An overly long list of my useless feedback to torture your eyes.

I want to first start off by saying I do enjoy this game. I am a lazy writer, I have poor penmanship and my limited vocabulary could easily be written on a lunch napkin. Half of the words would probably be of the vulgar variety. With that said, what I write lacks grace and may come off a bit more coarse than intended. While this will be a long read, each point is still overly simplified and curt.

I have only been playing about 7 months so there may be items I am not thinking about in my ideas below. Something may exist that I am unaware of. Feel free to point out things I am overlooking. Also, keep in mind I never got to see the old boards so I may be pointing out something someone else has already mentioned in a post. I am not trying to steal the limelight, just offering my useless feedback.

I have a huge list of GUI issues and suggestions. I am more than confident a lot of issues will be corrected when the new GUI comes out. I will mentioned a couple items concerning it but more so generalized. I won’t list things like recipe filtering, sorting by level, expanding the left column, etc.

Lastly, I am keeping each point to a single paragraph on purpose so excuse me there. There are just my thoughts and in no way do I think they are right or represent everyone. Now enough with the disclaimers.

Augmentation skills need to be combined in the recipe section to one category. The recipes themselves need to be simplified to help preserve what life our wrists have left. One box for decomposing, one box for extracting, and one box for undo, for example. For transmutation you could simplify at least distilling to one box as well. If a person doesn’t have the skill, they can receive an error message saying “you cannot decompose helms yet.” The description on the recipe can fill them in on anything else they need to know. This would be great for group content and as well as help solo players in high spawn areas.

The new GUI needs customization. One of the biggest reasons, besides giving people the flexibility to make things look like they want or assist in how they play, is to account for people with various impairments. A great example of this is for people who are color blind. They need complete control over color options.

Gardening, if there was a way to either to plant in a grid based around the player, or predetermined grid on the ground in the gardening area itself, would help a lot with managing the garden. This isn’t about making it look pretty, which would be a nice side effect, it is about manageability. If not, perhaps a GUI that shows the status of current plants you own. If within range, you can use that GUI to water, fertilize and harvest buy clicking the buttons there instead of having to find the plants and click their buttons instead.

Clicking, for me, is a major issue in this game. I have problems with my wrists in general. Sometimes I almost think the game is programmed to select everything but the actual item, player or NPC I want. Yes, I know you can somewhat workaround with lots of keyboard shortcuts but that is often way less efficient and takes away from other keybinds and accessibility you would rather have. Instead of a single click of a mouse you have to press a key over and over to get to your target. I believe part of the problem is hit boxes being overly large and the game sometimes seems to put priority on certain items/players/NPCs over others. It seems it assumes you want to click a player instead of vendor for example.

Looting is almost a mini game of its own. Keybinds for various actions like loot all, butchering, skinning, etc. could be useful. Highlighting green gear would be useful as it is still used for augmentation and transmutation skills. Make it flash like other rare loot or simply outline the box around gear with the color of its rarity. It is extra time having to constantly check the loot to see if it is mundane gear or not which probably is more helpful in grouping situations but is also nice in high spawn situations. Having an area where you can mark certain loot as unwanted would be nice so it doesn’t even show on the corpse or is auto destroyed upon auto loot. Can remove later if you wish to start looting that item again.

I would like to hear more on performance in this game and whether there are known issues. I have a high end system and I get dismal performance. Mouse look constantly jerks pointing me in random directions and some dungeons, like the lab, it can become close to unplayable with low framerates (8 or lower). No matter how low my settings go the problem exists. If this is a widespread issue, are there settings that you suggest?

Greater flexibility with particle effects would be nice. I realize they can’t be totally turned off as we also need to know when bosses and mobs use their special abilities. Can have options to turn off for players and/or lower their intensity (Number of particles or brightness of particles). The high contrast and flashing can be extremely disruptive to other players.

There is a lot I would like to bring up about chat. Like font size changes, color options, combat spam, time stamps, better tabs, ability to chat on in selected window and which chats go in which tabs, etc. Once again we will save that when the GUI comes out as a lot will probably be fixed then.

