My Further Observations & Nitpicks

Just a few things, thoughts, comments & whatevers..

Crafting
Two things that have been on my mind recently.

1: "Support" There are only a handful of merchants who sell craft supplies and even fewer who sell recipes. The world is getting pretty big and it's bad enough when new testers feel lost in general. With the mines emptied of ore nodes and many people not knowing where to find recipes, testing crafting is becoming more and more trying.

I would like to see more effort put in to making basic supplies and recipes more readily available and easy to find. Actual shops specializing in a particular craft should also sell the recipes for that craft.

2: Discovery. The more complex recipes become the less viable discovery is. I realize there are some crafters out there who like the idea of discovering recipes but if it's one thing R17 drives home for me is that many recipes are less than intuitive. If I'm actively trying to build a table and don't know the recipes.. how the hell am I going to build a wardrobe by mistake???

With the latest recipe changes we now have some that require two tools, fuel and 3 different ingredients. There is no way I would have simply guessed how to make those items. Especially without know the quantity of the ingredients needed.

There has to be a better way to learn recipes beyond having to buy recipes or look at wikis. I will dwell on this one for awhile but some manner of quests and apprenticing seem the obvious direction to go here.

Difficulty vs Durability
This has been bugging me for awhile now. Once I get beyond a certain level it becomes pretty annoying having to deal with low level encounters of any kind. Weapon durability drops too fast. If I ever see anything worth less than 1000 xp to me I feel compelled to just avoid it at all costs because I don't want to waste what precious durability I may have on my weapon on 'small fry' opponents.

I appreciate that no distinction is made here. I mean a weapon doesn't care whether it's hitting a grey wolf or a large red spider and that's how it should be but replacing or repairing weapons is a burden right now that if I really want to get my effort's worth out of each piece of equipment and at level 30+ killing grey wolves just doesn't give me that.

Innate Skills
Just as over powered as they were in R16. Maybe I've doing something wrong but by level 20 I was still able to raise my over all damage reduction to over powered levels. In this regard I haven't been effected by the new skill point limits at all and wasn't that the point of putting those limits in in the first place?

I'll say this one more time. The new limits are not a long term solution. The problem is that some of the innates are over powered.. they need to be rebalanced.

Game Balancing
On that note.. what's the rush? It's Pre-Alpha.. function comes first right? Sometimes I get the feeling like the devs are trying to make the game a little too balanced too early with quick balance fixes. I would rather see the time taken to really give each balance issue the attention it needs even if it takes longer.

We know innates are an issue.. but does it really need to be fixed right now? Or is this whole point limit on innates just a test to see how it effects the issue? Can't say cause the devs haven't said that I'm aware of.

Polearm skills
I've been trying out halberds this release. Interesting. I have been a bit bewildered in the past with the "pull" skill. I find it a bit ridiculous to be honest that you would pull someone close to you so that they could have an easier time hitting you. If anything, a pole arm user would often prefer to keep opponents at a distance to be out of range of their attacks. I still think that is the way it should be.

The way it is however, the obvious game mechanics actually make the pull skill useful. Particularly against archers who run only just far enough away to get pulled back in. Now when this happened I have "GET OVER HERE!" echoing in the back of my brain whenever I do this to an archer. Strange that I've never played Mortal Kombat and yet that's what I hear in my head.

Mining
I suppose I touched on this briefly already.. but I made a list for this post so I'm just going to comment further.

Why have the ores been removed from the mines? I couldn't take that long to added them back in can it? This goes back to supporting crafting. Without places to mine reliably it's that much harder to craft. Fewer people testing a feature is less data. Besides, if there are balance issues here again it's pre-alpha. Wouldn't the time to limit availability and balance the economy come during late alpha or beta?

Mob AI
From being practically blind to a bit overly aggressive.. I'm not sure how I feel about the current agro from mobs right now. I've gone from usually fighting 1-2 opponents if I'm careful in R16 to in some cases a half dozen in R17. I thought R16 levels were pretty decent. Maybe what we have now is just something we need to adjust to but it makes me wonder why a change was made to begin with.

Transport To & From Novia/Hidden Vale
Kingsport has two ships going to Novia. There are docks between Britanny and Pax Lair. So why not have one of those two ships go to the northern docks instead of both going to near Ardoris? That would be really nice.

