Live events and the development stages

[Khaylara]

I wanted to give an overall feedback on the stage PG is in (my thoughts but also conversations with other players) and start a suggestions for live events thread.

From what I understand at actual release Citan aims to have everything out, level 100+, all races and skillsets ready. It's common practice in MMOs to raise the level cap post release. Idk if this interferes with his plans for development stages but my suggestion (discussed with others too) would be to rather keep these things for post-release updates. Again just a suggestion, it would be much better (in order to increase and maintain a decent playerbase) to focus on the following:
-further fixing and balancing skillsets (especially the summoner type ones)
-new UI working smoothly
-improving the group content experience

Don't get these suggestions the wrong way (@Citan and the rest of the staff) your work is appreciated a lot, they are just thoughts meant to keep people playing more consistently and not have 3 weeks of playing then 4 months break (which is the case right now). Players are racing to unlock more and more skillsets (solo ventures and not everyone's cup of tea cause let's be honest only a small percentage of us enjoy "make cash, unlock, max, rinse, repeat") and group dungeon runs are not happening much so many players go on very long breaks (many of my high level game friends have 4-5 months breaks if they ever come back). Imo they need to have fun in order to play regularly.


As overall suggestion on the development stages (and touching on the frequent wipe threads) I think for release it's more important to have balanced skills even if these skills are at level 70, not 125, than to have everyone level 100 upon launch and everyone playing the same 5-6 skillsets that are actually decent to use. Very few will be willing to level necro, AH, hammer, knife etc (the underwhelming skillsets). So new players will be hit in the face with a game community already max level and playing the same "classes" which they will probably follow. There are already multiple Global chat discussions in which new players are advised not to start certain skillsets cause they're "rubbish".


Now onto the second part-live events, I have a few suggestions (which might not work from a technical point of view but I think they would up the fun factor)

-animal tournaments: for example a "pvp" event with just bunnies or deer in which players will be awarded special prizes for categories like "cuteness" "sneakiness" "best dressed" "best at playing dead" "scariest bunny". The prizes would be some cosmetic items like hats or tiny knitted tops for rabbits or even fur dyes (I wanna be a purple rabbit please)
-country fair: this is what I wanted to do but w/o a GM present we might have the items wiped within minutes. We're planning to try using one of the rooms in Serbule Citadel and using player stalls to dispense food. It won't be as fun though as if we were to do it in an open area with free food dispensers, picnic blankets etc. If we ever do a country fair live event we could have srand keeping items from despawning and handing out cake (Yes, I've never had cake in PG so I'd like a piece too, it looks very festive)
-actual PvP tournaments, maybe team vs team type. The GMs would manually lower our damage output to say 10% to make the fights last longer and the team rewards could be only special permanent badges (ofc you could hand item prizes too but idk if they're needed).
-curse events-Citan did this before when everyone was turned into bats.
-music and dance festivals-maybe an ornate harp or lute as reward for the bands, maybe a pair of dancing shoes for the attending dancers
-survival races-a race through Gazluk or Kur, prizes being permanent campfires or a fur coat (something silly along those lines)

As I said I'm not sure how many of these are doable but if we make a lot of suggestions maybe Citan can sift through them and find a couple that are easier to organize. I have more ideas but I thought these would be enough for now, note I tried to keep the "rewards" part to fun prizes and not overwhelming, gamebreaking items.

So shoot some more suggestions, not exclusively for live events but what would be fun for you and not take a lot of actual development time (achievable stuff)



edit-I didn't read before I posted, I realize the first part might come across as "telling devs what to do" and I wanted to underline that it was not my intention. English is not my 1st language so the tone might be misinterpreted. I only posted development stages suggestions based on observing the general chats and the forum posts (many complaints about pets, necromancy, skills not being viable) and noticing the lack of dungeons runs lately, at least the high level ones.

