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Sims
09-27-2021, 01:29 PM
The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2904-Update-Notes-September-27-2021

Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.

Zavos
09-27-2021, 08:18 PM
Fire Magic/Ice Magic now has swanky new animations that has an animationlock preventing movement during casting. I have extremely mixed feelings about this.

Celerity
09-28-2021, 07:53 AM
I haven't had the chance to try everything yet, but I just wanted to give my initial thoughts and there's probably too much to cover in one post anyway.

Firstly, wow is this the largest content update we've had to PG? It sure feels like it.

Povus:

I love it, I think it's the best designed map we have so far, in terms of terrain and biome transition. It actually feels like a real place, with a nice variation of hills/mountains, wooded areas, swamp and river that all transitions very nicely. The ground spawns are generous, which I think is a good thing (I still remember fighting for mushroom and butterfly spawns on FR release) and I love the feel of the area and the things to find.

The town defence system is pretty fun so far, I've enjoyed myself doing 4-5 of them already. Slightly concerned about how this will play out a year or two down the line but we'll see. I also feel like it maybe needs a few too many players. In a mid-morning Europe timezone invasion, I think there were about 8 people and it took us over half the night just to light all the lamps. Once the pets counting as enemies for lighting the lamp bug is fixed it might speed up a bit though.

The monsters are tough though, very tough. I'm sure this is intended, but it's like you gathered all the hardest/most annoying monsters in the game and put them all in one place. Ratkin are straight up op, they delete your armour instantly, stun you, mob you in packs, the shamans can root and then they have high evasion ontop of that. They were bad enough in Rahu Sewers, now with even higher hp and damage and no easy access to that accuracy buff from the goblin, they are brutal. I like the new monster models though and the Hexapus, Skeletal Triceratops and Kuvou have interesting abiltiies/passives that make them challenging without being too impossibly hard.

Graphical/performance changes:

General performance seems better, but for some reason, now when I open or close various windows like the skills and abilities window or the training section of an npc I get a second or 2 of lag.

The new filter to the game took me by surprise at first but after getting used to it I think it makes the game look a lot better... mostly. Fae Realm looks like I accidently set my monitor saturation to max and hurts my eyes to look at it, I think casino is a bit too dark too.

New weather looks amazing, not much else to say about it.

Balance changes:

Nerfs to shield and staff were needed. Not sure nerf to staff was the right mod though as it's more the ridiculous flat physical mitigation that made it op, but it's still something. Shield's nerf might be a tad too much but I'll have to test it out myself first. I don't think the nerf to cow was the right one either, it was cow's physical mitigation that made it strong, not its general elite mitigation. So cow is just even worse for WT now when it wasn't particularly good to begin with.

Buffs for knife fighting, psychology and werewolf were needed. I don't play any of these skills though so I have no idea if it's enough or too much.

Armour damage mod buffs are another good choice, they don't scale with flat or % damage mods, so 9 times out of 10 they were completely outclassed by other mods.

New skills:

Haven't used them enough yet to comment but just from a brief look at animal handling/genetics it seems really interesting. Whittling as another buff to knife fighting (hopefully) means knife fighting should be up to scratch with the other dps skills now.

Mikhaila
09-28-2021, 11:13 AM
Really an awesome job on Povus. The zone feels alive. Nice transitions from one type of terrain to another and quite varied. There's just a lot going on there. Really looking forward to diving into it again tonite.

I really like how the mobs aren't just bigger and tougher. The special attacks and defenses mean you have to pay attention to the fights, even at 80. Dying isn't a big issue in PG, so I think having hard and interesting fights is a good thing.

Plentiful resources is nice, and having a risk/reward factor makes it more than just rushing around grabbing stuff. You really feel like you are in competition with the ratkin for their metals.

Great job.

Ranperre
09-28-2021, 01:52 PM
Nerfs to shield and staff were needed. Not sure nerf to staff was the right mod though as it's more the ridiculous flat physical mitigation that made it op, but it's still something. Shield's nerf might be a tad too much but I'll have to test it out myself first. I don't think the nerf to cow was the right one either, it was cow's physical mitigation that made it strong, not its general elite mitigation. So cow is just even worse for WT now when it wasn't particularly good to begin with.

Quoting because we think similarly about the game and wanted to add something.

Very few people were doing WT before this update (Nobody was selling good quantities of quality phlog for weeks) and decreasing the performance of a good tank isn't going to help. My big issue with the current situation is that if you are making phlog too difficult to get, you are holding people back from what is probably the most entertaining part of the game: mods. Back when I started, you could join a random group on sword/shield and get enough nice phlog to either perfect that set or make another. These days... that sword/shield set would be a useless piece of shit in WT/GK, as are most beginner sets. In order to gather phlog to make yourself better at combat, you either: have to accept being carried in a group (way more costly to the group than before) or buy/manufacture it. Neither of these are reasonable options. To put numbers on this, you need 3-4k phlog to make a set. At current prices, that's 800k-1m, which is absurd for someone that recently hit 80, and there's no way for one to somewhat efficiently farm the phlog itself without being being a useless piece of shit and dragging down guildmates or a friendly group. Maybe I'm too far removed from this part of the game (very early end game) and missing something, but it just seems like a major and unnecessary barrier to progression right now.

I'm not asking for the days when people would npc nice phlog... but there has to be something between that and where we are now.

tl;dr: At least in the current balance situation, dungeon content is/was way too hard and the tank nerfs don't help.

