Update Discussion: June 26, 2019

[mrwarp]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2188-Update-Notes-June-26-2019&p=16012#post16012

Discussion goes here! Please report all bugs using the in-game reporting system for better tracking.

[Citan]

There are more "secrets" in this update than usual, mainly due to experimental ideas that didn't pan out, but which left behind something interesting. Some of those are actual literal secrets (such as hidden rooms) but others are just little interactions or items that didn't merit "patch note" status. But one change that maybe should have been added to the notes: there's a book on Joeh's counter in Serbule which teaches new players how Augments are supposed to work. It gives a bit of Lore XP when read.

[TimbreWolf]

Just wanted to say thanks for the update guys. Not sure if I was the only one that submitted a bug report - but I ran into the work order item removal issue last week and filled out a report for it. With that said - I really do appreciate you guys taking time to tweak that system for us. Now I don't have to worry about changing load outs, only to find my rear end flapping in the wind.

[Niph]

It seems to me that equipment search should allow for the AND combination of skills (i.e. Ice Magic AND Psychology). I just made a search, and all it tells me that there is one shop with a yellow level 70+ Ring or Main Hand slot, and either Ice Magic or Psychology, somewhere. The odds that this item has both skills together is low, and that leaves potentially a lot of shops to search.

[Yaffy]

I complained about how Telka's Teeth potions are not only incredibly strong for a racially locked potion, but also bad design in that if you're playing a melee/tanking build like unarmed, it's blatantly better to pick Rakshasa over the other races due to gaining a huge amount of damage and a ton of melee evasion.
It wasn't changed this patch, but that's ok.

What isn't ok is combining this with the Unarmed changes. Not only were Rakshasa blatantly better at Unarmed due to Telka's Teeth, but now Unarmed actually scales off of evasion now by regaining armor and gaining damage whenever they evade. This makes it so the Telka's Tooth potion is EVEN BETTER. It has actually gotten to a point where you might as well not even be playing Unarmed unless if you're a Rakshasa now, especially because Unarmed is now missing a significant amount of its physical resistance because the physical resistance mods were replaced with these evasion mods, and is therefore weaker if you aren't able to build melee evasion to stack with it.

Just to make matters worse, if you thought picking the wrong race was bad enough, Unarmed + Werewolf is now incredibly good... IF you're a Raksasha as well. This is because Werewolf can also gain melee evasion through See Red, and stacks incredibly well with Unarmed's changes for damage at the same time. You can drink the Telka's Teeth potion in humanoid form and then shapeshift into a Werewolf. This means that Unarmed is heavily effected by not just one permanent choice, but TWO.

Just to put it into numbers, a Werewolf Rakshasa can get 54% melee evasion with 80% uptime, and that's before alcohol buffs and Lend Grace. With alcohol buffs you can get 20-25% additional evasion. This means we're talking about having around 50% melee evasion with 100% uptime and 76% with 80% uptime just by using one skill. With a priest or bard, you can hit 100% melee evasion. If you aren't a Rakshasa you're losing 20% melee evasion and if you're not a Werewolf you're missing out on 26% with 80% uptime (And Lend Grace for 10% more evasion if you aren't an animal), which is to say you're losing a ton of melee evasion. The fact that picking the "Right Race" gives you more than double the evasion that the Unarmed skill normally gives you should speak volumes to how ridiculous this is.

Now of course, evading all those attacks is already overpowered for taking less damage, especially when you should expect around 70% of the attacks against you to be melee in Gazluk Keep and even more in other end game areas. But wait there's more! What makes it even worse is that now unarmed gets more damage and regenerates armor when they evade melee attacks as well, meaning melee evasion gets better the more you stack it!

To start, with two level 70 mods you will regenerate 112 armor every time you evade a melee attack. That basically means that every 3 times you evade, you get 2 free max level, unmodded reinforces (The shield armor regen skill) casted on you. Assuming you're playing the right race + Werewolf, this means that on average you're getting Reinforce casted on you for free every 12 seconds per melee enemy you're fighting, or every 8 seconds with alcohol buffs on. Another way of looking at this is that with 50% evasion, you're regenerating 56 armor on average every time you get attacked by melee, or 84 armor if you have 75% evasion.
In terms of damage, level 70 mods will let you get 234 bonus damage on your next melee attack every time you evade. Combine this with the fact that Telka's Teeth just straight up gives you +100 more damage just for being a Rakshasa and you're hitting for about 217-290 extra damage per attack on average when you're fighting just one enemy. If you're fighting more than one, your average damage increases even higher due to getting more chances to evade before you attack. That's higher than the base damage of most Unarmed and Lycan skills. Although it depends on your exact build, it is safe to say you should expect to get about double the normal DPS with this set up, making this not only incredibly overpowered for survival, but also constant DPS as well. This isn't even considering the idea that you might have a Bard or Priest boosting you to 100% melee evasion.

