PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Sangwa on April 12, 2011, 09:21:15 pm
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From PS's site:
9. You have the option to live as an adventurer or as a normal citizen - both paths will be rewarded in the game.
Currently PS has only 2 real needs: becoming stronger than others or crafting something more awesome than the others. It also fails to reward people who spend time roleplaying sociable or scholarly characters. These are my opinions on how we could change it:- Implement hunger and thirst. This will make people visit the tavern as well as give a purpose to cooking other than combat. Make it simple;
- Reward players for spending time around talking (through system, not with GM's). If you have a way of telling if they're afk or not, you could count the time where they are in non-fighting or crafting zones and are not afk and reward them for that. Make the PP bonus small enough to demotivate anyone from hanging around pressing a random key each 5 minutes;
- Ignore fighting for a while and make some items for the sake of aesthetic. It's more important to flesh out the characters right now than it is to improve the weapons and spells.
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I'd add a smith as a popular path now. Simply because it pays off. Other crafts are underdeveloped. In order to provide other paths, economy needs to be more diverse. Herbal, harvesting, alchemy, leather working, tools making and etc. Since smithing now almost entirely focuses on weapons and armor, more warriors are natural result of that. Such things as fishing or farming are totally marginal in comparison at present.
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Well, most smiths I've seen around are also fighters.
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there are other paths that pay off:
smiths
mages
(cooks, but that doesn't pay off much)
merchants who sell and resell, that pays off too
err.. out of ideas atm :P
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there are other paths that pay off:
smiths
mages
(cooks, but that doesn't pay off much)
merchants who sell and resell, that pays off too
err.. out of ideas atm :P
Smith was stated
a mage is a warrior, though i'd like to see someone play themselves as a travelling magician.
Cooking yeah.. though i've heard it isnt nearly as profitable
To get items to sell you either need to be a cook or a warrior.
FISHING AND HARVESTING! If they've got the items ALREADY there, the least they can do is make them useful. >.<
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So, all you're giving me is careers that walk around the fighter career. It's kinda lame.
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Metallurgy has nothing to do with fighting and they probably make more trias than any other job.
Some players , like Dannae, make some trias by selling their in game art. Either by working on commissions or selling items like greeting cards. Jaycol use to make money selling greeting cards and maps. True you aren't going to be earning millions of trias to cover heavy training costs but if you aren't training a lot I'm guessing you can make enough to get by.
I have known players who made trias from being a taylor and writing out descs of clothing in books and selling the books. I know people who make trias as authors creating in game books.
As has been mentioned merchants can make a living buying and selling goods.
Cooks can make trias by selling food to people like those in the Champion's Cup who can use food to heal. Food does heal health and replaces stamina and you can eat food while on the run so there is a value to eating food. The higher the quality of the food the more health and stamina that is restored.
It helps if the players support those who are trying to make trias in different ways, like buying art or books or "clothing" or greeting cards. Maybe hiring a poet or singer or bard to come perform at an event you are throwing.Or Pay a cook for catering your event, or just buying food maybe for that long run out to BD and back.
Of course don't forget the miners who sell the ores to the metallurgists.
when people were trying to earn trias for the guild house auction in January I saw most people mining and doing metallurgy, not hunting or fighting. sure as a hunter you might get lucky and loot a high value item but the more sure bet is metallurgy for earning lots of trias.
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The problem with metallurgy so far, it's disconnected from smithing in a sense. I.e. the quality of the produced stock doesn't affect the quality of the item (so I'm not sure what's RP reason is to pay money for high q stocks). So metallurgy is used only to be able to make more complex stocks / alloys. Quality is somehow not playing right there.
And as we discussed before, crafting needs balancing i.e. more practice points (don't confuse them with PPs) for higher items in the skill group, for example 1 for sabre, 1.1 for shortsword, 1.2 for longsword and so on. This will allow more advanced crafters who can make broadswords or even platinum steel swords or whatever to advance their high levels with more reasonable speed, and will give some incentive to make more complex items. Now, there is no incentive to train on broadswords or etc. Hammering handles produces the same advancing speed.
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Great naming of residual markets Sarva. Well besides the greatly challenging metallurgy.
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I think Sangwa's concerns in the introductory section of this thread are well justified.
