PlaneShift
Announcements => PlaneShift News and Rules => Topic started by: Talad on January 18, 2011, 12:34:45 am
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[news taken from main site]
Happy new Year! We have some news about balancing, and in particular about trainers. It was a long time we didn't do a real balancing pass on the trainers, their location and their max skills. The current situation was a mix of history and quests and probably too many local edits. In many cases the max rank of the skills were very uneven.
For this reason we decided to have a global pass to align the trainers to the new "heat" map we are using recently. The "heat" map is nothing more than a way to identify certain areas as low/medium/high rank, and to distribute the monsters/loot/trainers accordingly, so that new players can have easier life and seniors can find challenge in new unexplored areas. Obviously this is just a general guideline and there can be exceptions to the "heat" map based on local quests, a bit of randomness and to leave some surprise the players. With the trainers we followed the heat map as well, where all basic cities are considered "low rank", the terrain outdoor areas medium, and the bronzedoor region "high rank". We hope this will allow a more natural progression.
On the same line of thought we will have soon a quests update (related to factions) where we will try to minimize the long travels between hydlaa and bronzedoors in the starting quests, so players will reach more remote areas at the right pace, when their char is more prepared for adverturing in those dangerous places. This anyway doesn't prevent players to explore (except few places which are locked by quests, like the winch). In this pass we removed all the trainers for skills which are not usable in game, and made all stats trainable up to 400 and all skills to 200, like it was supposed to be from the beginning. The trainable skills are: all armors, all weapons, all stats, the magic Ways, shields usage, repairing armors and weapons, body development, and usable crafting (cooking, smiths, mining, fishing, ...) and empathy. We hope this is a small step toward a more balanced and enjoyable game.
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\\o// Thanks PS team!
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\\o// ditto! Thanks a lot PS team!
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Very nice, I hope there will be new trainers and quests in Amdeneir and the new part of Oja. Thanks :)
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Thanks PS team, some progress! \\o// :thumbup:
EDIT: Although I am coming to issues with this, it's a little over the top, 400 in every stat. That's 600kgs + 120kgs with seductions. I think Stats should stay at 200 or go to 300. It's great for merchants that they can now carry 600+120kgs but I think they should drop this idea, think about implementing carts to move things from one spot to storage easier, maybe implementing Seduction armor so that players if they want it they can still find it.
200 for every skill, I think it should only be 150.
This to me isn't balancing it's giving an OTT lazy solution for something that needs some good thinking.
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Many new trainers in the new part of Oja didn't see and in Amd at this time.
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This is the best news I've heard in months, mabey now i'll finally be able to survive a hit from a dlayo :3
Wait a minute.....
My Maxed HA is only half way now >.<
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Many new trainers in the new part of Oja didn't see and in Amd at this time.
;D I really didn't understand that. Is there or isn't there? you kinda started saying 'there was' then said 'you didn't see'. Maybe you forgot a comma ;)
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Many new trainers in the new part of Oja didn't see any* in Amd at this time. :P
woo! new stuff!!
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When updating the list of trainers on the GM website I didn't notice any trainers listed in Amd but say a number in the new section of Oja.
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Stats to 400? Interesting...
Personally I would have things at half the new system (Skills100,Stats200) but that's my personal opinion. Just seems that training a character to the level of pre-existing PVP "masters" will take longer.
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Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait… did you just say body development? And how are we supposed to train that? By lifting ulbernauts?
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[18:39] <Talad|ZzZ> news on main site
[18:42] <Lilu|study> body development is trainable?
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> it is
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> not sure if practice works though :)
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> try push ups
[18:43] <Lilu|study> =P
[18:43] <Lilu|study> is /pushup the right command?
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Body development is not a skill you can practice at this time.
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Damn, im going to have to PL again to be able to duel :/
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looks like talad made a big mistake there body development is not trainable.
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[18:39] <Talad|ZzZ> news on main site
[18:42] <Lilu|study> body development is trainable?
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> it is
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> not sure if practice works though :)
[18:43] <Talad|ZzZ> try push ups
[18:43] <Lilu|study> =P
[18:43] <Lilu|study> is /pushup the right command?
