PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Talad on April 14, 2014, 06:23:00 pm
-
Hi,
with 0.6.1 we introduced a new progression system for skills and we want to get your feedback on it. Training a skill now only happens through practice and there is no more the need for you to learn the theory from trainers. This means you'll are no longer required to go back and forth to the trainer to advance and you won't be required to spend Progression Points and money on it. Please note this is valid for Skills only (Blacksmithing, Sword, ...), but Stats (Agility, Intelligence, ...) continue to work as previously.
-
One thing I noticed was that there are various quests that will need to be looked at. This is a particular issue with the way quests because you are supposed to know when it is time to get the next rank's (apprentice, adept, master) quest when the trainer stops training you. Now that trainers no longer train there is no indication when you are to proceed.
I think this is a fine experiment although I have heard concerns from people who no longer have anything to spend their money on. I like the continuous learning aspect.
I will post more thoughts when they are alittle less muddled in my head.
-
I more liked the previous system, because now you can train skills without thinking and having the need in searching a trainer.
In my view the economy is failing a lot now, because trias are gained, but there is less to spend them on.
I would love to see a small change, where only progression points are needed to train a skill from a trainer.
Another addition could be that players can train others too, upto the level of training they have.
-
@bilbous
Mordaan and I know very well how much a pain this will be with quests and getting all the dialog to match the new training system. As any references to "go see X for 15 lessons" is pointless now and needs removing.
When it comes to skills like cooking or crafting I think something along the lines of "when you can make X you will be skilled enough to continue and should see Y" assuming there are items that you can start making at the level needed by the quest would be a nice In Character way of putting it. And would be something easily noticed by checking the crafting book. For the Way quests it's a little different as many are odd multiples of 10, like 30, and there are no changes with what you can do when you reach those levels for the players to use as a guild line. I am in the middle of testing a way to make things like this much easier for the player, which will have the npc tell you if you are skilled enough, but I need to test it will work correctly before we can release it. I'll know better later today as I'm playing with the system now.
We are also waiting on the decision as to how much this system is liked (and therefor if it is kept) before we make any in game changes as changing it all back again if this system is removed is not something I want to do.
-
I very, very much like this version of training!! \\o//
Bilbous does have a valid point about the Way quests ... and as for crafting, that would be a nice indication to let us know, through the books....
Thank you all from my tired feet (and brain) :thumbup:
:sorcerer:
-
I don't know you guys but I'm going to miss training beside my Red Way master...
-
I definately prefer the new training system for various reasons, including:
- The old one required to go to an NPC way to often IMHO. And in training fighting / defending usually even to different NPCs as more than one skills gets practiced. Sometimes it meant waiting for the next real time day of playing as a NPC was sleeping
- For players who are not into fighting there now it is easier to spend some progression points on skills. Before it was rather difficult to earn PPs that exceed the PPs needed to rank the skill. My char did recurring quests over and over and over again to do this for example.
- I never understand why a NPC should validate the practice my chars made and are then magically able to do so in an instant. I just clicked train and peng there the skill was leveled
Yet I also see some challenges:
- The new training system shows skill leveling in-balances way more clearly
- The new training system reduces interaction with NPCs a lot
I elaborate on these a bit more:
I see how the new system shows skill leveling in-balances more clearly. So for example it is possible to raise armor skills in no time by equipping good armor, possibly including armor of the Defender and then have a ton of mobs fight against the char while casting Life Infusion as needed. I tried this myself. This doesn´t require botting, and I wasn´t botting. I never leaved the client for more than a minute already for the reason to watch the health of my char carefully. For me this shows that armor trains much more quickly than using a weapon. Another probably inbalance has been fixed before release and this is the famous mutiple pet command trick. But in my perception due to the extent that Empathy doesn´t raise at all anymore.
I think its important to watch out for imbalances like this and fix them over time – without punishing players that take advantage of it as long as they are not botting. Actually instead of needing GMs to more carefully watch for botting I have some suggestion to prevent extreme botting via some kind of thing that is actually natural:
It is utterly unrealistic that any char is capable to defend against to ton of mobs for almost unlimited time or do any crafting work for an unlimited time. At some time the char needs to take some rest.
