Update Discussion: March 9, 2020 [Archive] - Project: Gorgon

Aionlasting

03-09-2020, 05:37 PM

Appreciate all the hard work. Keep it up. I like the metal change. That makes more sense as a tankier player likely is wearing metal gear and would benefit from damage mitagation. Very smart! Thanks for adding in the buff display, and I am happy to hear its location is temporary because that UI box is crowded and it would make more sense for it to show up on the target frame like in all other mmo's. But happy to see some attention given there. Enjoying the continued attempts to flesh out the combat system. I think the other armor types would benefit form interesting effects to similar to armor getting the damage mitigation per 50 armor points. Cloth shoudl have osme unique bonus like maybe 5% increase to spell crit chance... and leather can get some buff.. maybe.. spells recover 15% faster on cooldown... (i.e. they can attack faster essentially but since we have no attack speed I guess we can' buff the attack speed.. haha). Well keep up the great work. Really looking for to the animation system that will hopefuly make combat feel mroe fluid too. I think combat pacing still needs work. Its noticable when you go from project gorgon to other mmo's were the combat feels more fluid and the timing feels right.. proejct gorgon combat is very spikey and things eitehr die right away or you die too fast preventing healers and support classes to shine... the pace needs continued work but i think youre doing that so keep it up!

Vish

03-09-2020, 05:45 PM

Uriana and Glowing Sphere see Fae players as Mortal (all talking with players with standard line, its strange that fae player say 'yes i Mortal')

alleryn

03-09-2020, 06:24 PM

Uriana and Glowing Sphere see Fae players as Mortal (all talking with players with standard line, its strange that fae player say 'yes i Mortal')

This probably is part of (from the patch notes):

Please note that this is a "soft launch" of fairies - which means that while the mechanics are in place, you'll see some places where quests are "Coming Soon!",or where NPCs don't yet recognize that you are a fairy when you talk to them. We're working on these elements for release later in the month, but we didn't want to delay getting feedback on the basics.

Ranperre

03-09-2020, 11:04 PM

However, when removing the hacked-in artificial boosts for Elites in Gazluk Keep, we found several bugs where Elites received the boosts intended for Bosses instead of Elites. This meant they were proportionally a bit tougher than intended, and they also dropped much more Exceptional, Epic, and Legendary gear than intended.

Could you elaborate on this? Tougher how? Are we talking health/armor (stats you can see) or do "bosses" have a special addition to "invisible" stats like attack damage and rage accumulation? I've tanked/dps'd/solo'd those mobs as much as anyone and nothing ever seemed blatantly off, so I'm curious.

I mentioned recently on the forums that I feel Elites/Bosses drop a bit too much high-rarity loot, and I'm considering lowering them a bit, but that didn't happen in this update.

I would just like to caution against this. Right now, a decent way to make money after you've maxed out your gear is to run through elite mobs selling their guaranteed magical gear. After you take into account travel time, even with the best of groups, the councils/hour tends to be inferior to solo methods. Any dramatic change to this would be detrimental to encouraging teamplay (something that Gorgon currently doesn't really excel at). I haven't had time to experience the current changes, which obviously slow down fighting, but they don't sound "dramatic" yet.

Greenberg

03-10-2020, 09:41 PM

I say the change to thorns was unnecessary, the problem stems from warden being nearly useless for animal forms and it's hardly surprising to see players drift to warden/druid since it's giving multiple percent based synergy. While animals get plus core damage after a basic attack but if you're running deer/warden you'll be very likely using antler slash since it'll deals more damage, gives hp and has a smaller threat to critical mods. The problem of people farming lower levels wouldn't be solved by the nerf I can easily pull 4-5 mobs blow all their armour off with an AOE and do it all again by the next pull so it's more of quality of life thing.

I agree that privacy field needed a bit of a nerf since it does attack range but not to the degree where it's basically useless and remember with thorns builds mobs bite back.

I agree that privacy field needed a bit of a nerf since it does attack range but not to the degree where it's basically useless and remember with thorns builds mobs bite back.

Glythe

03-10-2020, 10:34 PM

So when you were listing the disadvantages of fairy characters why did you neglect to mention they would never be able to sprint? I read a conversation in global last night where Jack was overly dismissive if not rude to a player asking about it. Jack told everyone that while Fae are currently able to sprint with abilities like take the lead this was not intended (and presumably will be patched out later).

I can understand this from a design standpoint and I do not have an issue with this decision. I would however have liked to known this was the design plan for fae when we learned things like they would have -16 inventory and would respawn in the fae realm. Land Sprints give fae the ability to run away in combat and as a result cheat death in dungeons where they cannot fly.

Nobody I have spoken with expected this as a design point (as the other negatives seemed pretty severe).

Balancing thoughts:
Thorn dmg:

By trying to avoid Warden + Druid you "ruined" it for all others. Now i have to do warden + druid to do atleast some dmg with thorns.

Pre nerf warden could do something like 1000 dmg to the target. I had someone power level me a bit for pig using warden and I have to say it deserved a change. They walked into the mob with the damage shield on and it died instantly without the need to do anything else.

That level of passive killing power did not make sense when you consider the options available to other classes.

The damage shield on Fire shield is not very good compared to some of the other classes but I find it works quite well still.

srand

03-11-2020, 12:32 AM

So when you were listing the disadvantages of fairy characters why did you neglect to mention they would never be able to sprint?

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Fairies can sprint.

Glythe

03-11-2020, 01:05 AM

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Fairies can sprint.

Jack said in global that fae would not be able to sprint via ground skills.

I guess he was misinformed... my mistake.

Celerity

03-11-2020, 02:57 AM

I think the thorns changes are fine, if you haven't already tried them out in game, I would recommend it. At high levels it basically adds just 1 more necessary hit from just running privacy field to kill the mobs. For farming low levels it makes essentially no difference. I think it needed a bit of a nerf at high levels since it was easily possible to use nothing but privacy field and heals and still easily kill things, that at least has partially changed now, since it's still possible to do it the old way but noticeably less efficient. Where the change was most important though, was in thick armour mobs, it was possible (I did it myself and reported it) to go to the rahu sewers and kill most of the mobs around the treants with just lvl 40 privacy field alone, completely unmodded, since most of the mobs there had such low hp. If it was possible to do it at lvl 40 unmodded, then I'm sure it would be possible at lvl 30 modded and hopefully I shouldn't have to explain why a lvl 30 farming a lvl 60 area was bad.