Edit add: Sorry, not trying to argue that some level of tank nerfs weren't necessary, just that I'm of the opinion they should have come with hp reduction of elites or something to make those mobs easier.

Mikhaila
09-29-2021, 10:05 AM
Just addressing the idea of phlog, I agree that less folk will be doing WT with it being harder to get a tank. I'm trying to remember how tough FR was when I came back to play and was running around FR using level 70 gear and unarmed/psych. I think it was tough, but obviously not impossible to do. A whole lot of rings and necklaces became phlog while i was leveling. Not as fast as being in a group doing elites, but still doable.

Povar is also doable at sub 80. I was leveling hammer and ran over to try it out. 66 hammer, no mods, and 80 ment were able to kill the little stuff, but I learned to stay away from the big things. I was phlogging stuff to save room. Also got quite a few items on the nightly raids.

None of this was as fast as being in a good FR elite group, or a WT group, but still a pathway. Especially if leveling up skills. So the variable to consider is time. It certainly might be that getting enough to create armor could be a challenge. level 90
phlog is also going to be in demand at some point. I'll be hording all of mine until making 90 armor is a thing.

INXS
09-29-2021, 05:18 PM
The tank change just made easy things a bit harder and we all know Eric likes a good balance, having old tank just go in yawn while tanking xx creatures and the rest kill stuff then run through a dungeon make good bounty is not what maybe it's wanted in the game.

Ranperre
09-30-2021, 04:53 PM
I finished armorsmithing last night, would have waited for the weekend, but real life commitments. Even though jewelry starts you at 50, they're of a similar difficulty since the lion's share of slabs comes from 50+. Too bad you can't make 80 gear atm as the marvelous surveys appear to be broken.

I believe one would need 3-4 stacks of magic sand to complete it, depending on your earned crafting %. Have fun doing regular surveys, if you go that route.

The gear looks decent, it should probably offset about half of the mitigation my cow lost on the nerfs. Without any personal testing, I honestly think it might be advantageous to go 3 leather and 2 plate if you happen to not have a healer and 5 plate if you do.

Mbaums
10-01-2021, 07:15 PM
The Animal handling change is probably for the best. A ~30% crit rate, where my pet’s basic attack can hit for 20k was kind of fun while it lasted. Obviously my current pets are nowhere near complete with animal husbandry, but the change made their DPS drop by ~30% in my small tests. I do hope they can reach close to those numbers again because it’ll probably take months to breed a pet with ~80+ in all of the stats. But I guess once people create those super-pets they’ll be passed around left and right. Thinking about wanting to have 3 types of bees makes this a possibly impossible to accomplish within a year, even if I do get lucky with pet int rolls. If I could even shuffle caught pets across my account it would probably save me months of breeding effort.

I’m using my unarmed/psych setup much more in Povus. In Povus, I just switch to Animal Handling only when I need to fight those big guys with armor/health regen (forgot their name), because they take forever otherwise.
Some of the drops from quest items seem really rare, like the fishing net quest just does not even seem worth it. And the orcs in Povus seem to drop whittling knives about 50% of the time. Could just be me tho!

Dumdidum
10-04-2021, 04:08 AM
Unfortunetely the same <10 people give feedback, it starts to feel like an echo chamber. Anyway here is mine.

The good:
- weather system
- new skills/skill unlocks, gives us something to do again
- Povus layout
- Skills that dont need counsils to upgrade !
- make offer at stalls ...(could we also get a reversed auction option where a seller puts in a reserve and auction duration and the highest bid gets?)
- new recipy drops

The bad:
- Players outside the US with different timezones get further behind again, unless they have all the time in the world to play 24/7 and can log in at US prime time. I am referring to the Povus invasion system.
- Totally no fan of content on yet more timers. Its starting to feel like Project Timer for me. Already not amused by having to wait each and every time in FR to hand in work orders. The new content has a bunch more timers, making it hard to achieve anything unless you are on 24/7 again. Unless you enjoy wasting value playing time porting to Povus each and every time just to see if the NPC are there or not, on top of doing that for FR , SV etc.

The ugly:
- sadly, hugely disappointed by the genetics and Husbandry...unless we jump to conclusions and its not as we think it is:

Genetics analyzers say they have a 5% chance to break, well mine break 50% of the time. At 2 xog per, we are looking at 10k + analyzers to get all 5 categories of genetics levelled up to 100 someday. Looks insanely time consuming (or expensive) to me. Made it to lvl 24 arthropod on 200-250 analyzers, crazy amount.

Husbandry. First of, you are better off failing mating than getting pregnant (more xp time wise). Weird to reward a mechanic this way.
Secondly, my first babies ended up with way way less stats than the parents. This cant be true, right? Or are we looking at a system where genes of parents mean very little? In that case we have a timed, random number simulator skill without any outside control of players.
Thirdly, it does not seem to matter at all what level the pet is. If so, this is a missed chance imo. Mating lvl 1 bees or lvl 80 bees should make a huge difference.
I had so much fun with the pet system in an old game called Rappelz, quite frankly Husbandry and AH in this game seem a burden, a hassle best avoided. Other skills are way easier to level up , way easier to play, with much much more damage output.

