Release 19 Instructions

That much is obvious.. My comment was meant to be rhetorical really. I just don't know what the reasons are that it couldn't be done for all blank books at once. Just seems funky.. but you guys know what you're doing. I was just hoping for a little itty bit more is all. When I see wee.. I meant wee. Not a big deal.

 

Heh. Just made at least have my day. Though I'm not sure why that is. lol

 

Armor, including helmets, will be enchantable in the future. Plus theres other reasons down the line it may matter. If you can't see what enchantment is on a piece of weapon or armor, then you wont know what your going up against in PvP. Hiding a helmet or enchantment effect is misrepresenting stats on you, making it impossible to know how to deal with you most effectively. "I have full physical resistance on my armor! so ill take this guy with the giant axe. Wtf? why are his hits ignoring my resistances?" Other guy: "heh heh, he doesnt know im dealing Ice Damage. Heh heh"

Coulda been a "She" too, not tryign to be sexist

 

I do understand your reasoning. Maybe there can be a skill kind of like arms lore that could let you see enchantments and item durability of an opponent.

 

Some MUDs had a skill to view all armor and their stats, on another player. All players in the room were notified that player a viewed player b.

 

Well, the way things are ATM you won't even know what weapon *type* someone is using until they enter combat mode. Much less what enchantments that weapon has. So, by that logic, weapons should always display, too. And I fail to see how seeing someone's hat could tell you what enchantments it has, do you expect some kind of bizarre particle effects on armor?

 

That would be interesting, someone has a flaming sword but you don't see the flames unless you had the skill such as arms lore allowing you to see them. Basically the skill would let you know if there is something special about an item or piece of equipment visually. You could see your own items abilities but not that of other people.

Anyway, don't want to go off topic, just that this comment caught my eye and sparked my imagination.

 

The only reason that I even want this is for the assassin type player. Not using the stealth ability, but using natural cover of darkness and trying to sneak up on people. If you are a giant ball of enchantments it doesn't work so well. I can understand the argument against it though.

 

It would work similar to the "identify" spell.

 

I expect some visual design indicating enchntment (such as gold inlays or soemthing), as was stated a while back by devs. I would liek weapons to display on the character in some way at all times, but if they arent in combat against you, theres no need to really know unless you intend to ambush, and by then you'll quickly get an idea. if you turn things off where they are never seen, they will never know unless you tell them.

The way combat is now, they dont have any skills available to use anyways the instant they draw thier weapon

 

Maybe they could make it to where the enchantments only show up when you actually fighting someone, not just in combat, but perhaps when blows are struck.

 

I could see that working well for weapons. Even ad an "activation" animation for when your weapon is "turned on". Ladies.

 

Could we at least get a rough design breakdown for the locked deck long term plan? How do you intend to balance and make it a meaningful choice if locked deck has no access to the main amount of skills (no combos, when combos are making up the main part of skills later down the road) and far worse damage per second due to random deck having next to no delay on skill use?
I'm not sure how that is any easier to balance

 

If they continue to iterate the deck building, in which you can already assign skills to specific slots, I don't see a long-term need for a locked deck. I'm hoping they will take a look at the Focus skill tree and make the ability to lock skills a low tier with reasonable cost, so setting at least one "always needed" spell will be easy to do (and possibly part of the starting deck).

The choice to use a locked deck would then just be you buying enough ranks in that skill to lock every open button. No need for two deck behaviors.

 

This is exactly what I'm worried about. If there is not even a choice for those with a massive distaste for the random deck, then I can not hold it against people who state that they're not going to play/buy the game thanks to that.
@RichardGarriot said that he wanted a game where you could completely avoid using a GUI. That is not possible with a random deck, but is possible with a locked deck, since you can mesmerise cooldowns on locked deck and play it like a piece of music, where the skilled player won't have to look at the sheet of music either. You can not (even with having skills appear on a static position) know when a skill appears on a random deck though, so you can never really hide that.
I'd at least want to have the chance to turn off the GUI (if I'm skilled enough).

Which helps squat to balance. You'd still not be capable of using combos, you'd still churn out less damage per second and you'd still be far outmatched by random deck users.

 

They will still absolutely need two deck behaviors as it is now. Reasons:

- All new players will start with locked deck by default. I don't see this ever changing simply due to how different deck combat is. I don't think a tutorial is going to help change this for most new players. Remember, it's not just simple card-based deck mechanics. It's real-time, fast-paced, and random deck mechanics. I foresee them toning down the firehose even further for new players, perhaps even decay=0, with skill points needed to speed it up.
- A subset of the players will never embrace deck combat. They simply won't, just as some PvE will never PvP.

The ability to assign slots for the skills was a good step but it's no locked deck. Hybrid decks are a good option, but it's just that: an option, not the default.

 

Even if I'm a paladin of the locked deck, I trust Chris and won't rush to any conclusion until he says he's done tweaking (or done tweaking enough). Nor complain if I receive less love than random deckers - that's somehow by design - even when we clearly receive the short end of the deal.

 

RG spoke at some point about how he was considering moving away from a locked deck at start. I think he even mentioned possibly getting rid of locked decks.

But, I think, more importantly, when more and more combos come in the game, the appeal of using a locked deck will go down, unless they figure out some way to use combos with a locked deck. We'll be able to combine most magic spells together to create entirely new spells.

 

The only difference between a locked deck and a tutorial deck with each glyph assigned to its own slot is the refresh. Yes, you will not be able to memorize that you can hit "2" every 4.5 seconds to optimize your DPS, but I think that is kind of the point. Locking the glyph allows you to do that, but gimps the output of those same abilities.

Getting rid of decay until you purchase that ability makes sense. You can discard if needed. Adding an ability to auto-stack if you draw a second glyph into the same slot would allow something more like a locked deck, but with all the benefits of glyph.

As I said, it is an iterative process. I think there have been a lot of good changes in the last couple of releases, so I'll look forward to what they have in the pipeline.

 

I just want to put this here as food for thought. Start at around 2:25