I like fairies so far, I haven't had a chance to try out their racial skills much yet because the fae realm starting area was so overfarmed that I put off doing the quests for a while, but I like the models, starting at lvl 30 and the flying. Also just kinda fun to start again from nothing but not sure I want to grind to max again.

I'm with ranperre about group dungeons, even as it stands right now, you can make about as much money per hour gardening as an experienced group can make at gk. Solo combat is even more lucrative since you just kill so many more mobs and skins are worth so much. I agree that equipment rarity is too good from dungeons but I feel like it needs some other way to earn money to replace it if you do nerf it.

EDIT: So I just completed the fae quests in the fae realm and I have to say they are very confusing. The first few quests make sense but then after that I was a bit lost. Having the additional quests from felmer, crelpin and midge only unlock after you've done some previous ones was a bit unintuitive when there was no text to suggest that they had new quests for me, and I think I ended up talking to every single npc about 10 times just to make sure Noita or someone didn't suddenly have a quest for me. I only really knew there was more to be done, firstly because I didn't have the fae racial skill which I knew existed from the patch notes and global, then secondly because people were talking in global about what recipes they had that I hadn't unlocked. I expect if people weren't talking in global about it, I would have just left, none the wiser. Also similar thing about the shortcut to Sun Vale, maybe it's just because I was already used to the fae realm before this update, but I only even thought to look for it because I heard people talking about it in global. So it might be useful to add this to the NPC dialogue.

cr00cy

03-11-2020, 04:02 AM

ok, my thoughts on update after two days playign with it:

THE GOOD

- Thorn's nerf - was needed for sure. Even thought they are not as good vs elite mobs, or in groups in general (unless you are tanking) they were offerign just too much passive damage. Privacy Field still delas a lot of damage, but weaker thorns might need lookign into (I think Fire SHield is weakest right now)

- Ah changes - I like additional info we are getting for our pets. Pets matchign our speed is samll chnage, but very noticable, even after sevral hours of plaing AH/IM on my Fairy, I never 'lost' my pet. Also, they are far more consistent in attacking. Not sure how they AI handles fightign multiple opponents, will test it later on my main. But overall, good changes.

- I like addition of buffs/debufs/dot's dispalying in mobs info window.

THE BAD

There is not much I have to complain about in this new update. There is just one thing - Fairy startign area. I knew that, seeign as it was Fairy relase, I should expect starting area to be overpopulated. But too be honest - I never saw more than 3-4 people hunting for mobs there, and finding them for kill quests was still a chore. I think I spend like 20-30 minutes just flyign around, trying to find last Ocelot for my quest. Not because they wer econstanlty killed - at that time i think there was only one other person hunting there - but because they just wouldn't spawn. Area was swarmed with trolls, but there was almost no low level mobs.

I know that spaw rates were increased, but this will not help too much. Real problem is that Trolls are taking over spawns. It's the same situation as with deers near Wolf Cave durnign full moon - most of them are repalce dby wolves pretty quickly, since peopel doing Altar quests hunt them down.

THE... UGLY?

Well, overall I like this update. I don't think there is any change I would consider bad (I have mixed feelign about some of mod changes, but I'll need to test it out before givign opinion.). But ther eis one thing I'm concerned about, and that is - why would I wnat to switch to playing Fairy, whe there is so many skill to level up? To unlock it, you need to clear lv 50 dungeon. Sure, some high lv player can carry you, but it's still require at least some time investment.

And once you unlock fairy, what do you really get? Ability to fly is neat, but not game changing. You get some free levels in few important skills, which is good, but there is so many more to grind. Uniqe abilites for Mentalism are neat, but not so powerfull I would want to change character just for them (though I need to see what mods they have). Fairy crafting give it some nice QoL, but then agin, none of item crafted by it are pernament (inless you stick to cold zones). Sure, you can easly re-craft them when you need them.

I guess, what I'm tryign to say is that what fairy offers is neat, but not good enough(so far) to make me think 'I want it!'.

Is it enough to keep me playing for a bit longer? Yes, definitly. I, at very least, want to lv up Fairy crafting up to around lv 50, just to see what things it can craft.

Is it enough for me to switch to it as my new 'main'? Nope, not a chance. There is just too many different skill to level up, and I'm not feeling like going through some of this grind again (brewing/cheesmaking beign main culprits).

Then agin, I have hundreds of hours on my character. Someone who just started, and created charctert just to unlock Fairy race, will probbaly have much easier time switching. Especially if they get carried, instead of having to level to 50 or so, and find a group to clear WN.

Oh, and I would prefer if info of buffs/debufs would be dispalyed under monster HP/Armor bars, in the 'target' window, instead of in the 'more info' window.

Mbaums

03-11-2020, 07:41 AM

I’m going to echo ranp’s question about wanting more info about the fixed GK mobs. Boss flag or not, they were absolutely blasted through. I think this might deserve its own thread where players give input on balance, with the expectation that 80% of the players will have reds, and 2% will be in all yellows and what is appropriate content for everyone.
--
I was pro-healing mobs when it started but I think last year’s world boss event made it obvious it’s gotta change. But monsters healing armor could be a thing!
--
Fae wise:
I can’t seem to find the NPC to quick level foraging, pathology and nature appreciation but it could be part of the soft launch.
I started with knife+ice. I think I am going to switch to ice+mentalism. I do like the new slice attack, but it just requires me to break down so much stuff. Once I get better overall gear/endurance/etc I will be re-visiting knife.

With future advanced-races, can you give them a quest to fast-to-unlock transmutation/augmentation? I would ask for it here for Fae, but with the requirement really being ~40’s for a winter nexus group, people might miss transmutation/augmentation completely. If Orc starts inside GK, and Dwarves in Statehelm, they shouldn’t need to bother with the aug/trans quest lines.
--
Also, AH's info window , the increased damage and better aggro are all great. I did not do extensive testing on the taunt but the monsters clearly didnt pretend my pet no longer exists.
The monster-details via pathology is great. You might need an option to show "stacked" buffs, like 2 of the same psi wave taking up 2 lines makes things get crowded fast, but I get it's likely in that window for time being.