Unfortunately for me, trading (playing the economy) and AH/AHu are my 2 main drives to keep playing this game and slowly but surely i am losing interest, and it seems i am not the only one, numbers are seriously dwindling.
Hence my comment about an echo chamber, it would be of much more value to hear from players that quit why they did, then to ask that to the 200 fan boys and girls that will stay around no matter what.

Celerity
10-05-2021, 05:42 PM
A lot of the problems I complained about earlier were fixed, so I'm happy about that. I've also gotten the chance to play quite a bit more now, so I have more to say.

Paleontology - fun, quick skill to max. Literally told by the skill trainer it's pointless, and it is indeed pointless, but kinda cool to summon skeleton dinosaurs all the same. It's the perfect example of Project Gorgon humour and I'm very glad it was a short skill. I think if this had been long it would have been terrible, but as is, it's great.

Whittling - another pretty quick, easy skill to max. Comes with buffs to knife fighting and minor buffs to deer, rabbit and pig. I'm not against any of that and I'm glad you let us use oak wood all the way to max level. If we had to start using spruce etc. I would probably start complaining, but again I think you've done a good job. I'm a bit confused about why it takes artistry levels to appreciate the carvings, when you can make statues with blacksmithing and jack 'o' lanterns with artistry which give larger buffs and don't have these requirements to appreciate, but oh well, not a big deal.

Animal Husbandry - so I said I thought it seemed interesting earlier, well to be honest, now I don't think it actually is that interesting. You just breed the animals together then pick the ones with the highest stats and repeat for a long time. It feels like it's not even worth leveling up any of the pets until you get a really high stat one so I'm also a bit conflicted there. I don't really use animal handling much so I'll probably just breed animals on the backburner and eventually max the skill. In terms of just leveling the skill, it's faster to fail the breeding since you get 50xp after waiting a few hours, compared to 100xp for waiting a few days when you succeed, which doesn't make any sense. It makes all the items you can craft to increase the breeding chance pointless and is completely counter intuitive. Maybe genetics makes this more interesting? I wouldn't know because I haven't managed to unlock it yet but I guess it could be cool making a really funky looking pet.

Armorsmithing - waiting until poetry jam buffs to really do this properly but I've scratched the surface and it seems ok. I won't be making new armour pieces for my tank set because I don't see an extra few % of mitigation as worth the cost, but I'm sure others might. Leveling it is maybe a bit too grindy at the higher levels? I've only planned it out, but even with nearly all the exp buffs in the game and a stack and a half of magic sand to do motherlode surveys with, I still don't have quite enough slabs yet. For reference, that magic sand probably took me over a year to accumulate and doing the normal surveys is painfully slow. I think this would be a tough one for new(er) players to max.

So may as well talk about the new survey system in Povus, I did 50 astounding metal slab surveys and I think I profited around 110-115 astounding slabs (I mined a few non-surveyed metal nodes on the way) and it took me about an hour and a half. The constantly spawning ratkin are kind of annoying and a few times I had 8 ratkin miners spawn on me when I was trying to mine the node. I think the number that spawn needs to be decreased a bit, I don't think it should ever be more than 5 and maybe 2-3 on average. I also don't think it's necessary to have the chance to fail at mining the node, normal mining surveys were not particularly op so I don't see why these limitations have to be brought into place alongside constantly spawning mobs on you. I think this is just way too slow, motherlodes are easily 10x faster and when there's that much of a difference between methods, it makes it really hard to justify doing the slower one. Also just want to say that the compass directions are backwards in Povus, reported it in game but I found it a bit irritating.

I want to talk about the Povus invasion again. I think it's a lot better than when I first reviewed it, the enemies don't stick around as long after the wave is done and a lot of the annoying bugs are fixed. I still think it's too hard, the mobs themselves aren't too difficult, until you get to the flapskull wave and then you better hope you have an absolute minimum of 10 people, since they completely swarm you with large shout radius and quick movement. But the problem is that no small group of players is ever going to be able to clear the mobs quickly enough. Even with close to 30 players doing it today, we only just managed to almost finish the fae wave and still we ran out of time. I think to be able to clear the whole thing in time, is roughly equivalent to a 40 man raid right now. I don't necessarily mind large raids/world bosses/events, the problem is getting that many people together, and in a relatively low population niche game like this it's just not really achievable.

The xogrite rewards also feel a bit lackluster. I didn't mention this before, but I think the rate of xogrite in general is fine. I'm still not a fan of time-gated currencies like this but I understand why it was done. The problem I have with it, is how you get it, if you do a full invasion for an hour, even with a large group you're maybe getting 7 xogrite in that hour. If it's a small group you could be looking at even just 2-4. Yet there's an hourly crafting quest from Lincha which averages ~11 xogrite for something you can do in 10 seconds. Similar story for the barter with the dwarf smith, forgot her name. I don't think these need nerfing, but I think the amount from the invasion is too low and could use a buff. Otherwise, the current method for xogrite feels like holistic wellness where you just log in for a minute every hour, do the quest then logout again.

I briefly tested the shield changes with my unarmed/shield tank and I don't think the 10% nerf to bulwark mode broke the game or anything. I haven't done a full run yet and no idea if it's completely screwed over players who don't have access to perfectly rolled best in slot gear.

Dumdidum is right, most of the people giving feedback have played this game for years and have incredibly good gear, money, resources etc. I would like to see some more newer players adding their feedback.

Still, really enjoying the update and happy about how fast a lot of the bugs have been fixed.