PlaneShift already has a short term concept for that with physical and mana stamina. Would make adding some longer term exhaustion / recovery cycle make sense? Some value that doesn´t decrease very quickly, yet also takes more time to increase again. So that for example a reasonable time a char simply would need to take some rest (just as in real life)? Say after a hour or two the char needs a rest of half a hour or two or something ike that. It would also give more space for RP as during some times a char would not be able to engage in leveling.
On the other hand that might be overdoing things and adding complexity and it may be possible to fix imbalances and prevent some of the botting by balancing out short term stamina stuff. Actually my char doesn´t seem to exhaust at all by defending herself which isn´t all that realistic. Preventing to be hit requires agility and moving quickly, surely this should be somewhat exhausting. Of cause its important not to overdo things there as this may frustrate quite a bit not being able to practice / train for a longer period of time which is one aspect the new training system addressed (no wait for NPC to wake up).
Aside from that, maybe re-introducing some NPC interaction, but not as often, but more rarely may make sense. So at certain mile stones. It would feel natural to me that you can practice and level a skill to some extent and then need a trainer to teach you a certain edge that is difficult to learn all by yourself. In any way on NPC training: I think it should need some time as well, as I find it unnatural that with NPCs its always "Poof! There you have it.". Then this could be used to allow part of the training through giving tria to NPCs as an alternative way which adds some variety. Yet, this would also complicate things again. On which milestones and how does the player know? In that area I also very much like the idea that players can train other players as this offers another incentive to work together in a team.
Another idea would have equipment wearing out, not only shields and armor and weapons, but also other equipment, yet more slowly depending on equipment, a sickle probably quite slow, a rock pick maybe a bit faster, and armor, weapons and so fastest.. And making the effect of wearing out more clearly. Certainly a q1/300 shield shouldn´t offer much protection anymore or at q1/50 weapon be that useful for attacking. Right now I don´t see any disadvantage in using equipment that has quite reduced quality.
Well in summary I think its important to fix any skill leveling inbalances as these show more clearly now and to have some in game mechanics that prevents extreme botting cause I don´t think GMs can watch out for it 24/7. Aside from that I do think its a big improvement and I would keep the change in general.
I do think that keeping the new system offers quite a bit of new opportunities to develop the skills system further.
-
I don't know you guys but I'm going to miss training beside my Red Way master...
You can still do so for RP purposes.
-
Perhaps an accreditation tax could be developed whereby you can keep training all you like but you only get the full benefit when you pay up. If you don't pay your tax then the next level of training would be slower and the tax rate for the new level would be higher.
For example: A character practices digging starting at level 0, completes the level and owes 50 tria in tax. He can go pay his tax or keep digging. If he chooses to keep digging his practice could be at a rate reduced by10% and his tax for this level would be increased by 10%. If he continues beyond this the penalty will increase to 20%, 30%, ... up to a max of 50%.
If you do this then the current trainers can collect the tax at the appropriate levels where they formerly sold training. By doing this you would minimized the alterations that would need to be done to the quest lines.
This idea is probably a non-starter.
-
I like this very, very much, but I see the problem with potential abuse. It looks like it could very easily be fixed by tweaking the tribes logic so that when a battle goes on for too long, more mobs come in to help - thus overwhelming the AFK player. This could be done in very creative and clever ways.
-
I think the new system is wonderful. It adds a very natural feel to progression, which was lacking before. It makes no sense to have to go "buy" a new lesson to advance skills - speaking as an RL swordsman, a person can become quite skilled simply by developing the intuition needed to fight well, without ever having a single formal lesson. The same is true for crafting/cooking skills - they naturally develop. The new system reflects this quite well, and I think the weapon training is well balanced at the moment.
Accumulating PPs to train anything was a major weakness of the old system, since massive amounts needed to be acquired and this was painfully time consuming. The expenses also got horrendous very quickly, making it difficult to even steadily train a single skill at a time. With the new system, the PPs needed for stats seem to well balanced. It lets a new player get some training in reasonably quickly, but doesn't leave a gaping hole for instant-max characters.
I only have two comments about the new system's balance. A: Ranged training is still painfully slow, even at low levels. I think that the amount of practice needed per level should be slightly reduced. It should still be slower than other skills, but not by as wide a gap as it is now. B: Armor progresses too quickly. Considering how tough the npcs are now (A Cutthroat does a lot of damage to me with 50Q MA, maxed skill, fully defensive stance) this isn't too big of an imbalance, but I think it should be slowed a little bit. Also, since real armor is more of a on/off thing rather than a skill acquired, I don't think that being able to train armor fast is that big of an imbalance. Besides that, from a pure mechanics standpoint, if someone maxes armor but doesn't take the time to train a weapon, all he'll be is a quite harmless but slow to damage opponent.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the new system. The only thing I would suggest changing at all is the practice rate for armor and ranged weapons.
