I am not enjoying this game

this is the part that amuses me.

this game is a niche game, for folks who enjoyed, or may enjoy the uo and u series of games. that means basically the demographic is not the younger tween crowd, it is a much older group of folks..shouldn't the game cater towards preserving our frail bones?

i remember mentioning something like this a year ago, asking them to focus on a 'fewer clicks' mentality for everything they do, as i am already post-surgery for both carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel..

 

Maybe we could all get together and have a big sign made to put on the conference room wall at Portalarium:

"IS IT FUN?"

 

Complex is not always fun; I'm all for making people run around and hunt down rare and special materials, having a bajillion key/mouse commands in game to assemble something is a little silly.

 

Not sure...assumed any armor could get a crit result...Haven't critted since R25 making wolf hats...Cloth armor just doesn't crit for me...and I've made better than 20 full sets for selling and personal use

 

Along with ALL of those, you can also crit on rings, necklaces ( I think), and even instruments. If/when they ever let us make capes/robes, I would imagine it could be possible to crit on those too.

<Waits for BDF to drop in a post about robes>

 

From a long term game perspective, I think that people underestimate the importance of taking some material scarcity steps that Port has done. That is not to say she isn't right about click crafting, or that the critical formulas are a bit absurd(and unacceptably twisted by expert tables/prosperity tools).

 

Is that due to changes in this release? I've not done any crafting yet but in the last release I was no where close to 99 tailoring and would crit quite often.

 

I was GM tailoring last release and not critting. I haven't tried crafting the heads the release tho...but It could have to do with the 63% chance to succeed making critting pretty rare. In my mind being GM tailoring or near it (Man does it crawl at 99 now)...should achieve a crit at least sometimes...Otherwise what is the point in a GM skill? It has cleaned my production pool out haha.

 

I've crit leather and cloth armor and made full crit sets for people (Tailoring at 119). Crafting is a bit repetitive right now but changes are coming in to make it more interesting. I think of the current state of crafting as a launching pad for a really fun and interesting system.

 

I lived on a Farm for most of my life. I don't recall one time while planting thinking "this is fun or exciting" lol
I know this is a game, but Im curious in what way can you make the simple task of waiting for things to grow more fun?

Edit: I suppose you could add more steps and things to add/take care of the plants. like excellerated fertilizer and pest control, which if maintained proper and to the maximum would yield higher results. But idk if that would really add to the fun factor, myb.

 

Sure! Well, there are LOTS of games out there that have gardening in them (Farmville, anyone?) and manage to make it interesting enough to make people WANT to do it. The backbreaking parts of farming are already removed by this being a game, right? (probably why you didn't find it fun in the first place.. though many people would say they love backyard vegetable gardening or growing beautiful flowers in real life)

So, then it is a matter of making the pastime fun. That could be by waiting to see what new combination you might get from cross pollination, what rare item you might find in a harvest, or creating something beautiful to use to decorate your home. If there was adequate profit in it, it wouldn't matter if it was "fun" as long as it wasn't too tedious.. but the devs don't appear to want to go the profit route.. so giving it some random chance or real benefit to other skills (like cooking or alchemy) would go a long way to make it more enjoyable as a feature of the game.

 

They could create more game objects to represent plants in intermediate stages of development, including for example yellowish texture to indicate one type of plant ailment, and black spots on leaves to indicate another - these would require player intervention using a crafted elixir to save the plant and prevent the disease from spreading to other plants.

 

WHAT someone has a crit set before me? I know it's not hardened!!!!

 

Ditto. Crafting needs a lot of love though, however, they have expressed both in the forums and in hangouts of the avatar that it will be revamped in upcoming releases. Its obviously no where near complete, and just exists to test back end functionality.

As for the critique about gathering, well, the game is supposed to be hard. Well maybe not hard, but not easy street. You cant craft a bed out of a single cotton plant harvest. Perhaps people are too used to the ease of access to commodities in N America, and dont understand the extreme labor that goes into their shoes and socks that they just go to the store and buy once they wear them out in 4 months.

Also, you get pretty big yields once you get good at gardening. I get like 4x the yield from my cotton plants around my house than I do from the ones out in the wild. Also the higher level the zone is, the better the stuff you get from resource nodes.

Everyones feedback is valid, but this basically amounts to crying about things theyve already adressed will be improved.

Also, feedback would be a lot more valid if people were able to suggest how they would like it to be, instead of just saying "this sucks! all this hard work you got underpaid for? it really sucks!" Actually I have no idea what the devs are making, income wise. I just have a feeling people working for porlatarium are doing it more out of love than financial security. Just a hunch there...

A lot of complaints in general come from people not understanding how software is developed. Theyre making sure the fundamental back end systems work and work well. UI bells and whistles come last. Its a lot more to QA and iterate upon than just making sure the underlying system isnt buggy as heck. Plus systems designers are rarely talented at UX (speaking from my own experience here...). The more complex the UI/UX without a fully fleshed and tested back end, the more spaghetti code you will end up with over time (code that is very difficult to maintain, expand, and improve upon).

Trust me, I dont like the current crafting interface either. Ive been crafting non stop for like 3 days. But again, they said its going to be better in R27, and they will continue to iterate upon it. The recipes arent even all finished. Im surprised this sort of thing isnt more obvious to people.

Want to make crafting (a bit) more fun? Get a great radio station for your avatar radio. I suggest 'techno.fm' at 256kbps. Great work music . Srsly, I am really enjoying my radio station blaring out of my hand crafted wall shelf in my basement of crafting stations. Dont have a radio? Then donate/pledge and help them make the game great! Cant donate? Then Id say you dont get to complain .

