Priorities according to Rieto

[Rieto Peyuzar]

First of all, I would like to thank the devs for their magnificent work. I know they do it in their free time, and the intention of this thread is not to dog them with \"hurry up\" or anything similar.

First priority: Server wipe
If you are gonna do it, do it. We know it\'s necessary, but truly, the haunting reality that everything you\'re doing is completely useless is ruining the game for everyone. Sure there are those of us who play for fun, but how many guilds have fallen because of inactive members who are \"waiting for the server wipe\"? How many players have left and won\'t show up for a really long time? The truth is that it\'s all depressing, and that if you really need to do it, you should try to make it your top priority to get it over with quick. Everything that needs to be done before the wipe should have priority over all else. It\'s killing the game\'s fun in the exact same way that fire alarms during english class don\'t.

Second priority: Monster loot.
How many monsters actually drop stuff when you kill them? My limited knowledge only hints at rats and tefusangs. How many monsters actually are there? I can think of at least 5 kinds of baddies that give you a big heap of \"xxx has nothing to be looted\". How many HUMAN (not really human but you know what I mean) monsters are there? What is that thing rogues stab you with? Yes, a broad sword, and yet it seems to disappear when you try to get anything out of his body there is nothing. What about fanatics? they may be foaming at the mouth but they still wear clothes. and those big brutes in the arena? they\'re way too hard to take down for them to give you nothing...

Right now the only reward killing monsters gives you is experience. Experience is USELESS without money. I, personally have 94 progression points and not a dime to use them with. I\'m sure there are those who don\'t have this problem, but then i\'m just as sure there are dozens of others with my same problem. Mining is extremely tedious and not really worth the effort, for more than one reason (see priority 1 for one of them). the only monsters that do drop items (if you\'re dyslexic, tefusangs and rats) are at an EXTREMELY wide skill gap. Nobody can go from killing rats to killing tefus, and there is a similar gap in the reward too. A rat gives you 7 tria worth of loot, a tefu gives you 15 or so. the massive difficulty gap doesn\'t leave you much choice but to wander the sewers endlessly until you can face a tefu. The solution? raise the sale price on tefu loot to about 20-25 tria and give more monsters items. Gobbles for example could be skinned, clackers could have their pedipalps removed, all with a scaling price ladder as difficulty increases.

Just my 0.02$

[DaveG]

1)  The server wipe will be to fix \"exploits, cheaters, and bugged accounts\".  They won\'t do this until the causes of the \"exploits, cheaters, and bugged accounts\" are fixed first. (character creation glitches, dark red potions, disappearing/spawning items, trade glitches, autorun glitches, etc, etc, etc)  Don\'t worry about the stupid wipe.  When some of the bigger updates are added, we\'ll need it.  It\'ll essentially be a whole new game, and you won\'t care.  Besides, the devs are using the definition of \"soon\", meaning at some point in the future...  eventually...

2)  Duh... I\'m far more concerned with the whole crashing thing at the moment, though.  Some of this is a recent anomaly, unfortunately.  In the past months, the rat population in the sewers plummeted, and the stances system broke.  Newbies had it bad, but now they\'re screwed.  Once you get stronger, you can go after the rouges that actually drop those broad swords.  But, there\'s only 4, the drops are uncommon, and they\'re usually crowded.  But yea... loot sucks... this is the most common complaint.  They\'ll get to it when the get to it.

3)  PP is useless.  I have thousands.  Money is the obvious bottleneck.  The general consensus around here is that the ideal system would do away with PP, and just have training for the lower levels in a skill.  After the apprentice period, training would be gradual with use of the skill.  This would be a total overhaul of the system, so don\'t expect it for a while.

If you want more info on these things, search the forums.  There\'s allot of posts on these subjects...

[Leeloo]

Having the wipe too soon will just make sure that there will be another wipe later. Hurrying it would be a bad decission.

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Leeloo
Having the wipe too soon will just make sure that there will be another wipe later. Hurrying it would be a bad decission.

