Discuss the Dev Blog: May 6 2018

[Citan]

The new dev blog is up! You can read it here. (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/entry.php?31-Dev-Blog-May-2018)

This is the discussion thread.

It's really long... and this is the shortened version! There's just a lot of topics to cover. But if you want to skip over boring technical stuff, you can jump to the "Treasure and Skill Changes" section about halfway down.

[INXS]

Serbule is a complete town it has it all, no other town compares . Can't expect people to move to others areas when they feel incomplete. Kur Outpost can't hang around when in between the 2 buildings you freeze to death, how about a few huge fire pits bin between them and create a non freeze zone. I know Almuna is in arid area that's fine why would I want to hang around there when I have to constantly make sure I'm not dehydrated and die, how about putting a few palm trees in the outer walls and these cast shade into town, can't believe Almuna doesn't have a tanning tack! Rahu was in need of tlc and the addition of transfer chest and extra NPCs storage has been most welcomed.

[Xelrah]

To add to previous reply, Serbule is also the only town that has player stalls currently which is probably one of major reasons also. Either having other towns with stalls or global auction house type of thing would help spread players as well.

Interesting read nonetheless, looking forward to all the changes and additions.

[Rhawkas]

Woohoo, Priests (and Priestesses) are coming!

Will it be an "off-hand" skill? Will there be any kind of equipment required to use it?

[Quanzhigao]

I think storage is one of the main things keeping people in serbule. As a newb you spend a lot of time getting favors up, it's easy to unlock ivyn's chest and easy to get joeh/marna to soul mate by giving skins/bacon. Then you get to the next few zones and all the NPC's want way different stuff, generally harder to get.

Maybe increasing the base council storage slightly and changing up where some of the storage is located; I don't think there's any storage NPC's in eltibule keep which is the core place in eltibule, maybe move the council storage to that keep and move all the storage in the zone to there(ie move sie antries storage to yetta, maybe let kalaba store a few pieces of equipment)

[Solstafir]

I'm super excited about all of this upcoming stuff, thank you for taking the time to write a dev blog again!

[IndigoBlue]

@Citan (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/member.php?u=59) This was a fascinating read. I don't always bother with updates from Game Devs, because patience is my middle name. And usually, the game is finished and is simply pushing out content updates every 3-4 months. I'm a little more invested in PG though, and have been been looking forward to these posts, since you announced they were coming.

I still a newbie to PG, but not to MMO's, and I agree with other comments already in this thread. PG does need 2-3 cities with full features. At very least access to the 8 slot chest that allows for multi-toon item sharing, and access to the Council chest. I'm not going to ask that we have access to all the NPC boxes we have all over the world except in Serbule, or the player shops, because that's really themepark'ish.

But the amount of people in Serbule is just crazy on the weekends, and even with all settings optimized, getting anything done in Serbule during a poety event is just impossible. I STAY AWAY during those events.

So this is my official vote for a 2nd hub city that is SAFE. No cold/hydration issues. Hopefully before level 40 or 50.

Also, I know some people are going to be disappointed that you did not mention Vampirism, but a Healing Support Class is a great step. Not a fan of that class, but I'm glad to see it's coming.

Finally, about the "all at once" versus "slow updates" for the combat updates. My vote would be "all at once". It will SUCK for your team, because there will be a lot of screaming, but more people will probably be active, which means it's easier to find bugs and stuff, right?

[ArkadyRandom]

Great blog and super meaty.

My characters aren't 50+ so impact on me would be minimal but I'd prefer a more dramatic nerf-cyle for combat scaling rather than slow. I suppose it depends on how close you feel you are to your target values. If you're really close then a few slow incremental nerfs makes sense to me. If you're not close then I think ripping the bandage off makes more sense.

The knife update and dual wielding sounds great.

I think it's a mistake to make Priest (or any skill line) group focused. You're painting yourself into a box and arbitrarily creating content divisions where there doesn't need to be any.

The client offload system sounds so interesting to me. I have a reasonably powerful computer (4790, 16GB, GTX970, 1TB 850 EVO) on a gigabit fiber connection. I have noticed times where I'm the only one around in a dungeon or area and performance is spotty. Maybe in the future, this could be an opt-in feature for accounts with adequate hardware and network bandwidth.

[Daguin]

Thank you Citan! This was a great read, and a really interesting look "behind the curtain".

I agree that Serbule is OP in terms of resources, and maybe a simple solution of moving some of the existing storage or caves there to Eltibule would encourage people to thin out a little...
A tanning rack in Ilmari would be great, as others mentioned, since most of the work orders there are for leatherworking+tailoring unless this is an intentional hindrance.

I'm very excited about the changes to Knife as I have been interested in testing it in a secondary off-hand role with some of the higher DPS skills, and Priest sounds like a lot of fun (and step towards weather witching perhaps?). . . New towns (outposts) sound like a blast too!

