PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Gilrond on November 30, 2011, 12:57:48 am
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In response to the quote below, I thought it's good to start a new topic:
weapon/shield/armor making takes ridiculous amounts of time. It took me 7 hours one time to get one low level of shield making (8-9) compare that to 10 minutes to get one level in the 60-70 range in two armor types at the same time. Crafting is a waste of time.
Yes, I agree, current crafting progression (except may be for metallurgy where parallelism helps) is very unbalanced and is simply horrible. Please correct me if my calculations below are wrong. For example, let's say it takes 14 practice points multiplied by skill level to level up the blacksmith skill to that level (from the previous one). Since now there is still no graded practice gain (see proposal to implement it on the bug tracker (http://bugs.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=5170)), character can only get 1 practice point for some action (not even for every action). Therefore blacksmith training can be reduced for example to rehammering heated sword handles (since there is no benefit in points in any of the other actions now). Hammering one heated sword handle takes 1 minute.
Therefore to level up from (N-1) to level N, it takes 14 * N minutes (and I'm not even counting heating time for simplicity). So, for example getting from lvl 29 to lvl 30 will take you 30 * 14 = 420 minutes (7 hours). Sounds hard enough? Let's take a more distant look. Since some managed to max other skills, why not to max blacksmith with some effort? How long do you think it'll take? Let's see. You have the following sum:
14 + 28 + … + 14 *200 = 14 * (1 + 2 + 3 + … + 200) = 14 * (200 * (200 + 1) / 2) = 14 *20100 = 281400 minutes = 4690 hours = 195.41(6) days...
Hm, more than half a year of real time hammering? No wonder you don't see many maxed blacksmiths around. So what about adding graded practice to reduce the crazy grinding?
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One minorly mitigating factor in regards to blacksmithing is that generally speaking the activity that gives the practice also gives practice in some other skill. In your example you would likely also get sword making practice. Still this does very little to improve the situation or answer your argument. I can wear two pieces of each type of armor and dazzle 10 tlokes and their attacks will level all three skill types quite quickly. This is the flip side of the problem.
How much weapon practice can you get if you stab a critter for that same minute wielding two knives?
One wonders why there is a master crafted hammer if you cannot make simple jobs go quicker.
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Swordsmaking, shieldmaking etc. skills aren't progressing much faster, so even if you gain two skills at once, the problem of very slow progess still remains.
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Yes, this has been serious problem from the beginning, and it got much worse the day practice was restricted to the skill ranges we have for each crafting process (see bug tracker link above). As Gilrond stated, this does not seem to be a simple matter of tuning a few numbers, but a fundamental flaw in the current set of rules (fiddling around with those ranges will probably affect other things). On the other side, practicing certain other skills does not only take orders of magnitude less time, but really also implies much less human effort (mob auto-bashing while having a chat, training magic while earning some money etc.)
I think the natural solution to this problem is to penalize endlessly repetitive training sessions. The amount of practice awarded should not only depend on the difficulty or time requirements of an action, but rather on its learning value for the character to experience something new and hone his skills. Okay, this sounds abstract and hopelessly difficult to implement. Well, you could think of a finite history of recent practice activities for each character. Beating up the same type of NPC, spamming one spell all over or repeating the very same crafting process would fill up the list with patterns of repeated action IDs. This could be interpreted as an effect of exhaustion or boredom that will drastically lower the gain of any following practice, unless you clean up your history by doing other things, which will discard the older entries. I think with such a system, the complex and tedious crafting patterns will have a natural advantage, because in order to produce something reasonable, you will use many different processes. The times of endless handle hammering would be over. Limiting skill ranges for practice could be dropped entirely and the gap between casual practice and stubborn grinding could be narrowed down a little, too.
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I have a suggestion on all this. Aside unbalanced exp from diferent crafts or spells, its a fact that training is long and very very boring. Being long is acceptable, since we don't want skills to be trainable overnight. But as for boring, something needs to be done.
So, how about implementing quests as a way of training skills? It could be repeatable quests given by the master of the skill every 24h or even every 6h (that's one ingame day i think). Examples:
-Harnquist asks for help with and order he has from Hydlaa's guard. The player needs to prepare 12 shortswords. The quest gives swordsmithing and blacksmithing exp.
-The player's magic master sends them on a quest to kill a certain monster by magical means, or solve a mystery or magic nature (or a riddle). The quest gives magic exp.
-The music teacher sends the player to play for the visitiors of Amdeneir's tavern for 10 min. The quest gives musical instrument exp.
-Jomed (in Kada El's) asks the player to prepare some dishes for him. The player gains cooking exp (and some tips :P).