Melkhiresa
10-07-2021, 03:39 AM
Going to leave all the stuff about the town and event alone considering enough people have said their piece about that subject and focus more on the other changes.


-High level cheese requiring Ratkin Cheese Mold adds another farm gate to a skill with plenty of that as is. Outside of just drops from Povus Ratkin maybe allowing Rahu Sewers Ratkin to also drop them(killed a bunch and none dropped to check) or allowing the Goblands transit pods that drop from said Ratkin in both zones to be able to be bartered in to the Mold as well. Maybe in time this will work itself out with supply over demand but it never hurts having a secondary option. Could even somehow make the item a byproduct of some other crafting skill or add it to the reward for doing Sewers AM.

-Huge fan of the new weather effects, outside of extreme fog issues. I cannot wait till rain, snow and storms eventually get added. Between the ambient sounds and that the immersion really just tickles my fancy.

-This is a problem as a whole with damage over time effects and combat but the 45 or such second Kuvou dot/power degen just makes this even worse. Regardless of mobs being dead or not you are still stuck in combat for the duration of these effects as well. Add in the fact power and HP regen ticks often are very buggy and do not happen at all or take forever and it just leads to annoying gameplay. Whatever causes the last issue is the worst offender but regardless shorter duration dot's even if their potency had to increase to stay at whatever 'difficulty' level you desire would be a nice change.

-It's nice to finally see lv80 animal armors and the buffs some of them received. My only gripe is to the best of my knowledge this left out Deer, Cow and Pig Porkpie hats. They as well could use a slight buff in what they provide damage wise.


-I've mentioned this before but consider adding Rabbit Familiar Controllers(Dyable) to crafting as well as giving it a secondary bonus. It does not have to be the same as say a Masquerade Mask but even flat bunny damage as a whole would then make the Tiara a useful option for non ice using bunnies. That or leave them in the loot table as is and allow a different Tiara to be crafted as such. On the same token the same could be said for Alicorns and the weird Pig helmet thingy. You took the time to design and animate them so it would be a shame to see them disappear in to obscurity.

-I like the addition of the new armors from Armor Smithing and the various bonuses they were given. This at the same time makes me wish Hardcore Armor got the same treatment in terms of craftability as well as a possible universal % damage on them instead of the random ice here or electric there which would open up it's usefulness to all skills for those who do play Hardcore. Alternatively just adding electric and ice to each piece for the short term would still be appreciated. Maybe even the option for Torgan to offer a higher level barter than he does as well. As a whole Hardcore items and the mode itself needs some love and a little more fleshed out. I surely can't be the only one who plays and enjoys it conceptually.

-Synergy levels and lv85 loot. A large number of skills cannot reach that in synergy levels as of yet and some even have none across the board. I know it's not a simple fix but a few of the combat skills have what would seem obvious umbrella skills that could give a synergy as such. Example being Ice conjuration giving ice levels or even fire magic as well. I'm sure there are plenty of future skills planned to fix these issues just somewhat lopsided right now.

-Your general increase to mods that give armor damage was a nice change but unfortunately due to their inability to scale like flat damage on the skill would they are not in a super great spot I feel. Add in that armor damage does nothing when said target has no armor left and unless the mod offers a very good secondary it's just a rough pick. Perhaps adding some or better utility as well as the armor damage could help alleviate this if scaling is not an option.

-The animal dye VIP gift for rabbits is a nice addition and honestly a smart move. Cosmetics are a big thing in MMO's and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who obsesses over such. The adding it in later as well is a nice touch and makes it not feel as forced if you want to wait. Whether through VIP or added to other things such as guild credits more smaller cosmetic changes would be a welcome addition. From dyes to animal colours to even different coloured abilities sort of like the current firewall option.



Tank Nerfs:

While there were certain skills that for sure needed a mitigation nerf I'm not really sure you fully hit it on the head with this one. To quickly summarize lest this turns in to a Novel there is a reason Staff and Shield are the general go to in tanking at this current juncture. They both provide some of the highest levels of flat mitigation as well as % to the largest number of current end game damage types.

There is a lot I could go in to but Deflective Spin itself for staff is a big culprit in this. It offers 13% mitigation to all as a base on the ability as well as the following.

- Deflective Spin heals 270 Health over 15 seconds(2)

- Deflective Spin costs -9 Power and mitigates +11 damage from each attack for 15 seconds(2)

- Deflective Spin restores 66 Health instantly and provides +50 Mitigation from all Elite attacks for 15 seconds(2)

- Deflective Spin gives you +18% Projectile Evasion for 15 seconds

Sure you might not take every single mod but that is a TON packed in to one ability. Mind you Staff still has blocking stance which offers large amount of flat physical mitigation. As a solo tank skill all this above is not going to give the issues we have with insane mitigation unless you are facing weaker hitting mainly physical damage things. but when you combine it with Shield that not only shores up the one glaring issue staff has(lack of taunt) but almost mimics the large amount of damage types covered in mitigation as well as the amount you start to have a problem. This also brings another issue up...in almost every metric Deflective is a much better version of Bulwark now with the nerf. There really is a ton more I could go in to but I wanted to just touch the tip of the iceberg.

There is also a big disparity between what skills get stun resistance or removals which is what allows for a lot of these insane pulls currently being pulled off. As well as the avoidance granted by priests from their modded Triage as well as pig ect. All the above play a role in some of the silliness we see currently.

