PlaneShift
Announcements => PlaneShift News and Rules => Topic started by: Talad on September 12, 2012, 04:00:36 pm
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The silence of the last few months was due to devs working hard on new items we are now ready to release! A series of updates are planned in the next few weeks, and today we present you the first one. In particular the settings department have spent the last two months putting together what we hope will be a pretty exciting update, it's been a lot of work! Here are the details:
- We have now a way to keep track of your progress in a quest. Basically every time you speak with an NPC the server will automatically add 'quest notes' to your quest description based on your progress. To view them you just open the 'Quest' window and in the description section you will see a list of notes for the quest you have selected. For old and completed quests it may or may not show correctly (depending how far in time you completed those) but any that you start or progress from today will have them showing.
- Quest names have been improved to be more meaningful.
- The syntax/structure of quests has been updated, to simplify their maintenance for devs.
- All 'yes' and 'no' steps have been removed so that should stop all cross quest triggering of steps by mistake. This also means that you can use the menus to progress quests when the response from you looks like it should be yes or no and not just tell the NPC directly, exceptions to this include when a free text response is 'yes' or 'no'.
- Some quests rewards (armor/weapons/food/animal parts/raw materials... etc) have now increased quality. In general weapon/armor between 50 and 100, others may go up also in the range of Q150-300. This will make the quest rewards far more valuable to everyone but mainly new players and crafters.
- Many repeatable quests have been improved a little so you won't always do the same thing (unless you do the quest lots then you will run out of options). Harnquist for example now has a more wide ranging diet, and Remant wont always lose his bracers in the same place.
- The Blackflame quest line has been improved so that you no longer get quests showing if you should not be able to start them.
- The first part of the Magic Way quest updates is done. You can now get to adept in all ways (quest 6) and as soon as you pick a masters quest other quests will start to be locked out. The correct locks for all the quests have been added, and the settings about which quests are possible to get have been altered. To apply this logic to existing players, all master quest accomplishments have been wiped. This means you will have to redo the master quest again. In addition the Red Way quests now have more Way related settings explained to you in the quests (sorry to those who have done them as you'll miss this).
- We have tested in the range of 170-180 of the quests, so there should be very few bugs to start with, but there are likely to be some we have missed. Please either file them on the bug tracker and/or file a petition in game and we will fix it as soon as we know.
- All Xacha references should finally be removed from NPC descriptions, action locations, KAs and books.
The team really wants to thank Venalan and Mordaan for the exceptional work done on the items above!
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Variable repeatable quests ... :thumbup:
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I still didn't get my Molecular Blue... achiev...
WHAT IS THIS? All my shiny achievements are now gone, except one! And that's the most embarrassing one of all!
*weeps* (http://planeshift.subhosting.net/myplane/profile/Jamona_Shikon/achievements/)
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Also keep in mind, you still have the ability to add your own quest notes the way you always have. The two should not be confused. Personal quest notes are done by players and are recorded in your settings folder. These quest notes are automatic and done server side.
They can be very valuable in case it's been awhile since you've started a quest and forgot where you were or what you needed to do next. Think of these quest notes as a running summary of what has been done.
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wonderful news, maybe time to login some dweebs and see if I can get to 300 ahead of bilbous
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Yay!!! Thanks! Thanks for helping the ones going out in the wild without a pen!! hihihihih
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I really need to point out that I did essentially all of the work listed above myself, the only bits I didn't were from Talad who added 'quest notes' to a few quests and Daxa and Sarva who helped with a lot of the quest testing which was great hugely appreciated by me.
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One critical point needs to be addressed, otherwise these kind of changes to magic are a serious settings regression. Since master quests are blocked out (settings wise circles not promoting masters of opposite circles etc.), how new players are supposed to get glyphs which come from the master quests? According to the settings glyphs are occurring in the nature and can be obtained from the glyph hunters. I.e. according to the settings there is no direct logical relation between being a master in some way, and obtaining glyphs. I.e. someone who for example avoids circles, can still be trained in magic up to high levels and getting the glyphs can practice spells. But if the only source of glyphs are master quests - it creates a problem.
Secondly, since circles become now more closed, you need to provide some "out or circle" trainers. Magic is a phenomenon not bound to social groups (which circles are), so if some powerful mage doesn't belong to a circle, he/she still can teach others. Introducing such kind of societies will broaden the settings. But the most serious issue is the first one. If it won't be addressed - the current magic system can be considered crippled.
