Animal form and soulmates

[Dibbuk]

Would it be possible to allow NPCs to interact with players in animal form, once they reach the "Soulmate" level? It would add incentive to become soulmates with as many NPC's as possible.

[Ells0430]

Either that or animals need a few more NPCs to talk to. I love animal town but it doesn't contain everything needed to move out there and also unless Enter the Light gives you different options Serb will always be homebase. Right now most of the major NPCs in serb won't talk to animals. I love the concept but it makes full time animal nearly impossible, imo.

[Citan]

I don't think it makes sense to "unlock" an NPC after it reaches Soulmates, because that requires you to NOT be an animal for a long time before you can then be an animal. The conceit of most animal forms is that these are curses -- sudden, horrific transformations. (And in many cases they really are sudden and undesired, such as when you fail to defeat Maronesa and find yourself turned into a cow.) So I don't want to give extra benefits to people who do lots of legwork beforehand. Unlocking things as an animal should be done in animal form. But there will definitely be more animal-form NPCs -- and animal-friendly NPCs -- over time.

Also, remember there will be more travel options in the future. The way Enter the Light works is temporary -- it won't always be a magical transport to the newbie town. I've left it that way until we have mounts and some of the other travel tools that are planned.

[Ells0430]

That makes sense, I can't wait to see what is coming in the future for animal forms. I often forget that there are other travel options coming along, will be interesting to see. :)

[Dibbuk]

Thank you, Citan.

[Oxlazr]

Citan

Per the above, are there any plans to lock localised storage for animals? I.e. the bookcase in Serb - you can access Marna's storage and such as-is and I find that largely just pushes staying out of animal form further.

Somewhat related, but are there plans for animal forms to actually become curses down the road? The cow-curse is the only one right now - and it's fairly trivial to get rid of it; it doesn't really feel like you've earned your freedom anymore. I wager that pig form at least will be an actual curse, but it's been years now and it's still just a hindrance to pick up the various juices instead of activity working around the downsides; we're still in half-measure territory - playing an animal doesn't feel like a curse, rather it just feels like skillsets gated behind tedious busywork.

It's pretty interesting that people get so worked up about animal forms, and I think PG is on to something interesting here, but I'd really like to see something happen to rock the boat.

As an aside, though somewhat relevant - Do you think curses will ever be reworked? A lot of the time getting decursed usually just means asking for help - some curses being a bit more complex than that would be fun, in my opinion, so you actually have to work with the consequences of your failure towards a solution, rather than just asking for a zerg to help you out (i.e. something akin to the Harry the Wolf solution for cows - something to work towards).

Also, any updates on potentially removing deer form from druids?

Sorry for poking with questions >_>

[Tiamat]

Right now you can max out storage with whatever anti-animal vendor as humanoid, then animal-up and access that storage from the bookshelf. I'm not sure whether that's going to stay in or not, however.

Also, seconding Oxlazr's question about deer/druids.

[Silvonis]

Citan

Per the above, are there any plans to lock localised storage for animals? I.e. the bookcase in Serb - you can access Marna's storage and such as-is and I find that largely just pushes staying out of animal form further.

Somewhat related, but are there plans for animal forms to actually become curses down the road? The cow-curse is the only one right now - and it's fairly trivial to get rid of it; it doesn't really feel like you've earned your freedom anymore. I wager that pig form at least will be an actual curse, but it's been years now and it's still just a hindrance to pick up the various juices instead of activity working around the downsides; we're still in half-measure territory - playing an animal doesn't feel like a curse, rather it just feels like skillsets gated behind tedious busywork.

It's pretty interesting that people get so worked up about animal forms, and I think PG is on to something interesting here, but I'd really like to see something happen to rock the boat.

As an aside, though somewhat relevant - Do you think curses will ever be reworked? A lot of the time getting decursed usually just means asking for help - some curses being a bit more complex than that would be fun, in my opinion, so you actually have to work with the consequences of your failure towards a solution, rather than just asking for a zerg to help you out (i.e. something akin to the Harry the Wolf solution for cows - something to work towards).

Also, any updates on potentially removing deer form from druids?

Sorry for poking with questions >_>

They're all curses.

[Oxlazr]

They're all curses.

Only two are from bosses, the rest are just juices so you know what you're signing up for; the deer curse is ridiculously easy to get rid of, given the solution to your problem is right outside of the dungeon & defeating the boss to decurse rarely seems like something that'll ever happen.

I apologise for the lack of clarity there, though. They're "technically" curses, but right now they just feel like arbitrary restrictions for skill-sets, given if you want to play a pig, you'll likely need to pay ~4000 gold for some unpig juice to decurse, then wait 3 hours to interact with animal town every now and then, whereas the cow curse was initially "oh crap I'm a cow, better find out how to deal with this"

Either way there's a lot of idle potential there that's not being tapped into. Normally I'd shrug it off as alpha-testing but at this stage I kinda feel like the status-quo is going to continue to hang around forever; it's been 3 years and all you have to do to play around a "curse" is spend some gold and afk for awhile, or run over to a cave and one-shot a boss.