An economy and progression system with a broad diversity of ways to earn a living is certainly desirable.
Clean and fair progression curves for each of these areas will be needed in the long run.
But it seems already a big challenge to design few of them for moderately well balanced difficulty curves.
Maybe it is more important to focus on those elements that are already available and add complementary content later.
My guess is that development will probably cover a bit of both, so let us see what the future will hold.
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I disagree $Bonifarzia, mainly because the developers have been leaning on fighting for a long time now and it hasn't been providing much novelty or points of interest. Even those markets Sarva mentioned all serve to, sooner or later, provide either tria or resources for fighting: cooking is creating potions, metallurgy is creating tria for training, books... Well, the books I've sold the most are related with weapons and I've seen others selling those related with magic (which is fighting.) All revolves around fighting, unless by some odd chance you get to have a guild auction when your guild doesn't actually have a guild house already or if you like levelling metallurgy and weapon crafting for the autist fun of it (i.e. without trading with others).
Including other needs, such as hunger, thirst, the need for social recognition (with items of value) and whatever would certainly diversify PS's experience and mind set. Rewarding players for sticking around others actively would also be a great way to balance out IC lifestyles as well. Currently a character that fights trepors all day can improve his intelligence, while a character that writes books and discusses points of view gets 0. Just awarding these characters for being active would be a great motivation, no matter how small the reward is (1 pp each 20 minutes, if need be).
It's all fine if you want to excuse the current blind focus, but I think we'd be better off with only a quarter of the retarded "I must kill the offender" and "I must be an offender!" types of characters. And that will only help with the right motivations and needs.
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Sangwa,
In the past i have sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting, i made quite a bit with selling those goods, since there was a need, so i created a market...
Gotta be creative, i think...
Grtz, Perlan
[edit: no, i am not gonna share what my money maker was]
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So you sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting? What goods were these? What did you use the money on?
I have a character that makes most of his tria by sellling books, card readings, etc. Creativity is certainly a good ally, but not everyone is willing to give it away, specially with the current educational systems making it so scarce. It's ridiculous to ask every player to create his own market and to make it work.
My advise: gotta be reasonable and allow for real, capable easily eastablished markets that do not linger around fighting or stat raising only. Creating a food market would help in many ways: taverns would be populated, food would have a chance to exist without replacing potions.
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I disagree Bonifarzia [...]
Including other needs, such as hunger, thirst, the need for social recognition (with items of value) and whatever would certainly diversify PS's experience and mind set. [...]
It's all fine if you want to excuse the current blind focus [...]
I am not looking for excuses here, nor do i second a focus on repetitive, stultifying actions for practice and progression. The second of above quotes summarizes it quite well. But it is a long way to get there.
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So you sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting? What goods were these? What did you use the money on?
Like i said: i am not gonna share what my money maker was
Secondly: it's not polite to ask people what they are spending their trias on...
Grtz, Perlan
[Edit: concerning art like Sarva stated; i never got paid for the numerous sculptures, landart pieces, decorations and conceptual art pieces i have made, but it's a hobby, and a means to amuse friends and the few passers-by for me]
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Boni: It'll certainly be shorter if the developers focus less on the eternally unbalanced fighting system and on silly unaffordable items. If they use that energy to create at least 1 new market (like the food one) they'll implement something noteworthy that will have a visible, straightforward impact and imidiate consequences.
Alchemy, harvesting, fishing, herbalism and whatever are just transformations of the current crafts. Creating hunger/thirst would make some of these distinct from each other and from fighting/stat raising (since you'd actually need them to survive as well).
Perlam: Lewl.
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Sangwa,
Not long ago the Klyros Junction organised a poetry contest with a main prize of half a million (if i remember correct)
I have also organised mount races with a main prize of a million in the past
Just two examples that raise trias (by exception, i admit)
Regards, Perlan
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Ask me in game how do I get money to buy food :)
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So, let me get this straight, are you guys telling me this because you think the system is good as it is and we don't need to diversify the needs in order to diversify skills and market? You agree that everything in-game should be linked only with HP recovery and stat improving in a way that doesn't concern getting characters together or justifying the distinction between food and potions? You agree with this because you've found ways to make money to buy training? Or because you've made up a hunger that doesn't exist and doesn't need to be regarded by other players?
