Werewolves

[jacksin125]

I'm going to post all the discussion about werewolves that occurred in the new update thread here, so people can discuss it here instead of cluttering up the update thread. I'm also going to post some extra thoughts of mine:

Cr00cy: Well, looks like i have to wait for next full moon to be able to level up my wolf too bad i dont have gear for any other skillset. Would it be possible to allow us unlock lv 70 in diffrent way, at least temporary? For exampel from Sanja?

Julcat: We Lycan are cursed. Not only are we gonna be locked out until the full it is likely it will cost tokens to unlock+tokens for abilities leading to 2 months before we can get to 70 and have abilitys.

jacksin125: I'm going to have to agree with this. it is an artificial way to make leveling take longer, and I have yet to see that ever work well in any videogame. Not only that, but what if you happen to be busy irl for even just 1 or 2 of the full moon days? It turns this game from a casual one to one where you might have to slip out of work to get good.

Krakatau: This should probably be looked at. I hadn't really thought about it, but it does force people wanting to advance Lycanthrope to find time to play during a 3 day window.

Citan: Yes, you have to occasionally find time to play during a full moon to get the most out of lycanthropy. That's not a bug, it's a feature. In exchange, werewolf players, and ONLY werewolf players, can buy their level-ups and abilities before they meet the prerequisites. They can also pay for it in "tokens", which, it turns out, are a whole lot cheaper than Councils. I'm sorry that the full moon falls pretty far from this update, though.

jacksin125: I constantly find myself broke, and I would probably prefer to pay with councils, because having to wait 2-3 months just to get to where other players can get in a week is sad and frustrating (Not to mention, if I actually ground for councils I could get a million or more in 2 months, which makes once-a-month tokens FAR more expensive than councils). Not only that, but artificial ways to make leveling, or getting the best gear, basically making it so that to become a top player you have to just wait, is generally one of the most disliked features in any game I play that has it (I've seen it in GW2, and every discussion about it was negative).

Now, I don't have a problem with the idea of doing quests to get tokens to spend at an altar. However, I don't like that it was designed so that I want to quit the game because I can do almost nothing until next month, and even then I still have to wait another month to unlock everything. So, I'll say this idea here, and post it as a suggestion ingame: Allow players to complete the werewolf quests and spend tokens on lvling up anytime, but only refresh the quest list once a month. Also, add more quests (tier 3 and maybe even 4 of each quest) so that a player could get everything they can grind to unlocked before the quests refresh again, but make the higher tier quests drastically harder (So go from killing 50 to 100 to 200 and so on). This would encourage lazier players to just wait until quests refreshed, but more dedicated players would be able to grind at their own speed. I personally feel like you should still only be able to do quests to get buffs during the full moon, and I feel that that would give enough of a reason for lycan players to do a ton of quests during the full moon.

EDIT: If you happen to actually consider my idea, but encounter a problem with my idea, I will be happy to do all the thinking to find solutions for you. For example, how to make the ongoing quests and full moon events work smoothly together. My favorite solution so far is to have the month-long quests grant "skill tokens", which can be used for unlocking higher levels, unlocking skills, and maybe something else as well (if you wanted to add something else later). Then, the full moon events would "override" the normal month long quests and tokens, and the full moon events would be basically the same (except that they probably wouldn't let you unlock higher lvls or skills). If you wanted, you could make skill tokens reset at the same time as normal werewolf tokens.

cr00cy: Well lv 60 unlock coudl be fullly done within one full moon. And all task can be doen within one, two days max.

That being said, it still feels wrong that we are locked out of new content just beause update happened on wrong day. Well i guess it wont amtter that much when game is relased (since all leves will be unlockable alredy).

I seriusly feel sorry for new(er) wolves who spend all they time levling wolf. Thye will be effectivly locke dout of 50% of they skills(and god forbid they have wolf rmor crafted... then they are really screwed). It wont matter that much for me (or other older players) because i have severla lv 60 skills, and a lot stockpiled gear for diffrent skill combinations, that i saved "just in case". And i can craft what im missing.

Well its not 1st time that wolves are locked out of new stuff becasue of full moon, but problem is we now have to wiat much longer to be able to acces new content.

Something to consider for future lv cap increaes - maybe make lv cap increase unlockable for money from trainer, and only skills from altar?

And when we are at the topick of wolf altar - can we please make huntign speed pernament skill alredy? I know i spamm about it a lot, but seriusly, its only movement boost wolf have (not counting mods for shadow feint - becasue at this point its betetr to pick mods for psotive attidue) adn its locked out durnign tiem its needed most.

jacksin125: I'm gonna stop you right there. Even if you could unlock everything for 10 lvls every month (Which I haven't been able to do, if only because of time constraints), you would be forced to wait two months to level up to 70, when it is probably possible to do it in 2 weeks or even less (I know it's possible to grind from 50 to 60 in 7 or so hours, if you do everything right). If we have to use the wolf altar for lvls 70 - 100, then that would be 5 months, no matter how fast the player could level. I don't know about you, but in most mmos I used to be able to lvl up to max (Including best gear and everything) in a month or less. The only ones that take longer are generally the Asian mmos that are full of almost solely hardcore grinders, and even then they only take so long because it takes forever to get enough xp to level up and to grind for good gear, not because the game tells you to sit on your heels for a month.