Happy testing everyone!

[Erthiel]

I would prefer the rip the band-aid off approach on the changes. Seems more reasonable to be annoyed once then a few times. I think we will be able to handle it :-)

Also I quite like Rahu. It is a big city with a number of vendors. I think it has the potential to be another player hub. It received the player work order board. If it got a few player vendor stalls and some equipment storage and poetry podium I see no reason it would not be as useful location as Serbule. These 3 things seem to be the ones that make any location less desired. Many players would still visit Serbule to buy lower tier resources, however there is no reason not to move some trade to a different location when the market for higher level tear items could be moved maybe?

[Northuunal]

First, awesome changes and I'm really looking forward to it. Second, let me know if any of the following ideas have already been put in place or mentioned.

To spread some of the players out from Serbule, you could put in a poetry podium in Serbule Hills and Eltibule. Add in some trainers for the different skills (blacksmithing, leatherworking, tanning to name a few) to both Serbule Hills and Eltibule. Add bookcases to each zone, and allow players to manage items in zones adjacent to their current zone from a bookcase, maybe at a small cost? Lastly, move some services around in Eltibule. Move some of the trainers out of Hogan's Keep and into or closer to Eltibule Keep, and make another garden area near Hogan's Keep.

Anyway, keep up the amazing work you guys are doing.

[Futan]

Great read Citan, thank you.

New player here, was pining for my lug tactician and wound up here.

Looking forward to all the updates.

[twincannon]

Wrote this up with the intention of it being a new thread, but I suppose this is the better place for it :)

Thoughts on optimization blog post

I just read the optimization blog and it brought up some questions and thoughts. I'm really enjoying the game, but I'm also having a hard time recommending it to friends due to a lot of the problems stated in the blogpost, so this is a pretty important topic to me -- even though most of these optimizations wouldn't affect me playing the game personally (though, it'd be nice! :P).

Also, please don't take any of this to heart or it as being accusatory, this is all just speculation and guesswork on my behalf in effort to try and help the game.


Animation overhead and it's relation to the UI lag/hitching

As mentioned in the blog, we all know disabling animations helps with lag a lot. One really interesting thing I noticed is that it also results in placing the interaction boxes at NPCs and players feet as a small "uninitialized" box. This makes me think that these boxes are recalculated every frame (or, every few frames with "Slow Boxes" being active), and needs the data from the mesh/animation/collision to do so. If this is the case, I feel like there's some easy gains to be had here. For most NPCs that just stand still or even walk around you could probably just calculate it once and use cached data -- there's no reason to constantly update this. Mesh size relative to screensize is one reason of course (you walk closer to an NPC, he occupies more pixel screen space, and thus the box needs to be larger), but you could still just use cached bounds of the character and only actively update his position. And even on moving and animating NPCs/mobs I'd say this data would only ever have to be cached every once in a while - either once every X updates, or maybe once at the start of every animation?

Another thing to note here (and this is just a shot in the dark guess) is that if all of the on-screen interactable objects are being checked every frame, there's probably some quadtree style stuff to be done, i.e. only check interactables that are near the cursor.

Speaking of "Slow Boxes", why does it also slow down stuff like damage numbers and item names? Even though these are placed at the top of items/NPCs heads, surely they shouldn't be as expensive? If they are, this is also probably a place for easy gains using cached data (a single vector for the relative position of the top of the mesh + the object's location, projected to screen)

Also, a slider for the UI pop-up distance would probably be nice. I see damage numbers from things extremely far away from me... if these are expensive, this should probably be an option (edit: derp! this already exists, nice!)

One last final note here, and I have no idea if this is something Unity is even capable of, but I recall past MMOs like Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online playing animations at a slower framerate in the distance. Could be worth looking into, it'd be a lot better than simply turning animations off and having broken interaction and T-posing going on.


Character meshes

At first I couldn't believe Unity not being able to handle 100 animating players. However then I thought about the fact that each character is not just a single mesh: it's the body meshes (which seem to be at least body and head here), and then all the armor/weapon meshes. So a potential upwards of 9 meshes per character. I noticed there's already a default humanoid LOD that gets loaded at a certain distance (at least for the cultists in Eltibule), which is good. Not much to say here aside double checking that the armor meshes aren't being used in any calculations such as the UI boxes -- the base body mesh should be all you need for stuff like that


Distance culling and server packets?