That is exactly true. However, an occasional wipe would help RP, since grinding / levelling will be next to useless so it\'ll keep it to a minimum.
@ Rieto: It does not ruin anything for me.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Sure there are those of us who play for fun

ROFL! If you are not playing for fun, why are you wasting your time \"playing\" this game?

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
A rat gives you 7 tria worth of loot, a tefu gives you 15 or so

The rat loot has increased in value: it is now 10 T per rat.
The tefusang tooth is worth 16 T

As for \"increasing the reward for killing\": PS is not about killing. It is about roleplaying. Thus, you kill for two reasons:
1) your char has realistic need to do so or
2) you need to advance a skill in order to be able to RP properly.

The usual MMO\"RP\"G notion of
3) you kill because that makes your char better

does not really apply to PS.

[Moogie]

The purpose of a tech demo is allow people to test it. We don\'t expect anyone to actually be able to have fun yet.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by Seytra
That is exactly true. However, an occasional wipe would help RP, since grinding / levelling will be next to useless so it\'ll keep it to a minimum

...

The usual MMO\"RP\"G notion of
3) you kill because that makes your char better

does not really apply to PS.

Unfortunately, this doesn\'t really describe PS, yet.  The stats/skills system as is currently exists forces powerleveling.  It was intended to do the opposite, but that\'s the way it is.  Not taking into account the ease of ignoring monsters at the moment, if you want to go anywhere you are at risk of monster attack.  Without an insane ammount of money, you will never be able to go anywhere safely but the sewers.  (newbies now have it much harder than just a month ago)  You\'d be force to RP in a very ristricted area, thus ignoring most of the game.  The changes neccisary to fix this will be drastic, and will make the wipe required.  At that point, I\'ll be happy to see it.

[Rieto Peyuzar]

@ Rieto: It does not ruin anything for me.
Quote:
Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Sure there are those of us who play for fun.

Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
ROFL! If you are not playing for fun, why are you wasting your time \"playing\" this game?

In that paragraph I made it clear that I count myself among those who DO play without regard for the fact that it\'s pretty much useless... Why the hell is everyone so quick to flame? It\'s not like you hade a base or anything, you read wrong....

Quote:
Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
A rat gives you 7 tria worth of loot, a tefu gives you 15 or so

Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
The rat loot has increased in value: it is now 10 T per rat.
The tefusang tooth is worth 16 T

I put those values up from memory of a few months ago, it\'s not like one could check or anything, like there are any rats at all?

Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
As for \"increasing the reward for killing\": PS is not about killing. It is about roleplaying. Thus, you kill for two reasons:
1) your char has realistic need to do so or
2) you need to advance a skill in order to be able to RP properly.

But your char DOES have a realistic need to do so. You can\'t begin another skill without money and there is no alternative to killing when you\'re right off the creation scree. Unless someone invests in you or something. Without money you can\'t advance.

The usual MMO\"RP\"G notion of
3) you kill because that makes your char better

You say it as if PS were something so completely different. It is different in very many ways, but most of the rules still apply. You do neeed to kill stuff to make your char better. And there will ALWAYS be powergamers, no matter what. You can \"enforce\" rp all you like, there will always be a guy or two who play for the sake of being the best and nothing more.

Quote:
Originally posted by Moogie
The purpose of a tech demo is allow people to test it. We don\'t expect anyone to actually be able to have fun yet.

Well yeah, but if they want anyone to test it for them they need to make it appealing. I remember when I was playtesting vendetta online in the very early days, it was as bug-ridden and frustrating as PS is now, but despite the fact that you randomly ran into asteroids, you were still having quite a bit of fun trying not to.

The objective of this thread wasn\'t to piss people off. It was to wake up the devs, be objective, do the important things first. we can do without fancy graphics and sound, the important stuff is to make it work right, trimming on the edges comes afterwards.

