Posts made by spoletta

I have probably missed some, but I have counted 52 skills available to everyone and 92 available to spell channeling weapons.

This huge amount of skills gated behind the spell channeling weapons makes it so that "mages" enjoy a huge range of different skills, while "non-mages" are feeling very limited in the choice.

Can the spell channeling property be converted from "Spell channeling" to "Spell channeling 1, Spell channeling 2, Spell channeling 3" (we can call them minor spell channeling, spell channeling and greater spell channeling?), so that spell channeling 1 allows all memory 1 spell channeling skills, spell channeling 2 allows memory 1 and 2 skills and spell channeling 3 all skills?

This way you greatly increase the build options and design space.

The way I see it, they should be attributed in the following way:

Spell channeling 3: Staves, maces, unarmed. (Very iconic spell casting tools)

Spell channeling 2: Dagger, Rapier, Shortbow, Scimitar, Quarterstaff. (Current spell channeling weapons)

Spell channeling 1: Long Sword, Club, Morning Star, Hand Axe, Battle Axe, Longbow (Weapons which are sometimes tied to casting archetypes)

Non Spell channeling: Spear, Warhammer, Great Axe, Great Sword, Halberd (Weapons too heavy to cast)

This way instead of having 2/3 of the skills gated behind a weapon property, the distinction is a lot more fluid.

It also becomes possible to empower a bit the memory 3 spells (which are currently a bit lacking), since they become restricted to only the most spell focused builds.

His point is that implementing features and bug fixing are not mutually exclusive.

But we are getting OT and our dev lords need this thread for the feedback on the temperature system.

I think that I did a very bad job at explaining the system.

What I proposed INCREASES the need to replace equip.

We have reasons to believe that the summon itself is bugged and that it will summon just a common elder mountain troll.

My worry is that it will be impossible to manage the correct degradation rate of rare resources, enchant materials and common materials at the same time.

No, the demand is exactly the same.

Currently you have an item which costs x rare items, and it gets destroyed when it reaches the end of its durability.

With the changes proposed, the item still costs x rare item, but it lasts only 1/3 as long and when it "breaks" you lose only 1/3 of the rare items.

The demand for those items remains exactly the same.

The hardened skins are a completely different issue XD

By the way, I didn't propose a dismantling system based on durability, because it would require something new and specific for this.

The way I proposed instead it is literally just a craft. Raw materials go in (t2 equipment) product comes out (t2 reagents).

Yet another thread by me on durability balance! (Guess that I was envious that Olive got the Harbinger of Famine title, and now I want the Harbinger of Ruin one)

This game has no repairing system, items will be eventually destroyed, and I have personally opposed any proposal of introducing it.

That said, I have come to consider a possible alternative to it, which is dismantling.

Current issues:

• The current item durability for t2 items is based on the difficulty of gathering those rare components like soul shards, and the difficulty of performing t2 enchants. This is fine, but at the same time it isn't balanced toward the value of the cloth/wood/leather/metal component of those items, which is a lot lower. This means that if we want to preserve the market value of t2 reagents, we sacrifice the market value of the "regular" resources.

• Even after the increase to 5 per enchant, the market request of common enchant reagents is low, because they are used on long lasting items.

• Uncommon reagents that are used in the crafting of t2 equipment (like sparkle of life) will never be used for enchanting, their value is too high.

In general it could be said that since the value of an item is composed by regular materials + uncommon reagents + enchants, it is very hard to balance all the resource values with a single durability value.

I propose the following (hopefully easy) changes to address this:

1. Triple the drop rate of the uncommon reagents, while also tripling the quantity needed for each craft. So for example a ranger armor would require 6 seer stones for the chest piece and 3 for the other pieces. The overall balance here is unchanged, since you tripled both need and drop rate.

2. Add a crafting tab to all crafting stations, which is the dismantling tab. This tab simply offers to "craft" the uncommon reagents using armor pieces as materials and would return 2/3 of the uncommon reagents used in the craft. So for example you would have a "Dismantle Ranger Armor" craft which crafts 4 seer stones and requires one ranger armor. This would be a way to recover a large part of the rare components of an armor when its durability is low. You don't let items reach zero durability, when they are low, you dismantle and recraft them.

3. Lower the durability of items to one third of the current values (maybe we can keep chain and plate durabilities a big higher, because right now they break a little bit too fast).

4. In the same way that we currently need 5 reagents of a type for enchanting and only one for the legendary reagents, we should need only
   2 uncommon reagents for an enchant.

5. When an item receives a tier 1 enchant, it's durability increases by 5%. 15% for T2, 100% for T3.

What would this achieve in total?

• The balance of rare items is the same. You get triple the amount, you use triple the amount and lose 1/3 every 1/3 of durability instead of losing it all the end of one 3/3 of durability. At the same time though the single item is less valuable, so we could start seeing them used in enchanting.

• The consumption of regular materials (cloth, leather, wood, metal) is now faster, preventing the saturation that we are currently experiencing.

• The consumption of common enchanting reagents is far higher. This creates a demand for low level items, which is usually expressed in buy orders in marketplaces. Those buy orders for common reagents greatly ease the life for new players.

• By increasing the durability of items with enchants, and reducing the cost of uncommon reagents to 2, the impact on uncommon and legendary reagent availability should be close to null.

• It increases the dynamism of equipment. Since you now recreate it a lot more times, you also have more chances to change its materials and enchants, instead of being locked in it for 3 weeks if you don't make a new set.

@Logain I agree on some changes being potentially good in that area.