-
I don't know you guys but I'm going to miss training beside my Red Way master...
You can still do so for RP purposes.
It won't feel the same and knowing myself I'll just train somewhere hidden so I don't lag myself other players. If I ever decide to play PS again.
-
I refuse to vote. I liked the old system after getting used to it, and , probably, I will like the new one - after getting used to it.
But I'm not sure if this is adding to player experience. Making things easier is not always making them better. When you rank up more easily, people will do that, creating an inflation of ranks in addition to the inflation of tria and crafted goods already in effect.
Currently, I'm on vacation in New York, experiencing a bad hotel wifi, and no time to play....
Good luck to you all!
-
Prior to this change, magic training was seriously encheapened(tm) anyway, so going from dirt cheap to zero does not make much impact. Prior to that, the cost was ridiculously high.
-
I love the new system, but I think that there are some changes that need to be done.
Currently, these are the most efficient methods of training the basic combat skills:
- Armor: Gather 20+ mobs and go afk in the defensive stance until the npc server crashes
- Weapon: Attack a training dummy with a low damage weapon and go afk in the least aggressive stance, attack again when it respawns and repeat
Perhaps the training dummies could be removed and some changes could be made to prevent excessive afking and make the game play more interesting. The way it is set up now is very uninspiring and encourages players to level up these skills while being away from their screen for long periods of time.
-
I certainly can see the convenience of no longer having to find a trainer for skills, but to be honest I think I would like a compromise between the old and the new system. Perhaps something like only needing to see a trainer every 10 levels, or something similar. To me, it seems like our characters may be self-teaching themselves a bit too much in some cases, and it would seem reasonable to have the trainer be more involved in teaching them.
Also, there is somewhat of a side-effect of this new system, whereas the players can't "freeze" their character's skills to a certain level anymore. That is, if we do an action, we automatically level the associated skill, whether we wanted to or not. If I may, I would like to request the ability to slow down (or perhaps even stop) the leveling of a given skill for players that don't feel as though they are ready to level up for a given reason. I would also understand and accept if there was a reasonable penalty to progression points gained if you slow down/turn off leveling.
That would be my two trias worth. ;-)
Celroc Amaul
-
[...]Currently, these are the most efficient methods of training the basic combat skills:
- Armor: Gather 20+ mobs and go afk [...]
- Weapon: Attack a training dummy [...]and go afk [...]
[...] some changes could be made to prevent excessive afking and make the game play more interesting.
Agreed, but that problem is not really new. Also note:
Hi,
Due to the new training system and to the number of players being caught in the act of botting [...]
Any players caught botting or AFK training their alts by the GMs will have those botted or AFK trained skills reduced by -30 and be banned for 3 days for the first offense. [...]
On topic:
I think the rules change is a courageous and constructive step in the right direction. However, it strongly enhances imbalances in practice gain per time unit, as pointed out earlier in this topic. It is a pity that the population of maxed out characters for a wide variety of skills will raise significantly in just a few days, while future rules adjustments will make it near impossible for newer players to catch up. We experienced this with body development earlier, and I fear it will be the same for many crafts and all defensive combat skills.
-
Hi,
Due to the new training system and to the number of players being caught in the act of botting [...]
Any players caught botting or AFK training their alts by the GMs will have those botted or AFK trained skills reduced by -30 and be banned for 3 days for the first offense. [...]
"Hi, we created this system so you can go AFK while training and max your skills completely, but if we catch you, it won't matter because we're bringing the banhammer down on you."
Good Lord.
-
Hi,
I would like to point out a few things that are being looked at:
- armour skills: have always been too easily exploitable to train, the new system is making things even worse, however we are
- training dummies: we created them to make your life easier while testing various skills, spell and effects, we think they are useful for you in various way and they fits nicely in the arena pit meant for you to train. Don't force us to remove them becuase you abuse this feature.
- economy: of course we knew beforehand removing money expenditure for training will result in the loss of one of the major trias sink in game, however before taking further steps to balance this (and that's something we already have plans for) we wanted to make sure the current training system will stay and we have to go back to the previous system; also increasing a bit the equipment decay is being considered even if won't go back to previous decaying rate (as of 3 years ago) which was a bit too overhead.