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
The objective of this thread wasn\'t to piss people off. It was to wake up the devs, be objective, do the important things first. we can do without fancy graphics and sound, the important stuff is to make it work right, trimming on the edges comes afterwards.

I was under the impression that this is what\'s been happening?

[Seytra]

Originally posted by DaveG
Unfortunately, this doesn\'t really describe PS, yet. The stats/skills system as is currently exists forces powerleveling. It was intended to do the opposite, but that\'s the way it is.

I wonder where you picked that up. There is no need to powerlevel at all. a skill system does not enforce powerlevelling. It can make it easier to do, but not enforce it. The state PS is in ATM requires grinding in order to level, yes. However, this is not a flaw in the skill system, it\'s an effect of the very limited set of available skills.

Originally posted by DaveG
Not taking into account the ease of ignoring monsters at the moment, if you want to go anywhere you are at risk of monster attack. Without an insane ammount of money, you will never be able to go anywhere safely but the sewers. (newbies now have it much harder than just a month ago)

I don\'t see any problem in this. The MOB AI is so dumb that they won\'t even manage to run after you if you take a turn around a rock. Yes, the AI will not cease following you, but it has a bug: if you managed to run off once, it will not attack you. It will simply walk past you. Therefore, there is no real danger in that. One can even completely disregard Ulbernauts.

Originally posted by DaveG
You\'d be force to RP in a very ristricted area, thus ignoring most of the game.

I can safely say that I have been RPing in almost every place except the plaza, and I never have seen anyone getting into danger. The aggro radius of the MOBs is quite small, you can easily sneak past them, outrun them and then ignore them. You can\'t run through them, ignoring them anymore, but this is a benefit IMNSHO. Trying to RP almost anything while standing next to a Trepor and an Ulbernaut is unrealistic and thus not good RP anyway.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
The changes neccisary to fix this will be drastic, and will make the wipe required. At that point, I\'ll be happy to see it.

What changes do you envision? I think the MOB AI needs to get smarter and the MOBs need to be able to run, yes. MOBs are not there to be killed all the time, but they are also not there to be ignored, either. Try that with a lion IRL.
However, I also know that this is a very very hard thing to do, nd this won\'t happen anytime soon.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
@ Rieto: It does not ruin anything for me.
Quote:
Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Sure there are those of us who play for fun.

Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
ROFL! If you are not playing for fun, why are you wasting your time \"playing\" this game?

In that paragraph I made it clear that I count myself among those who DO play without regard for the fact that it\'s pretty much useless... Why the hell is everyone so quick to flame? It\'s not like you hade a base or anything, you read wrong....

I think I had a lot of base, but whatever. You say you \"play it despite you find it useless\". This doesn\'t imply fun. In fact, it sounds more like you play it because of other reasons. Yes, we are testing it, and testing it is a valid reason to play. However, in this case, there is no reason for ou to be unhappy with the wipe, because if you\'re testing, you don\'t need to care about the wipe, since you\'re not testing the wipe.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Quote:
Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
A rat gives you 7 tria worth of loot, a tefu gives you 15 or so

Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
The rat loot has increased in value: it is now 10 T per rat.
The tefusang tooth is worth 16 T

I put those values up from memory of a few months ago, it\'s not like one could check or anything, like there are any rats at all?

There are. One in the arena, one or two in the sewers, one in the hills and ~six in Ojaveda.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Quote:
Originally posted by Seytra
As for \"increasing the reward for killing\": PS is not about killing. It is about roleplaying. Thus, you kill for two reasons:
1) your char has realistic need to do so or
2) you need to advance a skill in order to be able to RP properly.

But your char DOES have a realistic need to do so. You can\'t begin another skill without money and there is no alternative to killing when you\'re right off the creation scree. Unless someone invests in you or something. Without money you can\'t advance.

No, absolutely not. This is not your char\'s need. It is the player\'s need to get around the completely OOC restrictions of the game. From your char\'s perspective, there are no bugs, the entire world exists, all skills work flawlessly and first and foremost: your char is doing what it is supposed to.

