Update Notes for the July 28 update are posted here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...August-28-2017
But there are two other posts you'll want to read also that expand on the basic notes:
Now that you've read all that ... discuss away!
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Update Notes for the July 28 update are posted here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...August-28-2017
But there are two other posts you'll want to read also that expand on the basic notes:
Now that you've read all that ... discuss away!
"Bottles of milk stack to 5."
YES! OMG best change ever, 10/10.
Now only thing we miss is option "fill all empty bottles" when near wate source. Then it will be perfect.
Well downloading now,and then i go make new char. look forward to checkign out all new stuff
Fire and Archery got hit pretty hard with the nerf bat. While I can't comment on Archery (I'm only 55 there), Fire has always been inferior, compared to Archers, this balancing just reinforced the gap.
As for Animal Handling, I had completely given up on it after hitting 73. Will give it another try.
Hiyas, long time since I posted..mostly because I was too lazy to make a new forum account when you changed venues for your forums. I have still been following the game obviously, and log in to play once in a while.
Anyways with that being said I thought I'd leave some feedback about why players head in the direction of pure dps builds so often. ( because I read all your patch notes and blogs). It has pretty much been forced upon us because of how hard mobs hit, coupled with how big heals are not spammable and heal over time abilities are much much too weak to counter you being hit for 300+ a pop. In addition to that your current system of multiple respawns encourage dps checks ....because frankly if you don't clear areas fast enough ( and keep moving with very few short rest breaks) you get swarm-raped. The multi-repop-at-once mechanic is sooooo bad in this aspect, I know your intent was to make things difficult but there is a huge difference between difficult and " if you don't kill fast enough and or take too long in one area you die with zero counter-play options."..There is literally nothing you can do to save yourself or your group when 10 things respawn on top of you...You are just dead....when I say this I mean a fully decked out group in level 70 ( optimal / transmuted /augmented ) yellows will still die if a respawn happens...god help you if you are geared in gear with 3 modifiers like you specifically mentioned in your blog.
I personally feel like big damage numbers and twitch reactions are better suited to action-rpg's( as in the kind of games with manually controlled dodge and block mechanics). The time-to-kill in this game is much to short from both ends here. As in most level-appropriate encounters are basically " you or them in 10 seconds"...if you don't kill them that fast they WILL kill you. Even your highest end ( gazluk keep ) boss fights follow this pattern, except maybe they up the time to kill to 20 seconds, after that you run out of resources for both healing and damage..so again, you or them in a short time frame.
Correct me if I am wrong here but I was under the assumption that you wanted resource management to be important to combat, currently it isn't. Mobs hitting for extraordinary amounts coupled with the sheer amount of creatures you face at once and the respawn shenannigans negate any sort of resource management, the simplest way to explain this is again...you or them, in 10 seconds.
Rage reduction and healing mechanics are correctly balanced for 1 v 1 encounters, but not for group content....no rage management skill in the game even comes close to negating the rage that 5-6 players are dishing out. Same for healing...same for tanking...it all seems to be balanced against solo situations. As you may remember I tried so very hard to make a tank build and a rage management build work...tanking is possible versus one target only( which can be useful on bosses, there are also a very few specific builds that can actually keep you alive versus multi-targets but that's mostly due to 90-100% invulnerability mechanics, such as staff spins...once those invulnerability windows are up you are just as dead as anyone else, healing is almost a non-factor.). Tanking still has a plethora of aggro issues versus multiple targets however, such as not having abilities to generate said aggro on more then one target. Rage management also is nowhere near viable as a primary build in group content.
if you would like to see people playing other roles in group content besides dps then you need to balance content for that...My advice would be to lower the mob density in group content but make every mob take much longer to kill, as in 5-10x current health totals, but also reduce their outgoing damage so it's manageable. If you are going to force players to fight 10 mobs at once they need to be the low-health variety, not 10 elites that each hit for 250-300 damage per shot. This would have the added benefit of making content that is intended for grouping be non-soloable, because you would run out of resources in a long fight by yourself...the other benefit is of course, is if someone needs to afk for 2 minutes it isn't a guaranteed wipe ( which it kind of is atm).
Thanks for reading, I would like to see others opinions on these topics and feel free to agree or disagree as the situation warrants. Don't just read it and say nothing though, they need our feedback..it is super important in a beta like this.
(P.S. - I have mentioned all of this and more in feedbacks in-game, but I don't know what you have or haven't read, also I have more room here)
Overpowered! But I'm ok with that. And very happy, too. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by cr00cy
I mostly wanted to say I really appreciate the extra long patch notes and blogs for today's changes. I find the thoughts that go into game changes very interesting, and I'm really looking forward to actually playing and trying things out.
One quick comment on battle chemistry:
My problem with the golem mods is more that I don't trust the golem to use its abilities correctly, so any mod for them is immediately far less attractive than a mod for my own abilities. I'm possibly overly paranoid, but I don't trust the golem with dps abilities - I'm afraid it will rush in and aggro the wrong mob, and trying to manage that isn't worth a small dps buff to me. I've been using the golem solely as a passive mana battery, which doesn't really seem like it needs buffing. I have noticed its healing mist positively on occasion, but I can't really think of a situation where it would matter to me if it heals for 20 or 40 more - the scenarios in which that would actually save my life are too rare for me to prefer a healing mist mod to a mod for my own abilities that will be useful in every fight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Citan
Is there someone who is actually using the golem for dps who could comment on what mods they would find attractive?
I have updated my parser to version 288 (search this board for "Json Parser").
When is a new ui going to be introduced? Surely it's going to be the biggest source of bugs/fixes? Or are you planning on going to Steam w/ the current UI?
@ErDrick
I must say i agree with you. I mentioned it several times - both in game and on formum - that there is too much dmg flyign around. On both sides.