- NPC trainers: a known problem as well, however you can expect in the future to have to rely on your trainer if you want to acquire some "special ability" instead of having to rely on them to acquire skill ranks. This already happens for crafting where you need to acquire more advanced recipe books or for magic where you need to visit your trainer to gain further advancement in the training circle of your choice. Also some special abilities or equipment will be expensive in term of trias to purchase.
-
Allow me summarize my thoughts about new training system:
- New system encourages botting and AFK training. It contradicts RP principles, that distinguish PlaneShift from many others MMORPG's - so it is really bad move.
- New system removes trainers. It devalues players / characters knowledge about trainer's location and level, making game less interesting - read "boring". Leading simplifications in a quest system should also raise level of boredom.
- New system devalues tria. No big deal, IMHO - just need more things to spend tria for. Sadly, there is no such things yet.
- New system more natural?? But learning things first is also natural to all people! There are things that can be studied by raw practice, but there also things that require some reading, consulting, etc. - and some kicking from a teacher also!
- With new system, you can stay in the wilderness as long as you wish. But towns is social places, hubs of communication. Making towns less important could have negative effect on social aspects of the game.
My conclusion:
New training system is boring regression!
Please return old system while you still can.
My suggestion:
If you want to combine traninig with trainers with trainerless training - then just allow both! But make trainerless training more difficult. So, by example, if skill theory was trained to next level, it should take 30 min practice to raise it to that level. But in case skill theory is untrained, it just takes 1 hour practice to raise skill.
In this case, training can go by itself, trainers and towns are still valued, no changes in a quest system are needed, botting and AFK training is less rewarding, tria can be spend (or not spend) to training process.
-
I certainly can see the convenience of no longer having to find a trainer for skills, but to be honest I think I would like a compromise between the old and the new system. Perhaps something like only needing to see a trainer every 10 levels, or something similar. To me, it seems like our characters may be self-teaching themselves a bit too much in some cases, and it would seem reasonable to have the trainer be more involved in teaching them.
My thoughts too. I liked it that we could seek out training from NPCs. What I didn't like was having to grind all the PPs especially for it. Personally, I would be content with spending Tria alone as training fee. And adding to what Celroc suggested, perhaps even have special names designated for the Rank ranges; for e.g. "Beginner"(Combat), "Initiate"(Magic), "Apprentice"(Crafting) Level that would be equivalent to Rank 0-30. A trainer would offer the whole "Beginner Level" training from one visit. Then, you pratice from what you learnt and after having completed it, the trainer would tell you which NPCs you could go to to receive the next Level training. Something like it with trainers makes sense to me.
redhound's suggestion sounds appealing too if for one reason or other, a character wouldn't want to train under someone. But at least, keep trainers around for those who would normally have their characters receive training from someone right from the start.
Armor levelling is ofc looking more silly atm. And Body Development too, unless the two ways that I've noticed that give points each time are meant to be fixed.
-
... the new system is making things even worse, however we are
Inattentive? ;)
__
P.S.:
Like your sig, negative Beatrice. :flowers:
-
To make it natural, allow players to learn from consumable books or trainers (meaning this should be a choice). But this should only occur every 5 or 10 levels.
If you don't want players to bot, make it easier for them not to bot. In other words, don't let players believe it is necessary to bot. Ranking up in this game is very hard, and it becomes ridiculous at higher levels. It would be fine if grinding was fun, but it isn't. I never grind unless I am doing something else, like reading or watching a show.
Personally, I don't see how AFK grinding is a problem. Your system allows it, even forces it. I don't think armor skills should exist, as it only seems to create complications, and I don't see it being realistic. I also don't see how it is possible to abuse the training dummies. It's the same as training on a punching bag. Do you really have to be at your keyboard, mindlessly staring at your screen, while your character trains his skills?
A final thing, which I think everyone has overlooked. When you are grinding, you are wasting time. You are training an imaginary character and spending more time on his skills than your own. You could be outside training your own skills. You could be learning something. Instead, you are focusing your time on a character that does not exist. This is why I completely support AFK grinding and don't care if another player is botting.
-
I certainly can see the convenience of no longer having to find a trainer for skills, but to be honest I think I would like a compromise between the old and the new system. Perhaps something like only needing to see a trainer every 10 levels, or something similar. To me, it seems like our characters may be self-teaching themselves a bit too much in some cases, and it would seem reasonable to have the trainer be more involved in teaching them.