Come on. Don't just type stuff.
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Hey,
I normally dont get into the discussions on this forum, but i do agree that there is some thing missing in the community of the game.
I have noticed that the economy seems to evolve around weapons and fighting one form of being or another.
So I hope asking for another crafting form to evolve wont upset too many, the thing that i notice greatly is theres no Wood working or joinery, or even carving wood of any type in the game.
Just Imagine the whole new world that could be created, You would not have to buy your furniture or ask some nice Dwarven lady to make you a toy ;) and if the Devs are worried that there would be a map full of wooden objects lying around !! Well they would just dissapear when you leave ( your loss ).
The crafting of metal though is not used to its full potential, there could be tin toys, steel cabinets and safe's for the Guild House, lets take off the blinkers and look around our world to see what could be possible.
Hawin plods off back to the lake, takes out his fishing rod and lights his pipe
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Par of that is what I meant by status items and aesthetic items. Woodwork would also be used for furniture. Still, it'd be pretty useless right now to implement this, when you'd have like 2 or 3 toys and therefore wouldn't have enough diversity for any status gain. That's why I'm focusing on food, because it's already there but it's doing the wrong thing.
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In regards to the second bullet item of the original post, rewarding players for talking, maybe some kind of a rating system could be implemented. A player could indicate their interest in anothers role play, which could lead to that other character receiving some PP.
Of course this opens up a whole can of worms, and many ways to game the system come to mind. However, real-world examples of this exist in the form of ebay ratings, and forum ratings. Lessons learned there might be applicable to this feature.
Pros and cons of this idea may be best left in a separate thread. I'm just throwing it out there.
On the other hand, compliments from other players for my role play are enough reward for me.
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In regards to the second bullet item of the original post, rewarding players for talking, maybe some kind of a rating system could be implemented. A player could indicate their interest in anothers role play, which could lead to that other character receiving some PP.
Too much abuse potential. I'd keep it simple and do it like I said. That way everyone gets rewarded and you don't get (extra) social peanuts.
On the other hand, compliments from other players for my role play are enough reward for me.
What I'd like some of you to understand is that I'm trying to discuss a method here that would motivate the creation and maintenance of social and intellectual characters. Your personal experiences are very cute and all, but they're kinda beside the point. The question here is "would these changes make some careers more attractive?" and not "Can you make your career attractive?"
I believe these changes could make some careers much more attractive, therefore refreshing the character base and making the PlaneShift experience more diversified, interesting and synergic.
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have you ever slept on a rat fur pillow?
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I have never known any player or character who got rich by doing anything but mining and or smithing(or in a few cases looting a rare item and selling it). The thing is that in RP terms (if I remember correctly) it is stated by an NPC that 4,000 tria was the yearly salary of a guard in Hydlaa. This means that if you loot one good item, or pick up and sell enough apples, then you would in theory be set for a year or more. Now if you want to actually be able to train or buy...anything...then you are obviously are gonna need a more realistic way to make money.
So essentially if you want a pure RP char, then it would be easy to make a living in Yliakum, but if you want a powerful char who can do anything outside of RP, then you are gonna have to spend time crafting or killing stuff. Maybe random GM events or something like that could give players who are willing to RP and don't feel like botting grinding met a chance to make some tria. Regardless, it seems like the economy could use some significant re-balancing, maybe then people would RP instead of standing at the furnaces all day.
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I agree with you, my only divergence is what you call powerful. An ambassador should have the chance to be powerful in what he does and there's actually a stat that deals with this stuff, so why can't he train it while doing his thing?
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It would be nice if lack of water or food degraded your stats over time so that eating and drinking became necessary. It would be nice if you had to find shelter to sleep to recharge your stats when tired. It would be nice if Yliakum could actually face a famine or a plague that had a real impact on the citizens.
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I had this same idea as you Sangwa, that implementing a need for food and drink would help with making a more realistic economy. After thinking about this a bit, I thought it would probably not do much in the way of generating more RP. I think those of us who like RP are doing it regardless of the fact that nothing is gained through game mechanics, and will continue to do so. I wouldn't argue against a reward system for RP if the devs. thought it important. Maybe pp could be gotten for every 100 words you type in main. I doubt non-RP'ers would type nonsense just to get pp this way when they'd rather be off skewering some poor beast anyway.