Recently i decide dto level up[ few skills, and, instead of goinf full burst, wanted to try more susatined build. Skills i used were Hammer+shield, Druid+Bc, Staff+Ice magic. Long story short - it did not work out. Closest was IM+Staff - but like you said it was more thanks to spins/def stance. Druid+bc ultimatly worked really well - but again it was only becasue iw as able to burst mobs down in one rotation. Hammer+shield was very weak - mostly becasue shield offers too low sustain(and i ditn had too good gear for it).
with my current build (wolf+unarmed) im able to fight multiple mobs and susatin longer fights (my current record is around 2 min of constant fight), provided no too amny mobs come at teh same time - and that they deal msolty physcial dmg. With shield mods from unarmed i can stack up rather high amount of mitigation. But then again most of the tie i ahve to burst mobs asp anyway.
So yes i totlay agree with lowering palyers dmg output - but at the same time monsters shoudl have they lowered too. This or palyers defense (hp/armor) and/or sustain should go way up.
I am pretty disappointed in the archery nerf. I have been playing archer/sword since February and have pretty decent gear. Even with the prior mods I was not remotely close to a god by any stretch of the imagination. I die a ton and in places like the back of the goblin dungeon. Yes you have great DPS, but you are also a glass cannon. That should be the trade off for good quick damage. I think the majority of people complaining about the skill probably don't even play it. You have one awesome skill (mangling shot) and some very good supporting skills (heavy and heavy multi). A lot of the other skills are too weak to even be considered. The elemental skills are under powered and skills like blitz and basic are so weak they are unplayable even with the small benefit of a combat refresh. To make a statement that hammer "is in a good place" tells me that we need to do some playtesting of the skills. Hammer is fun but is over costed power wise and lacks the damage to make it viable for higher level content. I didn't see cow mentioned in the post, but it a virtual indestructible tank. It also has one of the fastest movement abilities. Lycan is also extremely powerful. There is obviously an opportunity cost to different builds and I know this is still alpha so I hope perhaps some further personal research on the part of the decision makers will lead to the realization that there is a huge opportunity cost to going for straight DPS. I personally have very few ways to mitigate rage and lack healing and defensive buffs but understand the trade off. Archery also eats up a lot of power. I think every build type should have some "go to" skills.
What do you mean by "always"? Fire was the damage king for at least 3-4 months in my almost 3 years of playing.Quote:
Originally Posted by kazeandi
Archery was high DPS before, then nerfed, then tweaked and improved, now nerfed again.
It's going to happen again. Find a skill you enjoy and play. If you always want to be the highest DPS be ready to chase the different skills as they get tweaked.
General question for archers, do you use multi-shot? At high levels it seems silly because you are going to pull something you didn't want to and get the group killed. So why bother?
I agree. Combat needs some tweaks. Back when sword was the agro holder we seemed to have roles in groups. Then that was removed so everyone started healing. Now we say "screw healing, kill it ASAP" and its working so far. Sure groups wipe when there is a respawn or a bad pull, but that isn't a challenge really as much as it is an annoyance.Quote:
Originally Posted by ErDrick
For odd balanced mobs the best example I can think of for a mob that takes too many resources to kill is the golem in GK. When I've killed it with a group with a cheese and a good power food, I use all my power, energize, and dig deep. Then I wait for energize to come back, use it and try to finish the golem off. Maybe this is a lvl 80 mob but killing that golem is "annoying"
I don't have any suggestions at the moment for improvement but willing to help with combat testing and offer feedback.
Fire was always very high dps, it was tweaked few times as well, combos were added then removed etc. I never found it lower dps than archery. I agree with Erdrick that the game (although the abundance of dungeons is nice) is not balanced around groups. Group roles don't seem to be the focus.
On the update topic-especially the augmentation and transmutation skills. Imo the changes are absolutely insane. First problem is filling our inventories with pure crap. Second problem is the crazy amount of items needed to hit one level of either augmentation or transmutation. Example lvl 64 to 65 weapon augmentation requires 51200 EXP, decomposing low level items gives 50 exp per item, decomposing a lvl 60 item gives 400. There is still an insane amount of items needed. That relates to what Erdrick said about DPS, that's the only way to farm so many items really, high dps so you can solo as many mobs you can in order to get drops and level. Using extraction recipes is almost out of question unless one is crazy enough to use heaps of gems and carry lots of beads to do that (it's just too costly).
Now I normally don't bitch and whine about grinding, as I told a guildie I did poetry and cheesemaking when that was considered crazy..and it was crazy:) He argued that Citan wants us to specialize BUT augmentation and transmutation are not specialized skillsets. I understand that as specializing in carpentry, toolcrafting, leatherworking...but not that much transmutation and augmentation. Especially transmutation was meant to be a user friendly skillset, it was absurdly hard anyway to reroll mods now it's nearly impossible to level without 24/7 solo grinding. One would argue that dungeons are better for that purpose but in practice they are not. Imagine a whole group standing around waiting for me to extract augments and fill my inventory with useless augments that i'm gonna have to drop anyway.
I would revisit those changes and touch up the exp. As always I'm not talking about me in particular, i'll finish all to 70-90 in a couple of weeks max but imagine how it is for a newer player who doesn't have my dps or my gear to have to grind 1 million items in a lower level dungeon to gain 10 levels of augmentation. Imho it's a bit much. Cause yup, by rough calculation, using crypt and goblin dungeon drops it takes 800-1k items per level above 60 (which, coming back to the inventory issue, results in heaps of different types of beads, prisms and phlogistons).
Excellent update. The new/revised area of South Serbule is top notch. Much better content, great goblin war base, goblin logging area is kewl also. Nice touch with tunnel from starter area. The updated Ranlon villiage is really a nice upgrade also. Dispersion of fish in lake was right amount. Lastly, the new NPC's is a much need upgrade to that area. Came out of tunnel with levels 10 in three fighting skills...still died twice to Megaspider, and gave up..."Boss Monster". Good call on stacking milk, boy that was a inventory killer before the update.
One question on my behalf is I do not understand blacksmithing and armor manufacturing. Is there a difference, will it get an upgrade. I currently have not topped out the leatherworking skill yet...but as a traditionalist, I am partial to metal armor verse leather. So I am looking forward to expanding that skill, even if it is bastardized into using both skills.
Or all including textile, tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing, etc..
Inventory management has always felt a bit like a subgame to me in PG and the latest patch with all these tiers of prisms and baubles along with extra recipes, became the expansion pack to that subgame. I already spend far more time managing my inventory than I would like to admit to. It often exceeds my active hunting and exploration time but that is another topic. Killing a NPC is often far quicker than looting, processing the body and then first stage processing of the loot.