On a last note with the shorter uptime and amount of CC in this game Cow really is at a disadvantage compared to other tank skills. Not only that but it has ramp up time compared to the very easy mitigation of literally every other skill. Some maintenance is fine but I feel you went to far in that direction here.


Povus:

The zone itself is rather enjoyable and well done. Seems like it has a lot of little things here and there so exploration was fun as well as plenty of spots that look like they were designed for future possible content. It would be nice to get a more concentrated residence or area for Ratkin like you have for the Ranalon in the zone, especially with the Ratkin Mold farm Cheese now has. I've noticed changing graphic settings on trees does not remove them like other zones. Was this done intentionally? Overall I hope future zones end up as enjoyable as this. Although I'm sad the ranalon don't drop an upgraded version of the kelp armor.


Psychology Changes:

I already wrote an insane amount on this previously so I'll keep this one "shorter". Some good changes and some somewhat pointless ones with where the skill stands.

-Psychoanalyze restores 143 Health to you after a 15 second delay" => after an 8 second delay

-Psychoanalyze restores 224 Armor to you" => 212 armor

-Psychoanalyze causes the target to take +20 damage from Psychic attacks for 60 seconds" => +78 damage for 15 seconds

This ability has much too long of a cooldown even though I can get behind all the changes. Shortening the CD would especially help since this ability is also a trigger for You Were Adopted and having this initially miss is horrible.

-Soothe Damage +128" => Soothe and Psychoanalyze damage +167 and range +5 meters

All the flat damage in the world does not take away from the fact this ability does not get a % damage increase mod. Thus it has to crit to even do anything of note and even then for such a long cooldown meh. When it comes to Soothe even with all the above and the ability to crit it still does very little and seems better off redesigned but the same can be said about a couple of Psych's abilities.

-Inspire Confidence / Positive Attitude Healing +83" => +98

-Inspire Confidence restores +205 Health after a 25 second delay" => restores +150 Armor to all targets

Good changes that help slowly put Psych closer on par to what other healing skills can do.

-The effect "Inspire Confidence increases all targets' Accuracy +20 for 10 seconds" now stacks with itself.

I really don't ever ever see someone wanting or willingly running with double of this mod. For most possible applications even if you were to run it one is enough. It also just adds a pointless double aspect. Why not just make the one single mod a higher number? What is the harm in that due to the lower uptime and situational aspect of it.

-Ridicule deals +57 health damage and taunts +525" => Ridicule taunts +800 and target's next attack has a 25% chance to automatically miss

I like the idea of this mod in general albeit both Mock and Ridicule serve literally the same purpose aggro wise. There is also the problem this is on a short CD ability so possible issues arise from that as well.

-Mock deals +125% damage and taunts +500, but reuse timer is +2 seconds" => Mock deals +125% damage, taunts +500, and hits all targets within 20 meters, but reuse timer is +1.5 seconds

Really like this mod especially for early snap aggro generation. A few more changes in this direction for Psych and we finally might have another tanky skill to pair with everything.


Animal Husbandry:

I wanted to get a good dip in to this skill before I wrote anything about it, mind you I'm sure there is a ton of depth we won't even know about till later so I possibly will be wrong about some of the below. There are quite a few shortfalls and issues I already see with this system as well as our lack of control or ability to change in some aspects.

First off by nature of space we were relatively forced to abandon most non bee or wasp pets to allow room for this breeding lest it take literally forever more so than it will. Secondly it invalidates currently leveled pets to be mostly pointless in the process outside of original breeding stock. The same can be said with most of the offspring as it turns in to a fish for some genes you like and delete tons of babies as you go to level it up. I'm currently on my 9th or so baby and just have to resign myself to deleting things I want to keep to continue the cycle. Pet cages for temporary storage are not an option either since they make them non breedable or do not work on registered ones.

At the very least there should be an option to 'study the genes or animal' that gives Husbandry/Genetics XP then releases them or something so there is some tangible benefit and not just pure loss after waiting days for these births. On the topics of gene's it would seem like many of them, at least visually, do not show what they should as well. The "glow' gene produces no glow for me nor do I see a difference when the 'Leg deformity' is in it's gene pool. So unless I'm missing something it would seem a few things need to be ironed out. To the best of my knowledge and testing their latent abilities do not change which I feel is a big missed opportunity. A Bee mixed with a Turret Wasp for a Poison Burst effect Clever Trick or such as an example. That or more variance in general need to be added to what type of attacks every pet type can have for an overall more robust breeding that isn't just raw stats and looks.

In the future when you tackle the other pet types consider more damage type options as well as possible gene's that could effect buff pets or healing pets. I'll probably go in to more detail at some other point but it would not take much to turn the healing/buff pets in to more of a support focused AH via breeding and a mod or two. Giving options that aren't just do damage for pairing options is always a welcome change and allows us to further vary the pets we breed and their uniqueness. Want to build a rat that gives avoidance to your group? Heals companions as well as yourself? Maybe Mr. Squeaky can be bribed to have a romp with a cute rat and pass on his unique electric self. Truly the skies the limit with the options so let us fly.


I love the concept of this all and the fact you were willing to try your hand at doing something literally no one else would due to the work involved. There just seems to be a few holes in the whole process that need a little more work.


P.S I also lied about the Povus event above. After doing it non stop I really wish you would change Lamia to act more like GK tacticians. Those things are a horrible design especially with the number at which they spawn. Make them beefier or hit harder to compensate but they are a very un fun mechanic for literally every build.

