Is This Game Too Hard?

[Rigwyn]

With all due respect, 200 hours to max a skill does not sound right for DW.

At a little over 150DW, It currently takes me about 2 hours to train 1 level ( 1.5 enchanting diamonds, or 2 hours looting ulbers ). At this rate, it would take me another 100+ hours to train to 200 assuming that the rest of my progress follows a straight line and not a curve. That would mean that the first 150 levels could currently be acquired in 100 hours. I'm very skeptical about that number, but I cannot argue that point as the techniques and time that it has taken to train has changed over the years as the game has evolved.

If I were to try to train a new char to only 150, I would need to train about 1/3 to 1/2 as much AW and possibly some armor skill to at least 30 to 60 or so. Stats also need to be raise gradually so that you can carry more loot per trip and increase your mana and hit points.  In the beginning, I would need to also train a weapon skill in order to loot for money and pp when mana was too low to cast. Add in too, the time that it takes to do the winch quest and obtain a mount. Without that mount, you need to factor in more time to run between the trainer and optimal training spot on foot. Finally, if training DW, you need to do the way quests in order to get better glyphs - otherwise, you are just wasting lots of time and will never get to your goal. With the way quests comes the need to find fellow players to lend you staves and things. 

For a newcomer who does not know all the ins and outs and has no idea which quests he needs to do, it will take much longer.

[Volki]

To those of you complaining about how hard it is to level, please answer this:  Why do you want to level up, especially to the max?  Is it just a desire for completeness, or do you have a plan for using your skill?

In no specific order:

1) Dueling

2) Access to areas with tough mobs

3) Roleplaying a character that actually has the skills and stats he/she claims or appears to have

4) Power

[Bonifarzia]

With all due respect, 200 hours to max a skill does not sound right for DW.

Yes, I think Eonwind really only referred to the fraction of time spent that is used for calculating practice points. As he pointed out, there are other aspects that act as a bottle neck, even if you only look at the gaining practice part.
Linear or curved? For simplicity, consider that the effort to go from N to N+1 scales with N, then the effort from 0 to N scales with N². Let us further assume going from 0 to 100 took roughly 50 hours, then 0 to 150 would take at least 112 hours, and going from 0 to 200 would take at least 200 hours. So the ratio of your numbers seems realistic to me - although it probably takes even much longer plus a few hundred hours running to the bronze doors and back 

[Mouli]

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=41348.msg465752#msg465752
the difference between theory and Reality is so big...
A master mage (with his way boosted over 250), and with stats maxed &  boosted (all around 440), can't even kill an onyx dagger or maulbernaut without having to sit down, and wait for mental stamina regeneration... of course you can use load of potions of regeneration, that give you around 200 stamina point (at 300Q) when your spell consume 400... so one  spell = 2 potions... that gonna be very expensive...

@Jowifi, why training ?
-1 cuz I cant imagine RPing a mage that cant heal himself, a crafter that dont know how to use an hammer or a warrior who can't kill a rat...
-2 because Devs and teams spend so much of their free time working on PS, just ignoring the game mecanism, sound not respectfull to the Devs work,

Overall, Rpers or Players, we are all Testers here, and giving feedback of our game experience is just our duty...
this Thread is not really a complain, has been posted in general discussion... and in my opinion, this game being too hard in some ways, is a fact...
Now, Saying "Why are you complaining ? just don't train..."
I should answer "because we love PS, just because we love it"

[Pakarro]

The mathscripts assigning practice points for every skill have been revised a few months ago, ...
. I guess the biggest problem is maxing out a skill (any skill) requires about 200h of practice time...

Ha, funny. If I could max mining in 200 hours, that would really be nice. On the other hand I've invested so much, it would be a pity if someone could max it in less than half of what I already put in...

[Pakarro]

Just not to be misunderstood: Learning or even mastering a skill is something which should take years. I really don't mind. It is just a part of life, also ic-ly

[Rigwyn]

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=41348.msg465752#msg465752
the difference between theory and Reality is so big...
A master mage (with his way boosted over 250), and with stats maxed &  boosted (all around 440), can't even kill an onyx dagger or maulbernaut without having to sit down, and wait for mental stamina regeneration... of course you can use load of potions of regeneration, that give you around 200 stamina point (at 300Q) when your spell consume 400... so one  spell = 2 potions... that gonna be very expensive...

I heard this argument before, however although nowhere close to this level with buffs ( 175dw, 430cha) I have not run into this problem yet. I HAVE found that not all spells can be cast the same way. Some are better when cast at a lower level - they drain much less mana and cast much faster, while others do well with a hefty amount of mana - they take longer to cast, drain more, but do more damage.