If things are changed to give some advantages to eating/drinking, those players who don't generally RP are just going to quickly buy what they need and get right back to grinding at something. It would help the economy, but not RP in my opinion, unless maybe exposing more players to RP when they buy may generate some interest.
On a more personal note, I'd love to be able to make jewelry and sell it as another non-violent source of income.
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I mentioned this would help with diversifying the careers, giving more importance to some careers. It doesn't help RP directly, but indirectly it creates importance in some careers, making them more visible and important, therefore contributing to a more colourful assortment of characters which then contributes to a better environment for RP. Improving the economy is also another indirect help to improving RP.
Also, it'd make the taverns obligatory passage points, therefore drawing players to them even if occasionally. You can only stock up on food for as much as you can carry and if you stock lots of food, then you're staying at the tavern longer that time.
I think the results of not eating should be status loss and not death (something like Dakkru's curse) therefore making it less frustrating when you go out of food.
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I'd like to think I have done pretty good as a cook. I have been asked to cater many events. When I haven't been using Stonehead food I have been paid for catering events like weddings.
Honestly if I make a high quality pie I can make more money selling that pie to an NPC than what you would reasonable expect a player character to but the pie for. As an example a 250Q Cinnamon apple pie sells for 850 trias form the NPCs. Is it really reasonable to expect a player character to pay that much for a simple, even if well baked, pie? Before running the Stonehead I have sold food at markets a few times and did very well with my sales. This was even before you could eat crafted food so there wasn't any healing of stamina replacement for the players who bought that crafted food. At least now crafted food can be eaten with the benefits associated with eating it.
I have also sold a number of my very simple cooking books. I'm sure I could have sold my books for more trias but to make things easier for people who are getting into cooking I have kept the price of my book low, only 1,000 trias per copy.
The people who are into role play will come to the Stonehead, eat and drink and many will even offer tips or donations of either food ingredients or trias. Those who aren't into role play will either not come into the stonehead or or only come in to complete a part of a local quest.
Of course for cooking some amount of hunting is involved since you need lard to make pies and breads, terpor wiggle feelers are needed for a couple of dishes and clacker legs for another dish. In the past I have bought lard or other food ingredients from hunters and I have some ongoing RPs with hunters who supply the Stonehead on a regular basis.
Anyway my main point being that for cooking if you are producing a high enough Q for what you are making you can already get paid more form the NPCs that what you would reasonably expect a player character to pay for food and drink. And as I said the people who RP and strive for realism will already hire cooks to provide food and drink for their events. Making it necessary to eat or drink will not really help player run cooks since in most cases, maybe all, it will be less expensive for players ot buy food from the NPCs in the taverns, since the NPC provided food is only 50Q and thus cheaper to buy, so you would still have the current situation of player cooks getting most of their trias from selling food to the NPCs. But as was mentioned making character have to eat or drink would force people into the taverns more often, but then are people who are being forced into a tavern to buy food and drink really going to make for good RP?
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Make higher quality food keep you fed longer or something. Regardless, besides things players do (RP hiring cooks, buy books) the whole economy is based around fighting. Food heals fighters, crafters make weapons for fighters.
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So, let me get this straight, are you guys telling me this because you think the system is good as it is and we don't need to diversify the needs in order to diversify skills and market? You agree that everything in-game should be linked only with HP recovery and stat improving in a way that doesn't concern getting characters together or justifying the distinction between food and potions? You agree with this because you've found ways to make money to buy training? Or because you've made up a hunger that doesn't exist and doesn't need to be regarded by other players?
Come on. Don't just type stuff.
Make higher quality food keep you fed longer or something. Regardless, besides things players do (RP hiring cooks, buy books) the whole economy is based around fighting. Food heals fighters, crafters make weapons for fighters.
I think several alternative ways of making trias have been pointed forward
BTW: back in the platinum and golden age, there was lots of RP going on at the mines... [tria making and RP did also go hand in hand at that time]
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You guys make me feel exasperated. Let me repeat myself: The question here is not if you can make your career work. Everyone can with imagination. The question here is if these changes would make those careers more attractive and main stream." And I think they would. I also think they would diversify better the objectives, since even the money you make with these alternative ways is usually spent on raising fighting stats.