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@ Venalan:
So you say that Mordaan did nothing?!
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- We have now a way to keep track of your progress in a quest. Basically every time you speak with an NPC the server will automatically add 'quest notes' to your quest description based on your progress. To view them you just open the 'Quest' window and in the description section you will see a list of notes for the quest you have selected. For old and completed quests it may or may not show correctly (depending how far in time you completed those) but any that you start or progress from today will have them showing.
Thank you so much for this! It'll make coming back to a quest after a long time away so much easier. :love:
Edit: And, y'know, all that other stuff is pretty neat too. ;D
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@ Venalan:
So you say that Mordaan did nothing?!
:-[ I would have loved to help on the quest notes but ended up being too busy with all the alchemy stuff. Venalan did a tremendous amount of work in a short period of time. :thumbup:
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A real +1 for the game. Less taking notes, more playing the game. Bravo.
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A real +1 for the game. Less taking notes, more playing the game. Bravo.
The problem with notes, is that they get deleted... I did a break sometime ago, and than, most of my notes got deleted, I did another break and all of them were gone!
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I have to echo Gilrond's concern about glyph availability. Making it impossible to obtain certain glyphs doesn't fit with the settings as I understand them. Reducing the number of spells people can access due to limiting glyph availability also lowers the play value of the game. (Less to do and try out = shorter time until a player gets bored, and as much as RP is and should be the primary focus, game play does still matter in this way.) But maybe new means to access them will be added? This is only the first step of these updates after all.
I think the quest notes are a big plus. And Erebey, your own personal quest notes can vanish if you reinstall since those are among your own logs I think. I'm assuming these new ones won't be likely to vanish in this way.
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I think the quest notes are a big plus. And Erebey, your own personal quest notes can vanish if you reinstall since those are among your own logs I think. I'm assuming these new ones won't be likely to vanish in this way.
Shouldn't vanish on "reinstall" (of PlaneShift) assuming the installer is sane and doesn't wipe your complete old PS settings directory... but indeed are only stored locally instead of on the server and require manual attention if you want to transfer them to a separate PlaneShift installation. If you wipe your PS settings, they'll get deleted; but so will be your logs and screenshots.
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@ Erebey:
Personal quest notes are stored as local file on the PC you used. You can play your character on different PCs, but the personal quest notes won't spread among them.
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A few updates,
There were some lingering bugs with this work, most of which has been sorted out now. A few quests have been reported as bugged which I have fixed and will try to get loaded onto Laanx soon. And all the action locations should work again, like the enchanting locations.
I think the quest notes are a big plus. And Erebey, your own personal quest notes can vanish if you reinstall since those are among your own logs I think. I'm assuming these new ones won't be likely to vanish in this way.
The quest notes -ARE SERVER SIDE- so will always and forever be available to you unless a Dev deletes them (very unlikely, in fact I'm not even sure why i mentioned it).
In regard to the glyphs, Chill... the mechanical locks should have been added to the circles from day one but for some reason were not added, but are now, and are not as stringent as the initial IC locks were. And are a mechanical way of letting you know you can't gain 'master rank' in opposing ways.
.. these kind of changes to magic are a serious settings regression... bla bla bla... the current magic system can be considered crippled.
What a funny, exaggerated and RIDICULOUS statement to make... As always MECHANICS do not always match SETTINGS!! This is in NO WAY a settings regression or in any way CRIPPLES the magic system, it is an addition to the mechanics that enforces settings. The short term(?) side effect is that SOME (not many 2 or 3) glyphs will be harder to get.
It would be far more pleasurable and useful to hear you thank the Devs for the massive amounts of their FREE TIME they spend in making this game for everyone... Thank you Ligh, bilbous, Shurrim, Candy, Cirerey, Taya (50% of what you said), Tessra, Lilura, Mariana, Karzela, Zantatous, Zerxzz, Jaycol, Waemaiy and others who have thanked us. The Devs, and I'm speaking personally love when our work is appreciated.
Glyphs do 'appear in nature' but there are IC complexities to these which will become apparent soon, once i get some books written on the subject. But in short they do not appear in a useable form and not every glyph is equal in occurrence, but that doesn't really matter. You want more glyphs quickly then pester GMs to get on and auction some off.