While I do agree, there are some measures one can take. Im practically an ergonomics expert as I code for a living, and developed RMS about 10 years ago. I make lots and lots of physical/health measures in my life to compensate, but nothing will actually make this go away unless I give up my trade for like 8 months or more.
So I would suggest the following:

1) Ergonomic Keyboard. The only good product microsoft makes is the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. You can keep an eye on newegg and amazon and find them for like $20. I actually keep 3-4 of them around at all times since they do fail every 2-5 years, and I refuse to pay $40 or more for them (they originally cost $15, but then they got popular, and without any changes, they magically cost between $35-50 retail, derp).

2) Ergonomic Mouse. Ive been using the Evoluent vertical mouse for about 7 or 8 years (and have tried many others). It has incredible sensitivity, so I can cross two 27" screens with the tiniest flick if I need to. I also crank my operating system's sensitivity up as well, and have become pixel-accurate with mouse movements with teeny tiny gestures over the years. It drastically reduces any mouse stress. The only dumb thing is they updated the model to have bright shiny LED lights on the latest version, so you need to unscrew it yourself and rip the LED out (unless you like to have disco lights all over your desk like those alienware computers).

3) Set Pomodoro timers. Force yourself to stand up, stretch your back, breathe deep and rhythmically, and pace around for a moment every 25 mins. Its been proven to increase focus and reduce RMS. I usually get out my foam roller and roll my back out, do a few reps of some light bodyweight exercise. The major thing is consistently doing it every 25 mins.

4) Use carpel tunnel wrist restraints all of the time. Yah you look like robocop kinda, but believe me, your RMS will slowly disappear and whither into nothing if you discipline yourself to wear these. With them, its a non issue for me now. Plus they keep my hands warm in my super cold apartment.

I could list way more stuff but dont want to completely derail the thread. I agree there is way too much stuff to click on and move when crafting, but even with an ideal UX, this will never go away completely. You will always get RMS, its just a matter of exposure to these machines.

 

I thought the benefit of growing your own reagents and other plants was you did not have to run around and find them laying on the ground or pay $$$ to vendors for them.

 

I try not to proselytize too much, but have you ever tried acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine? Holistic healthcare will do wonders where surgery will produce diminishing returns.

 

I agree with you completely.

I'm trying to hang in there, but the grind of gathering and combat is just not fun for me either. I'm hoping the March update brings some much needed love for gathering and loot. The combat though, twice the grind ugh...grind for xp so that I can grind my skills....It's just not enjoyable.

 

So far the only real thing I would like to see again is the way harvesting was in the beginning where you clicked on the bush, tree, node "once" then it started gathering and through the time of gathering you would get materials which were more plentiful and less annoying. which would also off set the crazy amount of materials for crafting these recipies that want 6 metoric iron sheets and coal and hammer and supple leather straps and a rare Babe Ruth Rookie card hand signed in mint condition.


Edit: OH can't forget the bucket too

 

Yeah there's too much clicking and dragging involved in agriculture. This is just the first iterations of agriculture so there's room for improvement. The way it's currently implemented, I'd like to simply drag the seed into the crafting window and it automatically drags the best quality farming tool I have, and water automatically. Then click craft.

Or maybe something like this: Put the farming tool in your weapon hand, then put the seeds in your offhand. Drag the seeds into your non combat bar and this creates a general 'plant seed' icon. Then you just click that icon once and it turns your mouse cursor into a nightshade, mandrake, apple, etc icon so you know what seed you're working with, you click on the available slot in the planter, and you're done. It would be nice if the planter was smart so that as you're mousing over the planter, the empty slots are green, the slots occupied by seedlings and plants are red. After you've planted one seed, the mouse cursor is still retains the picture of the seed you're working with and you click on the next available green planter slot. Then do you this over and over. This eliminates some mouse clicking and dragging and should make the planting experience easier to work with.

The water buckets could work the same way, a separate 'water' icon on the non-combat bar.

A few of my guildmates really love playing Farmville and the closest MMO/survival experience they've experienced similar to Farmville is Tree of Life. At the time we played it was mainly a harsh PvP environment and we experienced the farming for a few months. A few observations of things we enjoyed in ToL - In addition to farming plants and vegetables, there was a lot of interaction with farm animals. The animals provided resources. In order to get these resources you had to fence in the animals with different quality types of fences which required metal and wood. The higher quality types of fences were more durable, and the highest type of fence provided bonuses to resource production. After the animals were fenced in, you had to feed the animals which would cause resources to "pop out" of the animals and drop on the ground. Then my guildmates would gather up all the resources and use them in the crafting system to create food (milk, vegetables, wheat, eggs, meat, etc), armor (wool, leather), weapons (antlers), etc. We were also able to create other types of items like wheel barrels to help them carry more dirt or farm animals at once. By yourself you could only carry one animal or bag of dirt at a time. With a wheel barrel you could carry 3.

Animals provided different types of resources - Chickens would provide feathers, pigs would provide manure, cows would provide milk, manure, leather etc. Dirt was required to create rudimentary planting beds, and mixing manure with dirt allowed you to create better types of planters. There was a farming skill for plants and vegetables, and ranching skill for breeding animals.

One of the things that was really overwhelming in ToL was Hunger. You were constantly required to eat food, and there was an annoying "I'm starving" sound. Aside from the unstructured/missing warring system in the game, hunger was probably one of the most annoying elements.

The issue with animals in Sota is that they require space. This might be something that POT owners are able to provide the rest of the community, affordable lots for players to do farming and taking care of animals if this is ever put into the game. Should be interesting to see how Shroud evolves.

 

@margaritte got to 109 tailoring last night and from 106 to 109 her %success didn't improve at all. I still don't think she's critted.