SassySusie

03-11-2020, 06:52 PM

So I finally caved and started a fairy character because I wanted to play with the new mentalism skills that are for fairies only. Is it ever going to be possible to craft gear for the fairy mentalism? I tried to but of course no new skills come up with the mentalism gem. Will there be a new gem for crafting or will it be found gear only for fairies, which kind of stops us from crafting pockets for them lol.

alleryn

03-11-2020, 06:59 PM

There's a fairy magic inscription recipe for topazes similar to pig,etc malachite.

Mbaums

03-12-2020, 10:15 AM

I love the thick armor mechanism on NPCs. The old strat of leveling via nuking giant worms in Gazluk is likely dead, and thats fine. Still having tested thick armor for pets, so if someone could that would be great !

The Fae Armor penalty being -15% direct damage is a bit steep imo. I get you are pushing people to use Fae armor, but the other racial effects that guide gameplay are very minimal. -5% direct damage sounds fair imo. If you are planning Fae armor to continue after 80, with appropriately increased armor /effects, then I think Fae can live with the -15% for cheesing out and using the wrong plate armor.

Glythe

03-12-2020, 02:12 PM

I think the thorns changes are fine, if you haven't already tried them out in game, I would recommend it. At high levels it basically adds just 1 more necessary hit from just running privacy field to kill the mobs.

Can we have some smoothing out of different damage shields? Animal handling pre patch was very clearly a C tier skill and Archery was S+ skill by comparison.

Fire shield 6 (level 77 skill) modded out in full level 70 gear does: 237 direct damage with 105 damage over 10 seconds. Molten veins 5 (lvl 65 skill) with just % bonuses from fire gear and no actual mods for the skill is around 400 damage a hit. This is messed up balance.

I really do not think we need to have a game where one class choice gets an S+ damage shield and the other class has a C class damage shield. With this request I am not asking for everything to be different colors of equal koolaid.

You could do something like make fire shield be way more of a defensive thing... innate say 25 fire/cold direct reduction for popping the skill and another 10 or so indirect protection (be aware this needs to be significant because right now there is no "elemental defense stacking" like there is for physical).

I'm with ranperre about group dungeons, even as it stands right now, you can make about as much money per hour gardening as an experienced group can make at gk. Solo combat is even more lucrative since you just kill so many more mobs and skins are worth so much. I agree that equipment rarity is too good from dungeons but I feel like it needs some other way to earn money to replace it if you do nerf it.

Have you seen the prices for gardening recently? I think with the 'double grow' days you can get more gardening than you can in a group dungeon run. There is a guy in my guild who makes 70k selling veggies/flowers by doing a few hours of gardening per day.

I also want to quietly suggest Citan that you have not balanced the game for people wearing red gear. I could make a very long post on this but I want to spend my time today playing with my new fairy. An excellent example here would be fairy realm content. I cannot imagine people fighting the 'hive event' monsters without purples or yellows. I think that content is a clear example of level 80 'yellow' max enchanted gear balance (which is 3 tiers above what you say is the balance point). I think if you spawned in sets of red gear (augmented and transmuted tailor to order) to some of the best players in the game they would have no chance clearing all the FR content in red gear (without excessive use of run skills, roots, snares, fear and other 'nonsense' which the game is clearly not balanced around right now).

I personally would love to see the mid game be balanced for reds and 70+ be balanced for purple (I think most of the current 70 content is more likely to be balanced at purple max enchanted gear if we are being totally honest).

One added note : the old dungeon daily missions suddenly got a lot harder and this is good. Pre patch I had characters who were easily immune to droach fire. Wolf cave multi wolf pulls with the matriarchs are a lot more difficult on my 2nd and 3rd alts (who have progressively worse gear but are still quite well geared compared to most people getting carried through the dungeons).

Glythe

03-13-2020, 02:47 AM

Also quick question- did you intend to make winter fae blood in the Winter Nexus no longer auto stack?

I hope this was a bug as you can manually stack it. This does not seem like a good or intended change.

Coglin

03-13-2020, 02:53 AM

Animal handling pre patch was very clearly a C tier skill and Archery was S+ skill by comparison.

I also want to quietly suggest Citan that you have not balanced the game for people wearing red gear. I could make a very long post on this but I want to spend my time today playing with my new fairy. An excellent example here would be fairy realm content. I cannot imagine people fighting the 'hive event' monsters without purples or yellows. I think that content is a clear example of level 80 'yellow' max enchanted gear balance (which is 3 tiers above what you say is the balance point). I think if you spawned in sets of red gear (augmented and transmuted tailor to order) to some of the best players in the game they would have no chance clearing all the FR content in red gear (without excessive use of run skills, roots, snares, fear and other 'nonsense' which the game is clearly not balanced around right now).

Just to point out a difference of experiences, I could literally solo at least one of those hives with 70 Bard / 70 Animal handling before the update. So I am unclear how you are coming to either of those conclusions with such certainty.

Can we have some smoothing out of different damage shields?

Fire shield 6 (level 77 skill) modded out in full level 70 gear does: 237 direct damage with 105 damage over 10 seconds. Molten veins 5 (lvl 65 skill) with just % bonuses from fire gear and no actual mods for the skill is around 400 damage a hit. This is messed up balance.

It doesn't make much sense to balance damage shields against one another. It makes sense that they are individually balanced against the other skills in the class. We do not balance direct damage capabilities, elemental damage capabilities, healing capabilities, or taunting capabilities 1 to 1 between classes, for that same reason, as such, I cannot logically imagine a reason to expect damage shields should be 1 to 1 in capability either.