[Mouli]

I know Rigwyn but I was making reference to this statements

actually magic can be maxed in less time but you need to provide yourself a reliable source of mana, stamina, cast the highest possible realm available at your level and with the highest possible KFactor you can cast without failing too much spellcasting.

but for sure, Like Mariana said, I can stand on the rock down there and cast energy arrow for age and maybe kill one...

[Rigwyn]

Point taken.

[Eonwind]

Yes, I think Eonwind really only referred to the fraction of time spent that is used for calculating practice points. As he pointed out, there are other aspects that act as a bottle neck, even if you only look at the gaining practice part.

Exactly this time is not comprehensive of the time spent questing, RPing, rising the stats or acquiring the resources (for crafting) or even walking to the trainer to learn a new lesson.

I've gotten to the point with my characters where I'm not sure there's much value in continuing to level up.  I haven't made it past adept in any Way, I only have two crafting skills above 100, and my highest combat skill is only 32.  I can already kill all the mobs I want to with magic, so there's little reason to level up combat.  There's not much of a player market for crafted goods, and making stuff just to sell it to an NPC seems pointless.  I've done most quests a couple times, so there's no strong pull to run a new character through them. 

It's at the point where I feel I either have to get more involved in RP or quit.   Perhaps this is the goal of the devs and they're just hoping I choose RP over quitting. 

Yes we hope you choose RP over quitting.
However I think you played out most of game content (or the game content you are interested in). Our plan is not to bore the player and we're working to expant content all the time adding new quests, new crafting, monsters. It's a lot of work but it's being added all the time, and it's ontop trying to fix as many bugs as we can.

@ Eonwind:

I don't understand why 200 hours practice time are "the biggest problem of PlaneShift". Are they too many or too few? No, I don't see much problem in the practice time. I see the problem in the frustrating complexity and realism, if at all. I don't play a game that isn't fun; life is hard enough. Therefore I don't spend much time in leveling skills. But roleplay instead.

Not even german soccer team managers are as complex as PlaneShift, I believe. And you know, we germans are the clerks of the world. (More sarc marks?)

I didn't mean practice time is the single biggest problem of PS, but speaking about the leveling system taking a lot of time I'm sure it's the single biggest "bottleneck" (I say that having an overall view of all the rules, mechanism, scripts involving all the system), and yes I think 200h are a bit too much.
Speaking about complexity it's something that could take a whole new topic but just to mention a few things:
1 - class free system (where you are not restrained to choosing a per-determined set of skill) meant to award more advanced "game actions" as the char grows in skill experience has some inherent degree of complexity (think about mechanic physic involving more degrees of movement of a body in space: it's surely more complex than studying a system moving on a 1-dimension spece);
2 - a good GUI can hide some layer of complexity to the end user (so he can concentrate on the action instead of the ui) and we're trying to improve it all the time
3 - some mechanics should be more transparent and written in the player's manual, that's why I started a "strategy guide" http://planeshift.top-ix.it/pswiki/index.php?title=Players_Guide#tab=Strategy_Advice I hope both devs and players can improve over time.

[LigH]

Too much complexity also increases the risk of exploits.

I remember that there was some slightly complex sword making in Gothic 1, where you had to heat, hammer, chill, and sharpen the blade. Each step was exploitable by repetitively trying it in fast pace. So with a little luck and quick fingers, you could receive more than half of the number of used steel as extra blades.

Gothic 2 turned it into one crafting step. No more exploit. Not much realism either, though. The number of steel you could obtain from NPCs per day was limited, though. In a single player game, you could at least sleep.

Every game has different goals, different aspects. What works easily in one, may not be useful in another, at least not without some adaption. Yet, it may point to a valid concept.

[Eonwind]

Too much complexity also increases the risk of exploits.

I remember that there was some slightly complex sword making in Gothic 1, where you had to heat, hammer, chill, and sharpen the blade. Each step was exploitable by repetitively trying it in fast pace. So with a little luck and quick fingers, you could receive more than half of the number of used steel as extra blades.

Gothic 2 turned it into one crafting step. No more exploit. Not much realism either, though. The number of steel you could obtain from NPCs per day was limited, though. In a single player game, you could at least sleep.

Every game has different goals, different aspects. What works easily in one, may not be useful in another, at least not without some adaption. Yet, it may point to a valid concept.

