Updates on quests and settings

[LigH]

@ Erebey:

Personal quest notes are stored as local file on the PC you used. You can play your character on different PCs, but the personal quest notes won't spread among them.

[Venalan]

A few updates,

There were some lingering bugs with this work, most of which has been sorted out now. A few quests have been reported as bugged which I have fixed and will try to get loaded onto Laanx soon. And all the action locations should work again, like the enchanting locations.

I think the quest notes are a big plus. And Erebey, your own personal quest notes can vanish if you reinstall since those are among your own logs I think. I'm assuming these new ones won't be likely to vanish in this way.

The quest notes -ARE SERVER SIDE- so will always and forever be available to you unless a Dev deletes them (very unlikely, in fact I'm not even sure why i mentioned it).

In regard to the glyphs, Chill... the mechanical locks should have been added to the circles from day one but for some reason were not added, but are now, and are not as stringent as the initial IC locks were. And are a mechanical way of letting you know you can't gain 'master rank' in opposing ways.

.. these kind of changes to magic are a serious settings regression... bla bla bla...  the current magic system can be considered crippled.

What a funny, exaggerated and RIDICULOUS statement to make... As always MECHANICS do not always match SETTINGS!! This is in NO WAY a settings regression or in any way CRIPPLES the magic system, it is an addition to the mechanics that enforces settings. The short term(?) side effect is that SOME (not many 2 or 3) glyphs will be harder to get.

It would be far more pleasurable and useful to hear you thank the Devs for the massive amounts of their FREE TIME they spend in making this game for everyone... Thank you Ligh, bilbous, Shurrim, Candy, Cirerey, Taya (50% of what you said), Tessra, Lilura, Mariana, Karzela, Zantatous, Zerxzz, Jaycol, Waemaiy and others who have thanked us. The Devs, and I'm speaking personally love when our work is appreciated.

Glyphs do 'appear in nature' but there are IC complexities to these which will become apparent soon, once i get some books written on the subject. But in short they do not appear in a useable form and not every glyph is equal in occurrence, but that doesn't really matter. You want more glyphs quickly then pester GMs to get on and auction some off.

If I changed the settings tomorrow to say there are 1,984,279,914 different glyphs and you need all of them to cast the only possible spell it would probably take as many years for us to make them, if not more. No concern that you can state is one that the small settings department (I say small because there are currently 2 Devs and 3 prospects in settings so it takes A LONG TIME to get stuff done) has not already talked or thought about. There are quests and other pieces being worked on to address the difficulties in getting some glyphs, but they are not at the top of things that I or other settings people are working on in the next month or so.

If you feel so overwhelmingly that the fact that a few glyphs are hard to get is destroying the game for everyone then feel free to join as a settings prospect and help make and improve the game (Taya already is, which is awesome). After I gave up my free time to be a GM I then volunteered my free time to be a settings prospects to help make the game and my contributions meant I was promoted to an associate developer (all this happened at about the same time as Mordaan volunteered his free time). Just us two (2, 1+1, deux etc..) have made huge improvements to quests and how the quests work and the majority of the new quests and other little pieces added in the last year have been down to us two.... So imagine how much more we could do if the dedicated team doubled to four!

So this is a comment to everyone, we already know whats wrong, we are not ignoring it. We are working to improve the game all the time. And I'm sorry to say it, but discussion is cheap, easy and free. Getting stuff done is hard.

So it's not that we don't know about the problems, or that we don't care about the problems. It's that we don't have time to do everything immediately.

[Gilrond]

What a funny, exaggerated and RIDICULOUS statement to make... As always MECHANICS do not always match SETTINGS!! This is in NO WAY a settings regression or in any way CRIPPLES the magic system, it is an addition to the mechanics that enforces settings. The short term(?) side effect is that SOME (not many 2 or 3) glyphs will be harder to get.

More like impossible? Any good change and improvement you make is very appreciated, but when it's a regression - I won't hesitate to call it such. Not for the sake of deriding your work, but for the sake of you avoiding such things in the future. Changes can be introduced without making things worse for the players. Since quests are the only way to get some glyphs now, GMs indeed can compensate that, providing some other ways to get what is now locked out because of mechanics falling behind the settings. But would they? I doubt. If they would - it'll mitigate the issue.

You think about it from purely development perspective, and you are right - development resources are limited and you can't implement every mechanics feature to match the settings right away. But when you take features away with reasoning that it's for matching the settings (while really it's making things worse settings wise), one can't accept it as a right change. I.e. no one was pushing you to lock out master quests, until you figure out ways to provide all glyphs with alternative methods. But you rushed to lock them out without taking care of the later. That was a wrong order of changes, that's what I was basically trying to say.

[Sarko]

Hi

From my point of view Gilrond, they would implent more High level Glyphs (reward from master quests), it will reduce the number of 6 ways maxed mages. noone will try to max the 6 ways anymore as they will not be able to get the Glyphes...


Just my 2 trias.

[Venalan]

My last post prompted one player to contact me about helping with settings which is fantastic as I didn't expect any to. If any one else would like to join him(?) please don't hesitate form contacting me we can always do with the help. The first thing you'd be asked to do is come up with a piece of content on any topic to create. So even if you only want to do one book or piece of work you would love to see in game you can.

I hope to see my in boxed filled

[Gilrond]

From my point of view Gilrond, they would implent more High level Glyphs (reward from master quests), it will reduce the number of 6 ways maxed mages. noone will try to max the 6 ways anymore as they will not be able to get the Glyphes...

As I said the problem is not in blocking master ranks of different ways (having high level in all ways should be possible without being a master in some circle by the way, if not - it contradicts the settings. Example - Shindrok). The problem is that there are no alternative ways to get glyphs which come from the master quests at present. There is no such thing as high level glyphs - there are high level spells. Glyphs are generic, and can potentially create any kind of spells (from low to high). And essentially casting spells doesn't depend on political/social fact of belonging to a circle.

So, as Venalan pointed out, GMs can help with providing the missing glyphs until settings department will figure out other ways to get them to players.

[Pakarro]

First let me thank the devs for the steady and nice progress.

For the glyph question, a simple (?) solution comes to my mind. What would happen if in repeatable quests a small probability to gain rare glyhs were implemented -- instead of flooding the place with mind glyphs. Just like happening with weapons and armor.

[Mordaan]

What would happen if in repeatable quests a small probability to gain rare glyhs were implemented -- instead of flooding the place with mind glyphs. Just like happening with weapons and armor.

Hmm, interesting approach.  I don't think we currently have the ability to randomize quest rewards.  We can at least look into it, though.

[Gilrond]

Random glyphs can be added as rare loot as well (they used to be lootable long time ago, I've heard). That can provide another alternative source for them and prevent ridiculous situations like paying millions for a Sphere glyph and etc.