Outside of discussion thread:
I did think of a time when this might be reasonable. If lycanthropy is an advanced skill you're really only supposed to get after you've maxed 2 other skills, then you'd be able to play with those two others skills until the full moon came, so you wouldn't be sitting on your heels doing nothing. However, as of right now, I think many people are using it as their "first" skill (As in, that's the one they try to level up first), and there's also the fact that permanent werewolves would not be able to use most other skills while waiting for the next full moon (Although maybe you are also only supposed to become a permanent werewolf after maxing your level).

[Extractum11]

cr00cy's point about new wolves is pretty serious. If the standard playstyle is to wait for the full moon, grind out quests for the level unlocks + abilities, hit the next level cap in 2 weeks, and then wait for 2 more weeks, no one is going to play wolf as a main skillset. And you would lose access to all the other buffs, forms, and storage that are supposed to counteract the downsides of being a wolf during the leveling period.

If there are full-time wolves that are unhappy now about having to wait 3 weeks, there's no way that new player will willingly go lycan if he knows that he'd have to go through this wait 5 times. Maybe the current wolves can just pretend that there was a delay with the level 70 lycan stuff, and it's going to be released right as the next full moon hits. :P


In exchange, werewolf players, and ONLY werewolf players, can buy their level-ups and abilities before they meet the prerequisites.

Does prerequisites mean things like favor, or money, or level? The first two really aren't great benefits. If it's level (as in, a level 50 werewolf can buy the level 100 unlock and implicitly get all the other ones too), then I think it's a step in the right direction. It'd still be pretty tedious, but it's something.

In the other thread, someone brought up adding more quests to the altar. IMO this just makes it feel even more mandatory to play during the full moon.

About the altar: will the quests scale as we level? Is it going to be the wolf trainer up to level 100? I like to think that the Sentient Flame will be the level 100 Fire Magic trainer, but the Lycans sort of have that already. Like, the Altar of Norala is already peak wolfiness, learning from some random werewolf in a new zone almost seems like a downgrade.

[Oxlazr]

I rerolled to drop lycan some time ago, and this kind of stuff only makes me more confident in my decision.

I know a lot of games put time-locks on content, but that's typically for max-level content; you can't actively fall behind other players in levels - as a new player, picking up lycan, and later finding out that I couldn't max it for potentially months? That would definitely be discouraging - especially if you've been playing max-level content, then the fullmoon comes around and you literally can't level up past 50/60 for another month.

I'd consider features that let players opt for further temporary downsides to accelerate the token process, or perhaps allow some sort of skill that collectively allows lycans to summon 'extra' full-moons.

[cr00cy]

Well when lv 60 hit i coudl unlock lv 60 cap and all abilites at the same time. Hoever - i needed to spend ALL tokens for it.

If we assume lv 1 wolf could use altar to unlock all skill caps an new ranks - its not that big of a problem. Such player could just spend tokens from few full moons to unlock caps and skill ranks before even reaching them. In theory.


Hoever, if such player need to hit lv cap to increase it there is huge problem. Not only that - levelign up from 1 to 60 in a month is not impossible. Even assuming new player probably wont do it in most efficent way (since he/she wont have proper gear), and will be leveling other skills (craftngs/foraging, etc).

Considerign that with current system lycans have to spend 5 month to hit lv cap (assumign such player wont miss any full moon, and do all wolf quests each time), just being able to buy all skill ranks before hitting appropite lv is... well underwhelming.

So yeh, i support idea of allowing lycan to spe dup progress. But i dont think "summonign extar full moons" is good way to do so - i think whole systme needs to chnage. I wont go too in depth into this (it woudl turn into gigantick wall of text) but general idea i had as to allow lycans earn tokens outised full moon, accumulate them. Full moon woudl be tiem when tehy cna be spend, and current quest woudl be chnage to give set bonuses.

[Khariel]

My suggestion for the wolf altar thing, is this...

Open up the quests a day or two early, like when you get the buff for the impending full moon. That could represent the Goddess' increased reach into the world before she can fully manifest at the height of the full moon.

The other suggestion would simply be to increase the number of quests available. Not by a huge amount, but maybe add one final tier to what is already there, or maybe a final quest you can only get if you complete all of them... and if you do it you get a good amount of tokens for it.

[Dagimir]

Why not dragon ball Z it and have a druid be able to cast a false full moon for lycans to take advantage of? Just make the prereq to cast the spell some kind of super rare reagent.

[jacksin125]

In the other thread, someone brought up adding more quests to the altar. IMO this just makes it feel even more mandatory to play during the full moon.


That might have been me, but my suggestion was to allow players to do more quests outside of the full moon, but they could only use those quests to unlock skills & lvls, and during the full moon you would have the same quests and buffs.

Cr00cy, I haven't actually been able to unlock an entire level tier and all its skills during the full moon, but even if I could it wouldn't particularly matter if we had the ability to unlock the next tier up, because I don't think there are enough tokens to unlock two tiers in one full moon, nevermind that there'd be almost no chance of me being able to do that many quests. That is why I think we need to be able to unlock skills outside of the full moon. Accumulating tokens and then only spending them during the full moon is an interesting idea, but I don't think people should be able to unlock buffs using tokens that they got outside of the full moon, because then it would a) be pretty op, and b) Mean that werewolves would only have to go on for a few minutes during the full moon, so there'd be no reason to play while stuck in wolf form. If you can find solutions to those, then I'm very interested in your idea.

Khariel, that's a pretty interesting idea. It warrants some merit, but I don't think Citan would go for it. It also does not solve the problem we're currently having: Wolves are stuck waiting for the full moon to level up, and you can go up 10 levels faster than once a month, so they'll be sitting there bored until the next full moon.