This means that IF you've picked the right race AND you make the permanent decision to play a Werewolf, congrats! You have the potential to become incredibly overpowered now! If you decided to foolishly pick Human or Elf, well too bad, you'll just be playing a gimped version of this build and you basically shouldn't even bother with unarmed, or even worse, unarmed tanking. This whole thing honestly feels like a personal insult after I complained about Telka's Teeth.

[Niph]

I tried the 6 new War Caches. Difficulty-wise, I think T-2, with the named spider, is too hard for a solo level 60 character. It killed me several times before I could figure it out, but I guess some specific builds will have no trouble.

In the same vein, I suspect M-3 will not be very popular! It's not difficult per se, but some features of the game, when combined, can be annoying. For example, root + mobs aggroing through walls, root + face of death, permanent slow. There is also no marker on skulls that could help you write down the solution to a puzzle, so you got to use pen and paper to map the dungeon and add markers. I don't see any problem with that, but with several annoyance factors in the same place, I'd just abandon the quest when I get it.

[Citan]

Yaffy: personal insult? Give me a break. These are separate development topics. You want me to quickly remove parts of a design because you said something on the forum a few days before the update went live?

First, you shouldn't be able to retain the powers of Telka's Teeth in an animal form; that would be a bug. So let's skip all this werewolf stuff.

Second, like I said before, these are supposed to be rare. They aren't supposed to be something you can use constantly. In the same way you can't use Eternal Greens to just zerg through hard dungeons forever (due to a lack of said items), you shouldn't be able to use high-level Telka's Teeth constantly either. So if they do become popular the rarity will make it obvious how impractical it would be to use them every fight. And if that doesn't happen then I'll be decreasing their rarity, so they become a powerful prized possession. Something that will be mimicked in other ways for other races.

Third, I'm working on adding the necessary counters to evasion to make it more balanced -- hence the monsters with Accuracy in this update as a starting point. A few points of evasion isn't really going to be worth rerolling a character for, at the high levels, I think. And if I'm wrong when all is said and done, I'll fix it.

Fourth, stop with the persecution complex. I'm trying my best to be responsive, but things take time. You need to either give me space to do so or just give up on the game, because this whole "you offended me by ignoring me" thing is not okay. I value your feedback, both in the past and the future, but it should be clear by now that I'm not going to delay an entire beta update because you think it will be more imbalanced for a bit longer. I have schedules to keep; that doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. Stop it.

[Yaffy]

Yaffy: personal insult? Give me a break. These are separate development topics. You want me to quickly remove parts of a design because you said something on the forum a few days before the update went live?

First, you shouldn't be able to retain the powers of Telka's Teeth in an animal form; that would be a bug. So let's skip all this werewolf stuff.

Second, like I said before, these are supposed to be rare. They aren't supposed to be something you can use constantly. In the same way you can't use Eternal Greens to just zerg through hard dungeons forever (due to a lack of said items), you shouldn't be able to use high-level Telka's Teeth constantly either. So if they do become popular the rarity will make it obvious how impractical it would be to use them every fight. And if that doesn't happen then I'll be decreasing their rarity, so they become a powerful prized possession. Something that will be mimicked in other ways for other races.

Third, I'm working on adding the necessary counters to evasion to make it more balanced -- hence the monsters with Accuracy in this update as a starting point. A few points of evasion isn't really going to be worth rerolling a character for, at the high levels, I think. And if I'm wrong when all is said and done, I'll fix it.

Fourth, stop with the persecution complex. I'm trying my best to be responsive, but things take time. You need to either give me space to do so or just give up on the game, because this whole "you offended me by ignoring me" thing is not okay. I value your feedback, both in the past and the future, but it should be clear by now that I'm not going to delay an entire beta update because you think it will be more imbalanced for a bit longer. I have schedules to keep; that doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. Stop it.

The "Personal insult" part was me being sarcastic (Although still in a snarky way). I apologize if it wasn't taken that way. I was going to actually edit it out but you posted the exact minute I was going to change it.

Aside from that, I do believe there's a serious balance issue here. If the Telka's Teeth is supposed to vanish when you turn into an animal, then yes that's a bug. It isn't inherently overpowered to be able to use with animals, it's just that it allows for Telka's Teeth to be used in more builds. If you can't use it with Werewolf, then it can potentially become an issue when used with other skills, just that I believe Werewolf is the best current choice.

