Fighting through the tedium

[bilbous]

I've been playing this game for a while now and I played a bunch more last year. There are a lot of things I like about the game such as that it is free and sort of open. I think the setting is a fresh take on the genre of FRP. What I don't like is how tedious training can be. The biggest thing I dislike about training is that whatever you do the practice reward is no different but the amount of practice required to advance keeps going up.

Take for instance metallurgy: You start out only being able to melt iron, and then only if you have the book. In order to minimize your training time you have to set out a whole row of single ores to melt so that you get one practice per ore. This unneccessarily clogs up the shared furnace. Then when you are able to put the molten ore in the stock casting you no longer get practice points for smelting. So what you have is twice as much practice needed with twice as much work needed to get it; and the xp rewards are not such that you can reasonably progress as a crafter by crafting alone.

It seems to me that the xp and practice reward should be relative to the difficulty of the task.
For example: Weapon repair; the quickest way to practice weapon repair [without exploiting the stacking anomoly] is to run around fighting with an ordinary dagger, shortsword or axe in your right hand and the best weapon you can wield in your left (I use an iron axe.) Then you go fight whatever monsters you are capable of defeating relatively easily and you repair every slightest nick in your ordinary weapon as you go along. There is no practice or xp reward for repairing that 11 minute Frosty so why bother if you don't need to?

Things that are difficult for your character should give greater rewards.  If smelting 18 iron ore singly gives you 18 practice towards your training, smelting 18 in a bunch should give you at least 9 so there is incentive to do so. If repairing a weapon that takes 20 seconds gets you 1 practice towards then shouldn't an 11 minute repair job get you somewhat more?

Another source of tedium comes from mining. I understand that it takes time to dig in the dirt but does anyone wonder why some people want to have three clients running all digging? I can keep 3 clients digging and never miss a beat but i was told today by a GM that multiple clients is considered cheating so I am not going to do this. I can understand why multiple clients are a bad thing because some resources are extremely limited such as npc opponents in the arena particularly and spaces at the various crafting tools. Other functions such as mining are relatively unlimited ... is there an upper limit to the number of people who can mine in one quarry at the same time?

Sorry if I have been ranting a bit but hopefull I have made a few points that bear discussion. My aim is to help improve the game and not just to disparage it.

[provisionist1]

I have to agree with you on many points; yes, there are some things in the game that are tedious, slow, even downright boring. I am honestly surprised there are not more rpers because it can be much more fun.

Having said that, I have a few points:

First, the game is very much in its early stages, and many of the things you just talked about are incomplete and being tested (well, the whole game is incomplete and being tested). Crafting and weapon/armour repair are very new additions, no doubt they will be modified in the next client version based on our positive and negative experiences with these game concepts. I started playing at version 3.009 and I must say I am surprised and impressed at just how many improvements have been made to Planeshift in just a year and a half, I look forward to every update.

Second, concerning metallurgy and mining: I am sure any real life miner from the medieval era would tell you it was a very dull life, and smiths had to train for several years to become masters at their trade. I personally am glad that it is not super-easy and quick for players to become master blacksmiths. Planeshift would be no fun if one could master the game in only a month of playing, personally I think the game should be much harder. I think it is a shame there are players who can hit at hundreds of points of damage when there was only a wipe less than a year ago.

Third, concerning weapon and armour repair: I agree more depth needs to go into the programming of this, so here are my ideas:
1. The higher the skill one has at repair, the slower the deterioration (reasoning: a skilled repairperson would take better care of his weapons and armour)
2. Maintanance kits or individual items such as sharpening stones should be available for purchase that can be used on weapons and armour to help slow deterioration
3. Different weapons already have a minimum repair skill needed to repair it, but once over that, any additional repair skill points should both decrease the time it takes to repair, and repair the weapon to a greater degree.

I don't understand your comment about the left hand-right hand. My swords deteriorate equally no matter which hand they are in. However, I do agree that repairing a difficult weapon should give more progression points and practice than repairing a simple one.

Actually, this would be even better if it depended on one's skill level. For example, if a player had skill level 5 in weapon repair, and repaired a sword requiring level 1, he would get little pps or practice, and much more if he repaired one that required level 5. Then if he trained to 15, a level 1 repair would yield even less practice and pps and a level 5 less than before when he repaired it when he was at level 5 himself. A level 15 repair would yield lots of pps and practice because it was difficult and challenging.