One thing I noticed is Gorgon lets you set the object draw distance super high, possibly even zone-wide? This is really cool and I can't think of any MMO that has had such a large potential draw distance, but I also noticed that setting it from low to high instantly shows distant entities on your screen -- this leads me to believe (total assumption!) the client is being sent data from every entity in their zone, constantly? Seems like an easy server-side improvement here to send data based on some radius, if so


Sky/weather

This one confused me from the blog post. Firstly, there not being a "disable sky" or "simple sky" option in graphics settings is surprising, in a game full of such drastic optimizations -- having an expensive sky, this seems like a pretty standard option that even major titles have had in the past. Secondly, why would weather impact the client if it were disabled? Would it not be zone-wide and then just a simple packet sent every now and then saying "hey weather is on/off now" and your client handling the rest (i.e. easily disabled clientside)? Not that important since the feature doesn't even exist yet, but I think it's a good thing to think about.


Serbule player vendors

This is really just a straight up suggestion, but what if the Serbule player vendor area was just in a basement or something, i.e. a different zone from the main city? Though this area seems to be occluded, it could still help Serbule with network traffic if nothing else?


Well that's everything, again this is in no way shape or form meant to be condescending or accusatory or anything like that -- just trying to help offer any gamedev experience I have (unfortunately very little of it which is in Unity)! And I have no idea what you guys are dealing with on the plugin side of things and such (but with some of the UE4 plugins I deal with at my job, I can only imagine...). Gamedev is anything but a clean and straightforward operation, so again these are just guesses at best. I will say though that I feel like these should really take priority over just about everything else if at all possible, but that's just my opinion as a newbie. Really excited to see where Gorgon goes in any case!

[Justarius]

I really enjoy these Dev blogs. I don't really have any commentary, but it's nice to see feedback on what is being worked on and the developer's thoughts as to the state of the game, problems, issues coming up, etc.

I'm nowhere near skilled or geared enough (after almost 200 hours... heh!) to comment on the nerfs coming, but it was interesting to read about what issues are lurking and what fixes are in the pipeline.

[Rhawkas]

i would like to say first that if nerfs are coming i would rather you go the route of all at once instead of a little at a time...

all at once we'll more quickly see where you're wanting to take things, a little at a time we'll always be wondering "how much will it drop next time"

Yep, just like pulling off a bandaid or getting a shot. Just do it all at once and get it over with instead of prolonging the pain. XD

[PezOfDoom]

I'm not sure how other high level players feel, but I too am in the boat of "hit us hard and fast with the nerf," but only if you really know where you want to go with it.

I appreciate that your sentiment is to not reduce the number of viable combinations; rather to balance and scale them better. Are there any design talks around creating new mods for any existing skills or are you pretty happy with what you have currently?

I also recall many moons ago there was talk of removing or completely redoing battle chemist because it was too diverse/powerful in its current state. Is that still on the horizon for happening?

[Rick Sanchez]

Ugh I know Unity has her issues. I happen to know a thing or two about Unity and if you have specifics I'd be happy to take a peek.

[Xarduvik]

Love the update, well said! Yank off the bandage. Let the blood flow. Yeah, I'm one of those guys who are just slobbering over the promised Vampirism. I want to bite necks! Elven necks, human necks, furry necks, all the same juicy stuff! (Okay, I know that sounded rather sick.)

You've got a lot of work to do, I won't smite your frontal lobe with ideas or suggest something creepy (beyond neck biting) that can't be feasibly done. Keep at it, have fun, I'll be playing, waiting on the day I can use a toothbrush file to sharpen my fangs! ;)

[MorKazim]

thank you for the Update Citan.

in your blog you say that we need to spread out. we need to leave Serbule and move to other areas. that is good and we try to do that. but. you have installed in Serbule so many amenities that there are no ware else. lets say the vendors. or the order signs (they are local and most players use the Serbule one)

in order to spread the people you need to do something with the vendors. perhaps instead of real vendors add in more places a global vendor that links to all.
(add a global market).

I for instance try to go to Serbule only for 5min per game time for selling all that cant be sold elseware and leave. I would like to not going there at all as my rig is not new - good and I experience low FPS and lag

thank you.

[spider91301]

Im hyped as for priest and vampire cant wait for that

[Escwine]

Thanks for the Blog update! I enjoyed the read and understand the issues. First, let me say this is my first post on the forums and I did just review the game on Steam. I love what you guys have done here! Much like the game a friend and I have been planning and experimenting with. So we'll table that for now.

Few thoughts I had after reading the Blog. Serbule is always going to be the main hub city just by its position and nature in the game. I doubt there is much you can do to change that. But a few things might help move people out.

1. Some form of a universal storage/bank. You could still build around your current favor system, which is awesome!
2. Death respawns, out of dungeons, of course, could be just outside of towns, friendly keeps, etc. That would encourage player movement.
3. Some of the more popular vendors could be moved further apart or in some case just outside the city proper. But still centralized on the map for players.
4. Admittedly I haven't made it past Eltibule, so I can't speak to some of the other areas but things that make it warm or safe, etc. would move the more leveled players to the appropriate cities as well. Provided they can access storage in a more easy fashion as stated in #1 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1) .