I agree that leveling these skills is going to become a somewhat daunting task due to the number of items/experience needed, extra inventory management and time. Don’t forget that the current interface with its shifting recipes groups, large number of groups and now even larger number of recipes, puts a time delay in finding the recipe you want for the type, and now level, of the item. Then you have the fun of dragging items into that tiny box, hoping it doesn’t snap back to the inventory and then if not wanted, dragging the results to the bottom of the window to drop it. All the while trying to keep up with spawns and if grouped, the group. Also, while you are fighting, dodging spawns and trying to keep up with the group you also have to frequently obscure your vision with two extra windows and then get rid of them. It also makes random exploration a little less enjoyable as you accumulate 3 times more prisms and 3 times more baubles as you plow through multilevel NPCs along with, once again, sorting the level of the items you have looted with the proper recipes.
I have mentioned this before long ago, and I am sure others have as well, but could we have some way of getting master recipes for the transmutation and augmentation skills? Have all the sub recipes you want but include additional unified master versions under a unified recipe tab?
I will give two examples. The first example is having one single master recipe for Distill, for all rarities (The game can check the rarity of the item and then see if you have the sub recipe and then either processes the request or complain). The second example is having one single master recipe for Decompose that not only combines all level types but also combines weapon and both armors (The game checks the level and item slot type, sees if you have the recipe that matches and either processes the request or complain). The other skills can be done like this as well, with other checks obviously. The amount of unneeded clicking, searching, time and frustration this would save would be substantial in my opinion. Having all these tabs and recipes for something that is related and frequently used is very inefficient. If I didn’t explain that well let me know and I will go into more details or even do a mock up.
Yes to the "master" recipes. The way I see it both distilling and transmuting could have this kind of recipes. For example decomposing a low level yellow item would give 2 baubles and 1 prism, the highest level would give 8 baubles and 3 prisms, but all of the same type. I'm already going crazy managing all the medium and large baubles of few types, prisms of few types PLUS I sold some of the medium mats by accident. That on top of the-almost impossible-exp needed for one level, it's just too much.
Few reasons I don't like this direction in development (more and more tedious things to do):
1. It reduces the amount of fun I can have as a gamer, most of the times I can't be bothered cleaning my inventory in order to run a dungeon. I used to be able to just log and jump in Nexus w/o much notice, that's impossible nowadays. By the time everyone cleans up their backpacks the group is sometimes ready to disperse.
2. Citan shared his vision for this game some time ago, how he sees it in the future (correct me if I'm wrong)-a game to which players will come back again and again, played with long breaks even but in PG players should be able to pick up where they left off and just have fun. It was like that for me but lately not so much, it feels like I took an unexcused leave of absence from my job and got left behind (if I play less or not log at all for 2 weeks even).
The problem here is not the new content, new content is amazing! But the lvling process is becoming more and more tedious and boring, doubled by the eternal storage and inventory issues. And frankly the new content feels a bit all over the place. I explored Serbule Hills and instead of enjoying it I was thinking "why another cook NPC and how many stacks of this/that do I need to gain favor with these new NPCs"...and I don't lose my sense of wonder easily:) Guildies can testify that I still follow NPCs around and crack up at their dialogues but getting more and more disorganized recipes (that I can hardly find in my recipes book),spread between half a dozen NPCs is kinda dampening the mood.
In order to keep up with these mindless (and boring) daily tasks one has to be a true completionist and play a minimum of 7-8 hrs a day then spend some time to write reports (and tbh I haven't read many written by "completionists", there are like 3-4 of this type of player who actually bothers to write detailed forum reports). There's not so many of us in general, the player base is small and as a result you don't get enough data collection and accurate feedback. Most of us simply don't have the time to play for that long every day (although some of us would like to). So you might end up putting hundreds of hours of work into changes that are and will stay insufficiently tested. In the end that might attract some hardcore type of players who enjoy long daily grinds but might be unappealing to the niche target this game initially attracted.
Thinking just of last few patches, how many played bard at top level and in different situations? And wrote detailed reports on the skill. I can only think of one player who did both.
How many people maxed brewing and how many offered data about the lvling process and the bugs. At least on the forum I saw almost none.
(I'm not criticizing because I haven't done any of those myself, I simply don't have enough resources, storage and uninterrupted game time to do all of that).
Idk what prompted these crafting skills changes but as I said in the long run it might be appealing only to people who actually enjoy having alts for storage and playing solo a lot (nothing wrong with that but that might become the core community of PG with nobody to test group play, terrain or other small type of bug etc).
I also don't know if my long explanation made any sense but in a nutshell I feel like some of these changes towards a more "grindy" type of game are going to alienate many existing and potential players and I don't think that is Citan's intention. He doesn't have to ask us for opinions every step of the way of course but adding more and more game changing content without knowing if the players/how many of the players actually enjoy this content could prove to be a slippery slope.
Imho few funny dialogues and a few challenging mobs are way more enjoyable than adding 1921736435 extra decomposing recipes:)
PS the changes in poetry reading, although very socially impactful have a downside-it did make lvling poetry trivial and Poetry Appreciation was a "goals" skill, something that was challenging and kinda fun in a masochistic way...you either had to farm the crypt for primers or maybe become a necromancer and talk to corpses about poetry. Now you only have to take your char at the inn and click on a podium, nothing challenging or excessively fun about it, just more tedium (don't go afk for too long, keep clicking the darn desk, rate rinse and repeat).
I thought the transmutation blog update made the reason behind the transmutation and augmentation changes pretty clear - remove the incentive for high level players to farm low-level stuff. That seems pretty reasonable. If you use only transmutation during dungeon runs, you'd only need 2 extra slots for the new prism sizes, or maybe not even that if you know that only high level gear will drop and you will only need the large prism.
Of course, you'll still need a place to store the unneeded prisms, and all the different augment sizes... Somewhat related to that, I was finally looking at the new cooking recipes yesterday, with the division between great and regular meats. Yes, it makes sense in the high level vs low level kind of sense, but it's still a lot of crap to keep track of as a player, much less store, and it makes storage alts more and more necessary.