Material KP should not be obtained by finding them only once, it should have a 0-100% gauge like mobs have and offer a lot more KP in total. This way a player can start as a gatherer and get rewarded with KPs for his activities. You balance this additional amount of KP by having additional crafts being unlocked with KP, and masteries indeed being more like a crafting talent tree (non easily respecable) than a simple grind of materials.

This encounters the demand of those that want to be able to specialize in crafting. A crafter player would invest more points in crafting than in talents/skills. As long as the crafting talents offer only modest bonuses (no more than+10% damage/armor/resistances/durability in total), it would integrate well in the game.

In the end the KP would still be balanced, so a character would still be able to get everything in the long run, both combat and crafting.

What I find good in the recipes (limited only) is that you can't actually farm them. You can only trade for the specific one you want.

I also find it good that you can potentially link their drop rate to neutral alignment, so you give these players an incentive to flag neutral.

Problem is that I have run some math on it, and unfortunately it doesn't check.

Devs stated that they want items to last at least 2-3 weeks, and considering the effort in crafting and enchanting one, I feel like this is a correct approach.
So a player runs through a set+weapon (5 items) in 2-3 weeks.

Even assuming that a recipe will have only 5 uses, which feels extremely limited, it means that to keep them relevant the average drop rate for them should be one in 2-3 weeks. This is clearly too low.
As such, I don't feel like there is a way to make recipes relevant.

By the way, back on the temperature topic, I feel like the following changes would make it better:

• It currently is too punishing. 10 stack per degree is a bit too much, it should be lowered to 5 per degree. This way getting your equipment wrong by 10 degrees would result in a move penalty of 25%, which is definitely a big penalty already. Receiving a -50% penalty should be reserved for those really getting their equipment wrong, which means 20 degress under your comfort zone. This assumes that warm will receive a meaningful effect at least as penalizing as chill.

• At the same time though the insulation bonuses coming from t2 sets should not be so generous compared to the t1 ones. Ideally, they should be exactly the same. Exploring areas with extreme climates should be a matter of using the RIGHT equip not a matter of using a BETTER equip. A cloth is a cloth and fur is fur.

• The game should offer more ways to offset the temperature issues. Currently we can: change our armor type (very difficult), changing our armor material (possible), use specific skills (very difficult/possible depending on your base build). In the future we will probably get some consumables from Alchemy. I think that we should get a couple more: +5 heat or cold insulation amulets, fire/cold resist enchantments should also provide an insulation bonus.

@GamerSeuss we know from the first AMA that weather will affect farming. I would say that the effects have just not been activated yet.

But then we tie the crafting to a massive grinding, which is probably against the intentions of the game.

@DarthJafo they have fixed that Ctd literally in this update.

The current stack system (chill, Warm, Corrosion, Shock) is based on a 1-100 basis.

Warm stacks reduce fire resistance by 4 for each stack.
Chill stacks reduce ice resistance by 2 for each stack and move speed by 0.5% for each stack.
Corrosion reduces armor by 4 per stack and every 2 seconds ticks for 2 damage per stack.
Shock stacks reduce shock resistance by 2 for each stack and everytime you gain stacks you also have a 0.4% chance per stack to be paralized.

All stacks decrease by 10 per second.

These stacks are also used for the weather system. Hot temperatures cause warm stacks, cold temperatures cause chill stacks. Future weather effects may use the corrosion and shock ones.

While in general this system is working well, there are currently a few issues with it:

1. The rate of decrease is too high. A single player has no chances to have his stacks work in a meaningful manner. This becomes very noticeable on skills like elemental touches or arrows, where the next attack arrives when the stacks inflicted by the previous one have already depleted. Ideally, the rate of decrease of stacks should be halved.

2. The hot weather inflicts a penalty which is never felt if you don't fight something which inflicts fire damage, while the chill slowing effect is something that you always suffer. Warm stacks should probably reduce the fire resistance by only 2 and then have a secondary effect, like the other ones. Possible effects could be: Increase damage received, longer cooldown reductions, reduce mana/hp regen and so on.

@Logain said in Limited uses for recipes:

@spoletta said in Limited uses for recipes:

This has more to do with the actual difference between a t1 and a t3, than how easy it is to craft a t3.

Not really, if you look at this from a design and mathematical perspective.
And you have to check every suggestion if it does promote or divert from a design goal.

It is always an issue of finding the right compromise.
Players want this game to be about jumping into the action from the first moment.
Players also want meaningful progress.

These 2 desires of the community are clearly in contrast with each other.
The recipe system clearly speaks with the "progress" part of the community, but as long as a tier 3 is not necessary to compete with other players, the first part of the community doesn't have a lot of issues.

The Launcher is hosted by Gamigo US. Maybe the store too.

This has more to do with the actual difference between a t1 and a t3, than how easy it is to craft a t3.

@stkmro

1. Recipes in the cash shop is a big no. I think we all agree on that.

2. Recipes having limited uses makes it actually easier for solo players. It increases the accessibility to crafting. It comes with an increase in the drop rates, and many solo players will have no reason to ever build more than 10 slayer helmets, so a permanent recipe or a limited recipe for them is almost the same. By the time they need a new one, they will surely have the economic resources for it.

@OlivePit
the economy of those items is based around requiring those uncommon materials, I wouldn't touch that part.

@Kazzier

The game already works like that.
Easy - Primitive
Average - Tier 1
Hard - Tier 2
Extremely Hard - Tier 3

People are already grouping up to farm the materials for their armors.

The recipe system is something that is put on top of all this. It is another requirement that you have to fulfill (or purchase) in order to craft that item, and most importantly it is a resource that cannot be directly farmed.