I do believe you are highly underestimating just how useful melee evasion is as a stat. 20% is a very useful amount. In any other MMORPG, a tank being able to negate 20% of melee attacks is INCREDIBLY good. I would expect to see that on a buff with a very low uptime, or maybe on a button that requires constant usage, not as a passive effect. Even 15 or 10% is still very useful. Just as a comparison, I would say that the Canine variety of the potion is about as strong as as a staff user constantly using the highest ranked deflective spin (40% reduced damage for 8 seconds, 16 second CD). That's too strong for a passive effect that doesn't require you to use a specific skill. That also doesn't include the +100 damage boost, which is quite hefty.

I don't know how rare you expect Telka's Teeth to be, but they're certainly a lot more common than they should be, given that there are players who have stockpiled quite a bit already. The canine variety is the one I constantly quote because it's the strongest version and not very hard to acquire. Even ignoring canine, I would still say the weaker varieties are still quite strong, so even if canine is supposed to be a very rare treasure, it wouldn't be a big downgrade if you had to switch to Incisor. It also helps a lot that it's race locked, so the other races will be looking to pawn off any they collect since they can't use them.

I do want to state that I think that the new "Dodge for buffs" mechanic on unarmed is interesting, it's just that it clearly scales with melee evasion very well, and currently melee evasion is very limited which is why the Telka's Teeth potions are so useful. Regardless of whether you think melee evasion is that good by itself, if players are expected to try and build melee evasion to synergize with Unarmed, Telka's teeth is currently the best source of it by far due to having 100% uptime and not requiring you to spend time using abilities in combat. That means for players to build around this mechanic, being Rakshasa is a bigger contributor than your other skills, your equipment, your other mods, etc, which is the biggest problem with introducing this mechanic with it.

Also, don't think I have any sort of persecution complex with you. I do not actually feel personally insulted by you in any way. I am simply an asshole who makes sarcastic remarks at things in video games for fun. I honestly forgot sometimes that the developers are actually going to read these posts, rather than just being seen by other players, hence why I wanted to edit my original post.

[Citan]

The new unarmed equipment (that buffs evasion) explicitly states that you must be using Unarmed, of course. And if it isn't working as listed, PLEASE report that, as it is obviously a bug. And if it wasn't listed that way (which it is), THAT would be a bug, too. Obviously. At least I think it should be pretty obvious... okay, I guess it isn't obvious to other people, so let me put it another way:

If you find something insanely out-of-whack from the norm, which doesn't mention being unusual, it's probably a bug and it would be really helpful if you reported it. For instance, if literally ALL skill-specific gear requires the skill to be active, and a powerful new piece of skill-specific gear showed up without that requirement, the first thought shouldn't be "I guess this piece of gear is going into ALL my skill set builds forever! Nice!" but rather "That's a bug, I should help Eric make the game work by reporting it."

I'm not talking about when something is EXPLICITLY different, such as the special fireball abilities that say they can be used even when Fire Magic isn't active. I'm talking about things that don't say that they're breaking the general rules, but are. If it's not explicitly an exception to the general rule, then ... it's probably a bug.

[Mbaums]

I think I'm happy with the UA changes. If you looked at it before, it seemed difficult to imagine how they would scale the skill to ~125. Something needed to be done with the class, and I think I like these changes because my UA setup still tanks well. The bodyslam people probably have something different to say tho!



-IF I dodge 5 attacks in a row without attacking...my next attack could possibly be a 1 shot on a boss. I do not remember seeing anything about not stacking or time limits, just "your next attack".

It only stacks once, but it's still a huge damage increase. I kind of gave up on thinking my tank setup could do real damage before. I'm actually able to kill things now! I am shocked this mod works on all attacks and not just melee attacks, and I think I would be okay if they changed that part.

There is a lot of Telkan's talk: I think the highest Telka's Teeth are too rare to farm, but so many people just sell them to vendors. I think 1 player can't farm enough to keep it active all the time. They'll need to buy it from other players or buy it from the used tab. I think once people figure out there is a market for them, the used tab potions are going to dry up. If you wanted to make it less forgiving, you could make re-freshing the drug not remove the debuff. But I still dont imagine this is going to be something players are going to reroll for. And Yaffy is right that there is a weird way to get this buff on an animal. A bug report has been submitted for it. But I get that it's a no go. For example, eco-location drops when you are no longer a bat, but Telkan's does not drop when you are no longer a rakkie (under some rare circumstances that I'm not going to spell out for everyone).