[zirker]

I do like the pvp events, but I don't think reducing damge output by a % would cut it, you would need a different stat balance for pvpmaybe there could be pvp gear and pve gear?

[Khaylara]

We tried before and we 1-shot each other (I agree that reducing damage that much would be exaggerated, just an example though)^^.As for PvP gear that would be ideal but I thought it would take development time to accomplish that (given that PG is not balanced for PvP). Idk, my suggestions are mostly based on "fun and involvement" rather than serious events:P

[Sheawanna]

I like all your suggestion and think all could work .. I really like the idea of dying our fur . LOL
Not all animals have hats /barding/ so coloring our fur sounds out of this world totally like it :)

[Tigerwyld]

"scariest bunny"

I'm in! I am the most feared bunny in all bunnydom!

[Tagamogi]

As overall suggestion on the development stages (and touching on the frequent wipe threads) I think for release it's more important to have balanced skills even if these skills are at level 70, not 125, than to have everyone level 100 upon launch and everyone playing the same 5-6 skillsets that are actually decent to use. Very few will be willing to level necro, AH, hammer, knife etc (the underwhelming skillsets). So new players will be hit in the face with a game community already max level and playing the same "classes" which they will probably follow. There are already multiple Global chat discussions in which new players are advised not to start certain skillsets cause they're "rubbish".

I wish people would stop hating on knife. I love the skill to pieces, and I'm afraid one of these days Citan will take the complaints seriously and revise the skill to something I'll no longer enjoy. I don't read global chat much, but I did see someone there recently sagely pronouncing that knife was rubbish or something along those lines, and staff/fire was a great end game build. I dunno, I sort of feel that if people want to follow the one-line advice of a random stranger without asking why or considering what they themselves may enjoy, they may deserve what they get. :p

Anyway, skill quibbles aside, I largely agree with your thoughts. I think it's more important to have a fun early experience - if someone didn't enjoy the first 40 levels, they probably won't care much whether the level cap is 70 or 100. I do think the current early game experience is very fun but I'd rather see some polishing of Serbule Hills or Ilmari before new level 80 content.

Unfortunately, a lot of what attracts people to a game tends to be eye candy - I think it would really help if we had prettier character models, more character customization choices, more armor models,... And colored rabbit fur, definitely. With polka dots, please. :)



[...] many players go on very long breaks (many of my high level game friends have 4-5 months breaks if they ever come back). Imo they need to have fun in order to play regularly.

Another side track I think, but playing a game all the time gets pretty exhausting, too. Sometimes, taking a break for a month or even five helps make the game fun and refreshing again. The trick is just that people on a break need to want to come back, rather than deciding they are done with the game for good.

[Khaylara]

Just from my experience when I stop playing for half a year I usually stop playing alltogether. It's good to have breaks ofc (I have them too, not long ones but still overall I have less game time than people who started playing more recently than me) but at some point the game will be fully released and it would be optimal for the players to play regularly and stay involved simply because optional VIP subs will be a source of income to keep the server going. That's my reasoning anyway:) Another thing, I think it matters what one's playstyle is too, if someone farms 8 hrs daily and completes everything it can cause a burnout ecco long break or forever break.

In my opinion this game is great for casual players (meaning the opposite type to the hardcore grinder) and doing something fun for 1-2 hours daily wouldn't cause a fast burnout hence the events idea to change things up a little:)

[Oxlazr]

Yeah, the weekend events were a good touch but a random buff isn't really going to cut it in terms of making the game interesting again.

I've tried to try alt events, but I can understand that people don't really want to new characters given the game's current set-up.

Anyways, I figured I'd contribute a few ideas -

First off, random chest spawns throughout the world (i.e. 5 active chests, when one is looted another spawns somewhere else) - the loot contained within scales to the player opening, regardless of where the chest is found, and it also contains extra items - Eternal Greens, Minor Panaceas, as well as other valuable and special items - such as cosmetic items for humans, special instruments, animal items, councils, and max-enchanted gems.