I liked the old one-size-fits-all augmentation rules, just because I was playing a lot of lower end content still and had a use for the items I found that way. I'm not really unhappy about being told that if I want to level high-end augmentation, I now need to farm high-end items, that's fine, just less convenient. Storage-wise ... well, I just cleaned up my t&a alt before the patch, so I have plenty of room for the new augs. Obviously, that's not a desirable way to play though, and players shouldn't feel that t&a alts are mandatory. (Actually... people tend to vendor a lot of their augs and phlogiston, so maybe t&a alts aren't mandatory and I'm being too hoarding again. Still, it seems that most times changes in game complexity result in more items without a corresponding match in storage upgrades, so I find it really easy to get overwhelmed unless I can sort out stuff on my storage alts. New UI, etc.)
Yet another edit: I kind of like the new augmentation recipes as far as extracting augments goes. For some reason, it feels more intuitive and less math-y to me to say that I need 20 aug ornaments of size x in order to to extract an aug from an item of a particular level range, rather than looking at the item's exact level and then calculating the augs needed based on that. This makes it easier for me to look at a stack of aug ornaments and see at a glance how many extracts I'll be able to do with them, and whether it might be time to finally sell off a few.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tagamogi
Why i said what i said...many players who are in theory level 70 (but w/o adequate gear or bonus levels etc) will not be able to farm Gazluk or even Rahu solo, they are forced into lower level dungeons like KT, WC. I think everyone was at some point in that situation when you have to downgrade because where you should be kicks your arse. In order to get these skills up many players will be forced to go into the lower level places (removing the incentive you mentioned) and they will be needing a lot of said lower level drops to lvl augmentation or transmutation.
Not pulling this out of my hat, I do know a lot of players who are in theory lvl 70 but are unable to farm in ilmari, rahu or gaz due to lack of endurance, gear, etc. That is why I think these changes are beneficial only for high level players who put a lot of hours into grinding these (more complicated) crafting skills.
Note-I can actually farm all the high level places (with some difficulty but still can) so not lobbying for myself:)
This looks like a P2P-typical scheme to make players buy inventory upgrades - only that there's no such cash shop (yet?): Lots and lots of item drops, recipies that use many different items, but only limited *and* scattered storage across the different zones.
I get that you want many skills in game, each with an important purpose, but then you went ahead and made it all worse by requiring trash like "tufts of fur" (4 councils vendor price). And now this. Also don't forget, we're only midlevel, 70/125. Smells like lots and lots of additional tiers of required vendor trash, prisms, baubles, wood, metal etc in the future.
There was nothing wrong with highlevels farming lower content either. We did that in other MMOs, too, and "at least I get some baubles out of it" was a good motivation to help lowbies kill bosses in lower dungeons.
Then there's the point Khaylara is talking about, 70ers stuck in lower zones, because higher ones are too difficult to farm in for various reasons (one point being that winter gear is absolutely mandatory).
I'm not looking forward to content higher than 70 TBH, looks like a long, bleak grind, all while fighting the inventory war.
Please give these points a good thought.
Hm, hard to evaluate how other players are doing. I personally would consider the Tower View Cave in Gazluk to be pretty accessible to anyone 60-65+, and that has 3 chests and a named (although the named would be tough at the lower level range). You do not technically need any winter gear to reach the cave, although obviously it helps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khaylara
As a point of anecdotal reference: I believe I finally maxed my second combat skill ever right after the Mushroom Farming patch. Prior to that, I had completely explored and mapped the Tower View Cave, Snowblood Shadow Cave and No-Name Cave, as well as a good portion of the Windy View Cave (before the introduction of mummies, haven't had time to go back since). So, I don't think the Gazluk content is overly hard, challenging in some places, sure, but that's what makes it fun. All of the gear for my max level skills was obtained solo, although I possibly qualify as an above average player since I do have 4-5 bonus levels for both of my max skills, and I have been crafting and wearing a nice set of primarily purple, primarily level 60 winter gear.
I wonder though ... if someone hasn't been grouping to get gear, and hasn't been crafting to get gear, and hasn't talked to other players to see if they could craft gear for them ... do they really care about maxing transmutation and augmentation asap? And if so, why? It seems like they wouldn't even have the gear that would require the higher level t & a recipes.
Sorry if I've been wandering completely off-topic, it's just that I don't feel it's really a problem for someone level 70 to get 60+ gear. Whether it takes a reasonable amount of time to farm enough gear to level transmutation and augmentation at a reasonable pace is another question. I can't really answer that - I haven't really been paying enough attention to either set of skills, so I'm not sure what a good pace of leveling for them would be and whether the new xp distribution allows for that.
I farmed the Gazluk caves when I was 70 fire / 60 druid, in 60/60 gear and it wasn't exactly smooth sailing. I'd not have been able to do that in the typical mix of 40/45er gear with the odd 50er piece you loot in dungeons you can handle (wolf cave, dark chapel entrance). I killed the named by death-rushing it, in 2-3 "runs". Maybe, if you spent lots of time on single pulls and used every trick in your arsenal, you could "progress" there as a fresh 70 in 40er gear, but would that be fun?
I'm in a guild, only brought gems and stuff for my suit (60/60 would be entry level), but I know at least 2 people in rather inactive guilds who just couldn't get even that level gear to only get started.
Killing stuff that tough also hardly counts as farming - progression beyond 50 is borked from the POV of a solo player without long friend list, of whom there are many. I see 70ers in Ukorga blues every day.
Doesn't help that the Gaz DOT is just crazy for PG's equivalent to Arathi. Punishing a player for daring to step out of the newbie zones, with a vengeance.
I dread the thought of the maxlevel zones.
One can make, or ask a skilled player to make, level 70 leather armor pretty easily. Amazing skin can be farmed solo at level 60, and is most likely sold by players anyway (I have stacks of them on my vendor). So, even if it's hard to acquire dropped level 70 gear solo, and can testify it is unless you've specialized in cold environment survival, grouping the entrance of Gazluk Keep with leather armor is in my opinion possible, and from there you get all the loot you want. What you need is a decent reputation and basic fighting skills, so that people will assist you to make the armor and accept to group with you. If you want to do it all by yourself, then yes it's definitely much harder.