These alternative ways can not be expected to be carried out by most players currently. You can't expect a good amount of players will wait until they are level 100 in cooking to start making money, since they'll need to have money then. You can't expect a good amount of players to find a OMFG NEW business to make money, you can't expect a good amount of players to wait for the Klyros Junction to make competitions, you can't expect a good amount of players to be satisfied to have their hero stuck in a lower int rank than a miner.
Elady: Forcing has worked before like a charm. You should've seen the game before RPing was enforced.
Besides these examples you are all giving me admit cooking (and any other career mentioned) as alternative and pretty restricted in time and space.
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He means that the current exceptions prove the rule that the primary organizing principle for this society is war.
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Thanks Verden, that might work better than trying to lead them to that conclusion. :P
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I agree with this. PS's gameplay is already a long, boring grind with terrible quests, no boss fights, and unfinished character models which makes nobody want to play those races. The roleplay is all it has, and the roleplay is good. Fighting needs to be easy to get good at. It's already pretty skill-based, just take out the grinding and PS would be a lot more worth playing. See, the fact that combat is like that makes it hard to roleplay, too. Before the stats were raised, my character description was a lot like:
"At a first glance, Kaibane, judging by his pale complexion, skinny build, and black hair, not normal for a Dermorian, you think he could be a strong wielder of dark magic. By the black blade hanging from his waist and the dagger handle peeking out of his boot, you judge that he could be a sizeable threat in combat, too."
Now, I have to change it, because I am no longer awesome like that and now am 50% weaker than I once was [yay, stats raised, way to suddenly make hours of my time spent playing PS meaningless]. So I can't roleplay worth crap anymore, because when people see a character description like that, but under it:
"You estimate that Kaibane will take no effort to defeat."
They think I'm some PS noob who wants to be all cool and awesome instead of roleplay well, and then they decide to tell me so through various offensive PMs.
And yes, that does happen. I won't point anyone out, but it still makes me mad. I really liked PS a lot more when all that mattered was getting winch access, roleplay, and maxing stats [when it was actually fun to max stats, and not a grind]. Oh yeah, and I liked it when we had a Gugrontid mining spot, too, so I could find some way to make money besides repairing weapons, because *oh yeah* I can't repair anyone's weapons anymore because the stat requirements for that got raised, too.
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"You estimate that [...] will take no effort to defeat."
you can't take as good that thing, for me it has no meaning since 0.5, if not early. I don't know if it's fixed, but I think all the older players simply ignore that evaluation.
furthermore I'm against character descriptions that try forcing my thoughts. "you smell", ok, "you see", ok, "you notice", ok. "you think"......
boss fights? that's not the Fist of the North Star.
It seems you've lost the fun to adapt your character to new situations.
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The thing is, regardless of what the profession is, people will always flee to the most efficient tria-maker. I bet you anything that if the best way to make tria was something against the law, all these 'warriors-for-the-good' people and smithies would switch to that profession. Or, maybe just make an alt.
As for me, I've made my tria off of buying and selling wares. Not an easy job to get into, but once you are in the midst of it, there are chances to make it far.
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That's true Mekora. But it's never 100% of the people that would go to those careers. It's like magic and weapons. Just because one weapon is the best, it doesn't mean that everyone will use it. Most will, but still a good part of them will hold on to other weapons they like better.
What I want to see is a non-fighting-related market that isn't residual, but that sustains a good, competent second choice for players. I want this because I've tried to play a character that only survives on writing books and selling food and I quickly understood that neither of them are rewarded enough for the time they take: not in PPs, not in tria, not in demand.
To me the simplest way of making this come to be is through the measures I've pointed out. But there could be others.
Unfortunately instead of a quality discussion where people would tell me the actual limitations of these measures, their unwanted impacts, better versions or choices or any system-wise complications in implementing it, I have most people telling me what they think and what they have experienced for no apparent purpose. If anyone's point is that they don't want to see these secondary roles attributed any more importance, then I should be told exactly that, instead of being given useless text to read.