Secondly, random rare spawns - same as above, except with monsters.

These would essentially make exploring more fun than grinding a static location for hours.

Then, some conditional spawns would be nice - i.e. certain deadly monsters spawn only at night, and despawn at day (if not in combat), again with special loot; likewise, some monsters may only appear during the day (other monsters appear during rain, later on, for example) - and special werewolf NPCs roam the land during the full-moon, which drop special lycanthropy items.

So that'd be a good foundation, but then I'd imagine we could do more:

Cursed Areas / Dungeons - Dying in these areas applies a curse, which cannot be removed through usual means (or by using a Minor Panacea) - you'd have to either complete a quest, or meet some sort of goal to dispel the curse.

For example, through whatever means you can access a special version of GK where the monsters are roughly 25% stronger, and drop lv80 loot that you can use at level 70. However, dying here would turn on Hardcore mode permanently until you manage to not die for 8 hours of play time.

Then, finally back on the topic of the thread -

World bosses - these spawn randomly, are large and noticeable.
Rituals - Certain materials are required to summon a special boss - which must be collected from other bosses on a weekly cooldown. The boss can be summoned once per week ( could have a curse, and despawn if not defeated, meaning dispelling the curse would take at least a week. )

Beyond that, we've the standard array of events - X monsters invading Y location, princess X needs help from monster Y - these are all fairly generic, and I figure would actually play out a lot like the druid events.

Having lots of minor events would quickly get overwhelming in terms of development, though, but GM-controlled events sound like a good idea. Just chipping in some ideas for now.

[Khaylara]

The GM spawning random bosses by surprise sounds fun^^Just summon a random boss in the middle of serbule with 100 k HP and vulnerable only to basic attacks! Like the goats *sheds a tear for Miss Chivious*

[Crissa]

Live events are very costly for development time.

On the other hand, some of my favorite events in WoW were the silver or semi-rare events which would happen in zones with a certain summon or quest was triggered, or some weren't involved in quests at all. They just showed up, and you'd see some random NPC or boss show up and the zone would be really different for awhile as it tromped around. Those kinda of mini-events I loved, because every zone had them.

Kind of like the druid events, but less cataclysmic.

[Sheawanna]

Perhaps having spawn camps randomly placed , where you kill placeholders with a chance of spawning a boss or named .. that way less developer time required .

[Crissa]

We kind of have these spread around the world in Serb already, named characters who are slightly higher than their surroundings.

But instead of being always there or for quests, they could spawn or path randomly?

[Khaylara]

Okay another suggestion, someone else put the seeds into my head lol

-undead family reunions (okay halloween's over but why not)-Ursula, her mum and dad could come to Serbule one night
-james eltibule and his family could have a reunion in the central keep and kick the NPCs out while they do so. Players have to group up and send them back to their crypt.
-Percy's dead wife could haunt the surroundings and take residence in Gretchen's farm as a ghost and drive poor Gretchen even more crazy than she already is. We'd have to help Gretchen get rid of the ghost ofc


One that is more complicated but the mechanic is kinda implemented already in Amulna-the NPCs panic before a sandstorm and take shelter. Instead of a sandstorm spawn some elite mob, NPCs start fighting it, players help and die in a very unusual way, idk i think the already existing feature has endless possibilities^^

[Easylivin]

These are great ideas Khaylara

I'd like to share a few additional ideas.

A few months back a few of us in Holy Order were able to play some PVP games on newbie island. This helped us see what worked and what didnt. With that research we suggested some ideas for a PVP grounds/space/NPC . I think this would be easier to sell if we could create lore for the NPC and provide a much of the information needed as possible.


An NPC(REDACTED:cool:) to sell the pvp pots at the start would be a nice addition, as well.

King of the TP hill. NPC starts it, chess lever system. Game ends when first team gets five minutes of ownership.
For the pvp potions, it would be nice to have it so that attacks are reduced, and people can't one hit everyone.