Just a few thoughts on one of the many issues you guys are tackling. And let me say, of the many games I've beta-ed, you guys have set up the best community platform and have been the most open and responsive of any I've seen! Keep that up and this game and community will be like no other!!

Well back to Serbule for me. Music needs to be played and work orders to complete!! lol

[cr00cy]

About Serbule - I think you nailed main problem. ther eis so mhy good thigns in Serbule (vendors, storage) that are also very close to each other. One more... 'resource' i guess, is close by cave. Maybe not biggest thign in the world, but certainly ahve impact.

I think Rahu is on good way to becomign good hub city. it has all important vendors, craftign stations, and respectable amount of storage. What it do alck is Gardenign vendor (at least I didn't foudn any) and some caves for cheesemaking/brewing/mushroom farming.

Another thign that coudl help would be some way to transfer items between storages form diferent zones. Not like Council Storage Machine, but different system where you can choose come items from one storage (lets say Marna) to be transported to another (lets say Daniel Murderdark) over time. It could work like hangout with NPC.

About combat changes - I think one big nerf would be better. Sure, a lot of peopel will probably complain, but they will complain anyway, and if you over-nerf us, you can buff us up over time. And getting buffed feels better than getting nerfed, even if change is small. I agree that we have a big direct damage creep, especially with some skill combos. But if you gonan nerf our damge, I suggest you do the same to mobs - at least some of them. In few instances where i do not 1-shot mobs in Gazluk, I find myself dying pretty fast.

[preechr]

Like a lot of your new players, I took the EA Steam release as a sign the game I'd heard so much about was finally open for business, and I love what I see so far ...Kudos to the makers and the Alpha players that got us here!

As a new player, there does seem to be some growing pains evident, so from that perspective I'd offer a few thoughts:

Seeing high level players that look awesome and do amazing things is always a really cool experience in low-level areas as we get a glimpse at the possibilities in our futures, so it would be a shame to completely lose that in Serbule, but the logic of limiting foot traffic makes sense

I've noticed a fairly large amount of high-level gear and supplies in Serbule NPC stores, which makes sorting through it all to find something I might want to buy a slow process, but it also makes me wonder if the vendor opportunities in the higher-level areas is sufficient

One thing is for sure, for a new player it would be better to have vendors offering (mostly) zone-relevant items for sale, and de-centralizing serbule would likely help in that regard (I don't see the same clutter at Serb Hills or Estibule vendors)

The new players from the EA Steam release are helping to highlight issues with scaling like this, and since the game is great scaling will only become more problematic over time... Attempts to segregate Serbule will only provide a temporary relief window in which (hopefully) a longer term solution can be implemented

A suggestion that may require more effort than is practical might be to limit what a vendor will purchase to "local" items only, but something like that would depend on how your itemization is set up

A further suggestion to alleviate the pressure of segregation would be to plant a mushroom and some sort of daemon NPC (fairy) next to each Council Chest to allow players to access zone storage remotely ...While it seems the intent is avoid "world banking" this could be a beta only solution until something better can be implemented

The daemon could be limited to placing items in the Council Chest, though that would require more work... There could be a quest to unlock this feature in each zone and favor required as well, but that would be a lot more work

Another "quick and dirty" feature would be to add portable crafting equipment tied to carpentry, etc, such as Cotton Gins and Tanning Racks to allow players a little more freedom to do what they need to get done wherever they are until future hubs are developed

Finally, the Player Store in Serbule suffers from the same scaling and clutter issues as the local vendor NPCs, which only hurts the potential of this aspect of the game... Copy/Pasting that area into a higher-level part of the world would separate the market and give us all a lot less to sift through while shopping

While thinking about Player Stores, I'd like to make two suggestions about the UI as well:

1. Add piecemeal Work Order functionality so a player can set a total amount of lemons they wish to purchase at a unit-price with a mark-up that would be applied when the items are automatically added to their store (This would remove some dependency on NPC vendors and bring much more activity to the Player Markets)

2. While you're at it, please add a "Report to Admin" feature to the Player Store UI that would allow players to easily flag those that would list common items for stupidly high prices... While I understand that Capitalism is a good thing, a big part of the draw this game has is its reputation for healthy community, and if you want to keep that it will need to be protected, and a little self-policing might be all it takes

[preechr]

Oh, and +1 to big nerf then incremental buffs... not sure you'll ever proper player feedback indicating a small nerf was "just enough" and even small nerfs cause massive complaints

[Escwine]

I agree these are growing pains. And so much of the complaining is unnecessary and unproductive to the Beta process.

I like the vendor and the player store ideas. I too find it too time-consuming to search through stuff over leveled for us and priced 10k and up lol. A filter method in the store UI would be a good idea too. That way speeding up the time it states to fins armor, weapons, food, level, etc. Hub cities will always be crowded, that's for sure!