Further comments.
I'm often tempted (and sometimes do) caution people not to judge pre-alpha like it's a finished product and I hope I don't sound like that hear. Sometimes though I see a change and it boggles me. What are the devs thinking? Is this change as it appears to me to be? Or is there a method to the madness we are simply ignorant of? Is this change just an iteration that will make sense later on?

It would be nice to hear more of the actual thinking that goes on behind some of the changes. Even if it's just in Dev+

Gathering Skills
Just throwing this one in. Meticulous gathering for field dressing makes no sense to have.. I mean there's only a limited amount of hide to gather. What's left? And what's more it doesn't even work. The corpse disappears after the first time regardless.

Rather that harvesting multiple times.. perhaps you should get additional parts.. like a head you can mount. or other parts..

 

Spiders
How much poison can one spider spit in a day? There should be limits to how much poison even large spiders have at any given time.

 

Spiders are the bane of my existence. Especially the big ones, who root me out of sword range and laugh at me as I slowly expire. Plus, other than Avicularia Avicularia, I'm not aware of any spiders that can peacefully live so close together. Most are nasty cannibals.

 

I hate spiders.. I mostly avoid them now. Halberds are effective against them though.. they root you.. you pull them in.

 

I'd like to know why the spiders are so big! Like what are they eating to grow so large? What is their prey. .it must be something only spiders eat because we don't have giant wolfs, or giant bears lol. I don't see any giant sized grasshoppers or flies, or whatever insects spiders feed on. .lol Maybe it's us they are eating. . .maybe that explains it. . hmm..

 

Outlander blood = miracle grow

 

Garden spiders seem able to live together, I pulled up some grass mat and there were hundreds of them under there all together

 

You will never love spiders again once you find one lurking beneath the royal seat of the latrine.

 

One time I had a dream about this happening. .and when I woke up . . .it happened. I curse that night with every last breath in my body. . . .

 

There is a small spider which lives in my bathroom, its cute and I have watched it moult various times, want to see how long it lives.

As for redbacks living in the toilet, they really don't do that, its a myth

 

Somehow I get the feeling this thread has strayed just a wee bit.

 

Don't forget that jumping can often free you quickly from that sticky rooting web.

 

Just because spiders are so much easier to respond to. Finding the answers for game balance feels more like pushing a rock up a hill each month. Too exhausting to even post about anymore because we know we will do it again next month. See Sysiphus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

 

I don't think we need to be in a rush to balance everything perfectly right now but I think some things we can get a feel for. Spider poison is something I think should eventually run out.

 

Agreed! There is no way to figure some of these out with chance..

Agreed. This eats all of my gold I want to test things with buying repair kits.. its insane. A repair kit needs to repair.. Shouldn't take 4+ kits to fix my sword..

What??? Share with me your skill buildout lol.. you must be wearing full plate. I am level 40 or so in this release and I don't see this at all. And I have 40+ unused skill points because of these "limits".. not cool.

Yes! I feel like we are in a vacuum sometimes until a hangout session and we get some tidbits on what may be in the next release, but no thought processes. The Dev+ community involved more.

Good post sir.

 

1: "Support" There are only a handful of merchants who sell craft supplies and even fewer who sell recipes. The world is getting pretty big and it's bad enough when new testers feel lost in general. With the mines emptied of ore nodes and many people not knowing where to find recipes, testing crafting is becoming more and more trying.

I would like to see more effort put in to making basic supplies and recipes more readily available and easy to find. Actual shops specializing in a particular craft should also sell the recipes for that craft.


True, I understand they want to test out everything else involved in gathering and crafting, but in the interest of speeding up feedback and generating more numbers on materials used, critical successes, critical failures, attempts, etc (which I am sure they are gathering behind the scenes), materials should be made more available either through chests (like when they first rolled out crafting), vendors or increased quantities of nodes.


2: Discovery. The more complex recipes become the less viable discovery is. I realize there are some crafters out there who like the idea of discovering recipes but if it's one thing R17 drives home for me is that many recipes are less than intuitive. If I'm actively trying to build a table and don't know the recipes.. how the hell am I going to build a wardrobe by mistake???