Hehe. All other obsolete or unimplemented skills were removed from trainers though.
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Well at the "Meet the devs"meeting several people asked how the grind would be made less.. grindy. Doubling the number of levels one needs to train doesn't seem like the best solution ever :P
As for the amount one can carry. perhaps a good idea to simply not use lbs or kilograms or whatnot and use an Yliakum measuringsystem so it doesn't look like Yliakum has the same gravity as the moon.
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/me always wonders again why "l" and "b" are not even part of the word "pound"... :detective:
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Well at the "Meet the devs"meeting several people asked how the grind would be made less.. grindy. Doubling the number of levels one needs to train doesn't seem like the best solution ever :P
As for the amount one can carry. perhaps a good idea to simply not use lbs or kilograms or whatnot and use an Yliakum measuringsystem so it doesn't look like Yliakum has the same gravity as the moon.
Mobs are now easier. :D Now some are actually killable!!!!! :D
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Well at the "Meet the devs"meeting several people asked how the grind would be made less.. grindy. Doubling the number of levels one needs to train doesn't seem like the best solution ever :P
As for the amount one can carry. perhaps a good idea to simply not use lbs or kilograms or whatnot and use an Yliakum measuringsystem so it doesn't look like Yliakum has the same gravity as the moon.
Mobs are now easier. :D Now some are actually killable!!!!! :D
And what was wrong with your idea? Having the mobs as hard as they use to be, you felt elite and it worked well. PP wise well we can't go back then, but maybe getting 5PP-10PP from a rat if you were a newbe would be a good start!
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Weren't max levels of stats supposed to be different for different races?
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won't this cause some level of segregation amongst players based on level? New players only interacting with new players, and advanced only with advanced? what measures are in place to insure a nice mixing of the masses?
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The measure is... you. And how you choose to interact with others. :P No, seriously, I've never seen such behavior you fear, it's part of the fun to meet and talk with new players, and try to describe IC what they need to know about settings, history, quests... asking about their families... ;D
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Weren't max levels of stats supposed to be different for different races?
no
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The only negative side effect I've seen from this atall is for those people who duel, if you cannot up your stats fast enough, you're at a disadvantage. But honestly, that's just a temporary thing until people can slowly raise their stats, and it's not universal to all players.
I still think this is a great thing, and awesome progress. :)
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This should discourage dueling an opponent who is too advanced. It's not different really from what was before in this sense (if one would compare a beginner and an advanced fighter).
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Weren't max levels of stats supposed to be different for different races?
no
Why? Start levels are different different races have different abilities and stats.
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The Player Guide is outdated anyway. Especially those limits in race descriptions are related to units noone understands.
Example - Stonebreakers and Hammerwielders: "Limit 8th rank for magic. Limit 8th rank for martial arts." What are "ranks"? Magic has levels for skills and realms for spells, the current maximum realm is 5 - for spells of the second realm you need minimum level 20. If "rank" would be equal to "realm", there would still be enough overhead not to complain. If "rank" was equal to "level", it is very obviously not an implemented limit, or dwarven grand-mages would not be able to exist.
The Player Guide contains only "skill limits", but no "stats limits" per race.
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This should discourage dueling an opponent who is too advanced. It's not different really from what was before in this sense (if one would compare a beginner and an advanced fighter).
Well, if the dueling is friendly, a more advanced dueler can compensate for this, and handicap themselves to overcome the difference, so even then this shouldn't become an issue.
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I have the feeling, this will just increment the amount of people that quits the game, now the goals are soo far away. And getting the money to train and the pps will be worse.
Someone pointed out in other post about giving more pps if you kill a rat, for example, if you are a lower lvl player. That would be great, like give more pps according on how challenging is for you the creature you are going to kill, that would certainly help new players.
In other hand, roleplaying a mighty warrior or a great magician, with some "real" basis, for new players is going to be out of charts, as it was now, took already, a terribly long time to do any of those things (and of course not to mention crafting).