Also, there is somewhat of a side-effect of this new system, whereas the players can't "freeze" their character's skills to a certain level anymore. That is, if we do an action, we automatically level the associated skill, whether we wanted to or not. If I may, I would like to request the ability to slow down (or perhaps even stop) the leveling of a given skill for players that don't feel as though they are ready to level up for a given reason. I would also understand and accept if there was a reasonable penalty to progression points gained if you slow down/turn off leveling.
That would be my two trias worth. ;-)
Celroc Amaul
I agree with both of Celroc's points.
Needing to periodically visit a trainer, especially at lower levels (<50? <100?), to learn new skills makes sense. Maybe the spacing could increase as you advance beyond this threshold. This exists to some extent with some of the crafting skills already since you need to do a quest to get the next crafting book. Cooking, baking, herbalism, and alchemy are all like this.
This would also give player a chance to stop leveling a skill. The most IC reason I can think of is a mage not wanting to get too advanced in the opposing Way (since all the archmasters say this can be dangerous) but still wanting to be able to use a few low level spells.
Regarding the armor training issue, maybe give the mobs a physical stamina drain when they attack just like players have. After a period of time (less for weaker mobs, more for stronger mobs), they get tired and stop attacking. This would at least require the player to periodically attack the mobs to get them moving again. If the mob hadn't fully recovered, the time until it got tired and stopped attacking would be shorter.
-
When you are grinding, you are wasting time.
Anything you do that doesn't improve your life in some way is a waste of time. So why do anything to improve your character? You can role play in the game without ever using the skill system, you don't even have to honor the limitations of your starting stats if you find people who will go along with it.
-
When you are grinding, you are wasting time.
Anything you do that doesn't improve your life in some way is a waste of time. So why do anything to improve your character?
Because dueling is fun and I want my stats/skills to reflect my roleplay.
-
This is a pretty interesting change to the game, should try to keep the discussion on point if possible. Everyone knew that the armor situation would go like this, so no big surprise there. But I can't really answer the question if this change is generally good or not until it is shown how the trainers will be used eventually. If it is some sort of intricate skills tree type system, that allows for high variance in builds, then fantastic! But for right now, I do think that the tiers should be enabled with the trainers, the straight-up thing is not good. So, if an NPC trained to level X before, then the player now should be able to level through to X, and then visit the trainer, on up through the levels. Straight up does not make much sense, and I would like to be able to choose if the characters could develop a skill further or not.
-
Hi, first of all I want to praise the Dev Team because they put a lot of work, hours and efforts into an experimental system that possibly it could be reverted to the old one.
Then I would like to share some of my thoughts:
1) The new system highlights a previous flaw when training the Light Armour skill: since to level up you don't need to wear any piece of armour it means this is the only totally free skill. Since this is unfair in regards to other skills it needs to be fixed. To fix it is simple: if you are not wearing some piece of light armour you don't progress in that skill;
2) This system could work if applied to stats (it's more natural that if you repeatedly perform some tasks you raise the stat involved) and not to skills. In my opinion when training a skill it's natural to have "some checkpoints" with the trainer, so for example could be better each 10(or so) levels to meet the trainer to advance further and to get special abilities. Since Eonwind has already spoken about a similar system is being developed here we just need to wait and see!
3) If you think the current system is impossible to be applied to stats rather than skills (we all know as buying stats is all but realistic), well... think to Body Development. BD it's referred to be a skill, but in my opinion it's a stat: after all you get 4 health points each BD level... and it doesn't fit the definition of "skill". So if BD can be raised without a trainer, all the stats can do the same.
4) I would like to remind to everyone that this system was developed because almost everyone were complaining because training is boring/time consuming/hard: now you can't counterweight the simplification brought by this new system with more complex systems aimed to discourage botting/levelling afk and so on. After all who it's quite silly saying that this system encourage botting and afk levelling stealing time to a role play: who is the guy that think "I would like to RP but this system encourages me to leveling so I'll go to grind"? The power levellers will grind with a system or the other and RPers will RP with a system or the other... And you can't say there are less and less RP going because the system encourage grinding: the power levellers will spend more time grinding other than RPing indipendently from everything because they have fun in that way, as an RPer will spend more time RPing because he have fun in that way!