I think such quests can add a lot of variety on the training of a skill while also helping the player keep the feeling of roleplaying. Today we have lots of smiths that don't get to smith anything for anyone aside training, and lots of cooks that produce ridiculous amounts of food just for healing, just the same recipe over and over. And soo many mages that do no research or study on magic, instead wait for the first fight to put their magic skills to use. So something like that may help in lots of ways, even a little. :)
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"Long" should have limits too. Unachievable half a year of hammering for maxing the skill (not half a year of playing, but just hammering in pure time) can't be called acceptable, while other skills (like combat) can be maxed in reasonable time.
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To be fair, as in all other mmos, it seems that most people in the game feel obliged to max everything. If you want to roleplay you don't need to max all the skills you choose and your stats, you need just enough to reflect your charater's abilities. Otherwise you get in situations where you try to roleplay with people that say things like "I'm master in Crystal, Red,and Dark Way of magic, and also max armor and swords , and bows, and cooking and... so on. That's why i say its not so bad to have skills hard to max... as long as the process of leveling is fun enough.
In short, my idea was that what we primarily need is not everyone to be a master smith, its all smiths to have fun playing the game. But the fact that in MMOs gaining levels and skills is fun remains. I haven't trained smithing skills so I don't know how hard it is, still I agree the exp you get from different crafts should be balanced (see discussion on the bugtracker on the link above), its not nice to have everyone smith shortswords to lvl up.
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I didn't say you need to max any skill, I said that atm progression is unbalanced, which can be demonstrated with maxing time which differs greatly for combat and crafting for example.
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I have a suggestion on all this. Aside unbalanced exp from diferent crafts or spells, its a fact that training is long and very very boring. Being long is acceptable, since we don't want skills to be trainable overnight. But as for boring, something needs to be done.
So, how about implementing quests as a way of training skills? It could be repeatable quests given by the master of the skill every 24h or even every 6h (that's one ingame day i think). Examples:
-Harnquist asks for help with and order he has from Hydlaa's guard. The player needs to prepare 12 shortswords. The quest gives swordsmithing and blacksmithing exp.
-The player's magic master sends them on a quest to kill a certain monster by magical means, or solve a mystery or magic nature (or a riddle). The quest gives magic exp.
-The music teacher sends the player to play for the visitiors of Amdeneir's tavern for 10 min. The quest gives musical instrument exp.
-Jomed (in Kada El's) asks the player to prepare some dishes for him. The player gains cooking exp (and some tips :P).
I think such quests can add a lot of variety on the training of a skill while also helping the player keep the feeling of roleplaying. Today we have lots of smiths that don't get to smith anything for anyone aside training, and lots of cooks that produce ridiculous amounts of food just for healing, just the same recipe over and over. And soo many mages that do no research or study on magic, instead wait for the first fight to put their magic skills to use. So something like that may help in lots of ways, even a little. :)
This seems like the best idea on here. Its not hyper complicated (I don't know alot of programming, but I can say it seems like something that could make use of systems already in place, like say... taking the exp you get from 10 spellcasts, bundling it together, and replacing what it is that gives you PP as a reward with it.)
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It's pretty easy with the current quest mechanics. You only have to figure out a way of modifying the player's skills using an NPC in the same way Game Masters do. I hope someone keeps this in mind.
EDIT: Also, it's very well justified ICly:
"Hey [random char], are you busy?"
"By the gods, Trasok asked me to help him with an order and I have to make thirty axes before he smashes my head with his hammer!"
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What Gilrond said, re "Long...." (agreed)
This is /should be a fun game, not quite so "real life" as the crafting / grinding puts us through. I like to make axes, but it is become tedious. Plus the problem of delta blades disappearing... (thanks, but I won't go into files, and 'simply' change this to that).
The literal amount of time it takes is astonishing.
Sanrai :sorcerer:
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Having random quests to improve the skill is a good and welcome addition to break the routine of skill practicing (and they should appear once in a while, so it shouldn't be a one time thing, otherwise it's pointless). But it doesn't change the problem of disbalance and overly slow progress. Crafting progress rules need to be changed significantly to make the game enjoyable. See linked bug for other arguments, like encouraging crafting diversity and advanced items crafting (which are not encouraged by the current system).
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Any system in development is bound to need some balancing so some of the comments on this thread should be looked at within the scope of balancing in my opinion. Yet that does not mean that it is my feeling that advancement needs to be adjusted in any way to make advancement quicker.
My main character has been in play for over a year now and is a little less than mid-range. That seems fine by me. She has a lot more growth as a character in my opinion and it would not make sense that she be maxed in anything at this time.
She has never held a pick axe in her hand, so when my interest grew about the forge it made no sense to me that she would study in that area, Instead an alt was created to explore that aspect of the game. My main has a history of being a wine broker; so she started up her brokerage business again to trade in the products of my alt.
In the short time that the alt has been created he is now creating good quality steel stock and is now beginning to craft mid range sabres. There is no intent to power level at the furnace. He creates products to fill the needs of my main. It is approached via RP and his progression is based on the needs of my main.
