Originally posted by acraig
Trees: Trees, normal...until you see them on the road to the gold mining spot/magic tower, they are all flat, and a few of the trees are outlined in sky-colored outlines that are apperantly a sign of bad coding.

Hmm, possible to provide a screen shot to have a better idea?

Probably don\'t need one. Within the bounding box of a given tree, the transparancy is... well, global. Literally, the sky (backdrop) is being rendered in that region, not the nearest background object.

Actually, that giant crater is my fault.

I was heading to Oja, and just happened to run across Zanoxx.  As most of you know, he\'s been training his STR very hard, and decided to show me his progress. He got himself all pumped up, and... well, I couldn\'t resist.

I poked him, and he popped.

So, poor Zanoxx - but at least we still have a giant... uh, hole in the ground to remember him by...

Originally posted by RainyShadow
got it... it\'s \"The great advisor-point hunt\"

Hmm... that wouldn\'t sort of be like Karma-whoring on slashdot, would it...

(cough) That all sounds nice and all, but right now... I have a couple thousand PPs and zero cash, thanks to glyphs costing $2k, one single rank in casting being $600, and a 10 stack limit on any item... which, coincidentally, directly results in a 5-fold increase in non-productive travel time.

Mining as an income source is simply not viable as currently implemented.  Between failure rates, stack limits, and \"run times\" to sell and get back... well, you\'re an idiot if you persue it as anything other than a massive timesink while playing SubSpace or something. Personally, I\'d think you\'d have better fun with a ChiaPet... at least it would provide a faster sense of motion or progress.

With Tefs being the best stack-value I\'ve found so far, that\'s $160 per haul. Time spent gathering at the arena is (if you\'re alone) 2 or 3 minutes. If the Tefs are shared, it may be up to 6 minutes.  Run time to the merch and back will be another 5.  Basically, Arena tefs are good for about 22 tria per minute, in the better case. 18 tria per minute, average.

Wildland tefs are worse, since the run to & from is 11 minutes or so. The kill rate averages about 3 per minute, +/-.  Need 10 to fill a stack, so... that\'s 3 minutes of farming, followed by an 11 minute run to/from the merch.  14 minutes per haul, that\'s about 11 tria per minute. Travel times can be cut down in all cases by using /spawn, but that\'s technically an exploit and defeats the game\'s intent. I used to be able to gather about $800 tria in well under half an hour with plenty of time for chatter and play, which made studying a skill progression somewhat trivial while playing. Now, we\'re looking at about 70 minutes... and I will *not* be in a pleasant mood while doing it, since I cannot easily type to people without my toon stopping dead in it\'s tracks. It\'s probably for the best anyway, since what I\'d have to say would not be very appropriate.

Rats won\'t be any better; I suspect they\'ll be worse unless /spawn is abused, since run times and mob competition are significant.  You can easily nail the rats who\'ve fallen off the world, but that assumes you\'ve got the rank (and cash to achieve that rank) to pull it off, and also assumes that noone else has thought of it. After this post, you can assume that they have.

Abuse yields an interesting result, however:  Scroll farming.  Best time on scrolls is 100 in about 17:30, with heavy use of keyboard shortcuts and /spawn.  28 seconds to fetch 10 scrolls depending on server load and network latency, then a little over a minute spent on selling and returning.  That\'s 22 tria per minute with the least effort, but you must ignore the constant /duel spam. If you found it interesting that the temple has become so popular as of late, now you\'ll know why... and it aint because they\'ve all found Jesus.

So, we\'ll pick a ballpark of the best case, which is about 20 tria per minute.  One glyph costs $2000 - that\'s 100 minutes with no interruptions, no mob contentions, just non-stop, mash keys and go... don\'t stop, don\'t walk, don\'t talk.  The bulk of the time will be spent running (or waiting for /spawn)... which is odd for a \"social\" game, since the game does not allow you to chat while running unless you perform various gymnastics with your mouse.

