Words of Power (and a bit of venting)

I wanted to explain the problem with the way words of power currently work and why it is not an acceptable mechanic. I also wanted to type out my concerns about communication with the devs regarding this and maybe vent a bit (maybe a lot). If you want to come into this thread to tell me "it's fine" or "you are burnt out" both are factually not true and you could save yourself the time by closing the thread now.

I am admittedly a very hardcore player. I have always played MMO's this way. I work full-time, have a family, but am very disciplined when it comes to gaming. I enjoy games more this way and have always found "breaking" builds or figuring things out as far as efficiency goes to be incredibly fun. I do enjoy lore and so on, but anyway, I am saying this all in advance to inform of what type of player I am, how much time I have invested into testing and feedback, and also to address the inevitable "you play too much and are whining" posts that people always do when someone has a valid concern.

I currently have played 30 days and 10 hours. I don't have much afk time as the game logs you immediately and I can only play when I am off work. I have submitted a lot of tickets on feedback. I am mostly focused on mechanics and game balance (not that everything has to be balanced) so that everyone is having fun. I have also only played since May I believe, so I may not know some things that our known in the community by veterans.

OK... onto my actual concern. I recently decided that I really liked the results of my L5 words of power (the highest level one) so I gathered the mats for 200 and wrote them all down. If you have ever done this you would know how much mats that is, particularly the Nightmare Flesh which isn't particularly easy to get. I then had to write all of these down cause heaven forbid we have a way to copy/paste them from the message pop-up. I also screenshot each time I get the popup with the words of power and I keep all of this in order in my folder so I can figure out the actual word if I wrote it down wrong. I then enter the words of power by copy/paste as it allows me to get the buff or effect quickly while actually playing.

I was not made aware that the words of power can be stolen, and lost a huge amount of them. My document is 9 pages, contains over 200 words of power, and I had done this in the past 2-3 weeks maybe (its not months or years old). The way the mechanic works, which we are "meant to find out" like so much other content, is that someone else can get the same word and use it. Here are the problems with this and why it is unacceptable:

1. A player can lose their word without knowing better. The current mechanic definitely suggests to a player to save them up as we are required to write them down, its not a random buff that is given upon crafting of the word. The obvious assumption would be that it is ours as there is no warning or message informing us of the flawed mechanic. I am not aware of any warning in game about other players stealing your word of power, please inform me if there is one and also make it in red text like many other warnings in the game (hardcore mechanic for example).

2. I understand that in this game we are meant to "figure it out" and I generally have loved this. I am enjoying figuring out powerful builds, exploring dungeons, and have maxed a majority of skills without much help from others or the internet. This all fun and good. The catch is that you can't have your armor, weapons, or anything else stolen by other players. I understand how the concept is fun (oh no I lost the word! Eek), but the way it plays out is far too punishing. I lost probably a day of playtime to this.

3. I put in a ticket asking if it was a bug. I also informed them that I had spent a huge amount of time on this. The response was "this is how the mechanic works, players can steal your words of power" paraphrased. Maybe one sentence. No apology from them, no compensation as after all I am testing your game and the flawed mechanics for you from my own time... nothing.

I have seen an increasing number of complaints about this type of feedback both here and in game, with friends, etc. It is not acceptable to ask us to figure out the game if the mechanics are this punishing. Its fine to ask us to find out how to unlock a skill, a puzzle, etc. as there is not really a "negative" response beyond what we obviously know: you will lose time doing this. What is not acceptable is removing time/money from us due to randomness. I am not aware of many other ways the game does this, but this mechanic must go. I am not even bothered by it that much, in fact I'm moderately indifferent as I have tons of resources, I'm more annoyed by the response from the developers and the lack of consideration that you will lose players to obnoxious mechanics like this. Don't imply through game mechanics that something is ours, have us invest time to get it, then take it away. Good way to lose players. Also, not apologizing when your testers get burned hard is a great way to lose players.

To summarize, I love this game and want to continue testing it. I want to help you guys balance the mods and skills a bit better (they are horribly balanced at the moment and need tons of love), however when I sink this amount of time into something to facilitate the testing process and all I get is a canned response that took 10 seconds to write.......... well don't expect much effort in testing from me going forward, at least until this is addressed directly. I'd feel less confident in this if I didn't directly know of other identical/similar situations with players being frustrated by a lack of effort in responses.

TLDR: I am not asking you to change crappy mechanics, I am asking that you have major warnings on ones that can lead to total heartbreak. You have red text and warnings all over the "hardcore" system about the death mechanic, and its not even THAT punishing if you know about it, but there is not one warning that I am aware of about this archaic and awful feature that involves other players stealing your crafting. Please consider respecting our feedback as we are working hard for you for free.