Ranperre

03-13-2020, 08:34 AM

I also want to quietly suggest Citan that you have not balanced the game for people wearing red gear. I could make a very long post on this but I want to spend my time today playing with my new fairy. An excellent example here would be fairy realm content. I cannot imagine people fighting the 'hive event' monsters without purples or yellows. I think that content is a clear example of level 80 'yellow' max enchanted gear balance (which is 3 tiers above what you say is the balance point). I think if you spawned in sets of red gear (augmented and transmuted tailor to order) to some of the best players in the game they would have no chance clearing all the FR content in red gear (without excessive use of run skills, roots, snares, fear and other 'nonsense' which the game is clearly not balanced around right now).

I personally would love to see the mid game be balanced for reds and 70+ be balanced for purple (I think most of the current 70 content is more likely to be balanced at purple max enchanted gear if we are being totally honest).

Rarity of gear is planned to go up. We've been given unusually common purples and yellow to help the testing phase. I've heard it described that getting a purple while crafting, on release, is intended to be "like" getting a yellow while crafting right now. While that doesn't get to your difficulty of content comment, I don't think it would be reasonable for the Powers That Be to expect people to craft 2-300+ pieces of gear to do content post 70, it'd be a worse roadblock than 50 atm.

Greyfyn

03-13-2020, 02:35 PM

After all the dev warnings about expectations about posts here, players are still not getting the message!?

https://projectgorgon.com/terms.html
https://projectgorgon.com/conduct.html

I'm not a moderator, but consider that one will likely have to act again. As a volunteer guide I can share that consequences are real; please read the expectations at the links above.

srand

03-13-2020, 06:02 PM

A few of the recent posts in this thread wandered off from its purpose, discussing this update. I've deleted the off-topic content here. I tried to leave anything vaguely related to the update. But let's keep the detailed discussions of combat mechanics between you folks to its own thread, and keep this one focused on giving us feedback about this update.

Citan

03-13-2020, 11:59 PM

A few answers to questions/comments:

GK elites: Previously, GK bosses received cranked-up chances for Exceptional, Epic, and Legendary gear, above and beyond what bosses already were supposed to receive. They also got bonus health (between 9000 and 15,000 extra), and a bit more damage. In contrast, GK elites received a smallish health bonus and a damage bonus, but they weren't supposed to have extra chances for high-rarity loot. The elites in question (like the yellow Lieutenants) used one of the bonus-tables intended for bosses instead of elites. So they had +9000 max health instead of the intended +6000, they dealt something like 30 more damage per attack, and also had +20% chance for exceptional, +10% chance for epic, and +2% chance for legendary gear. They ALSO had their bonus chances from just being elites (which gave them e.g. +25% chance for exceptional already), so the stacking effect really made them a goldmine. I knew they gave out too much high-rarity loot, but I didn't put together why until just a bit before the update when I was cleaning up the entity files.

Thorns changes: I forget which thread it was in, but someone mentioned that thorns shouldn't do health-bypassing damage, and I realized that no, they weren't supposed to! Meaning that the damage-calculation spreadsheet assumes they deal regular damage. But then I implemented them as direct-health damage. So that was basically a bug fix, a no-brainer fix for me. That helped me understand where things were breaking down in my spreadsheet math. Even so, I still think thorns damage is overpowered when farming weaker monsters, and I'll have to address that at some point.

Fae newbie area: we'll make the trolls a fixed rate spawn so that they don't overwhelm the newbie area. Will also work on the newbie quests a bit more to try to make that intuitive. We'll do another client update with more bug fixes early next week!

Fae hives: these are definitely overtuned at the moment, meaning they are way too hard. They also have really cranked-up loot profiles, so it sort of works out, but not really. Will work on rebalancing those soon, but since these are large outdoor elite encounters, and I don't have a lot of experience making those, I expect it'll take some time to figure out how to make them flow.

Ranperre

03-14-2020, 01:41 AM

GK elites:

Thanks for taking the time.

Celerity

03-14-2020, 08:44 AM

Just did the fae realm dailies with a group and I really like the elite changes. You could definitely notice both the armour changes and the rage bar changes and I think both are for the better, it's really nice to see armour removal skills actually get some utility now rather than being completely useless. We still cleared the content easily for the most part, but a couple of the bosses felt significantly harder, such as the fire elemental one, due to the new regen system. I think the difficulty is around right, if it was any harder, I think newer players would struggle with it too much, so really the only thing I would want to see now is extra difficult content designed around yellow geared players, but I don't think we'll be seeing that until the end game.

Just as a side note, is it intentional that all the fairy magic abilities can be used from the sidebar? If so, it makes fairy magic very powerful, although you would still be mod limited.

Vish

03-14-2020, 09:24 AM

Fairy magic begining sidebar slot skills is not big deal because of mods
3 active skills mean than u need item set that mod 3 skills and it very hard (if possible) to do items sets that will make this OP

Glythe

03-14-2020, 10:33 AM

I remember reading a note that new fae characters would likely need help from other characters on the account. Are there plans to add a transfer chest to the Fae Realm? Solo players have no safe way to transfer items to a new fairy character.

Feedback on Fae racial skill:

Why would I make any of the items there to use? A permanent autopsy kit/saw/etc lasts forever and does not need dust to summon.

How about instead of summoning 3 different shields we have 1 shield summon and then an ability that coats the shield in defensive properties? Or do you think that is too close to armor patching?

The food is a nice addition (more food yay). Everyone loves extra storage and the light is cute (will be extremely helpful in places like labs).... but it seems like everything else is just something you spam once.

I am hoping there will be an endurance quest added for fae? The nature appreciation was nice as was the fishing xp. It is slightly brutal however having zero endurance at level 30.

I think it might be helpful to have some quest dialogue to prompt the player to do the sunvale quests to remember some of their skills.

Fairy magic begining sidebar slot skills is not big deal because of mods

Some skills in the game work incredibly well with no mods. This includes several staff abilities, elemental ward and the new fairy skill fae conduit.

I am not saying anything needs to be changed just yet but consider the following:

Pixie Flare 5 does 179 damage with no mods and can be on your sidebar.
This breaks the rule of damage skills being within 25 levels (because it is on your sidebar).

You can have multiple damage skills on your sidebar and use them to eliminate monsters while having very low combat skills with no damage boosting mods on any of your gear.

That might be a bit of a problem. Then again this may be the design model since you are basically playing a fairy to be a 'second character'. Maybe this is a perk and is part of the intended design.

