A few comments now that I've been playing for a month

Discussion in 'New Player Experience Feedback' started by Justiciar, Sep 29, 2019.

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  1. Justiciar

    Justiciar Avatar

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    Hello.
    1. First off I'd like to say that I really like the music/sound. I know that graphics gets a lot of attention for every game out there, and sound doesn't seem to. The general music is reasonably lilty and very appropriate and the dungeon music reasonably spooky.
    2. I also like the wood "rafts" on the swamp roads and the hanging lanterns on roads. It's quite Ultima-5 ish where darkness and light sources were introduced into the overland (yes, I'm that old).
    3. I still am a bit confused by how the economy works, since most materials cost as much as a crafted item unless you have a very high enchanting level and can really zap up those items, which of course doesn't work for food.
    4. Is there a specific reason for having a "batch of 12" potions recipe? It appears to only improve your skill by 1 unit as opposed to the 4 for crafting 4 batches of 3 potions, and there's no savings in ingredients. Maybe for people who want to grab a coffee while their character makes 1000 healing potions?
    5. One flaw I see in recipes is that multi-item recipes don't tell you how many they produce. For example, healing and focus potions don't tell you they produce 3 potions per batch. For recipes that only produce 1 item, that's OK since that's expected.
    6. One major flaw in adventuring is that armed mobs don't have a 100% drop rate for their equipment, for example, a swordsman doesn't drop sword, shield, or armor, a skeletal bowman will only sometimes drop a bow, and so on. It's OK if they drop junk, but rather weird if the obsidian archer you just nailed doesn't have a bow or the obsidian swordsman just has gold and no weapons, shield, or armor.
    Thanks!
     
  2. Cora Cuz'avich

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    They're for people who make a lot of them. The batch limit is 20. If you're making hundreds of them, it's annoying to do them 20 at a time. This way you're doing 20 batches of 12.

    Agreed. It's easier for potions; you're using three empty flasks in the recipe, so you get three potions. Where it gets really annoying is refining; the recipe doesn't tell you how many metal bindings or leather you'll get.

    As are we all. The idea is to prevent players from getting millions of gold by selling crafted items to NPCs for a profit. But it means that practically, items are never worth as much as the materials used. So the crafting economy is scattershot at best.
     
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  3. Barugon

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    But won't you only get 1/12 the experience?
     
  4. Cora Cuz'avich

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    No, and yes. I think you get a bit more xp for the batch recipe (I don't recall off hand) but you will overall get less than if you were to use the non-batch recipe. So 1/12 is probably not correct, but your general point is.
     
  5. Cora Cuz'avich

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    It makes me sad to think about it. I started the game with dreams of being the best alchemist in Novia, with people all coming to me to buy potions because mine were the best. About thirty minutes into the game, I figured out that would never be a thing. :(

    I had hoped that once (if) brewing got potions, it might become possible, but I'm presuming at this point that's a 20% of polish we'll never see.
     
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  6. Barugon

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    It's never true in any MMO. If it were then that means some people would be excluded from alchemy.

    BTW, alchemy is my only fully GM'd crafting tree in SotA (besides cooking, which doesn't count because it only has one skill).
     
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  7. Cora Cuz'avich

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    I'd never played an MMO prior to this, so I was unaware of a lot of online gaming mechanics. But, I don't see how that would exclude people. I understood that a) starting late, I would probably never achieve that goal, and b) in reality, I would just be a "top alchemist" rather than the best. It was the fact that all potions are equal regardless of skill that killed my dreams. I get why; potions that are individual won't stack, and potions that don't stack would be kind of useless in a system that relies on hotkeying them on a combat/utility bar.

    Still, I would have liked if "alchemy" in SotA wasn't just "enchanting with potions thrown in."
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2019
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  8. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Anyway. I'll stop hijacking the thread now. Sorry, @Justiciar.
     
  9. Jason_M

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    Me too. Maybe not the best... But I did want to provide value to people.

    But we cannot compete with free. As long as all alchemical products are popping out of mobs and bundles, we won't be much use except as gold/silver converters.