So this is 2), not 1).

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
The usual MMO\"RP\"G notion of
3) you kill because that makes your char better

You say it as if PS were something so completely different. It is different in very many ways, but most of the rules still apply. You do neeed to kill stuff to make your char better.

Obviously you confuse the state PS is in implementation-wise with what it is supposed to be(come). Right now, there is barely an alternative to killing, yes. But this is not by design, but simply because the rest isn\'t done yet! The argument of yours is like saying \"This table cannot be used to put anything on\", when the \"table\" consists only of two legs because the rest hasn\'t been manufactured yet!

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
And there will ALWAYS be powergamers, no matter what. You can \"enforce\" rp all you like, there will always be a guy or two who play for the sake of being the best and nothing more.

This is true, but is this any reason to cater to them? Is this a reason to make them feel welcome, or at home? No, it is, at best, a reason to try to make it as hard to do and even harder to compare oneself to others, in order to minimise the number of these people.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Quote:
Originally posted by Moogie
The purpose of a tech demo is allow people to test it. We don\'t expect anyone to actually be able to have fun yet.

Well yeah, but if they want anyone to test it for them they need to make it appealing. I remember when I was playtesting vendetta online in the very early days, it was as bug-ridden and frustrating as PS is now, but despite the fact that you randomly ran into asteroids, you were still having quite a bit of fun trying not to.

I find it sufficiently appealing as it is, and looking at the number of people who stay for a long time I\'m not the only one. We don\'t need everyone to test. In fact, we are building and shaping the future community of PS, and thus we must already take great care whom we accept and whom we reject. It is not the number of testers, it is the quality and mindset of them that matters.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
The objective of this thread wasn\'t to piss people off. It was to wake up the devs, be objective, do the important things first. we can do without fancy graphics and sound, the important stuff is to make it work right, trimming on the edges comes afterwards.

The devs will do what they feel like doing, just as in any hobby project. They are not working for us, they are not in need to be woken up.
The only \"wake up call\" that I would want to make is that they should more often consider what PS\'s goals are.
In this light, as I have said elsewhere before, implementing combat first was a mistake, and the duelling points are nothing but a slap in the face of every RPer, as are the extremely lax naming rules and the even more lax way some GMs \"enforce\" them.

[Rieto Peyuzar]

Originally posted by Karyuu

I was under the impression that this is what\'s been happening?

Ahem:
\"2005.06.03

     
You can update your clients through the updater application to get the following updates:

- Laanx temple has been expanded adding a new room in the upper level.

- The sewers have been lit up a bit, and many torches have been added and fixed.

- Jayose library has been expanded, with new shelves types and more space to walk.

- We added few new faces variations for the ynnwn male characters. You can see those new faces in the char creation.

- The game now supports the feature to add a description to any static object (like trees, statues, roads, stones, furniture, etc...). We just started using it, but you can right click on the book in the new room of laanx temple to get its description. We plan to add many descriptions to give more deepness to the background.

Enjoy!\"

I think I\'ve said enough.

[dragonfire999]

*AHEM*
Major User-Visible Fixes:

* A number of bug fixed on Hydlaa level.
* Updated/fixed some spell effects
* Fixed that you could freely PK players that were just joining the game
* Fixed that if you opened a window during autorun, you could run forever
regardless of stamina.
* Fixed that when you died, you could still turn your remains with mouselook.
* When a character is attacked, its stance resets to \"full defense\".
* Fixed that tab completition was sometimes changing chat command to /tell
from e.g. /say.
* Fixed that when negative HP rates lowered HP to zero, the character
was not killed.
* Fixed that vitals were not adjusted when they were at maximum value.
This means that negative rates (e.g. spells) were not always applied.

There are some known bugs we will fix soon:

*Flickering of a rectangle region near the connection between hydlaa plaza and the new East Hydlaa map
* Pssetup may crash on some systems
* Chat sometimes doesn\'t scroll down to follow new text
* Using the \"load all levels\" option will give you some wrong textures here and there (example laanx temple).