Animal town was a neat addition, but it almost feels contrary to the "sudden, horrific transformation".

Sorry it's all a little peculiar. It's always a point of discussion in-game, time and time again for years, and it'd be really nice to know what the plans are going forward so we can figure out what to do with our characters.

[Crissa]

I still say it makes most sense for there to be NPCs that have a pooled benefit. So that for Marna not liking you, there's an animal-friendly NPC that'll take pity on you (perhaps unlockable or bribable) to gain access to that.

Right now, not even counting the storage, it's still smarter to go human(oid) before going animal.

[Silvonis]

Only two are from bosses, the rest are just juices so you know what you're signing up for; the deer curse is ridiculously easy to get rid of, given the solution to your problem is right outside of the dungeon & defeating the boss to decurse rarely seems like something that'll ever happen.

I apologise for the lack of clarity there, though. They're "technically" curses, but right now they just feel like arbitrary restrictions for skill-sets, given if you want to play a pig, you'll likely need to pay ~4000 gold for some unpig juice to decurse, then wait 3 hours to interact with animal town every now and then, whereas the cow curse was initially "oh crap I'm a cow, better find out how to deal with this"

Either way there's a lot of idle potential there that's not being tapped into. Normally I'd shrug it off as alpha-testing but at this stage I kinda feel like the status-quo is going to continue to hang around forever; it's been 3 years and all you have to do to play around a "curse" is spend some gold and afk for awhile, or run over to a cave and one-shot a boss.

Animal town was a neat addition, but it almost feels contrary to the "sudden, horrific transformation".

Sorry it's all a little peculiar. It's always a point of discussion in-game, time and time again for years, and it'd be really nice to know what the plans are going forward so we can figure out what to do with our characters.

As you already said, it's been a few years in ALPHA. Usually players aren't involved in this early of development and it's just something you'll need to wait on as we don't have anything new to announce at this time. It's not as if it's been a few years post launch. Just hang in there. If you're bored with them then focus your game time elsewhere until we have more to announce or until those changes are actually in game.

[Silvonis]

I still say it makes most sense for there to be NPCs that have a pooled benefit. So that for Marna not liking you, there's an animal-friendly NPC that'll take pity on you (perhaps unlockable or bribable) to gain access to that.

Right now, not even counting the storage, it's still smarter to go human(oid) before going animal.

This is one of the reasons that they are considered curses. There's always going to be drawbacks to these cursed animal forms, if there weren't then they wouldn't really be curses.

[Crissa]

Right now, there's just no real way around it. The animal NPCs are harder to get favor with, way out in BFE, and sometimes under water (looking at you, suspicious cow!)

It's already a huge curse to lose one (or more) skills because they don't work as an animal.

[Oxlazr]

As you already said, it's been a few years in ALPHA. Usually players aren't involved in this early of development and it's just something you'll need to wait on as we don't have anything new to announce at this time. It's not as if it's been a few years post launch. Just hang in there. If you're bored with them then focus your game time elsewhere until we have more to announce or until those changes are actually in game.

Eh, "Alpha" development seems to be the way of things these days. Throw enough money at a kickstarter and you're in; as simple as that. In my experience, I always found it easier to just release content and fix it on the live servers than thoroughly test it myself; it's much easier to find bugs when you've got a community of people testing them. If anything, I'd expect development to slow down significantly post-launch, but that's neither here nor there.

It just feels like animal forms have always been a heated discussion point, and inevitably we end up with half-measures that aren't particularly fun. For example, much earlier on I recall animal forms potentially being permanent beyond level 50 - okay, great; you've time to test it out, then commit to a form forever. Alts gain a bit more value, and the restrictions are enforced and experienced. You make a choice, you live with the consequences.

As it stands, it's just continuously been a balancing act - you need to plan out your interactions, figure out how much of X item you need for favour with Y NPC while in human form, how much gold you'll need to train Z skills, figure out if it's worth decursing to vendor items to Joeh, because you'll need that cash to train new skills, and so on. It's just unnecessary logistics gating skills.

I'm not saying there's a best course of action, but merely that, as it stands, it's just a frustrating mess more often than not, and new features continuously contribute to the ambiguity of what playing an animal form entails (I.e. the storage issue), so some clarification and design perspective would go a long way.
I can't say I expect anything to happen in the immediate, or even distant future - hell, if anything it doesn't make sense to commit a lot of time to content a minority of players will appreciate - but some clarity wouldn't go amiss, even if it's just PR.

At any-rate, it's difficult to justify going back and trying out new low-level zones with the current character development requiring so much time to be pooled into a single character; at the very least it'd be good to see some incentives to play alts, and I figured animal forms being involved in some capacity would be an interesting way to do it.

Regardless, when it comes down to it it's your guys game, and while I can make suggestions and bug reports, at the end of the day I'm more interested in seeing the product you come up with.