Yep regarding crafting every game can have a different approach, some just require to provide ingredients and find a recipe them the actual crafting is all abstract, some are more realistic, other are in-between. Planeshift has a more realistic oriented way of crafting, someone can like it others not at all. At the moment one of the focus of the rules department is trying to improve data  (when possible) so crafting a single item is overall less time expensive, like making it possible to process many items at time (bulk crafting). Engine side a way to make crafting less manual (like equipping tools and starting a process with a single click) is being thought out, this should improve the gameplay quite a bit.

[Taya]

Firstly - I do not like the current stamina system. I had high hopes for it originally, but after playing with it for some time in game I got frustrated and annoyed. I had previously found 'grinding' way levels while sitting and listening to music or chatting to friends to be a quite relaxing experience. Not always an easy one for sure and I would need to watch my hp and pay some level of attention, but it was fluid and constant with no unnatural pauses. It was the right mix of attention and relaxation. Stamina loss introduced pauses that were, to me, very disruptive to this. I couldn't fall into the same relaxed state of mind that I had once been able to find while levelling. Something that had given me a little time to cool down and clear my head after a long day working had turned into something that I found stressful and unenjoyable instead.

As an alternative, I tried to enchant. I took a way from 184 to 190 by playing around with diamonds, but that was basically an exercise in moving something into a container then ignoring the game and doing something else for a couple of minutes each time. It was soul crushingly uninteresting. I got bored of it within a couple of levels, but pushed to 190 because it was a nice number. Then I stopped.

What did this mean? It meant I was no longer there paying attention to the game and therefore, when people I would otherwise have RPed with logged into the game, I wasn't there to notice them. I started RPing less and less, as I would log in, see no one around to RP with, have nothing to hold my focus while waiting for someone and so would just log out again or minimise the game and forget I had it running.

There are other factors behind why I went from being in game practically every single day to barely logging in of course, but I consider stamina to be the main reason I've not managed to change things since (though the so often absent NPCs also made me abandon an attempt I made at starting over on a new character as well).

One of the other reasons I stopped playing as much was because several friends in game all left at around the same time. Most of them specifically expressed frustration with stamina before doing so.

This brings me back to:

http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=41348.msg465752#msg465752
the difference between theory and Reality is so big...
A master mage (with his way boosted over 250), and with stats maxed &  boosted (all around 440), can't even kill an onyx dagger or maulbernaut without having to sit down, and wait for mental stamina regeneration... of course you can use load of potions of regeneration, that give you around 200 stamina point (at 300Q) when your spell consume 400... so one  spell = 2 potions... that gonna be very expensive...

Now in all fairness to the rules department, I think this is a bit extreme. I can assure you that my master mage can drop any creature in game without needing to quaff potions or restore stamina any other way midfight, even the lovely lavvar itself can't squish my claim to this but...

I worked hard to be able to cast r5 spells. It took me hours and hours and hours and hours and hours to get there. And it's basically pointless to use them. Two imagos while casting r5 spells = no stamina left. This is on a character with maxed mental stats and casting with skill levels in the range of 140 to 200+ (items used for the +).

I know stamina is being looked at and reassessed, but I worry any reassessment will not make a big enough difference and that, for some players, the damage has already been done.

(I also just want to acknowledge that my testing for stamina was done quite some time back - I do not know if there have been changes since, but the odd little bits of gameplay I've given myself since then haven't made it seem so.)


Now with that negative ugh all said and my ranting done, there are some real improvements showing up as well, so I'm certainly not abandoning all hope, but I really feel that stamina, NPCs who go walkies and a few other things really do need to be addressed.

[Volki]

Learning or even mastering a skill is something which should take years. I really don't mind. It is just a part of life, also ic-ly

Reminder: This is a game. People play games to escape life. Players are not interested in games that emulate life with all the same difficulties.

it would be a pity if someone could max it in less than half of what I already put in...

I have spent far too many hours on this game, and I would not mind if newer players were maxing skills at a tenth of the time it took me. I think forcing others to go through the same as you did, just because it was unpleasant, is incredibly selfish. It may not be fair to us, but it is fair for the game and its potential players. And it gives me more people to play with. People who aren't always busy grinding.

[Daevaorn]

This game has been much harder in certain areas before. It's under continuous development and things do change greatly over time, if you have the patience to stick with it and watch it grow. Mind you I'm not saying it's perfect yet.

I want to see who else thinks this game is hard. In fact, I don't want to see anyone arguing that this game isn't hard,

I don't see the point in opening a discussion thread if you are only after getting your own preconception confirmed, and you discourage anyone who is of a different opinion to add theirs. 

Honestly, what's the point? - Oh wait that was a rhetoric question; there is none, I do know already.