Compromise: When you GM, better notification but no giant explosion

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Vladamir Begemot, Jun 8, 2019.

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  1. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    When you GM a skill, Richard Garriott should appear on your screen in full LB gear, slow-clapping and yawning.
     
  2. redfish

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    No text telling you to send LB a tweet telling him you made a GM ?
     
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  3. Echondas

    Echondas Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    I hate to admit to it again - but Chris had a point when he mentioned the Las Vegas psychological effect - I was loving all the dings and stuff when I was just learning taming for the first time last weekend .. it was like - ooh, what skill can I try now?

    Folks might not want to admit or realize it - but a little audio visual recognition and feedback is supposed to, and probably is, making you a little more happy.
     
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  4. redfish

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    Some feedback yea... I definitely agree with that.

    I don't agree with making it Las Vegasy, because it could be done a lot of ways and usually you want to pick the way that is best for the context. Operating systems will give you visual and audio feedback, and they tend to make it soft and pleasing, for instance. Microsoft has sound engineers that work on system sounds. RPGs usually try to make the feedback as much as possible immersive, in the sense that it adds to the atmosphere of the game rather than detract from it.

    I honestly keep my sound off and have for a long time because I find too much of the audio in the game annoying, arcadey or distracting, especially like farm sounds when you do butchery.

    Adding to the atmosphere is what keeps me engaged in a RPG. Clinks and clanks in combat all good. When you have to go outside of that, please be as subtle and pleasant as possible. Otherwise, I'll continue to keep the sound off. I'm not playing a slot machine.

    Also, just listing to birds or trees sway in the breeze, or the waves crash in the ocean is nice and atmospheric and makes games more pleasant. For me, its better than having music.

    Oh and I hate the heavy UI sounds, too. There's a principle in UI design to not make the chrome (UI) so heavy that it distracts from the content, because you want to have the focus on the content and not on the UI. And they've made some improvements in the UI on that front by making the window borders less heavy. But while his is true for the visuals, its also true for the audio.
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2019
  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, @redfish, the leveling progress leaves a lot of potential on the ground. The whoosh is lame, but evidently people complained to keep it lame.

    Generally, that whole thing needs another design pass. Yes, it should happen once every four years or so @Mac2. That was all prototype placeholder in the first place.

    But here's where I come down. GM'ing is important, lets see it happen.

    I vote for the Highlander Quickening emote to be automatically fired off. It would be awesome. It's the Quickening, so temporary invulnerability during the emote.

    Try to be streaming when it happens.
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    @Mac2 I just realized you and I are speaking totally different languages.

    I don't care about this at all. I'm talking the psychology of play, things that keep people coming back for more.

    You're talking, and appear to think that was the point of this thread, utility. As in, "Oh now it's time to turn of leveling."

    That's a totally separate issue, although it all falls into the UI.

    No, I'm talking about a giant bolt of lightening striking you so you and everyone around you goes "Ooooooh gratz!" "Ding!" "Whoa!" and ten people who were just surfing the Twitch stream immediately go download this amazing freaking experience.

    Of course, I guess that will also be a reminder to turn of leveling if you want to stop at GM.

    You know what? It's a big moment, lets have it cause a huge AOE blast at the same time. Try to time your GM Blast for when you are fighting a boss.

    I'm changing the name of the thread to reflect this.
     
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  7. redfish

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    @Vladamir Begemot

    Well,he was responding to something I wrote about the progression system, and how progression is more about paying attention to numbers in the corner of the screen more than something concrete and 'real' and in the game world.

    So I think Mac's point was that if you had that kind of /slash command, it would keep you into the game world.

    I'm kind of thinking where you are also (though I prefer the effect to be more subtle), but I'm also trying to frame it from UI perspective, because I think the feedback is important both because of enjoyment on some level and but also because accessibility on some level. A lot of the game is currently hidden behind UI, windows, numbers, and /slash commands, and that's not where you want it to be if you want to engage players.
     
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  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    @redfish this was the response.

    Aside from this being a messed up statement, in my opinion, it is his first response, so one is guessing it is the response to the subject.

    Guess what, though, us mindless zombies like bells and whistles and fireworks.

    Fireworks sell. Bring on the fireworks.
     
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  9. craftymethod

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    I would like to hear a piece of gentle music when you GM, a mysterious, successful and cautious about the future but with a celebatory twist type of thing for a few seconds. Nothing too jarring but something that helps build progression of story of our characters.
     
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  10. Time Lord

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    The Fellowship would be a good example of such a climax :)!
    [​IMG]
    ~Time Lord Approved!~ :D It would keep me from falling to sleep so much as I do o_O...
     
  11. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    I think the OP's @Vladamir Begemot point - was that (certainly for the young and new anyway) reaching GM in anything IS a milestone for most everyone (even for you @Mac2 - once upon a time), and as such, I also feel that a bit more recognition of the fact would be a nice addition to the game for the majority of avatars .

    Let me and everyone else around me know.... Damn, I just GM'd. :)
    In my guild - who play together daily and speak in discord - it would be something we all could celebrate together.
    And we would.


    So, let the fireworks or bolt or whatever come, so we can all partake in someone's milestone... ;)
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2019
  12. Adam Crow

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    I assume your joking about an actual aoe. Cause that is the most exploitable and immersion breaking thing ive read in a while. So what the devs need to waste more time to write in code so that this aoe has timers and only works once per skill per avatar?

    And how do you really not notice you gmed a skill? Just because it happens once in your party doesn't make this a common occurrence. They must have been really spacing out or chatting and immersed in the game already enjoying themselves to miss something so blatantly obvious. Have you yourself ever not noticed when you gmed a skill? I most definitely have not. Even a mundane skill like dash, how could you miss that really? Did you notice they gmed the skill? Like this whole situation is kind of mind blowing to me that someone could miss it. o_O

    The skill you actually have to activate gets a gm icon added to it. There's a noise. There's the skill on sidebar. It says you gained the skill to 100 in the chat window. That isn't enough?