I beleave something interesting to do, to make the game more fun for everyone, could be to choose certain players, specially ones that have played a long time, and are very active (and of course the comunity could vote to select them). And then, give them some "gm" abilities, so they could host events, or such, but without really being gms, like they could plan an event, and then they would get the gm powers that day (or maybe an alt character could get them), and then they host the event.
Afterwards the people could vote or give points about how they liked the event and such, and the player that gets more points (because his events were nicer or something of the sort), gets some reward.
I mean the training is not bad, and many find it fun, but to be honest, you kind of isolate yourself when you are doing it, and to train many skills is almost imposible to do anything else but really training that ability. I would think, something great to do, could be something that would make players interact more.
After all this said, I thank you for keep working on improve the game, and I hope you find my comments of interest.
Dzy.-
PS: Sorry if I am not clear in some point, I will glady correct, sometimes i make mistakes in english.
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How will EXP and money gain be affected ?
Is there a solution for players to get enough money and exp to be able to train their levels so the level will be worth it? (e.g. magic)
does that mean crafters need to train themselves up to make 300q items again? also just a thought: if they will just do better items like 600q, will that mean more damage per hit and monsters won't be really as tough?
Also: requesting monsters that gives more xp / good loots but can only be killed in groups "you cannot attack, you are alone" of some sort, that would make it more fun. ;)
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Dzyan The Pp system is like this already. The lower your physical stats are the more PPs you will get against higher level mobs. Likewise the higher your physical stats the less PPs you get. I rushed to re max all my physical stats. This was a mistake since now I can earn very few Pps from killing mobs. For example now with all my physical stats maxed I get 3 PPs for killing a Ulber and 15 for a maulberlord. When all my physical stats we at the 200 level I was getting over 100 PPs for killing a maulberlord. If you want to maximize the number of PPs you get then keep your physical stats as low as possible. If you need to be able to carry more then only train your strength. Now when I start a new alt I keep the physical stats as low as possible and only train my skills like sword and armor. This lowers the number of PPs I need for training ( and trias) but as I improve my skills I can take on harder mobs and milk those mobs for more PPs.
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Hey Elady, long time no see!!
Well, I meant a more significant diference than a tiny one.
The other day I created a new characted, wanted to try a dwarf, and was killling low lvl creatures for really long time, couldnt move from rats because the others would kill me, but the pps i was getting was very low, so I couldnt improve my skills enougth to kill harder creatures without unavoidable death :P
At least I know the game, but I could imagine a new player feeling discouraged by an experience like the one I had.
Thank you very much for the tip though! Was thinking on maxing my main character stats, but I am very low on pps, so will work on pps first!
Regards.-
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Dzyan remember you can duel the mobs as well ie hit them then back up let them come to you and hit them as they approach then back up again. This lets you take on higher level mobs than if you just stand there and slug it out with them.
There is no question you will be stuck on the lowest level rats for a while. but at first the PPs and trias you earn in the tutorial helps. A good step would be that any alt you create on an account will be given the level of PPs and trias you would normally earn from completing all the quests in the tutorial since the second character on an account skips the tutorial and thus misses out on those early valuable Pps and trias needed for initial training.
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Body development is not a skill you can practice at this time.
Is that in the works for future upgrades? It may be a nice way to balance the need to level up skills with the complaints being seen by many RPers. If my character could have had some training show up with all her runs from Oja to Hydlaa she would be buffed in Stamina and Endurance; just in the process running travel. Depending on the weight being carried it could increase Strength as well. Providing such progression is very gradual it seems a fair way to develop ones character. To those that have a life, other than PS, then they could use tria to pay their way through skills development. It would add more realism as well.
To add realism to the advancement with a trainer, perhaps game time could be used. One could go to a trainer; towards the end of ones session; and say they wanted to purchase X lessons. Each lesson would require Y amount of game time. So when the character was logged in again a check would be made to see how much game time has passed since logging out and the amount of advancement would be made to cover that amount of time. The appropriate amount of tria would be taken as well.
In that way skill advancement would not happen instantly in game; but assumed to have happened during the game time which has passed since last logging off.