Thanks for your continuous support, let\'s make PlaneShift a great online role playing game!

 
    Bugs fixed

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Ahem [...]

Right back at you ;) When you take the amount of actual new visible content and compare it to the work done behind the scenes on bug fixes and code improvement, you\'re looking at a very small percentage. What you quoted from the CVS was the entry of one single day. Somehow you think that shows the devs\' entire progress?

[Rieto Peyuzar]

Originally posted by Seytra

I wonder where you picked that up. There is no need to powerlevel at all. a skill system does not enforce powerlevelling. It can make it easier to do, but not enforce it. The state PS is in ATM requires grinding in order to level, yes. However, this is not a flaw in the skill system, it\'s an effect of the very limited set of available skills.

I agree with dave on this one, powerleveling is not enforced per se, but there is only that to do.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
The changes neccisary to fix this will be drastic, and will make the wipe required. At that point, I\'ll be happy to see it.

What changes do you envision? I think the MOB AI needs to get smarter and the MOBs need to be able to run, yes. MOBs are not there to be killed all the time, but they are also not there to be ignored, either. Try that with a lion IRL.
However, I also know that this is a very very hard thing to do, nd this won\'t happen anytime soon.

1) I didnt post that :p
2) dave is right, the difference between now\'s PS and the PS after the wipe will be enourmous though i don\'t think AI will be the greatest difference.

I think I had a lot of base, but whatever. You say you \"play it despite you find it useless\". This doesn\'t imply fun. In fact, it sounds more like you play it because of other reasons. Yes, we are testing it, and testing it is a valid reason to play. However, in this case, there is no reason for you to be unhappy with the wipe, because if you\'re testing, you don\'t need to care about the wipe, since you\'re not testing the wipe.

I do have fun, I rp . And I don\'t find it useless, it is very productive actually, we\'re playtesting it. I meant useless char-wise it\'s not useful. Say you get lvl 50 in shield handling, it\'s an acheivement, but why work so hard when it\'s all going down the drain? Of course, this doesn\'t prevent you from having fun, but you have to remember that not everyone is as loyal to PS or even to RP as you are. I\'ve seen potentially great guilds and awesome people go straight to hell because the members got tired of waiting for the wipe. And about me having another reason to play? Yes I do, thee dev team had the decency to make a mac version of PS, an effore not made by very many. I feel like I have to return the favor in some way or another, which is why I playtest it for them and advise  in the help channel as much as I can.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
Quote:
Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
A rat gives you 7 tria worth of loot, a tefu gives you 15 or so

Obviously you confuse the state PS is in implementation-wise with what it is supposed to be(come). Right now, there is barely an alternative to killing, yes. But this is not by design, but simply because the rest isn\'t done yet! The argument of yours is like saying \"This table cannot be used to put anything on\", when the \"table\" consists only of two legs because the rest hasn\'t been manufactured yet!

I see your point, but what I mean is that you do need money to begin whatever your char really does. For example if your char is a miner you will need a pick, and a few levels of mining training. All this costs money, and how do you get money from scratch? you kill stuff, rp or not, you need an initial amount of tria to get started, so unless someone provides that for you, you go kill rats.

This is true, but is this any reason to cater to them? Is this a reason to make them feel welcome, or at home? No, it is, at best, a reason to try to make it as hard to do and even harder to compare oneself to others, in order to minimise the number of these people.

Powergamers thrive anywhere a skill system exists. It doesn\'t matter if you penalize him for powergaming, he can still take on an army of the toughest monsters and win. besides, there is such a thing as a power-rper, how hard is it to say your character is one who cares not about money or politics, but solely about his skill with the blade? Or in contrast a man who cares only about being the richest guy around, with the most stuff or the most wealth, no matter the way he attains that objective?