- Arundel

While this may not be a direct response to your comments, it might help... possibly?
At one point, there was an introduction to Words of Power on the website, but that seems to have vanished during the redesign. Even older players may have read a blog post, that's also now "gone." I've got a copy of that though, and here it is:

Elder Game, October 28, 2011.
Words of Power

I needed something for the Lore skill to do. It’s a prerequisite skill (meaning lots of skills will require it), but it felt stupid without a job of its own, too. So I decided they could research Words of Power. These seem pretty fun so far.
Words of Power are randomly-generated sequences of phonemes. (For example, ‘Twimjot’, ‘Fledbydpal’, or ‘Chruggomdye’. The’re gibberish, but not completely random letters, so you can kind of figure out how they would be pronounced.) To use a word of power, you just type it into the chat window. When spoken aloud, the word’s power is triggered and the word is used up, replaced with a new word. Words of Power only ever work once.

If you have a high Lore skill, you can research Words of Power via the crafting system. When you attempt the research, you can choose items to sacrifice. The more valuable the sacrificed items, the bigger your chance of success. If the recipe works, you discover one of the current words, along with an explanation of what it does. Their effects range from strong buffs to potent debuffs to killing yourself instantly, turning into a harmless animal, and a large number of other random effects. I’ve only implemented a few effects so far, but I intend for this to be one of the dumping grounds for any crazy effects I think up.
One interesting thing about Words of Power, though, is that this is a shared resource. There are (say) 10,000 active words in the universe and it’s possible for two players to research the same one (but unlikely, given the large number of them). Once anybody says a word of power, it stops being a word of power. So it doesn’t make sense to hoard too many words at once — eventually somebody else will discover your words and use them before you get a chance to!

There will be many levels and types of words, their effects becoming ever more arcane and bizarre. Nestled in among the thousands of words will be ones that bend the rules of the game: for instance, there’s a word that can kill everyone in a 20-meter radius, even though this isn’t a PvP game, and there’s otherwise no way to kill players. (So if you want to kill somebody really badly there’s a way to do it. However, it will cost you an exorbitant fee, it works only once, and your victims are likely to thank you afterward because it gives Dying XP from a cause of death they probably can’t achieve otherwise).
Since they’re just words, they can be traded in-game or out… as long as you really trust somebody. Or they can be shouted out in chat: “Somebody say ‘foafulpetzel’, something great will happen!” Words of power are a social device, and not an entirely positive one. I think it’s important for a game to have some sources of player drama like this, as long as the drama is entirely opt-in. But I dunno, we’ll see. Really, this is one of the design philosophies of this MMO: I’m intentionally doing things that are unusual, and combining them together in a complex world where it’s not really possible to predict how things will play out in the end. If it ends up being broken, I’ll just have to roll with it.

But anyway, back to trading them. There needs to be some reliable way to trade words of power. So I think there will be another research method that costs more, but doesn’t reveal the word to you outright. Instead, it gives you a scroll. When the scroll is read, you learn the word, and then the scroll disappears. Internally, it picks the word right when the scroll is read, guaranteeing that it’s still valid. That’s important, since nobody wants to buy a scroll with a used-up word on it. But the down side is that you can’t know beforehand exactly what the word will do. The scrolls have pretty generic labels (e.g. one might be labeled as a “Level 4 word of power”). Somebody looking for a very specific word may have to buy quite a few scrolls to find what they’re looking for. That’s okay — words of power aren’t supposed to be a particularly reliable or commonplace commodity.

Guessable Words? That’s Terrible! Wait, I Mean Great!

The words are generated from a list of phonemes. The more phonemes in the word, the more powerful its effect is (in general). Super-powered words are 30+ characters long and quite awkward to type. Less-powerful words are much shorter. For instance, right now on the test server the words “Follyik”, “Taithig”, and “Chrobog” are all bottom-tier words of power.
When I first implemented this, my instinct was that the above words were too short. People could guess them without researching! Especially after players learn the phonemes that are used, it would become relatively easy to guess. There are only about 100 phonemes, and these low-level words only have two phonemes in them, so there’s only about ten thousand possibilities… hundreds of which will be valid at any given time. You could have a 1-in-20 chance of guessing a word — or even better odds!

That seemed broken, so I fixed it, making all the words longer. And then it hit me: wait, no, that’s not broken, it’s great. If you’re at the bottom of a dungeon, trapped and out of ideas, and you resort to mumbling random phrases hoping to find a word of power, that’s… kind of wonderful, really, in a thematic sense.