Regarding the storage issue, one need to stop hoarding and sell/buy all these mats: only phlogistons and prisms really need to be stored, and there is no point keeping all levels, only the two level ranges that matter when you transition at 30 and 60.
(Disclaimer: I'm well-geared and don't have these problems anymore)
Yeah you can farm the stuff you need (including the yellow crystals and other mats) if you have a crafter and know what you need. Like I said, I'm in a guild, so I can ask, but people who play 2-3 hours a week, in a small and dead guild, either need to grind LW up or are SOL.
And this is only the "difficulty" side of the game. "You don't have to hoard everything" is fine, if slightly incorrect: You can't hoard everything. Even only the stuff you need for your armor, your cooking, transmute, augment and all the crystals and metals from geology and you'll run out of space.
I would take out all the trash drops needed for crafting, just don't make them drop in the first place. The unending stream of crap in our inventory is the consequence of the design decision to not have cash drops, even when it would make sense and you're fighting humanoids. With very, very few exceptions, mostly in the beginning.
And now we have meaningless depth: Additional recipes for Transmute, when the skill itself wasn't broken in the first place.
Cheap items gave cheap phlogiston, what was wrong about the system?
And who cares about the XP to level the skill, it's a one-time thing. Once you got it maxed you're done. If that was the point in the first place, giving less xp for lower level item distills would have fixed it without clogging our inventories and making me scratch my head when I logged in and went to the legacy vendor to find out what to trade my prisms for.
I play solo liek 99% of the time, most, if not all of my friends list is inactive, same for my guild. I had almost no problem with obtainign gear for my level. I was able to farm in gazluk with no winter set in lv 60 gear. When enterign new lv range i sualy replace my old pices slowly if i find somethign good, then craft myself whole set when i reach amx lv.
Only way i can see for peopel to have trouble gettign gear is if they rush to max lv, which is kinda pointless - you can level up just fine when farming for gear or mats for crafting.
About storage - i have problems only when i wnat top hoard lots of mats to go on crafting spree (liek i did when flower arrangmend, or brewign came out). I can fit everythign i use in marna and hulon - plus few more things in ARhu. And still most of my storage is filled with stuff i keep just in case i will need it. SO yeh i keep mats for LW, BS Carpentry, agumentation, transumtation, cooking, several stacks of stuff for brewing and flower arrangemd (for when i fianlly decide to level them up), plus almost all lv of mushrooms, just in case i will need them for something, AND tons of diffrent crap that i will probably never use but keep it just in case.
So im always suprised when peopel claim that they hoard only what they need, and still dont have neough storage.
Just to clarify I have more than enough storage and carry around a set of amazing cloth gear with full pockets. Also amazing max enchanted yellow set of winter gear and a spare evasion set (also yellow max enchanted level 70).
Now that I 'm done showing off, how many have such gear? I can cope solo in Gazluk, very hard and with many deaths solo GK entrance. How many can do that? That's what I mean by lack of accurate feedback. Naku and Niph are also old players (btw lol how did you manage in Gazluk w/o winter gear?! White wolf or?...). The majority don't have 50+ pockets to carry all the byproducts of transmute and distill, or the ability to solo lvl 70 mobs. So they're gonna have to farm KT or panthers to destruction if they have any hope to one day be able to reroll the mods on their gear or add an extra mod. Everyone is aware I suppose that dropped gear (including epic and legendary) is very hard to use w/o customizing it.
I don't want to debate but I feel that the changes made to 2 generic trade skills (transmutation and augmentation) were unnecessary and they had a negative impact on crafting. The recipe book is now even more annoying to use. Instead of streamlining the existing recipes it feels like going back in time towards the old type of augmentation oils when you hade to look for few minutes to find the right recipe and got loads and loads of useless junk as result. That is just my opinion.
PS If I'm asked to make gear for someone else I mostly likely won't. Mostly because I don't keep lower level mats and the max enchant things (like vervadium, spruce, amazing skins) I tend to need myself. I am generally a helpful player but it seems like the days when we made free stuff and gave it away at the well are gone.
In fact it might sound selfish but it would be good if everyone stopped giving away freebies, crafting from their own stash etc. We need to see how the game economy works (or doesn't work) if lower level players are doing everything by themselves. We need to see if there's a market for crafted items. I know most of us got help even if small but this type of small village economy is not going to work applied to a large player base. Tbh I think feedback coming from players like myself is rather useless overall, we need to see if these changes work for newer players. Augmentation and transmutations are individual skills, everyone has to do them alone at some point so we need to see how that works. Maybe I'm wrong not liking the recent changes so more feedback from newer players who are doing that now would be great.
Before I get distracted again:
I believe we are supposed to get a new armor smithing skill in the future. Some of the current blacksmithing recipes, like the werewolf armor, will then be moved to the new armor smithing skill. This is fairly old information - I don't recall seeing anything new on this topic recently.Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice00
On to augmentation: As someone who doesn't use augmentation or transmutation much, I tentatively like the changes (minus the storage and needing to figure out which prism to use for what). I have been vaguely leveling augmentation and keeping all the materials for whenever I feel inclined to actually mess with my gear. The net result of that to date is approximately a dozen augments ever extracted, maybe 4 applied to gear, and 12,000+ assorted ornaments/contraptions/thingies in my alt storage. I think the new division will help me let go of lower level ornaments a bit better since there is no longer any point in hoarding them for my "best ever" gear.
I'd like to see a reduction in phlogiston types - it would be nice if there were only 3 types of phlogiston that span the same level ranges as augmentation. I can't keep all the different phlog types straight, so it seems simpler to just ignore the lower levels entirely rather than guess what type of phlogiston I might need if I wanted to change something on level 25-35 gear. (Yes, the item workbench will tell me, if I have the item and if I'm near the workbench, neither of which is necessarily the case when I'm trying to decide how useful a handful of rough phlogiston is going to be to me.)