Aionlasting

03-14-2020, 03:38 PM

The one thing that bothers me about elite mobs or bosses is all they do is either AoE stun or AoE knockback. Is there not any other mechanic in the WORLD that these monsters could be given to make fights more diverse? Also shouldn't player stuns have diminishing returns on enemies? I.E. Why can you basically stun lock a group mob? Why not provide other gameplay mechanics players can rotate through and fix group combat so it doesn't come down to stunlock and burn? Its very one dimentional. I know combat pacing and combat in general is a work in progress in this game but I thought I would mention that too because I don't think its been brought up.

Citan

03-14-2020, 03:53 PM

Glythe

03-14-2020, 05:25 PM

- It's not intentional that fairy magic be usable from the sidebar, that will be fixed soon!

With that in mind the penalties for fairy seem overly steep.

You trade flying (cannot use range attacks while flying) for 16 inventory slots and automatic return to fae realm on dying.

You get a 10 slot box which is kind of annoying to summon in a place where creatures use fire magic and a light - which is mostly cosmetic but might help in a few places.

I assumed the sidebar powers were balancing that out. Having the epic sidebar attack is definitely broken but I do not really see a problem with the others considering what you give up. As an example you can mod power wave to be free free, stack 3 times and give a ton of power immediately when used. Or you can have the new fairy ability. Is that the design then that fairy is so niche that you are expected to always play mentalism?

From all the mods I have seen for fairy magic I do not think any of them are worth giving up mentalism mod slots for (disclaimer- probably have not seem them all yet). This is partially why I assumed they were side bar enabled in that they were meant to be meh powers you can call on after you used every other power on your bar.

It seems wrong that a fairy not playing mentalism has nothing to show for it in a dungeon except negatives.

Mbaums

03-14-2020, 06:30 PM

It seems wrong that a fairy not playing mentalism has nothing to show for it in a dungeon except negatives.
I disagree with your statement and I want to say upfront that this is nothing personal. Intentions and interpretations get crossed sometimes on forums and I'm spelling this out upfront in a very direct way.

OKAY-- your stance assumes that there is no game play outside of a dungeon and not picking mentalism is a waste of a fae. A lot of players have only 1 character because of the engaging skill system on PG. This is a massive transition where the intrinsic value of the player-account is absolutely changed. Every person that unlocks Fae MUST have another character who can complete a quest in WN, and so it's always someones 2nd+ character with unique opt-in mechanisms+curses. I'm trying to say: players generally know what they are getting into. Or at least we do, having red the dev blog. The rules for what an unlocked character needs vs a first character shouldnt be the same.

But I'm not really answering the issue yet. Fae have skills with twists, and even if the player is not using those skills, part of the experience to raise skills to use other skills. If someone rolls a Fae and uses unarmed and sword and never touches AH/Knife/Ment/ice magic and never flies and only uses plate, that's hilarious and the only 'nothing to show' situation.

Aionlasting

03-14-2020, 07:01 PM

- It's not intentional that fairy magic be usable from the sidebar, that will be fixed soon!

- Elites and bosses use all kinds of different rage attacks besides aoes, but the fact that you only remember the aoes probably indicates just how ineffective those other attacks are... :)

- Stunning IS supposed to have diminishing returns. But it diminishes slowly from a 4-sec down to a 1-sec stun, which takes a while. It was designed around a 15-second battle duration, which has never actually happened. Should be less of a problem when combat is longer, but yeah, maybe this is a system that I should crank up, at least temporarily, to move people away from stun-locking.

Thumbs up from me if youre working on this ... all I can say.

I know you've got tons of MMO experience under your belt and you're a gamer too at that so you've played other mmo's. I know you know the various creative ways to make monster combat more engaging and fun.

Part of it is probably player abilities too... how come you havn't implemented a Area of effect spell you cast on an area? Your AoE abilities are really just "cleaves" as they require a primary target to cleave enemies nearby with... its odd. Is it a unity limitation? Is it a UI limitation? I suppose the same could be said for enemies too, i'm hard pressed to think of a monster that casts an area of effect ability players need to move out of? I think they too just cleave off a primary target with unavoidable AoE damage.

Who knows... Well. Gl. Combat in my opinion is probably more important than any other element because the entire game revolves around combat... even if you go pureley into crafting you will at some point run into an enemy... unless you're a hermit but how then can you advance in the game? So combat must be fun, fluid, engaging, sensible, challenging at times, and reward at others.

Coglin

03-14-2020, 08:32 PM

Thow come you havn't implemented a Area of effect spell you cast on an area? Your AoE abilities are really just "cleaves" as they require a primary target to cleave enemies nearby with... its odd.

I for one sure hope ground targeted AoEs never come near this game. I think it has value in RvR or PvP style mmos. In a PvE game like this I feel it would be a hindrance and I hope never to see it here. I for one do not feel it fits this game in the least, just my opinion.

Glythe

03-14-2020, 11:55 PM

- Stunning IS supposed to have diminishing returns. But it diminishes slowly from a 4-sec down to a 1-sec stun, which takes a while. It was designed around a 15-second battle duration, which has never actually happened. Should be less of a problem when combat is longer, but yeah, maybe this is a system that I should crank up, at least temporarily, to move people away from stun-locking.

As players can we get the same rules of diminishing returns to cc effects apply to us ?

I disagree with your statement and I want to say upfront that this is nothing personal. Intentions and interpretations get crossed sometimes on forums and I'm spelling this out upfront in a very direct way.

If someone rolls a Fae and uses unarmed and sword and never touches AH/Knife/Ment/ice magic and never flies and only uses plate, that's hilarious and the only 'nothing to show' situation.

I do not take offense just because someone has a different opinion. It is fair to say then you agree that a fae in a dungeon - not using mentalism is at a severe disadvantage to someone playing the same classes as a different race? Should there not be some advantage to being a fairy even if you are not playing mentalism? Or maybe the penalties overall for being a fairy should be less extreme?