One thing I am looking forward for is drinking and tanking. The only people that I've seen drink so far just do it to raise the skill or just dabble in the art of booze. No commitment from these folks! I was going to mess around with some beers to raise my armor by ~200, but I think melee avoidance buff is going to be much more interesting. The downside is... if I maintain a buzz for an entire dungeon the shakes debuff might become an issue (as it should).

[Citan]

We've patched a bug that caused some bosses to be unable to spawn portals (or do other things) when they die.

There's another bug I've seen reported a couple times which I can't reproduce in a development environment: some people are seeing no clue-runes in War Caches, the little plates are just empty. If this happens to you, please try relogging and seeing if that fixes it. And whether or not that fixes it, please let us know in a bug report! Please report the results of your experiment whether it fixes it or not. That'll help me understand what sort of problem it is. Thanks!

[Niph]

One thing I am looking forward for is drinking and tanking. The only people that I've seen drink so far just do it to raise the skill or just dabble in the art of booze. No commitment from these folks! I was going to mess around with some beers to raise my armor by ~200, but I think melee avoidance buff is going to be much more interesting. The downside is... if I maintain a buzz for an entire dungeon the shakes debuff might become an issue (as it should).

On this off-topic subject, I have max Alcohol Tolerance, and currently my buffer of choice would be a +86 Armor from a barrel of Bourbon, but it only lasts 15mn and is not sustainable without adding several layers of drunkiness cure. I don't consider the buff worth the trouble of sustaining it, or even having it for a boss fight unless the fight is planned (since it takes an inventory slot to carry the barrel). Maybe this option will be more attractive in the future.

[Coglin]

My suggestion again is to lower the required levels on the lower ends of the events so that people under level 50 in combat skills do not have to be carried thru every dungeon.

In the grand scheme of things, players spend infinitely more time with a combat skill maxed then not. With that in mind it seems like a massive waste of time to cater experiences to what will I evitabley an extremely small minority of players.

[Mbaums]

On this off-topic subject...
Y'know, its a little on topic and a little off topic. These are all skills that share an ecosystem of sorts. Alcohol has a really good drug-curse, I'm hoping with beer I can get away with using the sober-up skill every so often I can manage using at least 2-clicks of Hegemony Lager long term in GK. When you look at it like, you are 30-levels above bourbon and you get wrecked, I imagine I'll find myself needing to be selective with my sips.

Random idea:Maybe Eric should add PCP or bath salts causing the player to yell at people and remove articles of clothing at random.

[Coglin]

My argument is that new and lower level players LIKE to be able to participate in these events. Many players during the events I have participated in have complained in chat about their being too low leveled to do any part of many of these quests by themselves. I myself find that even my combat skills running between 40 and 50 can not handle anything involving most of the Serbule dungeons alone. Many of us like to take our time leveling everything including non-combat skills because we are in it for the journey and not the destination and boredom after maxing everything quickly.

When low level players become a "extremely small minority of players", I think our Dev's and Admin's will start worrying about the longevity of the game because if there are no new players the game has died.

That isn't how it works. You could have a constant stream of new players. They will all still spend significantly more time at level 50+ then they ever will below that. You can attempt to demonize it all you like, but mathematically, I am simply correct.

If they wish to participate in higher level events, all they need to do is group up with higher level players.

[Yaffy]

That isn't how it works. You could have a constant stream of new players. They will all still spend significantly more time at level 50+ then they ever will below that. You can attempt to demonize it all you like, but mathematically, I am simply correct.

According to the developers, most players quit before reaching level 50, so that means the majority of players spend zero time at level 50+.

The vast majority of players in any MMORPG quit during the leveling process. In fact, games in general tend to lose more than half their players between 1-2 months, so this isn't really out of the ordinary. It's a big reason why MMORPGS nowadays try to push faster leveling so much.

[SassySusie]

Just want to say LOVE LOVE LOVE the gardening almanac and gardening bonuses! Thank you, this made me log back into the game honestly LOL

[Clip]

So, I'm not super qualified because I've never been able to put a full gear set together (So far, I have avoided accepting handouts/being carried through GK), but the UA nerf doesn't seem too bad. (Also, wow, I realized that I'm at 1000 hours in game, 7-ish months at level cap, and still trying to grind for a first gear set. I deserve an Ormorek-Scouts Persistence Merit Badge.)