-
I don't think armor-less practice gain is a real advantage for LA, because armor training works just fine with a single set of q1/50 armor. On the other hand, I would have liked to keep my LA skill at zero as during all the years, but accidentally maxed it in rather short time :whistling: (I'm not complaining here.)
I agree that passive progression on stats would be more natural than for skills, but i bet it is really hard to balance - also since some players don't want to have all base attributes raised to the maximum. Bodydev is not the best example, because i think practice gain does not work in a natural way at all (you need to lose a few ten-thousand percent of your max health for a rankup).
Otherwise, I agree with Jawir.
-
... the new system is making things even worse, however we are
Inattentive? ;)
:P ... we are working on a fix.
1) The new system highlights a previous flaw when training the Light Armour skill: since to level up you don't need to wear any piece of armour it means this is the only totally free skill. Since this is unfair in regards to other skills it needs to be fixed. To fix it is simple: if you are not wearing some piece of light armour you don't progress in that skill;
we knew that and it was done on purpose, even if you don't wear any armor at all the system considers the char to wear the "baseclothes" item by default (and it counts as LA on purpose as of now). Without this defensive bonuses from weapons and spells won't work.
2) This system could work if applied to stats (it's more natural that if you repeatedly perform some tasks you raise the stat involved) and not to skills. In my opinion when training a skill it's natural to have "some checkpoints" with the trainer, so for example could be better each 10(or so) levels to meet the trainer to advance further and to get special abilities. Since Eonwind has already spoken about a similar system is being developed here we just need to wait and see!
not exactly... we're going to develop a system that will allow to access more advanced feats/skill uses/special powers (without stopping the skill rank advancement) from a trainer (through quests or buying, ...).
3) If you think the current system is impossible to be applied to stats rather than skills (we all know as buying stats is all but realistic), well... think to Body Development. BD it's referred to be a skill, but in my opinion it's a stat: after all you get 4 health points each BD level... and it doesn't fit the definition of "skill". So if BD can be raised without a trainer, all the stats can do the same.
Current system can possibly be applied to stats as well, however for a lot of technical reasons enabling it for skills is a lot easier than stats and we would like to test the system a little bit before going through a change that will be even bigger than this one.
-
Because there is a strong RP community here, maybe there can be a storytelling approach to this. Perhaps the quests are what level up the skills or even stats (ie if you get a quest that makes you carry something heavy over a long time, you get points in strength and endurance, or a combat quest gives you points in the weapon/armor/magic school of your choice). This way, you get a few skills that level up faster (your primary skills), and the others can develop more slowly in the background for balance. You can even have the current trainers be the ones that offer the quests. As long as the quests are fun (I can see a love/hate relationship involving leveling intelligence and solving riddles XD), they turn the training from an issue of grinding or not to having an interesting story to follow. And it's alt friendly because you can have different quests for different skills, so leveling a strong, plated axe-wielder won't be exactly the same as leveling a fast, sneaky-sneaky dagger stabby guy.
-
A final thing, which I think everyone has overlooked. When you are grinding, you are wasting time. You are training an imaginary character and spending more time on his skills than your own. You could be outside training your own skills. You could be learning something. Instead, you are focusing your time on a character that does not exist. This is why I completely support AFK grinding and don't care if another player is botting.
And that's how I found out that, the more I study, the better grades I get. Don't expect me back in PlaneShift until this summer! Unless I get a job, then don't expect me back at all.
-
And that's how I found out that, the more I study, the better grades I get. Don't expect me back in PlaneShift until this summer! Unless I get a job, then don't expect me back at all.
/me waves :whistling:
-
Love the new system. Still takes ages to train up weapons, which I don't like at all but is probably appropriate and good.
Issues: Too easy to kill me. Too hard for me to kill. The trepor in the plaza nearly killed me last night, cut through maxed skill 50/50 plate armor like it was butter. Spiders nearly killed me in the dungeon. They also treated my armor like it was paint. Level 70 axes did not hurt them much. Level 42 dark way taste of death also did not.
Still too hard to get pp.
Tria less of an issue, and people who have mentioned there is nothing do do with their tria have obviously maxed stats. Stats take ages to level up and tons of tria. Other tria burners: Players sell glyphs. When there is a party in the tavern, the spread is extremely good. Hydlaa is inviting to beggars and gamblers now. I love having tria in my pocket and in the bank.
All in all love the changes.