[3lfk1ng]

Could fix Serbule through lore and an in-game player event.
1. Host one-time druid event.
2. Monsters overrun Serbule and destroy the town (like Lion's Arch in GW2).
3. Vendors that we have already earned favor with, fear for their safety of the constant attacks and move on to Hogans Keep/ Kur/ Rahu.
4. To help fight the invasion and save Serbule, Yetta agrees to teach Weather Witching to all those that wish to fight.
5. Host event where players gather resources to rebuild town/ gain favor/ gain civic pride/
6. Insert the new building art assets in Serbule.
7. The rebuilt town is now smaller and less desirable for veterans but good enough for the newbies.
8. The old vendors we've earned favor with can be found in other locations to help spread the load.

[Claymore]

I'm excited for Priest. I pretty much only play support classes in other games. Bard is pretty good in that department, so I've been rolling with that so far.

The channeling thing sounds annoying, but I hope I'm wrong. It reminds me of DDO where if you try to cast a heal spell on someone who runs behind a small rock on the ground, the heal spell will say you don't have line of sight to your target, then cast the heal on yourself instead, putting the heal on cooldown and wasting the mana because you were full health.

That said, mashing the heal button over and over isn't fun either. I hope the channeling thing allows me to show off my skill as a support. I think especially in areas like Winter Nexus, I'll be skirting the edge between max distance heals and staying out of an Ogre's rage bash. A very short run-speed boost ability might help me run into heal range to throw a heal to someone who is a bit too far away, or dodge an Ogre rage attack so I can heal while everyone else is stunned. I can also see party wipes because the Priest is so far behind he'll aggro respawns.

It makes sense to not allow Priests to be able to solo because being able to heal yourself while stuff is bashing you down is kind of broken, which the channeling thing addresses. I'm a little worried Priests will make battles much much easier, though. We've been skirting by with druids and bards, which have decent/okay sustain abilities. I'm hoping the Priest works the same way Bard does, where you have a minor heal, an oh shit button, and some buffs with nice, supporty mods.

[PezOfDoom]

Could fix Serbule through lore and an in-game player event.
1. Host one-time druid event.
2. Monsters overrun Serbule and destroy the town (like Lion's Arch in GW2).
3. Vendors that we have already earned favor with, fear for their safety of the constant attacks and move on to Hogans Keep/ Kur/ Rahu.
4. To help fight the invasion and save Serbule, Yetta agrees to teach Weather Witching to all those that wish to fight.
5. Host event where players gather resources to rebuild town/ gain favor/ gain civic pride/
6. Insert the new building art assets in Serbule.
7. The rebuilt town is now smaller and less desirable for veterans but good enough for the newbies.
8. The old vendors we've earned favor with can be found in other locations to help spread the load.

That actually sounds really neat, but might be too much for the small dev team they current have.

[RancidAngel]

Thank you for all the information.

I am not experienced enough to give feedback on most of what has been posted.

I like the idea of the new midd level HUB.

I also Strongly think that you are the DEV, creator and captain. so for the Nerfing subject you should be in full control of that decision.

this is Alpha and everyone should trust your best judgement on these issues.

Thanks again

[Aionlasting]

While you're working on the UI and trying to make it easier to scale DoT effects for knife skills, can you please make it so that we can see debuffs on the target frame with time remaining? Its really frustrating not to know when to reapply a debuff or a DoT or anything for that matter including buffs on teammates when you can't see the time remaining or if they are actually missing the buff. This would be HUGELY appreciated! Please :)

Thank you! Good luck with the server fixes and frame tidying. I look forward to the new animation system and I look forward to the day when Unity is a bit more considerate of developers trying to make an MMO on their engine. I think they are making those little steps but alas there is still much ways to go.

As always enjoying the game. Only slightly bothered that some great questions were never answered on the redit AMA :( felt like we didn't get much new stuff out of it and it would have been cool if this blog tried to tackle some of those unanswered questions.

Welp, see you in game! :)

[askjosh]

Could fix Serbule through lore and an in-game player event.
1. Host one-time druid event.
2. Monsters overrun Serbule and destroy the town (like Lion's Arch in GW2).
3. Vendors that we have already earned favor with, fear for their safety of the constant attacks and move on to Hogans Keep/ Kur/ Rahu.
4. To help fight the invasion and save Serbule, Yetta agrees to teach Weather Witching to all those that wish to fight.
5. Host event where players gather resources to rebuild town/ gain favor/ gain civic pride/
6. Insert the new building art assets in Serbule.
7. The rebuilt town is now smaller and less desirable for veterans but good enough for the newbies.
8. The old vendors we've earned favor with can be found in other locations to help spread the load.

I second that idea.

[Lyramis]

Excited to read about work on DOTS, it is one of my favorite ways to play but I have given it up the last couple years. Been hoping for a new full city for good long while and am super happy to hear about the plans for it and the new lvl 80 city in the future!