To the devs; great work, great progress 

Xirius

[Datruth]

Actually, the weapon wielded in your right hand, takes more damage than the one in your left.

You probably haven't noticed it, but you don't need to take my word for it, go try it out.


I disagree about the Crafting part, i'm glad it's tricky, i'm glad it's boring, and i'm glad it's time consuming.

i don't want tons of good crafters, because if there were, it would bring the price of swords and daggers down like crazy.

Just recently i bought a 700 quality SS from a crafter, It increased the amount of points that i hit for dramatically.

I was hitting about 150, and now i hit 300 and higher.

This shows the power of these swords, and they act like /8 or /9, while being a /2.

As for repariing, I agree with you.

I think repairing is something we all need and that being able to repair should be easy and should give you more points for repairing hard swords.

A fix is needed for the repair system.

The combat system is tedious  as well, but i'm glad, i don't want people leveling too fast.


~~Datruth

[bilbous]

i am glad to see some replies to my because it means my ideas are being seen as more than just whining. Let me try to address some of your comments.

I don't understand your comment about the left hand-right hand.

This has nothing to do with which weapon takes more damage, it is simply a reflection of the rule that only the weapon in your right hand gets repaired, therefor I keep a twenty second repair in my hand and can repair it in the time it takes me to get from a gladiator in one spoke to a gladiator in the next or whatever. I just keep repairing that weapon whenever it will take a repair.

This shows the power of these swords, and they act like /8 or /9, while being a /2.

This makes most of the older weapons obsolete. as far as I am concerned the frosties the fires the darks are almost completely worthless due to the time it takes to repair them for me they started out around 11 minutes each. my iron axe with /10 started out at around 70 seconds and I did not have to wait until rank 10 to repair it. At rank 18 it comes in at 32 seconds while the frosties are still at 7 minutes. Conversely I have sharp  broad swords and heavy broad swords which are nearly the same slash as the fire broadsword that repair at a  rate similar to my iron axe. Apparently the silverweave weapons are the same. and yet I have an iron mailed longsword of stone coming in at 8.8 slash that I still cannot repair. It is a relic of the 50+ slash days that I kept because I imagined it had a knockdown effect which no longer seems to be in effect. It might have been a lag effect originally but I didn't sell it when my characters went into hibernation.
So I think a little balancing is in order and have no doubt is in the cards.

Planeshift would be no fun if one could master the game in only a month of playing,

I have to say that this is not likely in any event. I have been playing on average perhaps 8 hours a day for the last week certainly more than the average person can and am nowhere close to maxing out. You can call me a power-leveller and you won't be far wrong ... it is mostly progression I like, but your average player isn't going to be happy with  playing a month of sundays just to get from rank 15 to rank 16.  Of course there are other things to consider like Role Playing but if you are just making it up as you go along what do you need stats or training for anyway?

any additional repair skill points should both decrease the time it takes to repair, and repair the weapon to a greater degree.

more repair skill already means less repair time. One thing I can say about crafted weapons is that they can't be repaired until they are less than 100% so if you get a sword that is 500/50 quality it isn't getting repaired until it is 49.9 and likely will never go above 50 again. At least this is what appears to me to be the case. It doesn't matter though because it then becomes a disposable weapon. If you crafted it in the first place just craft yourself another. This is another area where a balance will surely be found.

[provisionist1]

Wow, I didn't know a craftsperson could make weapons quality 700/50 or more. Personally I think this needs to be addressed as it's overkill, or it needs to take a massive amount of crafting skill to be able to make a weapon of that high quality. Crafting was just implemented, there should be no way someone can make a sword that powerful yet. Again, players hitting for over 300 points when they used to hit for 150, so now the players that hit for 300 can hit for 600. Some rebalancing is necessary in my opinion.

Ok, I didn't know more repair skill decreases the time to repair, but I still think it should also repair the for more if it's an easy weapon to repair; imagine a master repairman (like skill 20 or something) repairing a common short sword. He should only need to use one repair kit to repair it from quality 1 back to 50, whereas a silverweave should take longer and more repair kits to go from 1 back to 50.

Now I'm sort of rambling... I'll remember we're testing these new aspects, but rebalance... please.

Xirius