In terms of game design I see it as a better model when you have a choice between two things and the first option is good in scenarios a,b and c while the second option is good in c,d and e scenarios. If there is a third choice that is good in scenarios a-d but not e then you tend to have a problem. This game is unfinished (even still I enjoy playing it tremendously) and often there is a 'third choice' that is clearly better than the rest. I would love to see many things in this game smoothed out to be equally appealing choices. They need not be equal choices in terms of same skills with different colored effects; but rather they should have different ups and downs where they are weak or strong.

how come you havn't implemented a Area of effect spell you cast on an area? Your AoE abilities are really just "cleaves" as they require a primary target to cleave enemies nearby with... its odd. Is it a unity limitation? Is it a UI limitation?

Have you ever played Battle Chemistry or Fire? Both have AoE effects that you can cast without needing a target. One of the spells that got removed from the game hit all targets within I think 20m but was replaced with MV. The one thing I do not like about ice magic is that both of the AoE spells I use on my roation require a target.

Citan

03-15-2020, 02:24 AM

As players can we get the same rules of diminishing returns to cc effects apply to us ?
It is fair to say then you agree that a fae in a dungeon - not using mentalism is at a severe disadvantage to someone playing the same classes as a different race? Should there not be some advantage to being a fairy even if you are not playing mentalism?

The problem here is you're selectively ignoring convenience. A fairy ice mage has a TREMENDOUS convenience of not having to research any of their spells. That is a ton of work... and even unlocking the ice magic skill is hard. You've chosen to ignore all that and say "but AFTER all that convenience, what do they have? They suck!"

But if you're going to completely ignore convenience, then fairies are obviously superior to other races. They lose 16 inventory slots but have a fairy-only storage spell that gives them access to 30. 30 is greater than 16, case closed. Fairies are better if you ignore convenience factors. (They can't use metal armor? That just an inconvenience while finding gear -- we'll ignore it too.)

The point is you can't just selectively ignore convenience. If you want to argue that the inconvenience of accessing those extra slots is worse than the inconvenience of researching 100 levels of ice magic, that's an argument you can make, but that isn't the argument you're making. You have to take all the costs and benefits into account, not just "what have you done for me in the last five minutes of gameplay in this dungeon."

---

In general, I think we'll have to wait some time to see how people feel about the race's tradeoffs. I count it as a win if long-term players aren't incentivized to reroll as a fairy because of obvious mathematical combat superiority. The advanced races are going to be all about tradeoffs, conveniences versus inconveniences, doors opened vs. doors closed. And I'm basically aiming for contention. Because if everyone agrees that the tradeoffs of one race are better than another, I've done a poor job balancing. If there's a fair amount of argument about whether the tradeoffs are worth it, with some players liking the tradeoffs and some disliking it... that's a sign of good balance. So I'm going to mark you in the "not good enough tradeoffs" column, but we'll see how some more players feel before making changes.

cr00cy

03-15-2020, 04:13 AM

Ok, some more feedback on Fairy from me:

- I would love to see them havign more uniqe spells, not only for mentalism, but Ice magic too.

- Most item crafted by fairy racial skill are bordeline useless. Tools, like saw or skinnign knife are ok-ish, but ultimatelly pointless, since pernamnet, high quality one sare rather easy to get. First aid kits are better, they are consumables anyway, so crafting one or two when needed might work. Shields are complelty pointless -why I woudl ever want to use skill-enabling equipment that will eventually dissaper? Food, from all recipe si unlocke dso far, is best choice, since oyu cna craft it and eat it immedietly.

My suggestion is to make tools pernament, reduce cost of crafting, or increase yeld of consumables.

- It would be nice if we had more use for Fae energy and dust/ice we create. Maybe more feiry-specyfic skills, similar to the one that reduces flight cost? Like temporal increase to electricy/ice damage, increased evasion, etc.

- I like fae-specyfic teleportation skills, but it would be nice if we got begginer quest that would boost our Teleportation enough to learn Recall Beggining.

Vish

03-15-2020, 08:41 AM

Sugestion: don't remove Fairy magic skills from side bar, Add fae energy cost for them or add fae energy cost to then if mentalism skill is no one of active skill

Glythe

03-15-2020, 09:14 AM

Is it intentional that non fairy characters can make use of the fairy dimensional pocket?

The problem here is you're selectively ignoring convenience.

But if you're going to completely ignore convenience, then fairies are obviously superior to other races. They lose 16 inventory slots but have a fairy-only storage spell that gives them access to 30.

That is a very fair point that fairy characters get ice magic for free - and I did overlook it.

Maybe I am doing something wrong but my fairy storage only has 10 slots (I am guessing that is a later skill).

I know most people are not where I am in the game right now but when I decided to train and level ice magic last year it was because I could do so all the way to 70 at no cost besides uncap fees. The PG community as a whole does not seem to value ice magic but that might change when more people get it for free (even though I prefer it to fire and had both at the 70 cap before the 80 update). Not too long ago I traded 1:1 some of my red books for frost nibs if that goes to show how much less desirable ice magic may seem to be. You will often find the level 75-80 ice research material on vendors because most people simply do not want them.

I mention this because I am guessing that orcs will get fire magic for free. I estimate free fire magic would be at least 3x more valuable/desirable than free ice magic.

If I did not say so before - thank you for the Update! I am still enjoying my fairy character that I am testing in both mental/ice and a clone of my normal build.

alleryn

03-15-2020, 09:55 AM

Maybe I am doing something wrong but my fairy storage only has 10 slots (I am guessing that is a later skill).

Levels 23, 33, 47 in Fae Race skill give 10/20/30 storage slots [i think... the recipes are named Storage Portal (10 items), Storage Portal (20 items), Storage Portal (30 items), but the descriptions do all read "Open a portal to a private pocket dimension. You can store up to 10 items in it. The portal closes after 5 minutes." Presumably it's a typo in the desciptions].

Niph

03-15-2020, 02:46 PM

Feedback about another item in this patch: pet tanking fix.

Pets can be very good tanks now, at least aggro-wise. I tested two of them, the Tundra Bear, and Chopjaw (both maxed). Tundra Bear had no issue grabbing aggro instantly with Sic'Em, and both were able to keep aggro throughout all fights from start to finish. Autopsy reveals Tundra Bear usually had 85% of the aggro at the end, and Chopjaw 75%.