The only thing that jumped out at me was, why add a mod to the already overloaded Main Hand slot, when other slots seem relatively underused? (Looking at Feet and Off Hand slots in particular and thinking, "Red is good enough. I could live without the rest of the available UA/psych mods there.")

[Sheawanna]

I have to agree been playing testing way before Gaz was a thought in this game . I've never had totally full yellow gear on any max char . ( in fact have deleted at least 3 max chars . I'm not a crafter by any means ( hate it ) lol . I have survived exceled in this game . This game has always been my go to , great game lots of enjoyment .
I am ecstatic that we now know which gifts to give , to many things to many gifts . ( nice to know what's naughty or nice ) . no complaints in fact I think everyone should give it a go :) . Besides Where else can you Naa , Rii , Moo , and whatever else there is . A game fully worth playing /testing .
I do believe that perhaps , loot should not only be best at the crafting level :) . many ways to the end :)

Ps. Edit , Never in any game in the last 30 odd years have I experienced such a great developers interaction with their players .. Great Job Citan , srand , silvonis and all the helpers :) this is what makes sustainability within a game . KOODOO'S to all .

[liquidyoga]

Changing Sonic to Nature for bat and bard which has many mobs with immunities vs nature may be a drastic nerf to the 2 skill sets. Bat already has several skills that have no effect on certain mob types and I think that those same types already have immunities to nature so that is probably a double whammy to bat and a hefty hit to bard.

I completely agree. I can no longer survive (leave alone enjoy or thrive) as a Bard. As a druid-bard, I'm stuck essentially with Nature + Nature dmg and the results have been pretty discouraging already. The aesthetics and gameplay experience of bard sonic damage were so unique to this game -- one of the reasons why I feel in love with PG. Is there anyway devs could reconsider bringing it back?

Thank you.

[Mbaums]

I completely agree. I can no longer survive (leave alone enjoy or thrive) as a Bard. As a druid-bard, I'm stuck essentially with Nature + Nature dmg and the results have been pretty discouraging already. The aesthetics and gameplay experience of bard sonic damage were so unique to this game -- one of the reasons why I feel in love with PG. Is there anyway devs could reconsider bringing it back?

Thank you.

Could I ask where you are fighting? I admit I don't always pay attention to nature and sonic damage resistances. I think it's more likely that the mobs might get their resist tweaked.

[Yaffy]

If there is some consideration on bringing sonic as a damage type back, maybe it could be expanded to include wind related moves? The old sonic damage was limited to sound only as far as I'm aware, which is pretty limited. If sonic damage also included things like sonic booms/very violent gusts of wind, then it would be easier to implement on other attacks. Some examples could include shooting violent blasts of wind with magic or slicing through the air with a weapon so fast it creates a sonic wave.

[Sheawanna]

Yaffy I like your thinking . I miss my sonic . pfft to nature damage .

[Niph]

It seems to me that equipment search should allow for the AND combination of skills (i.e. Ice Magic AND Psychology). I just made a search, and all it tells me that there is one shop with a yellow level 70+ Ring or Main Hand slot, and either Ice Magic or Psychology, somewhere. The odds that this item has both skills together is low, and that leaves potentially a lot of shops to search.

That's my other quote! :)

[Niph]

On a different topic, it seems that the bug that did not show the proper color for gear loot >= blue is now fixed. Yay!

[Deldaron]

A little late to input, but wanted to get something out before the next update -

Gardening Almanac - absolutely amazing, as the world grows larger people find their favorite garden and just stick there, this has been a nice way to encourage players to move together and share gardening buffs. I assume the Kur location is a world building choice - it would be too cold to garden anywhere else so it should be near the hot spring where the soil might be softer, but it definitely feels strange. I assumed Gaz would prove more challenging to garden in than Kur, but so far Kur has been the least plausible long term gardening spot.

New War Caches - I'm obsessed with the skull door mechanic. One of the big draws for me in PG has been these little mini puzzles and this is a great mechanic. I would love to see more caches with unique puzzle mechanics. - One related thing I will say on UA (though was mentioned) is that if the idea was that telka's teeth should be rare - they are possibly too common, especially with the drug related war caches. War caches are my go to when I'm bored and feeling uninspired. A nice quick source of xp, money, and well encapsulated, which is to say great job and thank you! I like that they build into little stories and would love to see those extend potentially into above ground quests after unlock.

I'm not sad to see sonic damage go per se, I enjoy the ability to easily kill spy portals now on my giant bat char for sure, but I feel silly doing nature damage. I think I would prefer something like Wind Vortex -> slashing and screech -> trauma/psych - though I admittedly haven't thought about the balance of that.