-
Ok, I've been watching the game since I left, and even once tried starting a new character so I could provide feedback... immediately I noticed that it's *excrutiatingly* painful for new characters to get PP and tria, and I just sorta gave up... it was too aggravating to try to even get past level 10 of anything and I lost all motivation to continue.
I literally applauded at my screen when I saw you don't have to spend PP (and associated Tria) to train skills. That removes not only the pain of spending hours trying to make money and PP to spend it on 1-2 levels, but trying to hunt down the trainers. This also is much, much easier for newer players to understand; I nearly quit after a week as a new player (about 4 years ago) because of the PP/Tria problem and it wasn't nearly as bad back then. As for stats, it makes sense to pay for those still, and keep a use for PP.
Of course, as with every change to a codebase (especially in a MMO), rebalancing will have to be done. The Way quests would need revision as mentioned, for example. Tria and PP may also need to be watched since demand for both have reduced, as well as the rate at which PP gain is reduced due to skill levels. Regardless, I personally think this is a big step in the right direction and removes tons of the unnecessary monotony from grinding that keeps players never wanting to pick up a sword, tool, or glyph. That said, I've yet to login and try it out; I have to go to work soon...
I'd also like to say thumbs up on the various other 0.6.1 improvements. The stability and memory usage is a HUGE thing; I know people who quit because of this, and I'm not just referring to what happened in 0.5.0. I like the timing of the spawn rate fix for the gems and plants, when money isn't as huge of an issue (picking up plants was the only way I could find to pay for levels on my test char) and you don't have to go from the corner of the world your plants are in to some city far far away to train for one level of herbalism (same for mining). I was afraid of when that would get nerfed, that it would cause major issues for new players and some older ones, but the timing mitigates this. As well, there were a lot of medium/large other undertakings I saw that I'm glad to see done, and reviewing the bugfixes there's a lot of things in there I'm glad to see fixed or added.
I may poke around the game some when I get time. I honestly started giving up hope on Planeshift... I can't properly express how happy I am to see the changes in 0.6.1. The people involved deserve cookies!
-
Nice improvement :thumbup:
-
The new system is an improvement.. mostly for new players.
It's been mentioned above here that rebalance is needed and I do feel the same way. Progression Points become useless for people who trained their stats to the max. So I'd expect an adaptation to that.
Quests need to be reviewed, but I guess that's already a work in progress.
Rebalance the game and this makes a nice improvement.
-
The new system is good BUT when using the skill, it creeps up horribly slow when getting to the next level: From level 50 and on, it almost seems pointless to enjoy using the skills anymore : ( :thumbdown:
If I have 5 + creatures attacking me at the same time, that bar better fill up fast. Otherwise, I clearly have no clue what the point of the new system is.......
-
[...] From level 50 and on, it almost seems pointless to enjoy using the skills anymore : ( :thumbdown:
If I have 5 + creatures attacking me at the same time, that bar better fill up fast. [...]
I overall like the new system much more than the one implemented before. :thumbup:
But I agree that the leveling curve of skills up to lvl 100 or so should be lower than it is now.
Furthermore there is the issue with defense skills. IMHO If you fight multiple unchallanging creatures at the same time, there should be much less progress than if you attack just one challanging creature. Perhaps a way to solve this would be to make the defense skill progress similar to the body development progress.
On the other hand leveling stats might be a bit too easy now. But I don't play very much, so I'm not sure about this.
-
Maybe a little late but here's my opinion. I've always thought the "theory and practice" duality to make PS training unique and realistic, and I would be disappointed to see it disappear.
IMHO a good solution could be to allow players to train a skill without theory lesson from a master (like it is now) but boost the training speed in case he/she decides to do it. The boost could last few levels or a certain amount of time. The advantages:
1) It's certainly more realistic than both the old and the new system. There are plenty of self-taught musicians, artisans and sportsmen in the world, but everybody learn faster with a trainer.
2) No more "damn I leveled up and now I have to go back to the city".
3) Keeping training linked to an economical aspect can be interesting for the character progression strategy. One must "make a living" if he/she wants to progress at a faster place.
4) New players don't need to know about training at first.
5) Last but not least, it saves Venalan and Mordaan to spend hours and hours on correcting NPCs' dialogs (PS development can only benefit from this :P )
My two cents.
-
One way might be to have quests from the old combat trainers at certain levels much like for the ways and crafting.