Planeshift is getting to hard to play.

[Sarva]

Vakachehk as Weltall said you aren't digging in the right area of the mine if you are only getting 5 ores in 20 minutes. I have alts with very low mining skills who can do way better than that just by being in one of the sweet spots in the min. Tin is very easy when you are digging in the right spots as well

[weltall]

actually i'd have to add. to allow /dig with no argument to work (and for never client to right click + click on an icon to dig) we have changed the code which handles mining to attempt all resources, while before it was only the nearest one so the % of success has increased drastically as you could do up to 3 mining attempt in one with the current server data.

[Vakachehk]

Vakachehk as Weltall said you aren't digging in the right area of the mine if you are only getting 5 ores in 20 minutes. I have alts with very low mining skills who can do way better than that just by being in one of the sweet spots in the min. Tin is very easy when you are digging in the right spots as well

Sarva, either you are wrong or the devs wasted a bloody lot of time implementing 'hot spots' which is really useless. I have tested the mines going from one end to the other and they are all the same averagely, that was done awhile ago on Vakachehk before I was banned. I could get around 65 ores in about 45mins 45mins (remember this is at level 16 mining) no matter where I was... strange.

[weltall]

should see the mine many have various hot spots. plus it's not of statistical concern how many items you got over a certain amount of time in different places.

[Sarva]

Vakachehk you might want to read the last post on the first page of this thread which clearly states that location does make a difference. http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34817.0

[MirceaKitsune]

Hope this ain't too old to revive, but I agree with everything being too hard. Especially mining, and training many skills. My biggest issue is being unable to discover some things on my own unless someone tells me how to do them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or anything... just supporting the idea of making it all easier.

From discussion I had in other topics, I got the impression many people rely on other players guiding you through. And that if you can't get past something, you should ask someone you come across in-game to help you. Like I said in those topics, I don't believe having stronger players teach you must be a dependency to be able to do things. I think PS should be fully understandable to someone who is new and starts doing stuff without anyone else's guidance. Some may have not gotten to make friends yet, or want to play alone or not ask others what to do.

All of my PlaneShift friends are offline now for instance (haven't seen them since I got back), and I'm having a very hard time figuring out how to do a large number of things. Some are impossible for me to gather on my own. I actually found this topic while googling for help (trying to find a mine somewhere, but mines aren't marked so without help there's no chance of finding where they are). Yesterday I tried learning some cooking, which was ok thanks to the tutorial quests in Oja that are good. But at the end I needed help from someone on IRC to understand a real recipe from the book. There's also my biggest pain of them all: I'm completely stuck on many quests, because I don't know who to visit next (and where a NPC I need to see is located) and therefore can't continue them. I posted my idea for a solution in this topic, but many players don't seem to agree and believe I should rely on chat logs instead (I was lucky to still have the logs from this spring, but they still don't help me almost at all).

At this moment, I can actually say I find parts of PS unplayable without other players teaching you things, which means a newbie can't do them unless he finds someone in-game to bug with questions (which imo is not a good thing and should not be a necessity). As for skilling, that's also very hard sometimes in my opinion (even though you know what to do there at least). Not complaining or anything again, just saying what I seen and felt on the matter.

[potare]

 I think they should lower the skills of monsters back to what they were.

[Roled]

Ask people who ARE in game... make a new ingame friend. Learn new secrets and shortcuts...

IMHO it doesn't need to be 'easier', we as players 'need' to be more open and more willing to ask for
and accept help.. not a typically socialized skill for most North Americans.. can't speak for the rest
of our global community here...

Just call me "Master of Many Opinions"

Roled
the Buttinsky Elf 

[Illysia]

From discussion I had in other topics, I got the impression many people rely on other players guiding you through. And that if you can't get past something, you should ask someone you come across in-game to help you. Like I said in those topics, I don't believe having stronger players teach you must be a dependency to be able to do things. I think PS should be fully understandable to someone who is new and starts doing stuff without anyone else's guidance. Some may have not gotten to make friends yet, or want to play alone or not ask others what to do.