The ability to turn hide/unhide dropped items and tombstones could go into helping with performance and getting rid of eyesores on the landscape. I hate trying to loot and pray to a tombstone instead or pick up some random trash someone has dropped. Perhaps an option to destroy loot would help with this problem as well but I can see an argument not to.

A bug tracker would be quite helpful. If one does already exist, feel free to point it out to me. This would be a place of known issues for people to reference. I realize you guys have limited resources but in the end of the day I believe this would help. Not only will it prevent you from having to read tons of the same reports of known issues, to you, it would make players feel better that you know about something and going to fix it. People tend to assume the worse and have a higher chance of quitting thinking you don’t care or not looking into a major issue that is affecting them when in reality you are busting ass trying to fix it. This game has what I feel to be way too low of a population for a free game that is as polished as this is and this could be part of the problem. It is hard for some to understand that the game is being developed even though you may spam them with this is an alpha please report bugs and make suggestions.

The cold and heat mechanics in the game are unique and I give you credit there. Personally, I am not a fan of them. At the end of the day, and when the novelty has worn off, it feels like nothing more than a fly at a picnic. In essence we are just giving people personal dots in some zones and these zones usually appear to have very low rate of people utilizing them. I have heard some say it is challenging and that would seem to apply more to inventory management than the actual gameplay. Having to greatly alter your armor for specific areas, carry an even larger variety of consumables, change your skillsets to hunt in that area (which i have seen) or constantly swapping out consumables and gear based on the area you are about to hunt, is not my idea of creating challenging content. Perhaps, implementing multistep quests that help you learn how to survive the area better lowering their affects per quest or an outdoor survival skill that you can raise to lower it would be more engaging and accomplishing. The last thing we need is more forced crap in our inventory. I understand consumables are needed to get money out of the economy. Inventory is a topic I will refrain from for now as I feel there is a lot that could assist with at least neatening it up since we do often have to carry such a large variety of things from food, prisms, baubles, potions, flowers, gear sets, quest parts, etc. Would be nice to organize stuff we use separately from stuff we loot.

I love variety and while I am not a big tradeskiller, I would like to see them have the option of selecting the look of the armor they are crafting. So a leather worker gets to choose from all the various leatherworking graphics. This would lend itself to more variety in outfits and let people invest more in their characters. Obviously you could just allow people to choose the look of their gear through another skillset, vendor purchases or whatever but this idea would at least make it more interactive with other characters.

I hate to bring this up as I know you guys have already said you will be expanding all dungeons but things are getting a bit cramped with the small population we already have. I find myself standing around more than hunting as I hate constantly running somewhere just to find a limited number mobs and everyone is fighting over a kill. I am seeing some tension between players and “rude” behavior following. Not sure if the engine can ramp up spawn rate based on how quickly they can be killed or not though I could see problems with that.

Okay, that is more than enough for now. I don’t even want to proofread all that dribble myself. With that said, don’t be too harsh with grammar mistakes. If enough people don't shoot holes in everything I listed I will list out further items later on.

Let me know your opinions.

I'll respond selectively, as some of your comments i don't have a well-informed or particularly strong opinion:

- On gardening, while i think some of your suggestions are good, they make gardening sound so simple that a bot could perform well. It's important to keep anti-bot implementation in place for such a simple, repetitive task. Do you have ideas on how to streamline gardening while keeping it difficult for an automaton to perform?

- In terms of selecting objects and hitboxes, hopefully this will be addressed via the new GUI. I do find the keyboard shortcuts to be fine most of the time, although one gripe i have is that when you remove an object it appears to reset the queue. I.e. if you 'tab' to object 3 and pick it up, the next 'tab' will go back to object 1 instead of to object 4. I think preserving the 'cursor''s place in the object queue would make using keyboard shortcuts to navigate a bit easier.

- I find little trouble with performance issues, though i have not yet been to lab or gazluk among other areas. The only area where i have a consistent issue is the hallway leading south out of Serbule Keep near the player vendor stalls, where i often get turned around due to some sort of lag.

