Fall into Winter Telethon Missed Questions (mostly)

Thanks @DarkStarr for taking the time to answer questions.

I really like hearing this:

'Bella Bones asks: Can we have new dances such as a waltz, a hoedown, and ballet?'
'Darkstarr answers: yes'

I've wanted waltzing forever

 

When you you hold'n'drag the item hit the 'R' key to flip 90º on the other axes.

 

@DarkStarr It would be awesome if the answered questions could go in here or another thread as well. My question was starting to be answered by Richard when the power went out, so I'm not certain if additional color varieties for hair/eyes/skin are going to be implemented - just that it wasn't being worked on (yet?) due to trying to get the basics worked out with hair issues and <feed dropped>.

Many thanks!

 

@DarkStarr @Chris @dallas

During the telethon you considered increasing the inventory limit of player vendors. While on the surface this seems like a wonderful change for players, on a deeper level an important consideration is that any increase in player vendor inventory limits will decrease the value of player vendors overall, which were high level pledge rewards and are currently a popular item driving Portalarium bundle sales.

For example, if you double the player vendor inventory to 200 then you effectively halve the value and desirability of player vendors, deceasing the value and desirability of both Portalarium store bundles and rewards given to backers of the game.

How proposed changes will affect the value of store items and pledge rewards should actually be one the first considerations made.

 

I think this is a tiny sacrifice to make for those who planned on selling theirs or reselling other vendors. A huge, overwhelming majority of the players will never run into unsolvable item limit problems on their single vendor. Those who do want multiple vendors are most likely doing it to hit multiple locations and not for a ton of items in one location. In the long run, the value of the commission free vendors in relation to this change will be negligible.

While I agree it should a consideration, those people who bought the game looking for an investment to flip later should not be one of the first considerations.

 

I would put it this way; the devs never promised a certain item limit on vendors. If they did, it would be another issue, and then that consideration would be higher priority. But the value of commission-free vendors is that they're commission-free. Item limits also affect the commissioned vendors, too, btw.

 

The most important factor in vendor performance is location. As such, vendors in the best locations are shared among players. The only restriction on that right now is the inventory limit. The greater the inventory of player vendors the more consolidated sales will become on the player vendors in the best locations, resulting in vendors in less desirable locations getting even less traffic.

Consider for a moment if player vendors had unlimited inventory. What the game would essentially end up with is commission free public vendors with thousands of items right at the entrances to every town, and the vendor locations of everyone else becoming nearly worthless.

Of course, making anything easier in a game will always be popular, but it doesn't mean it's a good idea. And when the business model is based upon selling items in the store and pledges from the player community the very worst thing to do is make those store items and pledges less desirable - one cuts into revenue and the other cuts into trust.

 

That's certainly another way to spin it.

 

It's not a spin, it's a detailed elaboration that was intended for you. However, your brief rude reply appears to demonstrate that you simply support an increase in player vendor limits at any cost and have no interest in discussion nor consideration.

 

If it's complicated why do the recipes for (for example) swords already work this way? If making recipe A work in the same way as recipe B is 'complicated' then there's some simplification that needs to happen in the way recipes are coded.

 

From what you've said, I gather that you are sitting on a couple vendors that you'd like to sell, maybe not now, but eventually? So I understand why your perspective would be as it is. But as @redfish said, the pledge never said anything about limits, and the game is still being designed. I'm sure no one would be batting an eye if the limit were twice what it was when they were introduced. Chalk it up to another reason why persistence should have been held back.

 

Once again, nothing you wrote addresses the points I presented.

 

Of your original point? I think I did.

 

The issue is that the way it's presented to you in the UI does not necessarily have anything to do with how the code handles it.

I really can't answer this without seeing the backend, but here is some speculation: they mentioned something about tags so my guess would be that items are stored as {TYPE_ID, TAGS[], modifiedStats, currentDurability, tempMaxDurability}, with TAGS[] and modifiedStats being dynamically generated at creation from the materials but intermediate materials are stored as {TYPE_ID} making it a significant rewrite to the crafting code for a barely noticeable gain to functionality.

 

@DarkStarr @Chris
At some point, will we get a PvP reputation mechanism that will identify those who engage in negative activities vs. those who don't (something like red and blue names)? I don't mean something to punish people for PKing, I just mean something to distinguish those who are likely to attack me without provocation vs. those who are not.