What I would like to see for the lvl 50 ish full city hub and the lvl 80 full city hub is storage expansions rather than brand new storage. If each new full city had a storage that corresponded to each storage in Serb it would be quite useful. Favor up the new npcs and the same storage places one has in Serb are also available in the new city but can be expanded with more slots. This may need some tweaking..most ppl don't need more storage for alchemy pots, lol. It would relieve a good amount of traffic in Serb because higher lvl players would no longer have to go there to use whatever mats they have stored in Serb.

Please also consider having:
cows
teleport (recall hearts home) Some of us will want a new home and changing that spell will take long!
the many other things ppl have already mentioned that make a city useful

The teleportation system has as much to do with the traffic in Serb as anything else. I use tele to Serb to get to Serb Hills for making my cheese and mushroom boxes...would be so much better if I didn't have to go through Serb. Also, I keep my alts in Serb for milking cows. If Serb Hills had a transfer chests and cows in the same field I would move them there and stay out of Serb.

Have you ever considered adding teleportation skills as bonuses to combat skills or even crafting skills? What if at lvl 30 cow or cheese making you could teleport to any cow spawn point with grass? Or lvl 30 spider or tailoring could teleport you to any cotton gin etc?

If I had my way there would just be simple teleport options to any tele circle but I know that is not how you want it be for your game.

[preechr]

I think games that make teleportation easy are sacrificing a lot for "quality of life"

Life in a game is moving through the world, experiencing the stuff you stumble across along the way... While teleporting to wherever you want to be in the world at a whim may seem attractive from a time-investment point of view, I think it damages the overall experience and can have a massive detrimental effect on game economy

But yes... a few more cows and crafting locations here and there would be terrific

[lab1702]

Hi! First time poster, not very long time reader... but I already love this game so much!

My two wishes:
* Please don't make things too stratified, where you only really bump into people near your own level.
* Don't make travelling by foot obsolete.

Most MMOs nowadays have done both and it takes so much away from them...


Also, Serbule graphics:
If you're a newbie like me, you may not know you don't have to use the slider, you can type in fractional numbers. On my PC (recent generation xeon and nvidia 1060) the number 0.50 seems to be a good balance between being able to walk in and turn around in a vendor room while also feeling like the people near me are alive.

[Tagamogi]

Looking at the Twitter screenshots for dots, I'm now curious: It looks like we could have damage dots tick at different intervals. The Venomstrike example has 6 ticks happening presumably 2 seconds apart. This seems to imply that we could have another dot also acting over 12 seconds, but applying 3 ticks happening 4 seconds apart instead? I'm mostly wondering why - it seems easier to me to just have all dots use the same interval between ticks. (And then we'd know how many ticks any dot has by dividing its duration by 2 if that interval is 2 seconds. Although I guess it would still be nice for the game to show it...)

I'm pretty excited by the upcoming changes talked about in the blog. It's possible I'm too excitable but I squealed "ooh" aloud both when reading about the elven city past Sedgewick Forest and about the coming knife offhand change. I knew that the knife change was coming but didn't expect it so soon. That should open up a lot of fun new combos.

[Taledar]

I guess I never submitted my reply and now I've slept since then so darned if I can remember what I said. I'm not exactly to the point where the nerfs would impact me, but I'm still in the camp of pulling the band-aid off quickly and getting it over with.


While you're working on the UI and trying to make it easier to scale DoT effects for knife skills, can you please make it so that we can see debuffs on the target frame with time remaining? Its really frustrating not to know when to reapply a debuff or a DoT or anything for that matter including buffs on teammates when you can't see the time remaining or if they are actually missing the buff. This would be HUGELY appreciated! Please :) ....

This would be very useful.

[Grious]

Not sure if this has been suggested before but would making Serbule Keep its own zone help with handling the large amount of traffic it gets? Not sure how hard it would be to implement this but separating the town and the monster ridden 'outskirts' with a zone wall seems like it would help alleviate some of the problems.

Also +1 for Ripping the Bandaid off

[Arundel]

The new dev blog is up! You can read it here. (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/entry.php?31-Dev-Blog-May-2018)

This is the discussion thread.

It's really long... and this is the shortened version! There's just a lot of topics to cover. But if you want to skip over boring technical stuff, you can jump to the "Treasure and Skill Changes" section about halfway down.