Edit: Also how about just a single generic "remove augment" recipe that works on augments, shamanic infusion, blacksmithing armor enhancements, and whatever else is out there? Preferably using a simple, easily obtainable ingredient, or maybe even just plain old cash, so people don't need to hoard that.
Cold resistance potions, campfires and blnakets. Lost and lots of blankets. Tough right now i carry 2 sets with me - one winter for traveling/gathering in gazluk/kur and wolf armor for farming caves.
Problem with changes to skills -crafting or combat - is that you are not ment to achive amx lv fast. or at least i see it like that. For example, i often see people asking how to level fastes (or used to see - dont have time to play too much recently). And this is wrong mindset. You are not suposed to rush to max lv -you are supposed to take it slow, leveling other skills alongside your combat ones. Or at least it how i see it.
But i understnad why people try to rush to max lv - its what absicly every other mmo is about. In most, probaly every, other mmos you will get gear enough for your lv from quests/DF. Its not the cause in PG.
I agree with you Khay that feedback on many things form old-timers like us might be not most valuable - but i dont think its useless. For example, after last update i amd enew char to test chnages to newbioe areas. And im progresing much faster than i did when i started my 1st char. Not because i have any help (i didnt and wont give anythign form my main to this one) but because i know what to focus on.
And this is main problem imo. Progression in Pg is diffrent than in others mmos, so peopel who come here and try to apply knoledge form other games they palyed often fail.
Lastly - i will hold my judgment on changes to transmutation untill much later. Not only its too early to say for sure iof it was good change, abd one, or it didnt matter.
And besides - talkign about newbies and transmutation/agumenation is a bit pointless, considerign that most of them wont be able to learn this skills for quite some time.
(Quote, please be patient, I am and old geezer and still learning to navigate the quotes and such) Hm, hard to evaluate how other players are doing. I personally would consider the Tower View Cave in Gazluk to be pretty accessible to anyone 60-65+, and that has 3 chests and a named (although the named would be tough at the lower level range). You do not technically need any winter gear to reach the cave, although obviously it helps.
Well I will tell you how I am doing. I am trudging along without using Wikia or guidiance from others. I assume a lot of peeps play that way. I have played with guilds and teams on other games and have a modest disdain for it due to people trying to control my game through proxy leadership. So I am one of the ones who cannot do most of these higher level questing at 74 sword, and 75 shield. I am ok with that, because I am now learning all the basic skills I should have dabbled in earlier. Does it really matter. Not to me, because I am not in competion with anyone else. I sometimes get bored with farming lower level items to get better skills.
In my opinion why in gaming reality would someone want to pay for a game to max it out in a month. I know people who are doing this in AC emulator. Good for them. Stepping back I am o.k. with the game and the intent of the DOR. I probably won't play much if at all later on when all the jerks pay to play and I haver to listen to adolesenct jerks cursing because they earned a horrible curse and can't figure the cure out.
@Naku-you should know by now I'm not into "fast" at all. I'm probably the slowest older player. What I'm also not into is "tedious and feeling like a real life job", imo we had enough repetitive things to do w/o adding some very disorganised and frankly -in my opinion- useless recipes.
Same thing for both crafts I'm complaining about -simplify them to a single type of material as outcome (prisms, phlogiston or baubles) but high level items should yield a higher amount whilst low level items should yield a very small amount of all 3 mats. I just went to Nexus and I'm lucky to have patient guildmates, takes ages to sift through the transmutation recipes and drag the right item into the right window, it's annoying as.
Notice I didn't (ever probably) complain about combat skills nerfs, those can be unpleasant but necessary. The craft skills change is odd.
@Malice/Drizzt off topic but guilds in this game don't have much importance beyond socializing. From my experience nobody tried to tell me how to play or what to do. I've been in only one guild so far so my experience is limited but I didn't encounter that kind of issue.
Ugh. Every time you guys make these kinds of changes I really want to jump back into the game to test it out. I guess I'll try harder to be interested in the game even though I'll have to reroll once Fae comes out. I've kind of been waiting for that, but these changes are big enough that I feel like it's worth it to jump in and at least take a look around, if nothing more than for feedback.
I'll be playing a bunch tomorrow. Maybe make a new character and try to cheese or glitch things as much as possible in the newbie dungeon to see if anything is easy to break :P
I want to echo ErDrick's commentary, which perhaps deserves a separate thread, despite being the stated reason for the Archery rebalance in this patch. Characters who are not tightly focused on maximized dps are at an extreme disadvantage at the moment: both tanks and "support" builds (which typically means healers, but here also means rage management and theoretically crowd control-focused builds).
Broadly speaking, there are two sets of problems. One is numeric, related to character skills and mob values. The other is institutional, and will be more challenging to fix. Note that these are NOT exclusive problems at the endgame, or in Gaz Keep. Small groups of characters can get a preview of these problems in the first floor of Kur Tower, the elemental wing of Goblin Annex, and to a lesser extent in Borghild. They are under-reported as problematic experiences because, I believe, relatively few players are: 1) grouping for content, 2) grouping exclusively with appropriately-leveled players rather than overleveled and/or overgeared characters, and 3) experiencing content with builds not intended to maximize dps.
Numeric problems
The numeric problems are the easiest to understand, and the most likely to be corrected through simple balance passes. Tank builds, up to and including staff/shield, do not generate competitive aggro in AE situations (single target threat is pretty good). Healing skills, across the board, do not heal enough to support sustained combat; they are either trickle heals an order of magnitude too small or appropriate heals with far too long of cooldowns to sustain the role. Rage management is perhaps too good in 1v1, but is absolutely incapable of combating more than 2 characters' rage generation, rendering it largely valueless in group play.
At the same time, most mobs in group content environments are highly front loaded. Low HP, very high damage. That starts as obviously as Zombie packs in Kur Tower.
Note that in content intended for solo play, these are less substantive problems. Tank builds at level do just fine in overworld zones, in pre-Annex Goblin Dungeon, and even ironically in Kur Graveyard. The same is true of many support builds. They kill more slowly, which has troubling secondary effects, but they play according to their function. As you advance to harder dungeons, and attempt group play (again, at-level) the numeric challenges become increasingly profound. Characters cannot tank for appreciable amounts of time, both because they cannot hold AE threat and because they cannot be healed against inbound damage.