As for respawn points - Not quite sure if this is something that could be done, but either random respawn points, or a set position for each team that way we could prevent spawn camping. The issue is that everyone respawns at the same location which requires players to resist spawn camping and come up with a range on their own for "how far from spawn is far enough"

For gear, we have a few ideas so, I'll just start a list.
- Different colored pvp potions. One color makes your character red, or blue, or whatever for a set amount of time, and then revert when the time is up on the potions. This enables "team colors" and makes it easier to identify who is on which team.
- The group leader could speak to an npc and set their team to that color. This simplifies the above feature by having 1 player handle the team's color
- A suggestion for telling the difference between teammates, have two different pvp potions, one blue, and one red. The blue would give you a blue icon above your head, and the red would give a red icon
- Add regular white gear with no mods and the same armor values (so probably just one kind of set of armor) to a vendor as well. This could be done with the potion, the goal is to put everyone on a level playing field so everyone can enjoy pvp and it isn't just the highest level with yellow gear slaughtering everyone.
- Set it up so that we all get level 50 gear that everyone, including the newer players could use. Same reasons as above, even playing field makes it more enjoyable.

At some point, a sort of PVP dungeon that's kind of like Under the Hand would be cool to see. We did a bit of testing there, and had loads of fun with it.

We also created a game where the goal was to destroy the other team's mob. It was a mob with high health so it wasn't a 1 shot win situation. It took about 30 seconds to a minute of hitting the mob to win. This "game mode" suffered from the same issues as king of the TP hill above. Both were extremely fun and could benefit from their own space. Maybe this could be an arena in a "fair grounds" zone.

[jacksin125]

All of these ideas sound really good. I especially like the idea of world bosses, which require a very large number of players to beat (significantly more than 1 party). I've already suggested that, and some sort of "event mob" tag to certain mobs which allows everyone to loot them (more like the old loot system, but only for enemies or groups of enemies who are supposed to be fought by multiple parties). I also like the idea of random events, sort of like what Guild Wars 2 has. Those events really add to the immersion, and make you feel like you're in an actual, changing world, rather than the completely static feel that most MMOs have. Furthermore, you could give Rita and Blanche changing dialogue, based on whether the players succeeded at an event recently or not. Them always repeating the same things with absolutely no change kind of adds to the static feel, rather than the immersion for me.

Both of those things would take effort to add, but once you added support for them it should be relatively easy to just add a new event quest, or a new world boss occasionally. Besides occasionally adding a new one to keep things interesting, they should be able to basically run themselves, no GM intervention required.

As for Khaylara's ideas on the development stages, Citan and Srand, you're both professional developers with tons of experience, so I'm going to assume you know what you're doing (or at least more than me) when it comes to the development cycle, but I will say that imo making the game more interesting should really take precedent over adding new levels. Right now, to put it simply, most if not all skills are basically just a grindfest. many crafting skills are basically "click the button then sit there bored for the next half a min, but don't do something else, because you only have 20 sec left. once that time's up, rinse & repeat 100-500 times". Surveying changes it up a bit with "Travel through 3 different zones just to get the materials (at high lvls), then spend a half-hour to an hour organizing the maps, then a half hour wandering aimlessly, actively getting frustrated when things distract you because you've seen them a dozen times already". Combat skills are "For every one of them grind 10,000 mobs in x dungeon at lvl 40-50, then grind 15,000 mobs in y dungeons from 50-60. btw, if you don't do this solo, it will generally take far longer". Crafting skills could be solved with some sort of minigame, which could be a popup window or something in the actual game. If you wanted to go the easier but not as interesting route, you could just make things take far longer, but use larger quantities of ingredients and gives larger rewards per batch. Then people could set it in motion and do something else while they wait. Of course ,they wouldn't actually be playing the game then.

