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I will no longer make any purchases until practice dummies are fixed

Discussion in 'Wishlist Requests' started by Bridge Troll, Jul 10, 2020.

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  1. Bridge Troll

    Bridge Troll Avatar

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    You guys are ridiculous. Practice dummies have been broken since introduction. They should not require the owner to be present to function.

    I have been patient and asked at every stream for months, with no attention.

    Letting my wallet do the talking.
     
  2. Scooby Doo

    Scooby Doo Avatar

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    Totally agree @Bridge Troll

    I have a new bunch of players in my town sharing a house between 4 of them and they can’t use the training dummy unless the owner is online.
    I also have practice dummies all around the town, on vendor lots and crafting pavilions that have never been used cause they can’t :(

    Please @Chris @Elgarion look into this as a QOL change.


    Thanks.
     
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  3. Ravalox

    Ravalox Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Moving this thread to the wish list. The mechanic is working as currently intended.

    The will get more attention in the wishlist forum as well.
     
  4. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

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    I've never really understood how it could be a problem for player owned practice dummies to work the same was as the practice targets that are in every PRT, lots of NPC towns and some adventure scenes. Just seems like a super pointless mechanic.
     
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  5. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    Come on guys, it has only been like four or five years. And it was only repeatedly promised to be fixed on livestreams up until the sale.

    I guess now it IS fixed, they have moved it over to the "actually thats how we wanted it even though we told you otherwise" column.

    It's not like you can just walk onto a lot and use someones crafting tables, or shop at their vendor, or sit in their chairs, or use their musical instruments, or turn on and off their lights, or open their doors without them being there.

    Oh wait, you can.

    Hey, I have a better idea than fixing this. Lets have a whole new system! Lets get dragon ranching.
     
  6. Jikininki

    Jikininki Avatar

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    Bridge Troll, my respected nemesis.
    I turn my weapon away from your counterparts for the nights and days to follow, as you have found us a common enemy to stand against, together!
    I am beside you in this statement and battle; a problem of which has left a sour spot in my mood and confidence in the overlord-team for years as well.

    In all seriousness now, as a player who began playing before getting your own lot deed (where I could place my own dummy) was just a couple hours of your time, this was one of my first complaints. I was staying the pixel home of my friend, who had a dummy I could use, while he was present, and even still only sometimes. I see and found the appeal in venturing out and in populated zones to trains skills. While I would’ve never thought twice if training dummies were “personal” training dummies, my destain for this bug and the developments team’s attitude toward it came from the many times of hearing “oh? It’s not working? We’re going to fix it.” “It’ll be fixed in a future update” “we’re going to work on that” “Yeah yeah, it’ll get changed” for so long that it was swept under the rug to the point of finally giving up and “well... actually... we meant it to be that way”
    :cool:
     
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  7. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    it's not "we meant it to be this way." it's "the functionality we have given it so far is working." until such time as they proclaim "okay, we've added that extra functionality you wanted!" the fact that it's not doing the extra thing we want (me too) is not a bug. it's an improvement request.

    really, how many "stop putting in new stuff and fix the bugs!" posts have i seen? it's not always an either/or, but this is "new stuff."
     
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  8. Warrior B'Patrick

    Warrior B'Patrick Avatar

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    Greetings all
    As someone who has been here a while and has listen to the DEVs say why the dummy and target deco work the way it does I thought I would share this again. The functionally is tied into the AI of pets/vendors/and extra stuff. It is not just add a flag it is build a new part of the AI that would allow us to have more pets/vendors/and extra stuff on our lots and POTs and have them with their own movements and schedules. Eventually this will happen but there are so many other things I think are more important for the DEVs to work on.
     
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  9. Sulaene Moon

    Sulaene Moon Avatar

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    That ends this discussion. Pretty much describes the entire game. “Working as intended”
     
  10. Warrior B'Patrick

    Warrior B'Patrick Avatar

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    Greetings
    Yes there are things that are working as intended... when they were released originally to be something for your use on your own lot. Yes they need updating and we need more deco limits (done), more things that can be placed as deco (done), maniquins to showcase our armor (done), more NPC we can place in our POTs (done). Some things have stayed the same and some have changed. If you want something changed put in a support ticket or wish list request and if it gets changed great. If not don't use it. It really is sad to me that there is such negativity here. Constructive criticism is always welcome but the owners of the thing may have other ideas, limits, or agendas.

    Find ways to have fun and share them with your friends.
     
  11. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    I call BS. Practice dummys don't move or need a schedule. Vendors alrready work with visitors. This is not a feature request, it is a bug that is so old it is now considered normal.

    In engineering, temporary becomes permenant. And that is why we have so many prototype systems in a supposedly released product.
     
  12. Chemeck

    Chemeck Avatar

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    Im sharing my village lot with like 15 players right now (inn building), so I can relate. It doesn't make sense to work this way, same as Aether Amplifier should in my opinion play music hearable for everybody around.
    But again, there are many more urgent things (maps, jounrnal, ui, balancing risk&reward system etc) to fix/polish and still no details about any of it :) Things that makes new players log out and never come back. And i invited dozens, noone is around anymore. But can't blame them. Seeing that development strategy made me play the game 1h a week instead of 4h a day, which is not enough to keep my subscription. Right now all that keeps me around is my guild and people in it.
     