Figger1
10-07-2021, 06:28 AM
What is the reason for breeding? Usually it is to improve the stats of pets but after reading on here, it is to give your pets worse stats. I have played other games that had breeding. I remember one game where you had vials that you used to get certain traits from almost any animal to build a new pet and one vial was to choose the appearance of the pet. Then another game where 2 players bred pets, and it would create 2 babies, one for each player. And in this one, the babies were marked with a generation mark and once a baby reach generation 9, it couldnt be bred anymore.

I really hate that in Povus, when you mine a mining node that Ratkin miners pop up from nowhere to attack you, next thing you know you are surrounded by 5+ and you die, so I dont mine those nodes anymore and dont want even stand next to one in case the Ratkins will appear by just being near one.

The Povus night event seems like a Jack made event. I did do one that had lots of players but I dont think we finished it all. It was daytime before we finished and it ended. Maybe you could make the days and nights longer in Povus.

Eltibule is muggy and foggy during the day and way too dark at night, at night I turned on 'Brighter World', it helped some. I noticed at about 4pm in Povus, everything seemed to bright and blurry, I was standing at the portal to Rahu and looking in the direction of where I knew the lake was and could not see the lake as I did earlier that day.

Mbaums
10-08-2021, 09:39 AM
I feel like a Fairy who dove into Animal Handling have an unintended challenge with Animal Husbandry.

There are 13 animal stall slots as a maximum, from what I recall from Rum’s live stream. I don’t have the cap, but I’ll tell you my struggles with 11. It’s just getting so tight pet wise I deleted 1 free bee I was given. More leveled up pets are going to be released soon to make room because of stable space. I have actually removed some of the lesser pets I have already, like Hissy and a GK panther. I accept breeding takes up 3 slots, but I’m dreading the mount update because of this.

It’s a weird dilemma. I could stop trying to progress a single build (AH with a strongly bred pet) or stop progressing movement speed. It feels like, if you do animal handling those who just want to breed the mount are going to get an advantage. In other words, AH users are penalized by having a stable full of not-mounts. Technically I think the min/max option (that feels dirty) is to remove all of my pets, including the level 100 ones, and just breed mounts like crazy for a solid mount then either totally ignore AH, or maybe slim my stable and level up a new pet. That’s a bit extreme. I never want to lose the 2 free bees I was born with, and my build kind of requires the rat. The pressure is on; every pet is a slot commitment, so it’s difficult to choose hurt your progression today to help tomorrow.

Taking up 3 more slots for breeding a mount extremely tight, and I’m fine with that. But non-Faries have an easier time because they never had the bonus bees. I think all of this would be solved if Faries maximum stall slot was 15 vs 13 because… magic. But maybe not, maybe deleting the past-life pets is risk vs reward decision, and a legitimate strategy.

TLDR; it feels like Fae have 15.4% (2/13) less animal stalls at maximum in the context of breeding, because ditching the bonus bees feels wrong.

Figger1
10-08-2021, 10:34 AM
I just noticed that at 4pm in serbule it starts getting dark and at 10am it is foggy. Why did you do this, I loved how beautiful all the zones were before. Maybe there could be a setting to turn weather on or off.

INXS
10-08-2021, 04:36 PM
I concur with Mbaums, i too had to let go of pets to accommodate breeding bees and animal husbandry xp seems atrociously slow to even think i'll soon get those stable slots, with animal husbandry 2 free bees we should have got at least one stable slot to partially fix this problem.

Ranperre
10-09-2021, 03:25 PM
Mining (Exclusively the marvelous surveys): I love the ratkin spawns, in theory. It adds a combat element to mining that was sorely lacking and is a barrier to entry for what is otherwise a very profitable endeavor. I am of the opinion that it is currently too slow and the return rate should be increased by 20-30%. If you did one or both of the following, the return would be more appropriate: 1. Decrease or eliminate failed mining operations or 2: Decrease the channeling time from 6 to 4-5 seconds. I understand that you need to add barriers to resource collection, but this is bordering more on "fuck this" than "wow, that feels rewarding".

Let me put it this way: Doing these marvelous surveys was so boring that it drove me to play Dota. Nothing else in this game does that to me (I've done 6500 motherlodes).

Armorsmithing: The difficulty is about right. I'm concerned that the gear isn't good enough and you guys were too stingy with the white stats. I don't think this gear would be OP if you doubled every single (non-armor/refresh) white stat on every single plate gear piece, especially the orcish set. Losing power regen (via plate over cloth/leather) from gear is a big problem for dps these days and +36 to nice attacks isn't going to cut it.

Whittling: I was going to say this was way too easy, but it's probably intended to be on par with calligraphy/meditation, right? It's fine, but does come off as a little monotonous and boring. Maybe require maple or higher once you get to 50.

Nepe
10-12-2021, 12:32 AM
There are quite a few things I really like about this update.

Things off the top of my head:

Visuals:
I really like all the love and care put into the visuals. The entire atmosphere has truly been encapsulated by the weather effects, lighting or lack thereof, the little dust clouds when Ratkin burrow in to ambush you; hell, even the gloss off of the metal armor is incredible. It really shows you guys have been meticulously polishing PG.