This would probably be great if there were other sources of income, though, but there aren\'t any. I\'d very much like to have all the glyphs, I\'d very much like to step through the various ranks in each \"way\", and I\'d very much like to see how they work (or not), so that the spell/rank behavior can be evaluated. Dumb things like DOTs that reset the mob\'s health when they complete, DDs that suck additional manna as \"power\" is increased with no actual benefit, things like these need a pile of cash to discover and map. And right now, it aint gonna happen, because even the most simple bounds checking is like having your teeth drilled. Tell me if some idiot would be dumb enough to study if training strength actually has an impact on anything. Or \"int\", or \"will\" or anything else for that matter... what retard would bother spending three days to pump a skill fully green, only to discover it isn\'t implemented yet. \"Body\", for example.

The game is early beta. This is not the time to start retarding the economy, especially when every freakin thing that needs evaluation requires cash.

A Kran, out in the wilderness, decides he needs to \"go\".  He squats down, and begins to do his business.

A bold young Enkidukai, who\'s hoping to be known as a great explorer some day, happens by and notices the Mighty Kran.  \"Wow!\" he thinks, and realizing that he needs to \"go\" himself, decides to take this opportunity to commune with this great beast.  He parks alongside the Kran, and waits expectantly.

And for awhile, nothing happens... the two go about their business without a word.

Then suddenly, the Mighty Kran speaks.  \"Pardon me, but when you... go... does it stick to your fur?\"

The Enkidukai is awestruck! His opinion is being sought on the most important of topics!  \"Yes, yes it does! A lot!\" he exclaims.

The Mighty Kran reaches over, and grabs him by the neck.  \"Good,\" he says, and proceeds to wipe.

All we needed was system (most of all dice one). You can do same in PS, easily.

In other words, you needed a means of maintaining (includes tracking and modifying) state.

I\'m not arguing over if it\'s valid or not - it clearly is. What you seem to miss is that once a given state is implemented in-game, you cannot track it with a second source - the game\'s definition of your player\'s \"state\" must be authoritative.

Again, anywhere there is overlap, the game\'s version of \"state\" must be considered authoritative.  Anything outside the defined scope of that state is natural for what you suggest - it is, as far as the game is concerned, stateless.  Again, sword skill (as a dumb example) - if there is no sword skill implemented in the game state, then it\'s fair game for the imagination. Once it is tracked, however, the game must be authoritative, since *it* is the definition according to the game.   I can easily claim that the guy in the magic shop is a master sword trainer before he is implemented, because his existence (or lack thereof) is outside the scope of the game\'s state. Once the game implements a guy in the magic shop, however, my ability to ad-hoc add new attributes to him is severely restricted - I can no longer claim him to be a sword trainer, because the game defines him as not being so... and that *is* the definition that the other 9 billion players will see.

Player death serves as an even more trivial example of why the two cannot overlap. Go pick a fight with a Brigand, and fight him toe-to-toe.  Your master swordsman will make quick work of his foul prey, and the Brigand will lose. In-Game representations of the event will be dramatically different, however...  including but not limited to your corpse being laid out in the dirt, followed by your not being there *at all* after it pops you to the DR.  You can still RP a victory and that the Brigand was defeated, and you survived without a scratch - but in doing so, you flatly contradict the state as defined by the game - namely, that the other 5 people in your party are stuck waiting for you to run your ass back from the City, watching a Brigand stand around with 99% health.

PlaneShift isn\'t an RPG, or an MMPORG.  PlaneShift is a state management system, that manages your paper, pen, and dice.  Once the paper is used to track something, it must be authoritative in how we, as players, perceive that something.  Otherwise, we each have our own sheets of paper, about ourselves (which is fine), and also about each other... and no two will match... if they are allowed to overlap in what they define, they must by definition eventually contradict.

As a paper-based DM, you should certainly know this.

Duplication - pick a healthy mob, target it, and \"/cast freeze\".

Upon success, you\'ll watch the HPs tick away, almost as expected... 100, 99, 98,97,96,95,94,93,92... 100.  No matter what, if freeze is the initial shot, its effect will be \"never happened\" when the DOT wears off.

Once you whack the mob via other means, the DOT\'s effect seems to persist... but any time the mob\'s health is 100, the above behavior occurs.