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  13. crummel

    crummel Avatar

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    And while you (the devs) are at it, please fix the problem that you can't use Bodyslam on target dummies, since you just move on the spot and don't charge the target dummy. This way you can't train Bodyslam in... like thread opener Bridge Trolls mentoring sessions in Soltown.
     
  14. Ancev

    Ancev Avatar

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    Does it have something to do with how the game uses P2P networking?
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2020
  15. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Practice dummies were added when gustballs were...."adjusted" because people were using them in unintended ways.
    Prior to that, the gustball was a perfectly acceptable training device, you could pick one up for 50g and all we needed was the same exact deployable thing but with a town restriction to prevent its abuse in adventure scenes.

    Instead, they decided to make a house place-able version . Okay fine.

    It is NOT an unreasonable expectation to expect a 'house dummy' to work the same way as existing dummies in towns already worked - IE, that it was a static object that sat there and people could hit it.

    While it "only working when owner is online" is "intended functionality" I always felt this was because they couldn't get it to work otherwise, rather than it being a 'design decision' to make a practice dummy that nobody can use.

    We've seen the same problem (and honestly, not to steal the Op's thunder, but this is one of the MAIN reasons why I have stopped buying things) when they added conversation NPCs.

    The whole entire point of a conversation NPC was an interactive dialogue with visitors, right? Nevermind that the quest writing, quest flagging elements never materialised and I've just got a humanoid signpost. And yet, the conversationalist NPC, like the practice dummy, does not work if the owner is offline, because its implemented the same way - like a pet on the lot. If I'm online, and in the scene, what the hell do I need a conversationalist NPC for, I can just TALK to people! The NPC was meant to guide people when I am not present, which it doesn't. (Maybe this has changed now, I gave up months ago, since there's little point in trying to cram a story into 6000 words or less with no quest/journal/flags/interactivity with other npcs to link quest elements, and I'm not going to dish out more money to have more of these in the hopes that this will change at some point)

    Like the practice dummy, it may be working as intended, but the intent was extremely short sighted, not what was discussed/promised/talked about, and so on.

    I don't consider this "adding new stuff" - practice dummies (and conversationalists) are both examples of things that were thrown in the game and then left without any further attention paid to them. Lets just slap that in there and call it done, despite there being years of issues with the practice dummies either not working at all, bugging in weird ways, targetting issues with dummies (even if you're the owner), and the whole it doesn't work if owner isn't there issue. The conversationalist is exactly the same. So they got ink script to work on an npc. And then left it, despite it being not the stated purpose and it being over a year now since it was first discussed. There's no ingame tutorial or documentation on how this works player is just expected to know that this uses ink script and google it, I guess. Once you did take the time to figure it out further disillusionment when it doesn't work if you're offline! What! They slapped it in there, put a price tag on it, and left it. And this is something they're charging real $ for even using and is limited only to specific purchased NPCs (and I believe, a pledge reward robot?). I do believe that some crafted version was talked about, not sure if it ever got added, was already too upset by the whole thing at that point to even look.

    So, after buying a couple of these and having high hopes to integrate a storyline into my town, and finding out they are just signposts with no interactability and no customizability, and realising that they will probably be left this way, well...forever, and that the dialogue system is always going to be locked to specific purchaseable NPCs instead of what was originally talked about (adding dialogue to existing NPCs, vendors, etc.) - well, there is just no point. .

    Working as expected and working as intended are not the same thing.
    Working as expected is, you implement something placeable on a player lot that has certain functionality everywhere else in the game the expectation is that it will work the same.
    When it doesn't, we report it as a bug because its the only thing that makes sense. It's gotta be broken, right?

    (I'm reminded here of the item that was added to the store with a big price tag that was called Portal to Ardoris that, when used, did not portal the user to Ardoris. That was its only purpose and the clue was in the name! It was a bug. It got fixed. When you see a practice dummy on a POT or in someone's yard, the expectation is that you can, you know, practice on it. And you can't. Same logical progression.)
     
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  16. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    i almost spit my pepsi out lol
    didnt know that one
     
  17. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    this is not true. they don't have nameplates if the owner is offline. the conversation still works.
     
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  18. Elrond

    Elrond Avatar

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    The only reason i can think of why lot dummies work as they do is because they want every player to make one , that implies owning a lot to place it and materials to craft the dummy . Probably why POT owners didnt get a version ...we did ask for an Archery target like the ones in soltown to place in our pots for everyone to use...what we got was a lot version archery target which works only when owner present . I guess its one of those ''works as intended '' features ( like the devotionals counting as pot buildings instead of pot deco) that everyone hates but will probably never change...
     
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  19. craftymethod

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    Conversational NPC's did have a bug where they didn't work when the owner wasnt around, pretty sure that was fixed pretty quick, but it was an issue from what I read in the past.
    Pity about the training dummy situation.
     
  20. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    May have been subsequently fixed. When I bought it my alt on another account was not able to interact with it at all. Sadly, its still just an interactive signpost.
     
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