Institutional Problems
These might matter more. Foremost here is the repop-by-pack mechanism. This mandates constant group movement. In part as a consequence of the numeric problems, being at ground zero for the respawn of 3, 4, or 6 simultaneous enemies is almost invariably fatal. Also, repop rates are often fast even without burying, and appear stridently unpredictable.
This prevents "camping" in the traditional MMO sense. It also severely affects bard support features, which require motionlessness. It also has knock on effects for tanks; it is literally easier for damage focused players to burn down groups than for tanks to acquire snap aggro in your 4 new friends.
At its core, Staff is an interesting and enjoyable build. Shield has well designed elements. Bard is a philosophically interesting support character. But in reality, the durability of Staff is perhaps best employed to "buy time" against attackers in order to apply damage, rather than to tank. Shield is a deeply disappointing support tree (perhaps except for the stun, but again, 1v1 is not the concern here). And bard has crippling movement limitations coupled with a trickle heal that simply does not scale (and so I suspect the class is largely used for its large damage AE, which has other, chain aggro flavored, concerns).
It is telling that the most-discussed Psychology ability is You Were Adopted. That bards are cited for their large radius AE damage source. And that druids are lauded for the AE damage enabler that is modded Rotskin (and for flight, an unrelated concern). There is, to my knowledge, essentially no content with enough HP, at any level, to require a concerted effort at sustain to defeat in a full group at appropriate gear. And, indeed, such content would be impossible at current enemy output levels.
While that holds true, adjusting Archery will not solve the player obsession with damage uber alles. If Archery is nerfed sufficiently, something else will take its place. Making tanks and support characters appealing as group members requires first making it more possible to perform those roles, and then making a place where doing so is beneficial.
I 100% agree with the above post. And yeah it should have its own thread, but there has been such threads in the past. I guess we still need patience.
Sorry for the upcoming blocks of text...
I agree we need more feedback and discussions from a larger variety of players. The problem we often have is people tend to innocently judge others based on what they personally can do, what they know or their goals. Perhaps someone doesn’t hunt Gazluk or its dungeons because the dungeons are lackluster and bland, they find the cold depressing or they have visual/physical impairments and prefer fighting less threatening and easier to manage mobs. Maybe someone “hordes” because they like helping players, just starting out trying to raise favor, cooking, saving mats for gear, etc. or they do work orders because they like feeling like a merchant or they love cooking a large variety of meals not for the power of the food but for the role play aspect. Perhaps someone hunts lower level areas because they enjoy the layout of the dungeons, the creature types or look of the landscape, maybe they don’t want to stay in one spot killing over and over and want to roam and explore everything from Serb all the way to Rahu. That guy may choose DPS not for bragging rights and big numbers but because he wants to be self-sufficient, he doesn’t group because he has a kid that he constantly has to stop playing to tend to, his play time is during off peak hours or his goals lead to places others do not want to hunt. Maybe some people race to the top because there is limited population in their level range or they want to be able play with an existing friend. Then you have skill related situations were some people can solo Pask with relative ease yet a small group of like level players wipe to him.
I am sure we all know and are aware of the above but it is good to be reminded. I see a lot of post about I don’t have this problem, I don’t see why the player does not do this or that, or claim everyone does something because of simple X reason and so forth. Some problems are solved by knowledge and others are personal playstyles that aren’t right or wrong. It isn’t always black and white.
Concerning the new augmentation/transmutation change… I do agree, when possible, it is nice to keep over powered players out of the newbie friendly spots as to not unintentionally grief other players. Could we not simply have the augmentation exp and item returns be based off the skill level and not the recipe? You can still have all the recipes you want, hopefully adding in the master ones I mentioned earlier, but the returns are based off skill. A short simple example is when I have 60 augmentation skill and I decompose a level 10 item, I get nothing but maybe a little exp. This would allow newbies to still get normal prisms and still be able to have something they can sell to higher level players. It would also reduce the clutter both in inventory, mules and on the vendors. Keep in mind as the level raises I assume even more Prisms, baubles and whatnot will be coming down the pipe.
This is gonna be long with no tl;dr.
I'm not an old player.
Been in this game for 3 or 4 months now and still in the middle of getting my skills up there, always strapped for cash with gear way below my level.
My main build is Fire with either Druid (for grouping) or Animal Handling (for solo). Fire and AH are max, but my gear is lvl 60.
What I spent most of my energy on was trying out things. I'm the type of player with a deep aversion to everything gathering/crafting, but had to do both for substantial amounts of time, which greatly diminished the fun factor for me. I did it because I had to. You need a source of money and the first choice for that was Transmutation. When I could break down all types and got favor with Sie Antry and her friend, the value of phlogiston was nerfed to nothingness. Picked up Skinning/Tanning, which replaced Transmutation as primary source of money.
I don't mind farming for money or things that directly (almost) translate to cash, but Surveying, for example, is a huge timesink that's not fun at all for me. I do it sometimes in bursts to stock up on the stuff I want, but I dread it every time.
I just got Armor Augmentation to 20 and still can't get any of the others, because the thought of engaging in the other needed crafting professions makes me want to quit.
I came to this game for the sense of freedom and adventure, for the impression the guidance-less systems left on me. To try out skill templates, collect interesting gear, find ways to have fun in multiple ways. Some of the design decisions however, like the absolute need to craft, or the concept of "advanced", hard to obtain/level skills, are putting a damper on it every time.
Wanted to play Bard, because I find support roles fun. Getting beyond 50 was a pain already (bought a primer for 60k after 3 days of disappointing corpse speaking, after boring Goblinese grinding), then found out you need Flower Arrangement, for which you need Gardening at 50 plus a ton of seeds of all kinds, and that's where I gave up. I find crafting bad enough, please don't make me play a Facebook game in order to obtain the unlock for a completely unrelated combat skill. Every Bard being a top notch gardener and flower arranger is not only a very bizarre thought for me - it's clearly an attempt to keep me off the skill, and you succeeded.