    :(

    But the good news is that this dude is here. Welcome to New Britannia :)
     
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  10. Justiciar

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    @Cora Cuz'avich : Actually you could do that with potions, just have "levels" where, say, each +10 skill is +1/+2/+3 lesser/standard/greater. It would mean that you would occasionally need to swap out a diminishing stack for another one that is slightly different, but it's possible. On the plus side, even now you can try to become the best enchanter in the game and people would come from all over to have you enchant their stuff. :)

    @Barugon, @Cora Cuz'avich : I monitored how much I was getting for xp and saw no significant difference between batch of 12 and batch of 3. Btw, it is batch of 3 so you don't get 12x the xp, you get 4x the xp. Do you guys feel that potions "matter"? I see in previous releases they didn't like the 30-50 hp restored by the standard health potion, which was obvious enough. Currently it's 50-100 for a standard, 100-150 for a greater. But is it worth it?

    Which reminds me, what are your hp/fp stats if you don't mind? I'd like to get some perspective here as to what players who have been playing a few years have and how they play. Right now I've played for a month and my archer/mage is happy at tier 3 with about 400hp/400fp (dex buff, antimagic buff, flaming weapon, defensive stance, dodge, aimed shot, blind, cripple). I get creamed if I try to fight most tier 3+ bosses in Ardoris randoms (20-100+hp dam versus my 12-20 AND if you ignore them for 30 seconds or so they tend to heal back up to max AND they tend to be faster than me) and got fried by 5 skeleton archer/mages in the mines outskirts west of Veritas. Quest log says doing Tower of the Shuttered Eye would be "easy" for my char. I don't agree. Tips/etc. welcome. :confused:
     
  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    Have you done the other two Outskirts and the early part of their questline? It isn't advised to play all the way through Love before getting started on the others.

    Also, enjoy all the good low level content you can while you are low level, don't stay in the Ardoris area or you'll level all the way out while there, and a whole lot of Tier 2 and 3 stuff will be just sightseeing.
     
  12. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Except that's not what I want to do.
    Yes, depending. You can't spam them quite as much as healing spells due to the long cooldown, but they're great for when things hit the fan. I especially used focus potions a lot once I switched to air spec. The imbued ones are better than greater potions. I used both, as they have separate cooldowns. You can quickly get back 200-300 or so health/focus in a pinch. As well as restoration, both greater and imbued. Plus the stat potions. Didn't use resistance potions much, as it's not clear resistance actually works in pve. Regen potions are nice for boss fights.

    Um... Around 800-950h and 700f, I think. Health varies a lot depending on what I'm doing.
     
  13. OzzyOsbourne

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    I had the same dream with cooking.... the cooking tree is so god damn stupid. You're better off keeping it at the minimum so you can fail as much as possible and garner as much exp as possible per mats............................ this makes my brain melt just thinking about it.
     
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  14. Cora Cuz'avich

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    Can you call it a tree when it's just one branch lying on the ground?
     
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  15. Justiciar

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    @Vladamir Begemot Yes, I have wandered around. I've done all of the Outskirts and all the easy quests I've found. For Truth my next quest area is Artifice and for Courage my next quest is to save a knight up in the islands. I've gone thru the Whiteguard Silver Mines enough to Masterwork most of my gear and I've done quite a few waves of randoms in Ardoris area. I'm almost strong enough to take on the triple bosses of random, 1 at a time. The single bosses of randoms are still too much for me. I have about 4 banners of virtue plus several virtue items plus that virtue statue from the book quest.
    @OzzyOsbourne Mmm... Cooking... Bacon of Virtue +2 Tastiness ....
     
  16. Cora Cuz'avich

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    FWIW, Artifice does not require a very high level to complete, unless something significant has changed.
     
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  17. CrandalltheFoole

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    RNG - Random Number Generator
     
  18. Cora Cuz'avich

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    ??
     
  19. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yep, do Artifice if you're stuck on the Tower.
     
  20. Anpu

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    Did you actually do the ore quest?
     
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