If I changed the settings tomorrow to say there are 1,984,279,914 different glyphs and you need all of them to cast the only possible spell it would probably take as many years for us to make them, if not more. No concern that you can state is one that the small settings department (I say small because there are currently 2 Devs and 3 prospects in settings so it takes A LONG TIME to get stuff done) has not already talked or thought about. There are quests and other pieces being worked on to address the difficulties in getting some glyphs, but they are not at the top of things that I or other settings people are working on in the next month or so.
If you feel so overwhelmingly that the fact that a few glyphs are hard to get is destroying the game for everyone then feel free to join as a settings prospect and help make and improve the game (Taya already is, which is awesome). After I gave up my free time to be a GM I then volunteered my free time to be a settings prospects to help make the game and my contributions meant I was promoted to an associate developer (all this happened at about the same time as Mordaan volunteered his free time). Just us two (2, 1+1, deux etc..) have made huge improvements to quests and how the quests work and the majority of the new quests and other little pieces added in the last year have been down to us two.... So imagine how much more we could do if the dedicated team doubled to four!
So this is a comment to everyone, we already know whats wrong, we are not ignoring it. We are working to improve the game all the time. And I'm sorry to say it, but discussion is cheap, easy and free. Getting stuff done is hard.
So it's not that we don't know about the problems, or that we don't care about the problems. It's that we don't have time to do everything immediately.
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What a funny, exaggerated and RIDICULOUS statement to make... As always MECHANICS do not always match SETTINGS!! This is in NO WAY a settings regression or in any way CRIPPLES the magic system, it is an addition to the mechanics that enforces settings. The short term(?) side effect is that SOME (not many 2 or 3) glyphs will be harder to get.
More like impossible? Any good change and improvement you make is very appreciated, but when it's a regression - I won't hesitate to call it such. Not for the sake of deriding your work, but for the sake of you avoiding such things in the future. Changes can be introduced without making things worse for the players. Since quests are the only way to get some glyphs now, GMs indeed can compensate that, providing some other ways to get what is now locked out because of mechanics falling behind the settings. But would they? I doubt. If they would - it'll mitigate the issue.
You think about it from purely development perspective, and you are right - development resources are limited and you can't implement every mechanics feature to match the settings right away. But when you take features away with reasoning that it's for matching the settings (while really it's making things worse settings wise), one can't accept it as a right change. I.e. no one was pushing you to lock out master quests, until you figure out ways to provide all glyphs with alternative methods. But you rushed to lock them out without taking care of the later. That was a wrong order of changes, that's what I was basically trying to say.
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Hi
From my point of view Gilrond, they would implent more High level Glyphs (reward from master quests), it will reduce the number of 6 ways maxed mages. noone will try to max the 6 ways anymore as they will not be able to get the Glyphes...
Just my 2 trias.
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My last post prompted one player to contact me about helping with settings which is fantastic as I didn't expect any to. If any one else would like to join him(?) please don't hesitate form contacting me we can always do with the help. The first thing you'd be asked to do is come up with a piece of content on any topic to create. So even if you only want to do one book or piece of work you would love to see in game you can.
I hope to see my in boxed filled
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From my point of view Gilrond, they would implent more High level Glyphs (reward from master quests), it will reduce the number of 6 ways maxed mages. noone will try to max the 6 ways anymore as they will not be able to get the Glyphes...
As I said the problem is not in blocking master ranks of different ways (having high level in all ways should be possible without being a master in some circle by the way, if not - it contradicts the settings. Example - Shindrok). The problem is that there are no alternative ways to get glyphs which come from the master quests at present. There is no such thing as high level glyphs - there are high level spells. Glyphs are generic, and can potentially create any kind of spells (from low to high). And essentially casting spells doesn't depend on political/social fact of belonging to a circle.
So, as Venalan pointed out, GMs can help with providing the missing glyphs until settings department will figure out other ways to get them to players.
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First let me thank the devs for the steady and nice progress.
For the glyph question, a simple (?) solution comes to my mind. What would happen if in repeatable quests a small probability to gain rare glyhs were implemented -- instead of flooding the place with mind glyphs. Just like happening with weapons and armor.
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What would happen if in repeatable quests a small probability to gain rare glyhs were implemented -- instead of flooding the place with mind glyphs. Just like happening with weapons and armor.
Hmm, interesting approach. I don't think we currently have the ability to randomize quest rewards. We can at least look into it, though.
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Random glyphs can be added as rare loot as well (they used to be lootable long time ago, I've heard). That can provide another alternative source for them and prevent ridiculous situations like paying millions for a Sphere glyph and etc.