The guessable words aren’t powerful enough to damage the game balance, but they can mimic items you may not have on hand. For instance, a low-level Word of Restoration gives a big health-regeneration effect for five minutes.

The server protects against chat-spamming, so you can’t type too many attempts too quickly (or, just as importantly, hack the client to try thousands of guesses per second). Thus it would still take you a while to find a word of power by random guessing. But there is definitely a real danger to this system because it rewards excessive patience. (This is called “balancing via tedium” and is a big no-no in MMO design, unlike other game types like board games, where it’s often harmless.) So I’ve taken pains to make sure that people aren’t necessarily rewarded for just standing around typing words for hours. If guessing random words somehow came to be seen as the “right” way to beat monsters, that would be tragic.

That’s why I added the nasty effects. No matter what you’re trying to do, there’s an effect that will probably ruin your plans. Some kill you instantly, some teleport you to an odd location, some make you unable to wear pants for 30 minutes, and on and on. It’s true that the “good” combat effects might get you out of a jam, but these low-level words aren’t much better than a store-bought item. A Potion of Regeneration is a much saner survival tool.

Toys For The Rich And Powerful

Of course, the high-level words have a different role in the game: they’re where I stick the really weird stuff. For instance, one of the words polymorphs you into a pig permanently. (Yes, forever and ever, unless you obtain a rare dispelling potion. No, I don’t know why you’d want to be a pig forever, I just had the model handy and needed some insane power words. Ooh I know, I should make it so pigs can detect truffles from 60 meters! Let me write that down.) Other top-tier words permanently affect your stats, randomly raising or lowering your max hit points. Some turn boss monsters into harmless mini-monsters, or turn lakes to blood. But these words are insanely expensive to research. They’re money-sinks, in other words: toys for the overly rich.

(But to protect newbies, I’ll add a skill restriction on them… it’s one thing for an experienced player to be tricked into saying the Pig Polymorph word by a guildmate gone rogue, but it’s quite another thing to trick a newbie into saying it without understanding the dangers!)

The lower tiers of words, on the other hand, are generally more workmanlike. If you’ve got a high Lore skill, it might be worth your time to research some good level-two words for a weekend raid or planned boss battle. They’re for that sort of thing: semi-special occasions.

And the guessable lowest tier of words can be just as detrimental as useful. So if I get the balance right, then guessing words will be seen as a pretty desperate move… but if you’re desperate enough, or bored in town and want to experiment, hey, knock yourself out! Or blow yourself up, whichever happens first.

Sorry I didn't read everything but WoPs can technically be researched by other players, they are not "stolen" per se but another person might research the same word especially if you don't use them for a while (you might've "stolen" someone else's words too). In a batch of 200 if you apply probabilities it's very likely some were researched by someone else, the combinations aren't infinite. That is if I understood your issue correctly.

On the topic of testing and dev response I find it above average for a game that has technically one developer. Iirc srand files our reports and Citan fixes the bugs (simplistic way to put it but the point is they do respond to bug reports just not always via text but by fixing them). In this case it was easier imho to ask on Help chat, it's not really a bug and it's common knowledge:) Did not require a developer response.

Thank you for the very detailed feedback, Arundel.

The date on old WoP info that BetaNotus resurrected (and thank you for that, BetaNotus!) really surprised me. (2011? Really?) But it's true - the Words of Power system is very old and a lot of the features that were planned haven't been implemented yet. Worse still, the game has advanced in some ways but this system just hasn't kept up. We need to do a lot of work to get it up into the same gameplay usability ballpark (if that makes any sense) as more recent skills.

Your feedback is incredibly valuable for that. It's great to have it on the forums, too, where others can join in with suggestions and comments. (And yes, some venting, I'm sure. :))

I'm sorry about the miscommunication involving your in-game report. We're only a few people and we sometimes need to go through the reports fast. On a quick reading and since it was marked as a bug report, yours looked like it just needed a quick 'nope, that's intended' response. That response wasn't meant to be snide or dismissive. I'm sorry it came across that way.

Thank you guys for the replies. I do my research well but had never seen anything on Words of Power, so I assumed that I kept them indefinitely once I recorded them. This system seems intuitive enough. I'd suggest that either it be changed to actually be permanent (not stolen) or that there be some warning about "be careful, another adventurer may utter this word and take its power from the realm" so that we can be clued in not to hoard them. :P

Srand thanks so much for the response. I really wasn't expecting to get my time back, and I fully understand you guys are working very hard to respond to everything so you just went through it as you would any other. I don't know if I mentioned it in my bug report (I think I did), but when I actually tallied how many words of power I had made it was 200 (I can post the Word Doc as proof for unbelievers). A bit extreme, but the effects are very handy in a pinch. I was sad to have lost them, but it means a ton to know you guys care enough to consider changing the system to spare poor shmucks like me who hoard, or at least just let me know you read the feedback. Problem solved as far as I am concerned, thanks for letting me vent.