    This sounds like a complete waste of developer time to me. If something like this were ever added, I would like a toggle to shut this off please. I'm not a big fan of immersion breaking things like this personally.
     
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  13. Time Lord

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    *SOTA Burn Notice*
    :eek: Immersion! :confused: You found immersion?' "Here?" :eek: Please let me know where to find this well hidden commodity! o_O I am sorry, I just haven't seen any in great while...


    I must agree with you, yet there must be a way to either deepen what immersion there is here, or heighten our game's addictive qualities. Both of those seem one in the same until they reach a technolian's consideration in such things, and in my view of our developer's SOTA history, the ambient player life pleasures have been very neglected, which is evident in our towns being devoid of activities for real people... and that's just one of a very long list of neglected immersive qualities. Our immersion isn't a dire situation, but it sure isn't our game's strong suite.
    It doesn't pull you in, it leaves you in an audience of on-lookers o_O...

    Achievements celebrations are an addictive quality which I think we should pursue, as we don't seem to be making any ground breaking headway any more than we have in our immersion illusion.

    [​IMG]

    :oops: Immersion posted in Dev+... as if that would make a difference o_O I think Twitter seems to be the only venue for such things, but then it must fit into a 15 second sound bite, or it will never be considered...
    (Dev+ "Why don't we have this yet o_O?")

    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/why-dont-we-have-this-yet.155783/
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2019
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  14. Feeyo

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    For every GM level add a floating rotating light sparkle around your character for ever. Based on the good or evil flag just like the shroud color.

    And yes, I agree a GM lvl should feel like ooooh sweeeeeet. (dopamine brain effect)
     
  15. oplek

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    I always found GMing to be very anticlimactic. Just one of the ways that the game is presented as very bland.

    It may just be a number, but so are the leaderboards... and they felt like those were were adding.
     
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    Nope.

    How is a lightning bolt any more immersion breaking than a ring of fire or a meteor shower?

    Here's how to avoid it being exploited: Make it a one time thing. Since you're concerned about their time, I'll help.

    If(priorGMd == false)
    {
    BlowStuffUp;
    priorGMd = true;
    }

    Combat is so full of fire and meteors that I have personally missed almost all GMs. Unless I'm specifically watching a skill, something that is mostly for min/maxxers IMO, totally immersion breaking min maxxers, it just goes right on by in combat.

    The sound effect/visual is best described as a "whoosh", which shows how weak it is.

    Ring of Fire and Meteor Shower drown it out visually and audibly.

    The little icon is far from the center of attention, and I like to see what's going on, not watch some box on the far right. Those boxes are totally anti-immersion.

    So I disagree completely. And I think your opinion of immersion is completely opposite of mine. I like to be immersed in the action, not on a tiny box on the right of the screen, and a tiny little bar crawling up on that box.
     
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  17. Crendel

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    Not sure how many of you played the original Everquest but upon leveling a very loud DING would blast through your speakers.

    Now leveling in the original EQ was brutal and could take 100s of hours just to get to level 50...so yes it made you get a warm fuzzy when you heard the ding. Then usually you would post in local chat "Ding" and everyone that appreciated the grind would shout congrats

    It made for a very nice experience. I liked the ding
     
  18. Bedawyn

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    Hmm. In my offline game, all the effects when I went up a skill level were annoying as heck and immersion-breaking -- I don't need to be interrupted when I'm in the middle of melee by something telling me I went up from skill level 23 to 24 -- like I really care when I'm fighting for my life? I quickly turned off the side-of-screen indicators too, just more irrelevant visual distraction.

    But now y'all are making me think -- I don't remember ever seeing the yellow whoosh in online mode. Maybe I've just completely tuned it out by now? I use the trainers whenever I visit a new town as a reminder to check my skill levels and see if I can learn anything new (and if there's anything new I WANT to learn, which is a different question.) But grandmastery, and other benchmarks? There definitely should be some stronger marker there. Probably not quite a Quickening (much as I love Highlander), but there should be a middle ground between a full fireworks display and the same tune-out-able alerts for minor increases. Even if it's removing any alert for minor increases and using the yellow whoosh only for benchmarks, and something else a little nicer for Grandmastery. But please hold the notice until after you're out of combat and can appreciate it properly!

    You want to keep players? Give them positive emotional feedback for their achievements.

    I find it mind-boggling that the game doesn't already have skill levels along the lines of Amateur, Apprentice, Journeyer, Master, Expert, Grandmaster, Virtuoso -- with abilities that adjust accordingly. But that's a longer conversation for a different thread.
     
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  19. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, due to the exponential curve, there are too many notifications at the start, and too few later on.

    Every 10 levels would be sufficient. I guess once you're over about 120, even a single level is a big deal.

    Yes, the "Whoosh" sfx + visuals have been happening to you. Sounds like you didn't connect the visuals with the event, which isn't surprising, it's really nondescript.
     
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  20. Synergy Blaize

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    Lord British's preferred Player interaction method is Twitter.
    The Twitter limit is 280 characters or less... (feel free to keep your message shorter)
    He has stated on his Twitter page, that he finds Facebook (interface, with more characters/message limit allowed, to be) "too cumbersome to deal with".
    LB "rarely" interacts on this Forum with Players...
    So when messaging Lord Brit keep it "short & tweet..." on Twitter.
    LB will definitely respond on Twitter, to any players who advise him, that They have completed the "Shroud of the Avatar" quest & received their Shroud.
     
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