It is fun to have the alt being played as an up and coming crafter. It would not be as much fun to me if by supplying my main he suddenly became a master at the forge. Some day he may; yet he still holds in high esteem such masters as Hangatyr. For him to be on the same scale as Hangatyr would take away from who he is at the moment as well as who Hangatyr is.
The short and long of it is that it is my feeling that the progression rate of most skills is perfect for RP at the moment. To make progression any faster would diminish character development in terms of RP.
It was always my thought that development is the way it is on PS so that players would think in the very long term in terms of their character development. A master in any trade takes decades. Even at the 6:1 ratio of time in PS that would mean 4 or 5 years of real time for a PS character to be maxed. Without power levelling that works about just right in my opinion.
- Nova
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It was always my thought that development is the way it is on PS so that players would think in the very long term in terms of their character development. A master in any trade takes decades. Even at the 6:1 ratio of time in PS that would mean 4 or 5 years of real time for a PS character to be maxed. Without power levelling that works about just right in my opinion.
- Nova
Planeshift will never have any players at all if people expect to have to take YEARS to max a few things. I'm quite against powerleveling, ask anyone, but literal yearS? Not many people are going to want to deal with that.
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In real life all skills are not learned at the same speed. I think it is reasonable to say it takes less time to learn how to use a weapon well to kill things than it does to learn how to make a weapon well. It takes a lot less time to take many swings at a practice dummy with a sword than it takes to make a single blade. Also if practice is made to simple then we are simply going to end up with a lot of people running around who have maxed everything and well that is going to be rather boring.
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I think a more important issue grasped at in this topic is the monotony. In my idea, quests that give skill experience make a lot of sense. For instance, Harnquist promises to show you a few tricks in return for helping him hammer out so and so many of such and such. I see no reason why that couldn't be implemented. It would not disbalance the game, but rather give some variety into smith work that is sorely needed in my opinion.
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It is already rather boring, Sarva, and those crafting skills level so slowly that it is unrewarding. If Zynga has taught us anything it is that people are prepared to do boring things for as long as it produces something that appears to be a reward. If you don't want people to max out everything then set a limit on how many progression points a character can earn in a lifetime. When they hit 100,00 pps double the number required to level a skill over 100, when they hit 200k double it again and et cetera. When they hit 500k reduce the skill level to everything under 50. These numbers have been pulled out of my hat for the purposes of illustration, appropriate values may be quite different.
In real life some people have natural talent for a skill and learn it faster than others but this is not factored into the game system.
My character will never max out every skill and likely not even one because he is a bit of a dilettante and practices a bit of everything. He could max out an armor skill pretty quick but sitting in a swarm next to the trainer does not interest me very much.
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I don't know if Chessire's idea is new, but I definitely like it.
An important technical aspect is certainly the refresh rate of the repeatable quests. I remember this timer was once global, such that the first player to catch the quest would make it unavailable for everyone else during a certain period of time. Much has changed in the meanwhile, so I don't know if this is still valid. But if we have a strong connection between skill practice and repeatable quests, such things will be very important.
As a side note, I think that even quests for progression with combat skills could work fine. I think there already exists at least one (eeeevil) quest where the character was moved to some isolated map instance, where no other players were found. In order to advance, an NPC had to be slain in a one on one situation. The same mechanics could be used within the setting of the arena, maybe picking the geometry of a single pit to form a small map instance with special rules (e.g. mute spells there - we already have different rules for item collision in guild house instances than in other maps).
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global + personal
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It's a little unnerving to debate rules with a GM, so I'd like to emphasize this is a philosophical discussion regarding game design. Hopefully you're comfortable with this distinction, Sarva, and don't take it as a challenge to your GM authority :)
In real life all skills are not learned at the same speed.
But also in real life different people learn different skills at different rates, and while you might find combat easier to learn than smithing the reverse could be true for me. The important thing to remember is PlaneShift is supposed to be a game more than a model. It's important to make it realistic enough to be plausible, but it's also OK to make sacrifices to absolute realism for the sake of playability.
And when you make one skill harder than another you are effectively penalising players who put that skill in a more central role for their character concept than the easier skill, or even worse you push people toward the easy skill and away from a skill they might be better able and more enjoy role playing.
Having skill advancement skewed may make it more effective as a model of the real world, but so would removing magic. Both of those decisions can make it a lot less effective as a game. That's not to say that all skills should be exactly equal, you definitely get some flavor and RP mileage from having some difference, but 10% or 20% difference is more than enough to provide that while still allowing people to practically advance a skill important to their character concept.
Also if practice is made to simple then we are simply going to end up with a lot of people running around who have maxed everything and well that is going to be rather boring.
Don't we say people can RP with low skills? Would they lose the ability to RP because their skills went up? Why would a character with max skills be any less valuable to the community then a character with min skills?