I love how dark nighttime is now, it really incentivizes finding avenues for seeing in the dark. And the night sky is absolutely gorgeous. Many times I'll simply fly up above Povus, with some troll bourbon in hand, and gaze in wonder as the firefights break out around the town like little firecrackers. Pop, pop..... pop, pop, pop.... then silence. The warm little orbs start to light up one by one as the victors reclaim the town space in the name of Povus once more. It's really quite poetic.

I also really love all the fog! Growing up, I remember a few days where the fog was so intense you could barely see a few feet in front of you. I remember thinking how magical the fog seemed almost as if I was in another dimension. It was an amazing experience! Granted I get that some people want to be able to see where they're going, but that's what the maps are for :P I think this is an amazing detail that recaptures much of the same experience of my youth, and as inhibiting as dense fog can be it doesn't seem to happen super often as far as I can tell. It's a nice touch that adds a bit of realism to the game.

In the same vein, the cloud cover in addition to sunsets or sunrise is absolutely breathtaking. I'm in love. The snow flurries in Kur really enhance this. I really hope we see some rain eventually :D

Quality of Life:
Adding trees that can be harvested multiple times is such a nice quality of life feature! It made collecting Maple and Spruce an absolute breeze especially if you add in the flower arrangement buffs. Thank you!

Povus is challenging content:
The difficulty curve in Povus really shows, and that's a good thing! It's meant to be hard and I love it. Previously, difficult maps were largely challenging not in content, but in geography or temperature. Thinking mostly about Gazluk here, where mountain ranges are so steep they're difficult to even fly over, and the temperature is something that the majority of players will struggle with for a long time.
Povus however, seems so wrought with strife that no matter where you go, you're plagued with ambushes and pestilence.

For instance, the constant tick/leech debuff is so annoyingly awesome without being entirely crippling. It fits the theme perfectly.

Ratkin ambush during resource collection is a brilliant idea. It really brings resource collection to a new level. You're in a foreign land collecting prized minerals when suddenly, you're swarmed by Ratkin overcome with possessive rage.
The sheer number that swarms you is almost overwhelming and I absolutely love it, especially since they drop cheese molds! It's such a nice twist from the material collection that we see from all the other zones and it really highlights Povus' wartorn ambiance. Some players don't like the amount you're ambushed by but I quite like it.

Many of the other enemies are delightfully challenging, with some tricks up their sleeves if you're not careful. Exactly what I'd expect from one of the toughest maps we've had yet.

Night Raids:
The night raids are a super cool idea. It solves a lot of issues in terms of finding ways to generate quality phlog/large prisms for players who arent interested or perhaps unable to run WT. The escalation in wave difficulty has a good rampup pace to it. I feel like this is something that level 125 players will still want to participate in and still be met with a bit of challenge.

Secret Skills:
The quest chain to unlock the 'you-know-what' skill is brilliant! I love how it's not immediately discoverable, but something you have to take note of after the heat of battle. The lore uncovered by completing the quest chain is an amazing way to flesh out the world of Alharth and makes it feel more real. I'm so in love with things that reward the player to be curious and dig a little deeper. I had so much fun playing the investigator and finding out how all the mechanics work together so that I could solve the quest chain.
Please add more of these in future content!!! It's such a golden idea that truly enriches the game.

Animal Husbandry and Genetics:
This has so much amazing potential. I'm so impressed you guys would add something like this into the game. I'm excited to see these skills as they're continually worked on and tweaked in further updates. I can see myself spending months creating some badass pets. This is just another example of the ambition of PG making its own path in the MMO community and I'm so glad I get to be a part of the experience. Keep up the great work guys.


Things that I feel could improve:

Animation locking:
In the past few updates I've noticed that when casting spells or abilities, my character will lock in place for a second or two. While this is not game-breaking, it creates an experience that is quite frustrating. The flow of combat has become quite jarring, not only that but the skills affected by this almost seem nonsensical.

For instance, I typically play as a full support fairy healer. Positioning is super important for my build; and while most of my abilities are heals, when trying to heal I get locked into place. I could understand if I was casting like an epic damage ability for it to have an animation lock, but I spend most of my time casting minor heals. It's super annoying to be running around trying to heal my group and getting locked into place every other second.

One such example to further illustrate, druids have a slight movement buff called hunter's stride that boosts movement by +3, meaning that when you want to cast it, you are likely doing so because you have somewhere that you want to go. But this ability now animation locks, which seems to completely contradict a skill that boosts movement. It's gotten so annoying that I've found myself not casting hunters stride even when I could benefit from its effect in the long run.

Furthermore, animation locks drop characters that fly in elevation by several meters in height. I don't know if this is intentional but it only adds to the frustration. I play a fairy that boasts incredible agility and movement due to its inherent flight capabilities, yet I go through this comical sequence every time I fly.

Take off, cast hunters stride, sink several meters, fly up again, cast bulwark, sink several meters, resume flight.

Now you might say so what? But this happens pretty much every time. It just feels unnatural compared to my movement 2 patches previously.


FR saturation:
While I find the color changes to the game absolutely breathtaking, the fae realm daytime is a bit hard on the eyes.

Genetics leveling:
I don't know if this is a bug or not, but the break chance on the genetics analyzers seems to be inaccurate. While I enjoy slow grinds, this can be quite frustrating.