My build is Sword/AH. My gear is mostly max-enchanted+augmented Epic and Legendary, has all taunt mods at level 80 except main-hand and off-hand mods that are at level 70.

Taking lessons from these changes, I should rebalance my gear toward less heals + more damage for Sword, and less taunt + more damage for AH, since my character never tanks. (Before the patch, I used to share damage between me and the pet to survive longer.)

Tests performed at GK entrance, where I have no trouble soloing elites as long as I pull single.

Sokar

03-16-2020, 03:08 AM

Thorns:

While I agree that it is very powerfull for farming lower mobs - it is just that. It just gives you some councils. No usefull items to wear. If you want to farm high level elites there are way better ways than doing it with thorns and in most of the cases it didn't work anyways.

Fairy:

The only thing that prevents me from useing it as an real alternative to my main is the death penalty. Just one thing to think of: Maybe don't put nearly all advantages of the fairies at the "outside of fighting" situation (skill unlock, space, flying, food) and the disadvantages on the "during fighting" situation (death, metal amor,). Because in most cases skill sets/races/what ever is compared on the performance in battle. While it is very nice to have ice freely unlocked it is "just" saving "some" time at the beginning of your character. On the other hand if you die it will costs you time all the time (doesn't matter if you spend the time on farming the resurrection items or running back). So the battle advantages are the fairy magic skills. But you only get them while useing mentalism. So useing a fairy without the mentalism skill set is a very hard decision. Maybe let the fairy magic skills still be unlocked through leveling up mentalism but useable with all skill sets but with a (25%?) penalty if mentalism is not active.

If sticked to mentalism skill set: Maybe let atleast 1-2 of the 4 fairy magic skills be useable from the sidebar as an small benefit. Because if you want to use mentalism you allready had the harsh situation that you have not enough skill slots (same with all skill sets, but mentalism suffers a bit more of it because of the waves). So the new skills would only add a very tiny benefit because you have to throw another skill away for them.

Stun locks:

Suggestion For mobs: after the first stun hits them and has last, the next one only lasts 50% of the stun time and so on and if you stun one while it is allready stuned it reduces the original stun by half.

Assuming a stun time of 4 sec's it would be in the first case: 4sec + 2sec + 1sec + 0sec as the maximum time you can stun the mob regardless of fighting duration.
Assuming a stun time of 4 sec's it would be in the second case: 2sec (halved) + 2sec if you stun him two times directly one after the other.
Assuming a stun time of 4 sec's it would be in the second case: 2sec (halved) + 1sec (halved) + 1sec if you stun him tree times directly one after the other.

Suggestion for players: First stun works as it is now and after it the player gets a stun imunity of the same time.

alleryn

03-16-2020, 08:34 AM

Because in most cases skill sets/races/what ever is compared on the performance in battle.

If that were true then you wouldn't see so many people in pocket gear, you wouldn't see so many people choosing skills based on sprint boosts, you wouldn't see people who avoid combat whenever possible and spend most of their time crafting.

You make some good points about fairies, but i have to disagree with you here. Personally i find the ability to fly a MAJOR perk (then again i think druid is significantly overtuned so if you have a druid main i can see why you might find this perk to be a little underwhelming).

Sheawanna

03-16-2020, 10:28 AM

Glythe

03-16-2020, 11:42 AM

If that were true then you wouldn't see so many people in pocket gear, you wouldn't see so many people choosing skills based on sprint boosts, you wouldn't see people who avoid combat whenever possible and spend most of their time crafting.

You make some good points about fairies, but i have to disagree with you here. Personally i find the ability to fly a MAJOR perk (then again i think druid is significantly overtuned so if you have a druid main i can see why you might find this perk to be a little underwhelming).

I would love to see pocket gear be nerfed and to have the extra inventory spaces be folded more gradually into endurance. Maybe this would be something along the lines that pocket gear will give you your extra inventory from endurance again - of course with most of the "+20" becoming part of the eventual 100 endurance. It is disruptive to the balance of the game that you can put on 2 pieces of gear and suddenly have +40 slots (this is very obvious with fairy). The problem is that you can have pocket gear in your backpack and say ok I need to add 42 spaces now (bing). You can do the same thing with sprint boosts. I carry a few pieces of gear for a run spec that I use for extra speed out of combat (gloves and boots add 3x mods for speed and one of my characters has +3.5 speed on his boots). So looking at those ~40 spaces : if I carry extra boots/gloves/ring/pants/amulet for running and extra pocket pants/shirt for +40 spaces I still gain +33 extra slots.

To me that is inherently broken. I can have the best of both worlds - full fighting power with fully modded armor and pocket gear to give me more inventory. You make it seem like you have to choose but that is not the case. If you are carrying pocket gear you have extra inventory. Why would you not carry pocket gear unless you just want to make the game harder? You can double up if you wish and make combat pocket gear for a different skill spec.

Flying is not all the hype people make it out to be. At level 30 with no mods for it I can already run much faster than I can fly with battle chemistry/shield. If I had a mod set I would likely be twice as fast on the ground than a flying fairy (with full power to fight if I run into trouble). Having that much speed gives you equal security to flying but you lose the convenience of saying I will just fly this shorter distance over point xyz. None of my other characters fly and I do just fine - because I can "olympic sprint" past some of my friends using their speed boosts (recent guild mate quote).

I suppose I would like to see a combat benefit of some kind for the fairy once you get inside the dungeon where the "MAJOR perk" has no function. This could be as simple as allowing fairy conduit to remain a side bar ability (maybe require 2-4 energy for it to be used as a sidebar ability). The storage thing is a cute mechanic but I would have preferred flat inventory. If someone else summons it in a dungeon I will for sure use it but otherwise I plan on it being extra storage for things like work orders that I can access in town (where my ice will not melt).

Sokar

03-16-2020, 05:40 PM

Personally i find the ability to fly a MAJOR perk (then again i think druid is significantly overtuned so if you have a druid main i can see why you might find this perk to be a little underwhelming).

Indeed Druid is my main, and i'm using raven form a lot. But you don't need druid active to do so. So everybody can use the raven as long as you have unlocked it.