I can't imagine doing it, but I can't see how it would affect anybody else if somebody wanted to max everything. It's a different playstyle than mine, but it seems a valid one, and who am I to tell somebody else how to have fun? It's not like they can walk up to me, beat me up and take my stuff, if they don't post on MyPlane how would I even know if they were maxed?
Just because something is possible doesn't mean everyone will do it, and especially in this game there isn't any great advantage in doing so so why would people spend the time? I know a premise of MMO design is not to let players advance too quickly, but seriously, PlaneShift is in no danger of that. The Federal Reserve doesn't push an aggressive anti-inflationary agenda during a recession ;)
In summary, I wouldn't want to see all skills cookie cutter identical, but I'd really like to see them all close enough to be in the same ballpark, and if the math on smithing is correct then a rebalance is definitely needed to achieve that goal.
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Just to weigh in on the philosophical discussion, I agree that it would be boring to have a game with "everybody maxed at everything", but it is a game and it should be fun and it seems less fun when a person is faced with actual years of trying to build up expertise. I have sometimes been heard to remark that I could get a RL college degree in the time it may take me to learn to craft 300Q plat-steel longswords. However, the community benefits from having people who have dedicated themselves to a craft and have spent a great amount of time, both actual and in-game, becoming masters of their craft and such "sages" are justly revered, as they should be, and their works and advice are sought by many.
However, what I find to be the least fun in training a skill is the amount of repetitive action to gain the practice to progress. It seems that the best way to train is to do something totally repetitive in the least efficient way possible. For example, to get the most pp's in training a magic skill, DON'T wear bracers or any other buffs so that it takes many more castings to accomplish a goal. There are examples of this counter-productive behavior to be found in every kind of skill training, creating a game where a great amount of time is spent doing boring and useless things.
What I would like to see (since this is the "Wish List" section) would be more practice points earned for doing more advanced activities, such as more practice points earned for casting higher level spells, or making more complex items such as a Broadsword versus a Sabre, or actually finishing a sword rather than simply hammering on heated handles all day. I think the entire complexion of the game would be changed and the emphasis in training and crafting would change from that of repetition to something more linked to making progress.
Ketta :flowers:
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But also in real life different people learn different skills at different rates, and while you might find combat easier to learn than smithing the reverse could be true for me.
It would be kind of interesting to have skilling mechanics that reflected this reality. So, say, you could pick two or three skills in chargen that your character will have a knack for, with resultant accelerated leveling, but only in those skills. Might be hard to code, though.
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I've reviewed the calculations for time needed to craft, and there was a bug related to secondary skills and time. Basically when a secondary skill was not involved the calculation was using the default time and was ignoring the skill. Plus some other tweaks have been made to make it a bit smoother. In particular:
1) Fixed a bug which was not reducing time for skills when a secondary skill was not required (quite often). In summary the time calculation works this way:
- Time is scaled by skill. Up to 50% of skill there is no change
- 50 - 150% skill time is scaled with 1 - 0.5
- Time cannot go below 5s
2) Changed the way time is calculated to include a weighted average of primary and secondary skill
3) Changed practice points to be related to time spent and not just to the transformation itself. Before every crafting was giving you one practice point, now it gives you one practice point every 2 seconds of time spent. So the longer the process, the greater the practice gained.
This change is pending a server restart, considering now is peak player time, we will do it tomorrow.
Please test it tomorrow and provide updated feedback. We are willing to change it until it's good.
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This sounds awesome.
Thank you.
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Great, thanks for the update Talad!
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Balance is currently taken care of. That's all good. It's the most needed thing in the game (after bug fixes of courses, since they can flaw everything and waste the time of balancing devs).
There is also pruning being done. All good also. And an opportunity to consider getting rid of some skills as well. For example, only 1 Armour skill. For example, no more Repair skills, as repairing and making things should come together. Easier to balance, and more advantages.
Then, Crafting and Combat will still be unbalanced. One reason: training costs; money is way too important in the game.
- The way it is, trainers get uber-rich while players waste millions of tria so they can make their own 1000 tria weapon; also players can't concentrate on crafting as they need to spend half their time looting/mining/questing for Xp and money.
- The way I see it, you should either make money and buy your weapons, or don't make money and make your own weapons.
Suggestion: Pay a trainer a small fee and he will train you without paying more up to a certain level. Pay a master trainer one higher fee (or do a quest, or whatever) and he will train you up to a higher level. In short, you suscribe for a large number of levels.
Also, pay a smith to use his tools, i.e. unlock access for a period of time, and proceed as it happens nowadays. Or, he pays you some wages, and provides you with objects to make; you can't sell them but you train with them and don't need to invest in materials.
That wouldn't solve all problems - Combat XP would still buy you Cooking skills - but it's a start.