The alternative is to allow the character the same option when first logging on. Before actually appearing on the map they could get a window telling them how much Game Time had passed since last log in and allow them to move such training ahead manually. In that way they could cut training short for any reason they may have for doing so; yet the training could still be assumed to be done during the Game Time period from last log off until the present log in.
With both options for advancement of skills available there should not only be more realism to such advancement but less pain to RPers, as well; as it could happen in the process of RPing.
- Nova
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Elady,
To be honest, when I just started the game, I had the lesser clue about dueling that you could imagine, I didnt even knew what was that. Dueling them, takes longer time, and besides you could die (wich happens easier if you are new to it), and then you are with the curse.
All this is about real new players. Most games have a bottom 10 lvls or such, were everything is much easier, so they get to understand the game, like it, like the rewards from their efforts, and then, they get into the harsh stuff. Of course, I am not saying someone shouldbe killing ulbernauts in 5 seconds, but get more pps, so you could experiment, in diferent skills till you know better your way around, and what you want, would be fantastic, as it was the other time, with my litle dwarf, I hardly could be buying skills for axe, and that is because I knew i wanted to use axes, what if the player doesnt know what he wants, and would like to experiment?.
For a player that has characters with high stats, or that has been in the game a long while already, the fact that a lower lvl character is hard to train, is just a boredom factor. But for someone that is totally new, is much more, could determine if they stay in game or not. Even more, when at certain hours there are not much players around, so a new player finds a game that is too hard in its startings, and noone around to talk to. Not nice starting.
Regards.-
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Elady - how many PPs do you get for neotons?
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Gilrond after going to 400 in all physical stats, something like 12 if I remember correctly.
Dzyan Remember fighting isn't the only way to earn PPs. I've heard about changes coming to the quest set up. Hopefully they will bump up the Ps available in some of the early quests for new players to help a little. Encouraging people to do quests I think is good since they can help you learn about the world.
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Wow, that's really a little, considering how many PPs are needed for high levels training.
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Elady,
Yes would be good to have some changes on quests for lower lvl players, so they would get some pps easier. Still I think, on the first lvls not just the quest but the creatures should give more reward, so the player feels more confortable. Doing quest is not so hard, but not that easy either. If you are new might take a while to find who you want, or what you need. I just think of a more encouraging welcome to the newer players :D
Regards.-
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PP gains from mobs used to be alot worse though, i think they buffed it somewhere between 5.3 and 5.4 back last summer, but yeah basically the PP system right now kinda reminds me of the Oblivion leveling system, there if you leveled your major skills too fast you'd get little in the way of stat increases when you leveled up your character, then mobs got tougher to fight because they scaled with your level, endgame combat was practically impossible because while you have high level skills, your physical stats sucked and so you weren't able do much.
in PS it's like elady said, raise your mains stats too fast and you force yourself to either grind tons of low level mobs for 1-2 pp each, or waste alot of time fighting tougher mobs with weak attacks because your combat/magic skills suck
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Dzyan The Pp system is like this already. The lower your physical stats are the more PPs you will get against higher level mobs. Likewise the higher your physical stats the less PPs you get.
not exactly true, your mental stats are taken into consideration as well.
my personal recommendation (one could think that's common sense imo): raise your stats in accordance with your skills.
if you want to become a warrior, train only the according skills and stats and train those *simultanousely*
also note that there are still "end-game" NPCs around that give you with all phy. stats at 400 and all mental at 200 ~150PP/kill
for side-effects of the training cap: there aren't any. you don't have to train crafting further to get the same result, nor mining nor combat nor anything else.
all that the (final) raise of training caps (read: there won't be training past 200/400) does is... raising the caps.
the NPCs you may fight ingame were designed with those caps in mind and so were many other things, hence that change.
also you don't have to train to the cap to enjoy the game - really, it's nonsense. actually it's not even really useful for most skills (e.g. the difference between magic level 150 and 200 is negible atm and so is the difference between crafting level 100 and 200). those who'd like to may feel free to, but nobody forces you to by any means. after all it'd be boring if everyone was a "master", wouldn't it?
