
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I only gain levels because I want to explore the magic system. Very small gain for much pain right now. The idea that the few and mostly low-effect spells that we have are going to be impossible for me to get without buying into the endless grind makes me sad, and will probably drive me from the game.
I do truly hope that this does not happen Xanthan and that other people do not feel this way.
Then again if PlaneShift is really a role play game I think there should be a system in place for role playing leveling, but what about the others that do not want to role play? Would that mean there would have to be two leveling systems for each server? I imagine this would be difficult to do. Also I think it would make the divide between the two servers even deeper so that potential role players would not even think to join the role play server at all. Also once a player maxes out would that person leave to find another game? Then the community has no stability of which partly why PlaneShift is so great. This is a difficult decision for the developers to make in this case I think.
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I think that instead of making leveling easier, we should try to make it more enjoyable and less repetitive. And regarding stats, it doesn't make much sense to me that you can go from weakling to musclehead in a minute just by talking to an NPC trainer. Stats should be more difficult to increase, imo, after all, it takes a good deal of effort to naturally become a just a tad stronger, smarter, or more attractive IRL. Stats should be linked to the skills you learn somehow.
Anyway, I guess this is a sort of yes/no from me, so... snorks!
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Levelling should be harder but in a more roleplay supporting fashion.
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I think that instead of making leveling easier, we should try to make it more enjoyable and less repetitive.
Same thing IMO.
And regarding stats, it doesn't make much sense to me that you can go from weakling to musclehead in a minute just by talking to an NPC trainer.
That's why we need to get rid of progression points.
Stats should be more difficult to increase, imo, after all, it takes a good deal of effort to naturally become a just a tad stronger, smarter, or more attractive IRL. Stats should be linked to the skills you learn somehow.
Better yet, your stats should increase as you use skills connected to them.
Levelling should be harder but in a more roleplay supporting fashion.
Define harder. Leveling is already too hard IMO, especially magic.
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No.
Levelling should not be easy, but, I will agree with many who have posted here - it needs to be more fun. At present 'grinding' is such a 'drag' and not really fun, and RPing round it is not easy and sometimes to get a stat you need for your character you have to do it in such an out of character way!
I personally would like to see a 'turn based' drag and drop of skills whether they be combat or agility etc to set up your chosen moves - around which you can role play... of course that would give players chance to enhance their levelling with fun RP and if against other Player characters, enable the more skilled to be bettered by those who chose skills in a more dynamic way - but hey - what do I know? it is possibly too complex to set up something like that.
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[maxing one's char shouldn't be made easier
there is a good balance between levelling and getting to know the realm of Yliakum
if maxing would be made easier, people would get bored sooner and you'll loose players
coming from a point of view from someone with over 15 years of RPG experience]
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Zanzibar pointed out some of the drawbacks of using quests to facilitate RP-based leveling. These are valid points. (Though no worse than the problems of the current leveling system, IMHO). That is why I suggested multi-player quests (in the other previous discussion). A simple version could likely be done with the current quest mechanics. This would be harder to ignore RP on, since you have to interact with others.
I don't like the idea of requiring players to complete quests in order to open up trainers. You can solve quests without caring about the settings or interacting with other players. Also, the players who care about leveling so much will just use spoilers. For players who don't use spoilers, sometimes quest solutions are so unexpected (or they need to be worded so exactly) that they're really difficult to solve or can't be solved at all by certain players without help.
If quests are to be used for leveling, it's important for the reward to be proportionate to the level, since most the rewards now (esp xp) are tiny compared to what you need for going from (e.g.) level 149 to 150 in a magic way. Making a minimum level a requirement to get the quest would probably be necessary, or perhaps the reward could be an increase in level rather than tria/xp.
I'm encouraged by this discussion, and the fact that Xillix started it. This implies to me that we might see some positive change here, and that would be something that would move PlaneShift way ahead of the MMORPG pack.
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Does anyone remember Unterthemoon's ideas about a different progression system? - Is there anything included you could use?
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which one there has to be 100 versions, all shot down by zanzibar for some reason or another . . .?
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Does anyone remember Unterthemoon's ideas about a different progression system? - Is there anything included you could use?
Can you find a link to it? I remember Underthemoon proposing that we eliminate mental stats, but I don't recall an alternate progression system.
which one there has to be 100 versions, all shot down by zanzibar for some reason or another . . .?
Huh? I'm critical of the current system, but a lot of people are, including a lot of developers. In fact I don't think anyone is entirely happy with the current progression system.
Edit: There's one thread I was able to find: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=26644.0
While I pointed out where I perceived flaws, I no more "shot it down" than did Seytra, Neko, bilbous, Xordan, and many others who posted in that thread to point out flaws or suggest improvements. To pick on me is rather unwarranted.
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I agree that the amount of effort currently required is fine, and appropriate. I do think that there needs to be some balancing, but I think that making the skills actually sustainable (at all levels of progression) would go a long way towards making grinding less boring. Talking about crafting, for instance, there supply is much greater than demand, especially for novice crafters who want to improve, and must therefore create large amounts of common/standard quality weapons before they are able to consistently produce superior/exceptional/finest quality weapons. It also requires a large amount of raw material, which for the moment many players need to mine themselves because they cannot afford to pay other people to mine it for them. This problem is compounded by the fact that many (professional) miners prefer to mine platinum because they make much more from it than (even though it has no current use in the world) than mining iron and coal. Crafting also produces very few PPs compared to the amount needed to advance a level. Thus we see that to train crafting skills, is not cost-effective in terms of monetary cost and experience, which means that many will have to hunt mobs to get PPs, and maybe tria as well if they are strong enough to challenge loot-producing monsters. If not, they have to grind plat to pay for their training.