I have mostly heard people asking for "rip the bandaid off" or the "get it all done at once" change for damage. I will say there are some builds that way overperform even after the changes. These are mainly due to a few problematic combos with +x% damage to a type or skill. I don't want to ever suggest that everything be homogenized or damage be the same across classes - obviously though the overall of the abilities have to be factored in and it is hard to determine the power level of a freeze ability or a heal vs. direct damage. However, if you want I can send a PM with some of the really busted combos but I think you are aware as I have only been playing a year (active only half of that) and some of the people and you have been looking at balance for like 6+ years right? Regardless, it doesn't matter much in a beta but certain skills being too strong is pulling people away from testing and playing other specs because lets face it, we all want to be able to get stuff done and accomplish goals and sometimes an unfair build can help us do that. If you remove or alter the broken combos or abilities then it could at least encourage testing more with other skillsets. Of course power level is hardly the only determining factor in what people playing but I'd love to see the numbers on people sticking with Archery after trying something else, because for a long time half of the people I played with Sword/Archery for the damage. :)

The classes are unique and you guys, for having a small team, have created the most fun MMO I have played and with the least boring or repetitive gameplay because you refuse to make zones tightened to only one level range and you refuse to homogenize classes or abilities: and I and many others greatly appreciate that. If you want my suggestions on abilities or skill sets that overperform I can give them, but like I said I want to PM them (so as to reduce chances of others cheesing after reading about it) - and I'm sure someone else has already reported them.

[Murar]

Hi,
We are 3 guys from France to have bought the game, three different machines, three different connections. The game runs at 60 fps but since we left the island the game is totally unplayable because of massive lag. Please open a European server, or do something. We have a ping of 130 I dont know if it matters.The game is excellent but we can not play it anymore...

[Darkian]

Personally, I want the band-aid ripped off in this situation, as I've gotten closer to end-game and done Gazluk Keep a few times, I've noticed a trend of any combat skills that don't either A.) Do a lot of damage or B.) Bring a lot of healing, are irrelevant to the end-game content. This of course doesn't affect solo player's much, but it really hurts to get to end-game with a combat skill that ends up having bad damage. I primarily played Lycan for the majority of the 4 years I have played PG, but as I got to Gazluk Keep and realized that my ability to solo well doesn't translate well to group play at all, the long cooldowns on my abilities and the one-trick-pony of the Skulk ability just doesn't keep up with the combat in GK, when you have sword, hammer, archery, and mage players doing way more damage on shorter cooldowns.

Right now the combat just revolves too much around the *do as much damage as fast as possible before the mobs overrun you* and this is a problem with several key systems in the game, mob density and respawn rates in group-based dungeons makes it difficult to progress if you cannot kill the mobs as fast as possible. Power regen without a mentalist in the group or the greatest food in the game means you become power starved fairly quickly, and while I like the dynamic that needing food and power regen skills brings, IMO its not very much fun for anyone who doesn't have either of those things, personally I would rather the combat be slowed down specifically in the group-oriented areas of the game like dungeons, unless you are over-leveled and over-geared, a tank/healer should be needed, mobs shouldn't die in a matter of seconds, make the mobs harder, worth more exp, and respawn slower so that we can slow down as players and enjoy the game, enjoy the dungeon, and clear at a nice pace rather than rushing to get to the next safe area before respawns overwhelm us.

This is also a similar problem I've had with animal handling, no matter how many updates AH seems to get, the skill just isn't justified having over any other combat skill at end-game, the damage potential of your pet is a 1/5th of any other combat skill in the game, and since the bears have a +25 cold mitigation special trick (which should just be a passive for the owner btw) instead of a decent AoE threat attack, the pets are basically useless for fighting more than 1-2 mobs at a time, if pets had their own skills, and rage bar and you had a bar for *pet attack *pet follow * pet guard *pet stay and the combat skills consisted of "buffs" to your pet, and some heals to the pet, along with better mods for AH gear boosting damage, you would see many more people able to stay relevant in higher level content using animal handling, but having to micro manage the power cost of your pets abilities, for the considerably low amount of damage they provide, is just not worth it right now.

That's why I think you should just rip the bandaid off on combat damage, drop everyone down to the same level across the board on damage potential, so that combat skill is a preference on utility and playstyle, and not a choice of either being able to do end-game, or not being able to do end-game without being carried.
Maybe then skills that are underperforming will be able to be relevant.

Lastly, the group UI NEEDS a massive overhaul if you are going to start putting in full-time support classes like the Priest, targeting players in your group is clunky and half the time just plain broken when using the group window, some players are un-selectable, sometimes HP bars just show as empty, its a mess, and it makes healing with direct heals a pain.

This is just all my personal opinion though after playing for 4 years off and on, so take it with a grain of salt because I realize I don't represent the majority of players, but I want to see this game succeed, and not just have a niche following.

[Mechant]

This is just all my personal opinion though after playing for 4 years off and on, so take it with a grain of salt because I realize I don't represent the majority of players, but I want to see this game succeed, and not just have a niche following.

Actually I have started on steam release, also done GK multiple times, I totally agree with the damage, it is really broken, it would be a big mistake to release Priest without fixing the damage issue, I mean why would people play a Healer/Support class when you can One Shot the mobs ?