so... post in a nutshell: apply some common sense and don't overdo it - take the caps as what they are: caps, not minimums to reach ;)
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i'm pretty sure the term "physical stats" means all the character attributes, agi, int, end, cha, str, will, basically the main stats that affect all other stats, some people tend to think of these as the ones that will help you kill mobs, but it's only half of it, the other skills determine how often you hit, or dodge or successfully cast spells etc, so while it may seem unbalanced to some people, the whole balance issue may be in part of the player's leveling habits, i'm not saying there aren't inate balance issues currently in game but it's clear the devs are working on them.
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Just my opinion, but this is how the change will effect me:
I spent a lot of "not fun" time training some stats to hopefully try out dueling in a tournament or something and managed to max my sword and ha at 100. I'm not going to continue with this any more now that the levels have doubled. I'm just giving up on that aspect of the game because grinding is irritating for me and I'll just stick to rp. If I play long enough, maybe my stats will get maxed just before the character wipe of version 1.0 ::| I might reconsider if tournaments could maybe have events for different levels.
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Stats are not that hard, because you don't have to pracice them.
Funnily, it took me over 4 years to max a skill. I finally achieved it 3 days before the skill raise ;) I take it with humor.
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I'm glad you guys are balancing this stuff. The problem is... the old players who had everything maxed now already have remaxed stats, while the rest struggle to keep up.
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I might reconsider if tournaments could maybe have events for different levels.
not sure how it's handled nowadays, but there used to be 2 classes (amateur for up to level 50 skills, expert for anything beyond that), however that's mostly up to those who organize the tournaments. if you see the next one, maybe just ask the one organizing it whether there'd be the possibility for a similiar seperation ;)
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I'm glad you guys are balancing this stuff. The problem is... the old players who had everything maxed now already have remaxed stats, while the rest struggle to keep up.
:o are you serious?!?! FFFFFFUUUUUUU--
DAMMIT, MOUSE! IF ONLY YOU WORKED, I WOULD'VE BEEN MAXED IN SWORD ALREADY! :@#\
that's the lamest shiznit i've ever heard! dammit dammit dammit!
>:( >:( >:(
wait... but my maxed stats didn't re-max... why not? ???
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Sarras, your maxed things didnt remax, becuase nthing was changed about stats and skills other then the cap, your exactly as strong as you were before, you can just get stronger now.
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aghh thx... i was flipping out :-[ guess i read that incorrectly.
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What I'm saying is the players with 200k pp and several million just ran around and within a couple hours maxed the new cap. not really fair... just gives them more of a advantage
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doesnt take long to get tria or PP, if you think its so unfair, spend an hour shooting down expert glads, you'll have plenty of dough, and pp
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A note about tournaments. I think those should be capped in skills, by having different tournaments for different ranks. The same way you don't have a lightweight boxer do a tournament with an heavy weight. Having tournaments with very uneven participants sounds pretty wrong to me. The cap should be set as the sum of physical and mental stats, and potentially a cap for a single stat not greater than x. People organizing the events can set the rule and make it clear for all participants. Every tournament need a judge to ensure the rule is respected (through divination items or spells).
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What I'm saying is the players with 200k pp and several million just ran around and within a couple hours maxed the new cap. not really fair... just gives them more of a advantage
seriously... that's nonsense... if you're already at the old cap, earning trias or pp shouldn't be an issue at all and the major time drainer in trianing is practicing which is the very same for those that have "leftovers"
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Dannae- I have to talk to Car to be sure, but I don't see any reason why we couldn't host a tournament with two classes of stats. I've only ever competed in one tournament, because I never maxed my weapon and I competed against a player who had twice my weapon skill. It never really bothered me at the time, because I wasn't concerned about winning losing [did I mention Kisoji had to pay me to play in it? XD ] but I can certainly see how now there is a need for two classes. Even with my axe level and the old maxed physical stats, I do about a fourth of the damage of someone with maxed physical stats who doesn't even have maxed sword... not to mention they can do more damage in a single hit than I have HP.