As for combat skills, maybe just making partying up give more exp, or making combat more skill-based, so it actually engages you. I like the idea of having large dungeons where players can meet up, and parties can switch members, but that can't really happen if most high lvl dungeons can't be soloed, and especially not if they are designed to need a full party to beat (Which means that if 1 person leaves, the entire party immediately can't do as much). As for the actual combat, it's for the most part just pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, s1, s2, then checking whether I need to use heals. Rage builds so quickly that it's pretty much pointless to bother with Soothe, at this point we almost always need to use our entire bar because the cooldowns were increased, Which I'm not saying is a bad idea, but means it's not like we can just use the most effective 3 skills for every individual enemy.

Of course, that still wouldn't really solve the problem. Eric's idea of things like vulnerability and taking advantage of it could be promising, but as of right now it seems like all combat skills would need a major revamp for vulnerability to actually make much of a difference in the attention needed. However, I think one of the best ways to increase the low level of attention combat requires most of the time would be to implement things like dodging and actual movement into the equation. Wanna avoid the mage's high damage aoe fire blast attack? Then just get outta the way! Wanna not get decapitated? Then just back up! Wanna take on 3 or 4 melee enemies around your lvl without dying? Then just use advanced tactical maneuvering to keep getting behind them so they can't hit you! Right now, something that really annoys me is that there's no way to avoid damage. If you run away from a melee guy at a speed 5 times faster than he can move, but he already initiated his attack, you'll still generally get hit. Mages are even worse, to the point where their fireballs will chase you 3 times as far as the maximum spell range just because you got within 50 meters of said mage.

In all honesty, despite the game still being considered in alpha, I'm guessing it's too late to implement any of the things I suggested. However, I think they would improve the game a massive amount. Of course, I'm not a developer, so I could be wrong, but I'm just pulling features that I liked in the 50+ mmos I have played, and the multiple hundreds of total games, including non-MMOs, and features I have heard other people saying are great.

EDIT: Wow, I really got off on a tangent. Sorry for derailing your thread Khaylara.

[Khaylara]

There's no derailing, just detailing on what you would find fun.

I'm gonna have to repeat something though, I have no doubt Citan knows what he's doing, my development suggestions were only based on "the feel of the community" so to speak, what I noticed people complaining most often about, what seems to bore them and what seems to get them involved. I'm sure everyone noticed older players returning for the Halloween event even if this year is not a loot fest so loot/items/cash is not their main motivation. Ofc I couldn't offer a poll result with "what players want", just my thoughts on it. Even adding new skillsets, I'm looking forward to priests but these addons could be nice surprises included in updates after launch, new players would find it exciting too and the combat content stays fresh, same goes for new races imo. I so want to play a dwarf but I can wait till we have few hundred players getting to try it:) just my $.2.


@Easy - about the naked Anagoge PvP (lol) I still think the damage output should be lowered and maybe not the run speed? And for TvT maybe disable the possibility to attack allies (tbh I don't remember if that feature already exists or not). As for gear we could each get an agreed upon set of white gear and dye it white/blue/red, idk if we need a separate set (dev created). We should have the damage lowered though or we one-shot and it's not that fun to one-shoot:P
Adding some PvP events would also be a nice compromise between players who would like open world PvP and the ones who like PvE only.

[Tigerwyld]

.......but what about the bunnies?

[Hood]

Chiming in here to state that the biggest, most important, and most necessary fix to the game needs to be AI improvements to all combat NPCs. Their AI needs to be much less buggy and much more interesting. This change would have a large effect on the state of the game. I would be willing to commit to testing regularly for another year if I knew this would be addressed. I already love the gearing and skill system in the game. It is the AI that makes things unbearable often.

[Khaylara]

.......but what about the bunnies?

Bunnies are busy taking over the world! The bunny event would be awesome though

Hood-pets kinda follow the same pattern as the mobs (except their stats are a lot lower) which explains the complaints about the summoner abilities