It's not that they are 'stolen' but rather that someone else did the same work that you did, discovered the word and used it. They put in the same amount of work and I think saying that they 'stole' it mischaracterizes the situation. I know the response did not say they were 'stolen'.

Anyway, as far as 'compensation' - while we absolutely sympathize with situations like this, in cases like this we are unable to provide any sort of replacement. That's especially true during testing. While it's understandable there is frustration, you are testing the game and rooting out frustrating issues, bugs, etc is exactly what testing is all about.

Finally, the in game reporting tool is not for asking questions but rather to report bugs, suggestions, etc. It's not intended for conversations. Generally, if you are unsure if something is a bug, you can ask in General chat or bring your questions to the forums. Of course, you can submit it as a bug but please remember the above. If you haven't already, check out the sticky Testers Guide as there may be helpful information there.

Just to add, your feedback is appreciated. A note or warning that Words of Power can be discovered by others is a great suggeston.

I think it would help if the recipe text more clearly stated some of the risks involved. On top of having other people find the same word as you, there's also the possibility of researching the same word twice(had it happen a few times, one time I crafted two words and got the same one twice.)
I think it would also improve the system overall if there was some incentive to use the negative words. My understanding of the current system is that words are only replaced once used, which means all the good ones will get used instantly while the bad ones will sit around and waste slots forever. Personally that really kills any interest I have in words since I almost always get the bad ones.

Some of the earlier recipes did say that words of power could be used up. That's why scrolls of them are better than just getting the words themselves.

I've never had a stored word last more than a week. I'm not sure if that's a pretty quick turnover or whatever, but I kinda gave up on working on them.

...Mostly because Lore really ended up being really boring and useless to have levels in. I expected some synergy with Meditation and Alchemy and Artistry and such.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Silvonis

It's not that they are 'stolen' but rather that someone else did the same work that you did, discovered the word and used it. They put in the same amount of work and I think saying that they 'stole' it mischaracterizes the situation. I know the response did not say they were 'stolen'.

Anyway, as far as 'compensation' - while we absolutely sympathize with situations like this, in cases like this we are unable to provide any sort of replacement. That's especially true during testing. While it's understandable there is frustration, you are testing the game and rooting out frustrating issues, bugs, etc is exactly what testing is all about.

Finally, the in game reporting tool is not for asking questions but rather to report bugs, suggestions, etc. It's not intended for conversations. Generally, if you are unsure if something is a bug, you can ask in General chat or bring your questions to the forums. Of course, you can submit it as a bug but please remember the above. If you haven't already, check out the sticky Testers Guide as there may be helpful information there.

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I want to reply to this. I've appreciated Srand's feedback, I have interacted with Srand more than once and have been blown away by the maturity of their responses both dealing with the facts (data) and the human elements (emotions, time invested, griefing etc.). I am not triggered at this point. I will be blunt because I have tested and played MMO's for a decade. I'm pretty tired of developers expecting us to test their games for free and not appreciating it in the process: this pre-order, testing alpha/beta thing is fine and all but it used to be that you paid people to test your games for you. I don't want payment and I don't want reimbursement. Here is my deal, I never once asked for compensation and I would have denied it if you tried to give it to me. I have tons of resources if you looked at my account, what I am irritated about is this kind of reply where you coldly explain everything I did wrong in the process and don't consider that you have a tester working his butt off for free. When an error like this occurs and it costs a player a lot of time the correct response is not "its testing" and essentially "get over it", it's to try to address the heart of the issue (no warning, and time lost) as Srand did. You WILL lose players over dry responses like this, and you would be wise to back off and consider your approach. I hope this helps as you develop the game, this is just my insight as a veteran of countless MMO's and a guy who generally sticks with a game for years and beta tests every bit of content. Appreciate what you get when you have hard working testers like my peers and guildmates, and give us some respect when we are frustrated. I get that you are giving me facts but it is the way you go about doing it that is irritating to us. I try to stay positive but consider the relationship here. You are getting free testing, some of us could literally be professional Q/A type testers with out backgrounds, and your responses are dry or almost smug (talking as much about responses in game as I am here). I'm not alone in this. Anyway, have a good day and I hope you consider your methods in the future.