Overall Povus is super fun to explore, there are many ideas executed very well. This game rewards consistent effort and patience. It places challenges that stimulate character growth as well as team collaboration. The satisfaction of overcoming these challenges is amazing as you feel rewarded from all the struggles to work your way through to the high levels. I'm excited to see what you guys have in store for future updates! Thank you for all your care and dedication.

Figger1
10-13-2021, 01:05 PM
I dont know when this was changed but in skills, under Anatomy, all the species anatomies used to be in alphabetical order, now they are in scrambled order. Phrenologies are in a weird order also. Why?

Celerity
10-14-2021, 04:08 PM
Just wanted to say that after doing a full dungeon run of GK, the shield nerf to bulwark mode was perfectly fine.

Edit: actually add in that I don't like the animations locking you in place. They look good, I really like the new visual for fight me you fools and bulwark mode. But combat doesn't feel as smooth, especially for pulling, when I can't run past an enemy and bonk them on the way, or use my defensives on the run back without rooting in place. At the very least let us turn our character and make buffs like shield team, elemental ward, bulwark mode etc. not root you. I don't really care if the leg animation is just standing still but you're moving, it doesn't bother me.

Deldaron
10-20-2021, 02:21 PM
Povus

Overall I like Povus - the zone is beautiful and densely populated with points of interest and things to do. I know you have some changes in store for the nightly invasions, but I will still offer some suggestions.

Lamia:
Lamia are an interesting mob that says "screw your plans" by preventing you from using most of your bar - they make tanks highly ineffective until downed unless you have a combination of high burst and melee evasion which is a tall order. I like lamia b/c they make you more cautious and I think they really work in labs, but I think they need to be re-worked for Povus. One idea would be to give them another attack that isn't charm or give charm a fail chance on players outside of evasion or to just have them appear in smaller quantities. The issue w/ them in povus is because this is a timed event you need to move quickly, because its in a city you can't see every mob in the area, there are pats and respawns, and its not hard for a lamia or 4 to come in and slow you down by a lot. This is fine in the lamplighting challenge, but when looking at flapskulls I'm not sure they contribute much to this invasion.

Mob spawn rates for kill quests:
In certain encounters (megafauna, ratkin pest control) the biggest issue preventing a group from moving forward is spawn rate. It seems for the pest control that these tend to come in two waves potentially - that is at first the fumigators spawn and on the respawn wave there's a higher chance of pest control. I think I'd favor something like the orcish invasion where once enough orcs are killed reinforcements arrive from the east. Rather than waiting for pest control respawns, once enough fumigators are killed a wave of pest control spawn and rush the city.

Ratkin's "sense danger":
It seems ratkin were given a "sense danger" effect which I actually think is cool, but needs tweaking. Danger sense is what I'm calling the effect where a you're in combat with literally anything and a ratkin or 3 will walk 30 meters to the location of your battle to explore the area. I like the idea here, but I think its range needs to be slightly limited and it should be limited to only be ratkin to ratkin and not just general combat - or there should be certain zones where it doesn't apply (zones not controlled by ratkin). The other night I was doing lamp lighting in the annex fighting ghosts, lamia, and skeletons and there were some ratkin just outside the city who would "sense danger" and walk in to the annex to investigate. This felt so out of place - I think by the end I had to fight 3 ratkin while also keeping an eye out for lamia/ghost repops.

Animal Husbandry/genetics

I _really_ love the genetics system. I am currently level 80 arthropod genetics and have been having a blast running around documenting gene frequencies to figure out what's rare and how they're distributed. I was a little surprised that there is an optimal gene sequence outside of phenotype only genes, but honestly I'm grateful for this as a player as it simplifies things - it also seems that on the whole recessive is favored for all genes. It's a fun little side project that will keep us busy for some time. I posted in discord, but to recap:

I am mostly on board with "you can't trade pets and then breed them" b/c if that were allowed once people get "optimal" breeding pairs they could breed more and sell them and then there'd be ne point in hunting rare genes etc. But I think it would be cool if this only applied to captive raised pets and that wild caught pets can be traded for breeding. This would make a market for "gene hunters" who seek out rare genes and sell them

One thing I'm curious about with the genetics progression is how the xp scaling works. Every 5 levels of arthropod genetics I get +1 genetics level and +5 xp per successful analyze. I'm wondering if the +5 comes from the genetics level and will apply to future subskills or if it comes from arthropod genetics meaning each other subskill will have the same 9k analysis progression. If the genetics level determines xp that seems like later progressions will be too quick so I'm guessing its not this, but if each sub skill has a 9k kill progression that feels quite long. Particularly because there are certain zones where a species type is in higher qty and it will lead to higher level players camping lower level areas - I've already done this in serb hills/crypt. An obvious solution for that would be an xp decay on level of mob similar to anatomy, but then this 9k progression seems a little too unforgiving. I'm particularly concerned when we think of things like rodents where there really isn't high density of these.

The half way point for arthropod genetics is lvl 71 and by then you can analyze living bees/wasps and with a beginners analyzer are pretty close to being able to analyze FR bees/wasps so there's plenty to keep someone busy for the last half of the progression (especially since at this point almost 3/4ths of the genome is visible).

It seems that bees vs wasps have different gene frequencies, but I haven't noticed this on subspecies which I think would be very cool. I need to collect more data to be sure it isn't already implemented, but I would love for freeze wasps vs turret wasps to have different frequencies or even as far as "blood hunter bees are more likely to have key rare genes".

All in all I'm very pleased with it and enjoying the process :)