This was covered Roled. And to be honest, things have gotten more complicated recently as the devs test out new tweaks to the systems. However, if you spend more time roleplaying than trying to make sense of the mechanics, it gets much easier to ignore the rough spots.

[Vakachehk]

I think they should lower the skills of monsters back to what they were.

I agree with this. I don't mind if they have one Mob that is extremely hard and requires a group of max people to attack it. But not every single mob in the whole PS database.

[khoridor]

Ask people who ARE in game... make a new ingame friend. Learn new secrets and shortcuts...

Yet MirceaKitsune's point was that you shouldn't have to. And we can find many reasons for that.

It is indeed wise to ask people for directions, better ways, secrets and whatnot, in a proper conversation, but not so to force people into OOC technical chat because some tools are not intuitive enough. For example, why the need to rely on the fortunate presence of an experienced crafter (or the help channel) to tell you "open your inventory and put the xxx book in your mind slot" when a system message could remind you that?

For quests, it's also fine to ask people where to find a NPC, but it doesn't make much sense if a NPC sends you to another one without telling you roughly where to find her; I would call that a simple omission or inconsistency in the dialog. Easy to correct, if only by adding proper question/answer pairs in said dialog.

[MirceaKitsune]

Yet MirceaKitsune's point was that you shouldn't have to. And we can find many reasons for that.

It is indeed wise to ask people for directions, better ways, secrets and whatnot, in a proper conversation, but not so to force people into OOC technical chat because some tools are not intuitive enough. For example, why the need to rely on the fortunate presence of an experienced crafter (or the help channel) to tell you "open your inventory and put the xxx book in your mind slot" when a system message could remind you that?

For quests, it's also fine to ask people where to find a NPC, but it doesn't make much sense if a NPC sends you to another one without telling you roughly where to find her; I would call that a simple omission or inconsistency in the dialog. Easy to correct, if only by adding proper question/answer pairs in said dialog.

I agree with this, yeah. Although for quests, I'm also considering the situation where you forget what to do, and your chat logs are the only thing you can rely on (if you still have them). I had several ideas on how to "unblock" people who are stuck in forgotten quests though.

One was my marker idea that I linked here (symbols above NPCs you need to see in a quest). A good alternative someone proposed was NPCs you need to visit in quests saying messages to you as you pass by, which I also support. Another idea would be automatically logging what a NPC tells you in the quest notes (or perhaps a new quest window area specifically for this). So when you click a quest, you see everything the NPCs said on that quest. A third idea was allowing people to cancel one time quests too so they can take them again (you can only abandon repetitive quests currently). Not sure if this would cause any issues (like allowing one to get quest items for free by re-taking the same quest), but that way if you forgot what to do you cancel the quest and take it again from who gave it to you, hearing all the instructions and all. But yeah I think a solution of sorts would be good to find.

[khoridor]

Another idea would be automatically logging what a NPC tells you in the quest notes (or perhaps a new quest window area specifically for this). So when you click a quest, you see everything the NPCs said on that quest.

I actually do that manually, by editing the chat log and the quest log. It sure would help if done automatically, but that's an ok workaround for now, for me.

[Vakachehk]

Sarva, you are fooled, it is known, and I have fell for it too, but an older player has told me and many others that it is a fake. Hot spots are not real and never will be, it is possible for the center of the mine to be more likely but it doesn't make any sense or any reason.

But even if 'hot spots' were real, PlaneShift is still too hard to play. Its a game not something that someone needs to spend a lifetime playing. I must say theres more people here agreeing with me than ones stuck on a stupid license that they must disagree. Sorry but no can do, take the complaint in and deal with it, instead of making stupid comebacks that really wont help the game. If I cant even enjoy/play the game for nearly 2 years then how will a newbie, player numbers are at a massive low this would be a reason.

[lilura]

hot spots/the center of the mine are real, on EZPC when the GH was offered to the first guild with 1mill tuxide mapped out the mine so we could find the center and mine there because its the hotspot and we got ores pretty fast for having noob chars and then got the 1mill and the house also on the RP server we did the same for the plat mine in gug when an auction was announced and mined at the center to get more ore ......


and tux is an old player