General feedback on Why things are so ehhh . .

I get that they want to foster exploration but game design-wise, I agree that you should do that through tasks and activities the player actively chooses to do. Treasure hunting is a good example. I fail to think of any others right now on account of this delicious rum but yeah... What other things actively encourage a player to want to explore and subsequently discover rares/recipes/quests/what-have-you? Maybe we can spitball more stuff here. (Assuming you can buy onions at the grocer of course)

In Elite Dangerous they had a system where if your chosen faction was in a war in one particular star system, any effort you put in that was non-fighty in another system was null and void. It meant that if your gameplay style was to help grow factions, you either had to fight in the war, or like... Not play. Oh no... Player retention out the window. And I know Player Retention gets eyebrows raised! (That, and also the word 'conversions')

With that, in a recent update, the Elite devs allowed multiple faction states in multiple systems. It now means that unless there's a war in every single system your faction is in, you can still play to your own style! I don't have to fight the war, I can still sell liquor and cigarettes to the hard working miners of Eta Carinae and my time isn't wasted! 2018 was a better year for those devs where they focused on core issues and I think it's paid off. They're now in a much better shape for 2019.

OK, I'll lay off the rum now. Or maybe the forums but keep drinking the rum...

But my point is something to do with player freedom/agency. Creative choice? Player choice? SotA gets a lot of this right when it comes to housing.

 

Put treasure... in the chests.

Make sure that if you open the crypt over the course of a lot of problem solving and time that by the time you get there if it has already been looted by someone else, you get to loot it too.

All the achievements in the world won't offset the disappointment of an empty treasure chest.

 

But that's only because we still need better character model customization!

 

Probably set up that way back in the regional economy days and just never readjusted to the new reality. Just a thought.

 

I don't think "it should be" more complicated, I would think a "spreadsheet" view from the server side would make changing things much easier, starting in the Big Cities, to towns, then villages, maybe even a grouped view of all the "types" of vendors, it would seem that they've already grouped them together, so just change the master sheet and they all change....

The beginning program code is the hard part, but with some for thought (I guess they didn't expect to be changing things every day/quarter/year) to create a control system would be advantageous... It should not be hard to change things in the inventory, IMO...

Nor should it be hard a task to add/change things in the loot tables, IMO... or to change formulas in the RNG

 

I totally disagree with this thinking, I would much prefer a system where it is not advantageous to buy from a game merchant and an advantage to buying from a player merchant, all that would take is changing some numbers, it's ridiculous that Farmers can't make a profit... If game merchants were high priced, I would surely buy from a player merchant (provided their price equaled or below game price)...

The problem with solely having player merchants IS: players don't play games to be a 2nd job, so they quite and without game merchants, there is no longer a supply for inventory...

 

I would prefer NOT to go out of the game to find stuff I need, and if a game merchant overpriced their wares, I would definitely buy from a player merchant (provided the item I'm looking for is available and at a fair price), but I don't have the time to run all over the place looking in every single player merchant to find what I want, I would much rather grow it myself and save me the headache...

And Yes, I'm kind of peeved when I see "Lettuce" in a crate being displayed and none for sale in the inventory of the merchant... But I guess it would be harder still to change all the graphics, where inventory I know is in a database table somewhere in computer memory (all one needs is a tool to change the table inventory and everything in game changes)...

 

Yeah, I agree, I just don't think that's how the vendors are set up. I would put money down on it being a manual, vendor by vendor update.

 

All this talk about onions and carrots. I mean, who wants to eat that in the first place. Vegetables. Yuck! My character should not be forced to eat horse food to compete!

 

I have an honest question for a proper entrepreneur such as yourself: If you had 40 vendors in 10 different cities, how long would it take you to modify 8 listings on each one?

I'm assuming that player vendor management procedure to be the worst case scenario. I think it could be done in a working day and before lunch if they're well organized.

 

It sounds like you're talking in game, which is a different beast as well. But yes you could probably get it done in a morning in game.

Doing that in Unity is a different story, and I would just be speculating. I'll will speculate that there are more than 40 grocers in 10 cities as well. But no, it's not going to take forever. Just a lot of loading of scenes, finding the right prefab, finding the spot where the items are, deleting them or changing their values or adding them (depending on if they are getting rid of grocers and giving the farmers an iron grip on the world, or just adding in more produce.) Drop down menus, setting values, finding the next one.

 

If it were me, I would set a script on the vendor prefab that takes a type field. My script would then suck in some json or a csv depending on vendor type, job done. All I'd need to do is either tweak the json files directly or change the vendor type.

It might be a bit more complex than that in a server or multiplayer only environment but not by much, I'd probably be hitting an API over SSL to get at the json. Also I'm not sure what would happen to the json at compile time, whether it's packed into the client and how. I don't know as much as I should about Unity compilation. But it ought to be baked in for single-player moad I guess.

 

And >poof!< there goes an important gold sink. Gold just moves between players and accumulates in the economy. It's bad enough that the variable pricing system rarely kicks in.

I can't disagree with that.

Yes, surely there's a checkbox somewhere to turn on that script that's already written!

 

Yes, that was (and may be still is!) the reason for taking so long to fix bugs with NPC.
It seems not the way to say: ALL town guards now can be asked about standard keywords (and know about them!)
I also got the impression, each keyword has to be entered at each NPC. This explains, why some NPC understand - and others don't ...

If there would be a general database, a general intelligence for NPC could have been done - but it seems not to work this way (even if it would be easy to manage) ...

It could work like this [examples!]:
Keyword "ask about" drop down list shows "guard captain, guards, town leader, smithy, carpenter, ..."
Choosing "carpenter", the NPC could locate him on map and compass (like town crier do with house lot!) and it would be easy to find ...

Asking for "guards" in Ardoris could give the answer
"There are several guards."
--> followed with those guards, providing QUEST content, if any of them would be connected to a quest.
Example: You can find guard captain Cugel at the Guard House at the harbor. [Compass marker, Map marker --> Only if we toggled this option on! An old school Adventureer would find the harbor and than the guard house without further help ].

FINE

 

Yes, more structure and logic in distribution of items (including loot)
Recipes only available in regions was a nice idea and a good reason to visit other regions, explore their special stuff and learn about!
About (re)teachable" recipe: having a GM should be a good reason to teach most recipe to others (whom should have at least the crafting level which is necessary to use it!).
So he can be told but cannot re-teach them, until he got his (Grand)Master ... (well, I would still prefer Master from 100, and GM from 120 - that's another story )

A general +5% for all crafted items would be fine
For example:
Skill 100 (Master) raising exceptional crafting chance 1%
Skill 110 like before + 1% item stats / durability
Skill 120 (Grandmaster) like before + 2% item stats / durability
Skill 130 like before + 3% item stats / durability
Skill 140 like before + 4% item stats / durability
Skill 150 (Epic) +5% item stats / durability + exceptional crafting chance +5%

 

Ship sailed regions are a bust

This is great idea and could be applied to many things. however simple recipes should just be simple to find, and at the moment they determined that simple = reteachable, BUT you still have to find it first

 

Ardoris has a diverse market being a large coastal city..