- As far as the bug tracker goes, i think i've heard the devs say they want people to report bugs that other people have reported, the theory being that it gives a more accurate picture of how many people are affected by a given issue. Still a good idea, particularly if the number of reports becomes overwhelming as the player population grows.

- I really like the idea of being able to squelch unwanted loot. I agree that the looting process in general is overly tedious and could use some refinement.

Overall i thought this was really good feedback and i hardly noticed any grammatical errors (but it's drivel not dribble).

Having three sets of horizontal buttons, two if you forgo picking but this fixes some of the issues of underground pants, per plant in a GUI will still require moving the mouse around to hit selected buttons when they need to be hit as well as scroll, if needed, to next set of plants. How is this different from standing in a corner using the keyboard to cycle between plants and hitting the use key? Both are horrible and inefficient automation techniques. You will still need to make fertilizer when needed, will still need to path and run to get water when needed and then replant when needed. If you are achieving the later steps then, GUI or not, nothing is stopping you. The later steps are the steps to be concerned about as everything else is trivial to a coder in comparison.

Ultimately when someone writes a program that reads memory values and states, which has a high chance of eventually happening, making everyone else suffer out of fear and paranoia has not done anyone any good. They will adjust their software when needed. Gaming history more than proves this. Design the game for the players and not the cheaters. They are going to find ways to cheat eventually. There is no need to make the legit suffer in the meantime.

EDIT: Do you mind detailing out your hardware and OS?

EDIT 2: Also, if the plants were in a grid then the GUI really wouldn't be needed except to correct issues, from what I hear, of plants that cannot be targeted. Targeting plants is my biggest issue with gardening right now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jaspen

Having three sets of horizontal buttons, two if you forgo picking but this fixes some of the issues of underground pants, per plant in a GUI will still require moving the mouse around to hit selected buttons when they need to be hit as well as scroll, if needed, to next set of plants. How is this different from standing in a corner using the keyboard to cycle between plants and hitting the use key? Both are horrible and inefficient automation techniques. You will still need to make fertilizer when needed, will still need to path and run to get water when needed and then replant when needed. If you are achieving the later steps then, GUI or not, nothing is stopping you. The later steps are the steps to be concerned about as everything else is trivial to a coder in comparison.

Ultimately when someone writes a program that reads memory values and states, which has a high chance of eventually happening, making everyone else suffer out of fear and paranoia has not done anyone any good. They will adjust their software when needed. Gaming history more than proves this. Design the game for the players and not the cheaters. They are going to find ways to cheat eventually. There is no need to make the legit suffer in the meantime.

EDIT: Do you mind detailing out your hardware and OS?

EDIT 2: Also, if the plants were in a grid then the GUI really wouldn't be needed except to correct issues, from what I hear, of plants that cannot be targeted. Targeting plants is my biggest issue with gardening right now.

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Maybe i don't have a good picture of how your evisioned garden interface operates, but your use of "pre-determined" grid sounds like it takes out some of the guess work. As it stands, you have to take some care to fix your camera angle just right if you want to set it up to select all your plants via keyboard and no one else's. Even if you are standing in a corner someone can run up and put plants near you if they suspect you are botting. A predetermined grid sounds like it might make this more difficult.

Citan has made it clear that he thinks botting is a bigger problem with highly automated tasks like gardening, and that he's designed gardening to make botting difficult, which is why i bring it up. I'd suggest looking at the other gardening thread http://forum.projectgorgon.com/showt...rum-Discussion as it looks like it already addresses a lot of your issues, e.g.: "Basically, the new GUI will let me easily add a bunch of buttons when you click a plant. So instead of just a "Water Plant" button, there might be several different things you can do, depending on the plant's condition. If it looks like your plant's got bugs, maybe you want to use some bug remover... or maybe you decide to risk it and just let it grow, saving some money. Very small choices like that."

Here are my hardware specs:
i3 3.4 Ghz
8 gigs ram
GTX 1070 (formerly i played with the onboard Intel 4400 HD and it worked okay on lowest, though my framerate in Kur was down into the low teens)

Edit: I've heard the best things to turn down if you are having performance issues are grass draw distance and shadows.