I find it sufficiently appealing as it is, and looking at the number of people who stay for a long time I\'m not the only one. We don\'t need everyone to test. In fact, we are building and shaping the future community of PS, and thus we must already take great care whom we accept and whom we reject. It is not the number of testers, it is the quality and mindset of them that matters.

Although I completely agree with you on this point, I must reiterate that not everyone thinks as you do. To you and me PS is a haven of RP and an example of what an MMORPG should be like. To young, ?b3r-1337 billy, it\'s a place where you need to talk like you have a bug up your ass and act like a geek. This is an RPG, and because of that the need to RP is obvious, but forcing people to isn\'t the solution. I think there are enough precedents of forcing the general public going wrong to prove my point. Besides, do you think the devs would like it if after they make a jewel like PS it ends up being played by a grand total of 30-60 people? I don\'t think so. I reiterate that it has to be appealing to a lot of people, and also that a lot of different people have a lot of different tastes for what they think is fun.

The devs will do what they feel like doing, just as in any hobby project. They are not working for us, they are not in need to be woken up.
The only \"wake up call\" that I would want to make is that they should more often consider what PS\'s goals are.

The point of this thread is defined by that last sentence.

In this light, as I have said elsewhere before, implementing combat first was a mistake, and the duelling points are nothing but a slap in the face of every RPer, as are the extremely lax naming rules and the even more lax way some GMs \"enforce\" them.

Again, I completely agree with you. Production skills should have come first, and dueling points should be cmnd+a+delete. My name was made by the random name generator, as I think should be all characters.

[DaveG]

Originally posted by Seytra
I don\'t see any problem in this. The MOB AI is so dumb that they won\'t even manage to run after you if you take a turn around a rock. Yes, the AI will not cease following you, but it has a bug: if you managed to run off once, it will not attack you. It will simply walk past you. Therefore, there is no real danger in that. One can even completely disregard Ulbernauts.

Originally posted by DaveG
You\'d be force to RP in a very ristricted area, thus ignoring most of the game.

I can safely say that I have been RPing in almost every place except the plaza, and I never have seen anyone getting into danger. The aggro radius of the MOBs is quite small, you can easily sneak past them, outrun them and then ignore them. You can\'t run through them, ignoring them anymore, but this is a benefit IMNSHO. Trying to RP almost anything while standing next to a Trepor and an Ulbernaut is unrealistic and thus not good RP anyway.

The AI bugs will be fixed eventually.  You can\'t argue that the game is perfect for RP because it\'s broken...  What I\'m saying is that the game, as it is currently designed (ignoring the bugs for the moment), is not ideal for the level of RP immersion that we want in PS.

I don\'t like powerleveling; it\'s boring and not fun.  Too many games require you to do it to progress with the good stuff, so I\'m forced to mindlessly kill things repediately while I\'m watching TV or something.  PS does not want this stupidity.  Ideally, we want you to get the vast bulk of your character advancements from actually playing the game, and powerleveling would not have enough of a benefit to be attractive.

Originally posted by Rieto Peyuzar
My name was made by the random name generator, as I think should be all characters.

No, I disagree entirely.  My in-game name is my own invention, and is perfectly IC.  We just need fair GMs to be on the lookout for the really bad ones...

[fken]

Originally posted by Moogie
The purpose of a tech demo is allow people to test it. We don\'t expect anyone to actually be able to have fun yet.

hum... well... Ive a question... but I duno if it\'s a good one...
hum... how to ask that?

And if we have fun now is it odd? or bad? or annoying? will people think Im an alien (I swear Im not)?

/me points at the sky and say \"phone home, phone home, phone home\"

suddenly a strange UFO with nice colours (eh Moogie, Kary ! draw it please) came to Earth and Steven Spielberg get out from it and comes to us... And then Steven Spielberg said something odd, something huge, something amazing, something incredible : \"Rieto! Everything you said has been already said before and the devs know what they have to do!\"

OMG Im not sure but I think Steven must be right...