I was a pet class player in games like UO, DAoC, WOW, so naturally Necromancy and Animal Handling temptedme. Tried Necro, found it completely unplayable (or rather say, not fun, because it's a) not balanced at all, underpowered and weak, with extremely brittle pets you can only heal with Necro itself and b) full of uncalled for restrictions, such as the need for a graveyard, or the even weaker skull type summons). Gave it up almost immediately after a guildie had helped me get it - which would have been hard by myself.
Decided to go with Animal Handling, despite seeing all the problems the skill had, some of which have been amended somewhat now, some of which completely break the skill in groups (control, handling, aggro, behavior). I guess those problems are harder to fix and even then, pets are still very weak. When I first leveled it, it was considered the weakest combat skill. I would pass that title on to Necro, now that AH stopped being broken for solo, while in groups, AH still out-gimps it easily, with your pet suddenly chasing a buggy, fleeing (for no reason) mob down a crowded hallway, summoning half of the dungeon upon my team.
Psychology was good. Too good for heals even, and for it's uninteresting role as a secondary skill. No need for nukes in that tree, make that an "attack other mobs" skill and a charm and stat debuffs. I say that, because "healing" is not a thing in this game. Heals being weak or on long cooldowns makes playing a healer in groups impossible, while as a "heal pot substitute" solo, it's way, way overpowered, because itakes healing skills a must for skills like sword, hammer etc.
Druid was neither great support (but decent), nor good mainskill soloing power, but it worked fine with other skills.
Bard was good solo, irrelevant and possibly a security risk in groups, and now you nerfed the damage - why even bother with it anymore? It doesn't have meaningful buffs or utility that makes it desirable for groups. Groups are better off with a DD with heals and fear (Psychology). For what you get, it's way too weak. Risk/reward skewed. Obtainability: "bored vet level".
I hit 73 AH first and my gear for it was at best lvl 50ish, because a max level pet doesn't have enough killing power to be the motor of the build. That would be cat, the DD pet, played with a support skill, but it doesn't work out because killspeed being so slow, you'll run out of power before a group of 2 mobs your llevel is down. Bear now tanks a single mob okay-ish and at least distracts the others till I can kill them, but AOE aggro seems low, if it even exists.
So that's my builds now, along with Lycan being on schedule a bit before fullmoon, with either Psych (strong combo) or AH (illusion of a strong build due to my tank pet being 20 lvls higher than me).
As you can see, I experimented a lot, unlocked things like Staff, Mentalism, Shield, but never got to trying Battle Chemistry (brrr, Alchemy, crafting again) or highlevel Bard.
I enjoy farming, minmaxing, thinking of ways to make things work, while disliking the overly strong role of crafting here. Why crafting is even required only to start a skill, and then even more to progress in it I do not know, but it's a big minus for my type of player. Even in cases like Archery, the costs are too high to make it worthwhile. Yes, you can craft your own arrows (brrr, crafting) and farm everything yourself, or you can buy ammo from players if you're lucky and can find long/dense and at an affordable price.
But then I look at Sword and Lycan and think, why even bother when there's easymode skills that don't require expensive leveling, crafting, other PITA things like red books/explosive runes, and can kill everything 10 levels earlier in lowbie gear while being drunk and pressing random buttons?
For Archery you have upkeep costs. Fire costs your left nut and possibly a kidney in the future to level. AH has micromanagement and lacking power. You see where I'm coming from. Not only power, damage isn't balanced in all cases (overall it's not too bad tho), but also PITA-factor.
And now you make Transmutation and Augmentation even more of an item management sub-game.
Ppl are saying that 1v1 is ok, well, its not. With lower dps skills you kill much slower, whole long grind becomes much longer for no benefits. And since you regenerate to full in a few seconds after every fight, all sustain skills (tanking/support) have little value on sologrind. I tried to make it work with different combinations of psych, menta, staff, shield: even on low levels difference is so glaring, I dropped all silly ideas like "play what you enjoy" and started leveling that boring overused Fire. Combat system is clearly favours DPS - 2 dps skills always work better than 2 semi-support ones.
Lowering damage across the board and ofc increasing XP and droprate to compensate for slower killing would not fix everything but help a great deal.
For those of you that wish to continue the discussion on combat as a whole. https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...nd-Under-Tuned
I think ErdRick put it here because it's somehow connected, at least in the Global convos it was. People are unhappy every time damage gets nerfed(which is okay, part of alpha) for a reason, this reason being players have mainly dps focused builds. Dps only is not encouraging group play (or at least not a group in the traditional sense of it, it's only a bunch of people doing damage to the same target). When changes are made to combat skillsets it would be good to see some aggro boosts, some actual pure healer builds reflected in mods changes etc., not just "boost crits, boost damage, nerf crits, nerf damage". I'm not dismissing the work Citan is putting in development at all but every update people keep complaining about the same things (on Global but idk why not here)-everything about pets (all pets) and second-damage being nerfed .
What you want to avoid in high/low level interactions is competition yes, but also you want to avoid having no reason to go back. "I need me a pile of X" helps ensure there's higher level traffic in the area so newbies can get escorts and meet the higher ups. "What to do with all those greens" is on the good side of going back and hunting in low level areas, whereas "I also need those copper nodes" is the kind of competition you don't want.
Tanking and to some extent support roles do function in 1v1. They are unquestionably slower to progress, which represents a separate series of problems. But "tanks and healers solo slowly" is an MMO trope that might as well be an axiom at this point. That's not to say it's not a problem (but if they soloed at the same rate, why would solo players not all spec this?). It's not the same magnitude of problem as the fact that they have a dedicated role in group play, which does not currently function.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atis
We'll move the conversation suppose but I thought I'd chime in one more time. Reading different posts I realized that different players have different images of a tank.
1. A player who can hold aggro off a group even though their DPS is low, this would be a taunt focus build (imo no combat skillset in PG fulfills that role atm)
2. A "tanky" player-a player with very high defensive stats, mods and playstyle. Kills slower but doesn't die a lot. I doubt anyone goes for that in PG because there's no advantage in it (for an entire combo build). Most of us go for a "tanky" combat skillset as secondary (staff, shield, sometimes staff+shield but staff set as offensive skill). At the moment pretty much everyone plays dps in a form or another.
When I write "tank" I have 1. in mind