+1 on looting, it could use some sort of convenience added to it, just takes too much time.

The grid is nothing more than the game automatically planting your plants in rows for you. These rows/grid would either be based off your character, my preference, or based on the gardening area itself. With that said, this does absolutely nothing to help automation as it can also plant behind you and to the side of you as well. The only thing it is doing is ensuring the plants are spaced evenly instead of randomly placed with a high chance of bunching up. This allows the player to easily select their plants and take care of them. Once again, this would mostly do away with the need for the GUI excluding a couple of bugs.

I still argue that first phase planting, watering and fertilizing is absolutely the least of your concern with gardening botting. There is a threshold here. Everything before this threshold is so inefficient there really isn't any reliability or much to gain from it. Once you get past this threshold of actually knowing when to make more fertilizer, pathing to get more water, returning back to your spot... At that point it all becomes irrelevant as someone has to write a proper program to achieve this. Once software is written it can easily be changed to adapt to any new changes implemented. Before this threshold, there are simple limited macros which are dumb, crude and can not account for changes to game state. There is some amazing talent out there these days and a programmer can accomplish anything he wishes.

The main thing is making it hard enough that the simple things, which is accessible to the vast majority, like mouse/keyboard macros, can't take place and none of what I mentioned will allow that. Upper end of exploiters are a very small minority, which can still be devastating, but it is typically a waste of resources fighting them as they have the resources to counter anything you put into place. You tackle the majority, not the minority.

I believe they could probably achieve more, with little effort, by implementing a counter on picking plants, just like tracking the number of mobs killed. Anyone that achieves a certain amount over a time period gets flagged and investigated. Simple and sweet. If i have been online for 24 hours straight having picked 7200 cotton then perhaps that is a good sign to look into me and to watch me. Then you can see if what I am doing is in timed intervals, for example. Why design code to inconvenience players, or not make better changes to a game, when you can do simple things like the above instead? There are often simple and elegant solutions to be had.

My concern is people getting too paranoid that the legitimate players suffer in a futile attempt to stop a couple of hackers. I also don't want to see witch hunts start up from this paranoia like I have seen in other games. To clarify, nothing currently gives me the impression that is or would happen. Just like DRM technology that raises the price of the media and devices, Blu-Ray for example, inconveniences the customers and at the end of the day it gets hacked anyways while never accomplishing its goal.

alleryn, could you tell me what version of Windows you are using as well? I have your system specs beat and still have problems. Kur Tower I frequently have the spin issue I mentioned, for example, but there is also a ton of trash laying around in that dungeon. It is almost as if the game is loading new textures, or perhaps dumping textures too soon, or rendering things that shouldn't be, like items behind walls.

It is not about implementing code to inconvenience players, but rather eliminating a foreseeable source of abuse based on experience. That said, there are intentional checks and balances in order to maintain the development vision for certain skills and activities. An example would be strategic water source placement. We know that it would be much easier (for gardening) to have a well in the garden area but, in order to maintain the balance, there are requirements that must be considered in order to garden. That decision also has the foresight of potential abuse based on experience.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jaspen

alleryn, could you tell me what version of Windows you are using as well?

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Windoze 10 home edition (64 bit)

I don't spend a lot of time in dungeons and i often clean up the area i'm farming (dungeon or otherwise) by collecting all the trash and selling it, so that might affect my framerates.

I like all of your suggestions, but especially this one:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jaspen

Make it flash like other rare loot or simply outline the box around gear with the color of its rarity.

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I hope the new UI will address quite a few of the things on your list. I also thought I read a post by Citan a while back talking about plans to adjust the spawn rate of mobs to match the number of people in the area, but I can't seem to find it now, so I don't know if I was hallucinating...

I don't have anything particularly useful to add, just wanted to say that I think your suggestions are good. My main disagreement would be on the appeal of the cold mechanic which I'm still undecided on.

Ugh, anything to make clicking on objects in the world or cycling through them be less tedious ^-^