[preechr]

Hi,
We are 3 guys from France to have bought the game, three different machines, three different connections. The game runs at 60 fps but since we left the island the game is totally unplayable because of massive lag. Please open a European server, or do something. We have a ping of 130 I dont know if it matters.The game is excellent but we can not play it anymore...

There are several settings you can adjust to minimize the lag, but the problems are most noticeable in the Serbule zone, which is the main area

Until the upcoming patch, its probably best to level up down in Serbule Hills, the zone to the south

Serbule Hills may even be a better location for starting out, and the Inn is where you'll find the trainers for singing, dancing, surveying and shield

The foraging scene in the Hills is arguably better than in Serbule as well... Give it a shot and see if you guys can spend your time there until the lag issues get fixed

[Tagamogi]

Hi,
We are 3 guys from France to have bought the game, three different machines, three different connections. The game runs at 60 fps but since we left the island the game is totally unplayable because of massive lag. Please open a European server, or do something. We have a ping of 130 I dont know if it matters.The game is excellent but we can not play it anymore...

That ping is unlikely to be the problem. I'm in the US and usually get 50-100 ping. I never notice any problems until I get 500+ ping, and it doesn't really become unplayable for me until 800-1000+. So, adding a European server wouldn't help; your network connection is fine.

We've had some problems in the last month or so with NPCs in certain zones taking a long time to respond. There have been a few bug fixes to address part of that, but there's still occasional server-based lag and it's possible you ran into this. As preechr suggested, moving to a different zone may help until we get more patches.

[Tagamogi]

sometimes HP bars just show as empty

If you are talking about your party members' armor/health/power bars showing up black if they enter a zone after you, a workaround is to go to Settings, GUI, and toggle "Compact Party Display" to the opposite of its current setting. Save, and then change it back to what it was before and Save again.

Of course, it would be much much nicer if you didn't have to do that...

[Fhen]

With regards to combat and nerfing.

As a new player who has come from an emulated Everquest server (only up until Velious so very classic), the combat here is obviously very different. Also as a new player I am not 100% sure what the developers goal is with regards to pace and difficulty of combat.

As it is it seems as though the combat is designed to be fast and furious with soloing very much a viable option. Burn mobs and move on. Looking at how the support classes work this seems to reflect that with no real dedicated healer and some of the support classes even seem to do fairly respectable damage.

So is this the aim of combat? Do the devs want to slow it down and make it tougher? More strategic? Less soloable? In the dev blog Citan states he would like to see someone make a Fire/Priest solo offensive combo character but also says the Priest works best in a group.

I think that before we look at nerfing skills we should know what the devs aims are for combat. Rather than nerfing maybe make all of the combat skills equally fun and potent in their own way if the aim of combat is for it to be fast and furious. As has been mentioned you wouldn't pick AH at the moment to be dealing respectable damage (or at least at level 50 it feels a lot weaker to me than others) so jazz it up a bit rather than nerf others.

Coming from the game I have I am finding the speed of combat and damage potential of the classes refreshing and it would be a shame to see them all brought to the same baseline of damage. Also with such a free form skill system and the fact you can combine any two skills balancing is always going to be difficult. I'd rather see all combat skills made equally fun rather than equally similar.

[Murar]

preechr & Tagamogi thanks for the explanations guys , we will try to go to other areas !

[pete4613]

I think the real issue with players flocking around Serbule is favor levels. Like when you have to sell stuff and earn a decent coin you will most likely always return to the place where your favor levels are the highest, which is in Serb because you've used most of your time here.

A possible addition to a solution in the future could be to have shared favor levels and/or available credits among all the times. As for lore these vendors could be cousins or or family related and what not.

If this shared favor isnt in any interest, maybe make so that these family members across different cities gain a % of favor when you gift or do quests for the primary source. This could have more levels and decrease in percentages the futher away you get from the primary source' zone.

An example would be that you gift a ring to the jewel dude in Serb.
Jewel Dude in Serb gains 40 favor.
Jewel Cousins in Serbule Hills, Eltibule and Sun Vale gain 50% of that(closest nearby zones) which is 20 favor. This is 1 zone away from primary source.
Jewel Cousins in Kur Mountains gain 25% of primary source which is 10 favor. This is 2 zones away from primary source.
Jewel Cousins in Rahu and Gazluk gain 10% of primary source which is 4 favor. This is 3 zones away from primary source.

This build towards the issue that rises later when all resources are erased and when a enourmous demand rises. Also this makes it easier to adapt to a new city when you have to gain favor with everyone there.


I hope this makes atleast some sense, I already find the grind for favor exaggerating and I believe this could help the problem.


- Pete

[Crissa]

pete4613 Transferable storage or reputation is something that's been suggested before. I think that it sticks so hard to one city is why people are so slow to move to use another city.