With the latest recipe changes we now have some that require two tools, fuel and 3 different ingredients. There is no way I would have simply guessed how to make those items. Especially without know the quantity of the ingredients needed.

There has to be a better way to learn recipes beyond having to buy recipes or look at wikis. I will dwell on this one for awhile but some manner of quests and apprenticing seem the obvious direction to go here.

Again, hard not to disagree here. To be honest, I haven't had the time or ability to test out crafting yet this release, so I don't know what the recipes are like, but if they are similar to the last release or two, then there is no way a new player would be able to intuitively grasp what would be needed to create most items, as there is seemingly no logic applied to the materials required.

I would think there needs to be a counterpoint to the blind experimentation method. Yes, the only way someone created these things in the past was through observing a need and experimenting, but that ship seems to have sailed, since no one in game (at this point, anyway) is venturing into undiscovered waters... Everything we are making has already been made by someone else, somewhere else, so some record of its creation and the process used, whether verbally passed from master to apprentice or written down, should logically exist.

Perhaps either a series of crafting quests designed to get players familiar with each level of crafting, from very basic items, to intermediate and even advanced item creation?

Or, as an alternative, either characters one can talk to and learn certain recipes, or books one can find on the subject, or both?



The rest, I can't really have a say one way or the other, as I haven't experienced enough of the release to be able to comment, but I like a lot of what you have said so far.

 

You're lucky, 2 days ago I went bleary eyed to the bathroom and lifted up the toilet seat; Wait, why is there something squidgy in my hand, did someone not clean up... and I looked down and realised I'd just squashed a slug between my fingers that had somehow gotten there during the night...! Shroud should add Slugs and Snails and oozy monsters, to bring it back to topic!

 

So on the topic, I agree with most of the comments; crafting in particular is really weird, and increasingly hard to test because the Wiki is now often wrong on even the basics; Supple Leather for instance was listing an older recipe, and I ended up buying the recipe from the vendor for that just to make use of the leather I was piling up. And Beef Stock is really odd; it's not just beef apparently, but half the contents of the Fruit and Veg vendors, then I need an equally over complicated recipe to make a further sub-ingredient ...

Perhaps the thinking is players will share the recipes once they're found, but I can't see many finding them with the sheer number of items involved; what is more the temptation to sell the sub components, because you assume that's the final step, or just can't find any further ones, will ensure people will experiment less rather than more.

What we need maybe is an "Inspiration" crafting skill, so on a successful creation where that item is used in something else, but you don't know the recipe yet, you get a discreet message that says "You sense something more can be done with this..." but it doesn't say exactly what. And high "Inspiration" allows you to look at items, drag and drop them on each other, and get a sense if they have any combination potential. So milk dropped on flour might suggest "Hmm yes, that may work as an edible" or "you've possibly exhausted all that can be done with milk"

 

rofl, good on topic suggestions

 

@Brenton You're right I am currently going full plate.. that and trying out pole arms. I focus on damage reducing innates first. Earth innates provide +10 Str and +15 damage reduction between resistance and avoidance. Plus the defensive innates for my weapon. I think my total damage reduction right now is about 49?

So there are some critters right now who simply can't touch me at all.. or those that can it takes so long to do any actual damage that they're long dead.

The only things I really need to be concerned with is stuff the causes non-physical damage. Spiders are nasty since R16 but one or 2 at time aren't usually any big deal. I avoid skeletons simply because I'm not a magic user so having to kill them twice wastes my item durability. I've no incentive to fight them. Some magic users are just.. well they don't do much but I don't often go where they are anyway.. others.. depends. I know not to try 2 fire elementals at once..

Point is though, are far as PvE goes there's more than enough stuff out there for me to hunt (including cultists and elves) that provide plenty of XP and resources (especially with the XP boosts now) that I'm pretty much unstoppable. If I tried out shields I'd probably get my reduction up another point or two.

@Nemo I like that idea for intuition. I think that could potentially help a lot but I think there probably also needs to be more.

I actually like where they're going with recipes. The ingredients themselves normally do seem like they make sense.. it's just the quantities that are way off. A lot of the recipes are going to change even further as those quantities get adjusted. That's another thing that's been tripping me up. What I knew last month no longer applies. Though that much isn't important as once crafting is complete and balanced it will no longer apply. Still, it applies for testing which makes it all that much harder to test.