Talad- I don't know if there are any working item/spells for that yet, but would it be possible for a GM to act as a pseudo-judge and help check people in at the beginning of a tournament? Honestly, most players I know would be pretty honest about it and not lie, but just in case...?
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@Tessra, the spell Natures intuition, was sa spell that could open a mneu and let you see another players stats/skills
the reason it doesnt work now, i assume is becuase people complained about unwillingly getting scanned, and that its a pretty ooc thing for an RP game, they wanted to make tweaks
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;) That's why I said "working" spells.
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A note about tournaments. I think those should be capped in skills, by having different tournaments for different ranks.
That's what Entertainer Proglin often did: Sub-tournaments for beginners, amateurs, and professionals.
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Yes I remember those amateur tournaments from when I first started playing. Would be fun to bring back.
A note about tournaments. I think those should be capped in skills, by having different tournaments for different ranks. The same way you don't have a lightweight boxer do a tournament with an heavy weight. Having tournaments with very uneven participants sounds pretty wrong to me. The cap should be set as the sum of physical and mental stats, and potentially a cap for a single stat not greater than x. People organizing the events can set the rule and make it clear for all participants. Every tournament need a judge to ensure the rule is respected (through divination items or spells).
I agree, but before we had a certain spell that would allow someone from the actual guild organizing the tournament to be judge. Right now you would have to "book" a GM for the tournament so that they can check that everyone follows the set rules. But from your ( ) there it sounds like this might be reverted back to somewhat what it used to be? :)
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That's very good news for the balance of martial and arcane arts in both, PvP and PvM.
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hello talad..a really simple question..
well, you said " The trainable skills are: all armors, all weapons, all stats, the magic Ways, shields usage, repairing armors and weapons, body development....."
how can i practice "body development" ???
thanks.
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You can't.
Even gods err sometimes. ;)
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A note about tournaments. I think those should be capped in skills, by having different tournaments for different ranks. The same way you don't have a lightweight boxer do a tournament with an heavy weight. Having tournaments with very uneven participants sounds pretty wrong to me. The cap should be set as the sum of physical and mental stats, and potentially a cap for a single stat not greater than x. People organizing the events can set the rule and make it clear for all participants. Every tournament need a judge to ensure the rule is respected (through divination items or spells).
1: there is no way to test if people are cheating, since nature intuition is disabled
2: try and fill those tournaments with participants
Perlan, organisor of many tournaments
(one will come soon again)
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Perlan thats false, you just have to be creative, If you set a tournyment up the way that saanx did a while back, she had a requirment of max STR and To bring nothing but your ticket, so she then gave every single person exactly 300 lbs in weight, if you were forced to sit, obviously you were disqualified, as you tried to cheat.
Be creative :P
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Perlan thats false, you just have to be creative, If you set a tournyment up the way that saanx did a while back, she had a requirment of max STR and To bring nothing but your ticket, so she then gave every single person exactly 300 lbs in weight, if you were forced to sit, obviously you were disqualified, as you tried to cheat.
Be creative :P
Well, that is not gonna work this time, Earowo, since not all players will have the same STR..... (you're talking to an organisor of many tournaments)
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Again, thatswhy you require a specific ammount of str
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doesn't really work out as there are more stats then just strength, tho ;)
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Well in the Irka Festival, we don't care, it's just the best is the best, there's no junior, middle and senior tournaments, and having more classes means more tria for prize money, which the GMs have told me they cannot provide, nor can they even provide quest items (even if the quest is bugged) So it's a :thumbdown: to Talad, you need to think about what you said a little bit more!
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Well in the Irka Festival, we don't care, it's just the best is the best, there's no junior, middle and senior tournaments, and having more classes means more tria for prize money, which the GMs have told me they cannot provide, nor can they even provide quest items (even if the quest is bugged) So it's a :thumbdown:
that's why there are usually entry fees that provide the money pool to actually award prizes in the end ::)
as for stats checking with classes: I doubt it'd be an issue to get a GM to check the stats and even if it is, I'm sure it'd be possible to find a suitable solution ;)