For my builds i'm useing fighting mods and pocket enchantments at the same time. It's not this or this. Because with a purple/yellow item you have 2-3 mods to cover the must have mods. There are only a few builds that have 4 or more "must have" mods on an item. Beside this 2-3 must have mods the others are more like "nice to have" or "would help to deal more dmg". And by that point we are not talking about a second set of items for pockets/traveling which can solve most of your problems.

Fairy sidebar skills:

The point from Glythe should indeed also work if you make the skill use from sidebar with some small fairy energy costs. So you can choose to have some costs from side bar use or no fairy energy costs from main bar use.

Glythe

03-17-2020, 06:09 AM

On the subject of flight and fairy things - is there a post somewhere about Geometry Exploitation?

In Everquest it was a ban offense to fight monsters that could not fight back due to terrain/engine limits (this was known as geometry exploitation). To test it out and make sure it worked I killed the bear in the barn by luring it out of the barn and blasting it form the roof of the barn (and put in a ticket right after). I have been told there are people who do the same thing in the fae realm to solo elites. Is that approved behavior? I assume it is not (if that is approved behavior then maybe fairy characters and flying are op).

For anyone unfamiliar - rooting, fearing, snaring, etc. mobs is completely different than placing your character in a position where a monster cannot hit you but you can hit them. There are places in the game where you can melee monsters but they will not fight you back.

Indeed Druid is my main, and i'm using raven form a lot. But you don't need druid active to do so. So everybody can use the raven as long as you have unlocked it.

This is one of the reasons why I feel that flight is not a big deal. So many people are/were druids and you can just press a sidebar button to fly. Flight would be more valuable if you were forced to have druid active to fly (and available on your sidebar). Does flight form make you have a wooden object in hand (or foot)? Maybe it should if it does not.

I cannot use extra toes unless I have BC active with a flask in hand. It has always seemed abusive to me that the restrictions for druid flight form were so lax given how big of an advantage flight can be in certain situations (See above GE note).

Citan

03-17-2020, 06:38 AM

Glythe

03-17-2020, 07:00 AM

While it is very nice to have ice freely unlocked it is "just" saving "some" time at the beginning of your character. On the other hand if you die it will costs you time all the time (doesn't matter if you spend the time on farming the resurrection items or running back). So the battle advantages are the fairy magic skills. But you only get them while useing mentalism. So useing a fairy without the mentalism skill set is a very hard decision. Maybe let the fairy magic skills still be unlocked through leveling up mentalism but useable with all skill sets but with a (25%?) penalty if mentalism is not active.

D&D 3.5 made an alternate rule that is on the same idea here. Many of the monster races - when played by a character are worth a +2 or higher advantage. But as you get closer to level 20 those racial advantages fade in value rapidly. There was an alternate rule made so that as you leveled up you could 'pay off' the level disadvantage. That part is not applicable here but I think the idea is sound : an initial advantage (still an advantage) becomes less valuable as you move towards max level.

Ice is by far the cheapest and easiest class to get to max level. The only real difficulty/expense are the ice hearts - which are often found on vendors for 2k each (and maybe the ice pouches which are also found on the same vendors for 400 each). The only expenses I had for Ice magic were the unlock fees and the limited cost to unlock each research tier every 5 levels. Without adding it up I think the mentalism skill unlocks through 70 (all trainers before FR) would be pretty close to what I spent for unlocking Ice all the way to max level. If everything were available in the right quantities I think you could buy it all for less than 100,000 councils.

By comparison you can barely get 12 runestones for that price right now - but that is just the player perception of the value between fire/ice. Everyone told me that Ice magic sucked (just like necro). I tried it and found it to be amazing for group play. The main difference is that you trade some raw damage to get a ton more cc abilities.

On the issue of stuns and cc abilities - I would really love to see players and monsters follow the same rules.

Mbaums

03-17-2020, 09:59 AM

Players still don't know how weak/strong fae are. But the downside of going back to FR when you die is steep and requires storage organization to minimize the hurdle. The age of the current content makes all of the encounters "old", so players can judge the risk. But when new stuff comes out, then what? Learning new content is the biggest downside to fae, and it’s really not on the radar our conversation yet. The fae choice is like a classic curse-yourself for new powers. Rogue-like choices are great. But I think excluding the players who are currently experimenting, I fear the overall consensus is going to be a "no" to fairies. And that might be okay, but you don’t know how much of a “no” it’s going to be! What’s the threshold for a race-failure? It feels kind of foolish to argue everything so early because we don’t know much strong fae magic is, only that knife/ice/AH are more approachable to fae players, and those are uncommon skills to begin with.

Here is what I think is reasonable: The verbiage on the summonable Fairy storage portal makes it seem like it shouldn’t be shareable, but it is. I vote keep it shareable, change the text.

I harped on the stick-method of -15% direct damage from plate as being steep, but what about a bonus to balance it out. No, not with plate. A +5% electric/cold/fire/ knife fighting?/pet speed buff for wearing fae silk armor, which has abysmal armor. Whatever the bonuses, it should obviously fall in line with Fae. There might already be a buff on fae silk on fairies, because I have not tested it. Another option for the “more carrot” approach is have a small cloth-wide buff that is in effect until the fairy is hit, this would obviously help herd the players into the direction of playing fairies like you had hoped (gameplay wise).

Aionlasting

03-17-2020, 01:07 PM

A quick status report, since I mentioned the next game update would be soon -- it'll be soon :) A few more days. It started as a quick bug-fix update but then I had to go and add new game mechanics (like the aforementioned stun-decay tweaks), which always take a ton of testing. And meanwhile Sandra's added a bit more fae newbie improvements.

So probably Thursday, Friday if we're unlucky.

Happy to hear it. Hopefully you'll work on making those monster abilities stand out more too since all i seem to notice is AoE stun or AoE knockback... would love to see new mechanics like monster jumping onto an area and anyone in it gets damaged or stunned, or maybe they charge in a linear direction and anything they collide with is badly injured, or maybe they can sleep a random party member requiring a dispel or maybe they can mind control or maybe they can shoot projectiles out that can be avoided but if you get hit you take lots of damage or w/e.. just some kind of mechanics besides unavoidable AoE knockback and stuns... :)