Currently, I believe that the only family of skills that produce enough PPs and tria to sustain continued training is (melee) combat. You are even able to train both your weapons and armors skills at once, and excess PPs can be directed towards training stats, which further improves your combat power. Mining does pay for itself, if you can get the PPs. Crafting could pay for itself, if demand were increased. Further reducing the weapons sold my NPC merchants will probably be a major way of achieving this. Increasing the amount that NPC merchants pay for crafted weapons, and the price of their own weapons, would also be appropriate -- players would be given more reason to buy a crafted weapon if the NPC alternative is comparably priced, and players can sell their crafted weapons to NPCs for something that at least covers the cost of the materials. Especially since the Settings says a sword's cost is equivalent to a year's earnings for a farmer. By that standard, every character in PS is very, very wealthy.
Character stats are the anomaly in that they aren't trained, they are bought. Which leads to the previous comment that You can go from a 47-strength weakling to a 150-strength hero in minutes if you have the tria and PPs -- the latter of which might be difficult since the greatest gains in PPs are found in combat, which you are going to find difficult if you have 47 strength. Here, I would say that more grinding IS needed, absolutely. Maybe apply the skills progression system to stats as well -- you buy some theoretical knowledge, then train it up. Experience in stats would come through doing activities that require that stat. If it lowers your stamina, chances are it should exercise Endurance. This doesn't really make it more difficult, since you can go on doing the same things you do, but it will slow the progression to something that makes much more sense.
I wonder if the calls to eliminate PPs altogether are not unfounded. But instead of replacing it with something complex, why not just eliminate the need for PPs, and leave it at that? You still buy theoretical training, it still costs tria. Afterwards you train it to get experience in that skill as usual. PPs to me are just a hold-over from the leveling paradigm of most RPGs, which PS is trying to shy away from. Remove them and the amount you can train a skill is still dependent on how much that skill is actually used, so I don't see it as losing much of anything, except an artificial cap. If the amount of PPs rendered by an activity were harmonized with the amount needed to train that skill, it would definitely be balanced, but would have the same end effect as removing them anyway.
I deliberately avoided talking about skills you can train but don't have any use yet (ie cooking/baking) since this IS in alpha/beta. RP also goes a long way towards making grinding more enjoyable. This is especially seen in cooking and baking, where although the products are useless as far as (current) game mechanics goes, they do find a use in the RP community. There are also a few people that have decided to mine iron and plat as a service even though it's not the quickest way to get rich in this game.
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I think Bragan nailed it.
The system is fine, but it just needs balancing. I actually like the concept that I can't simply apply experience of PP to Mining that I got from Melee combat (and why is hand-to-hand called Melee in game?). I must practice Mining to raise Mining.
However, I only get practice points when I'm successful, and at low levels, I'm not successful that often. I just sat it in a spot and was unsuccessful 35 times before I got one piece of iron ore. Mining is also very taxing on mental fatigue, where as combat is not. As a Hammerwielder, my stats are focused primarily on Strength and Endurance, with low mental stats, so I have to constantly stop and take breaks every few mining attempts because I don't have enough mental fatigue. If I need 100 successful attempts for practice points, and it takes me 35 tries to get one piece of ore, then raising mining is going to be VERY slow. I have been stuck on Mining of 3 for several days, and I can't seem to get any practice points to raise it to 4.
I think we just need to take some time to crunch the numbers and balance this. What if I get practice points for each attempt, or if we just lower the number of practice points needed for mining?
I would try to create a base that it should take X number of dedicated game hours to raise a skill from 0 to 200. And then crunch numbers on raising at each level to get ideas on how to fairly set progression. You can balance that for another skill now. If everything is based on X numbers of dedicated hours, then the game should be pretty balanced. Mind you, you may not have the Mana to constantly cast a spell over and over again in the same way you might be able to camp in a spot and stay in near constant combat, but that is another story.
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Ok, ignore me, found IIslysia.... Think I might give it another shot....
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Further reducing the weapons sold my NPC merchants will probably be a major way of achieving this. Increasing the amount that NPC merchants pay for crafted weapons, and the price of their own weapons, would also be appropriate -- players would be given more reason to buy a crafted weapon if the NPC alternative is comparably priced, and players can sell their crafted weapons to NPCs for something that at least covers the cost of the materials. Especially since the
I really like this idea. Though I do feel that we should add some wooden training weapons to the merchants inventory so the new players have something to use. 400 tria is already killer if you are a weakling trying to earn it through rats. I have created characters who were "magic-based" and had to wait till they were healed again after fighting one rat. Imagine how long it would take if the price of the sword was raised to 4000 and glyphs would also be raised in price.
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We have had people working on this stuff for quite some time. Some balancing is being worked out for the next release.
PP system will be changed at some point but it isn't a current goal.
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I voted snorks... cuz is snorks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!... :D \\o//
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Now.. seriusly... Cannot be any easier regarding stats... maybe other stuff but no stats...