Dev Notes, June 6, 2017

[Oxlazr]

I mean, I've probably got the most controversial viewpoint on this whole animal-storage thing, but I personally don't see why an animal should need so much storage. You're practically restricting half your access to the game when you are in an animal form, and I think the problem lies elsewhere - again, the ever-so-discussed permanent animal forms.

Until there's some serious downsides to constantly shape-shifting, there's always going to be an overwhelming sense of obligation to decurse whenever the need arises. Unless something changes in this regard, I don't really see an issue with animals having access to human storage given how trivial gaining access to those storage venues is in the first place.

As it stands, I still feel like animal forms are gimmicky half-measures. They're fun to mess around with, but ultimately dead-ends in terms of actual gameplay content (barring lycan, which has some flexibility - and deer form for druids, I suppose).

In terms of the game being "as-is" I'd say having human storage available to animals isn't a big deal.

Shifting over to the whole "fake-ID" thing, the game has already played up the idea of familiars pretty heavily. If you could somehow become known as X NPC/player's familiar, then NPCs should be more willing to deal with you.

[Crissa]

Right now, serious downsides to decursing would bring testing to a halt and cause high-level animals to rage-quit as they get tripped up by minor mistakes.

'Permanent' animal forms are gimmicky. There's no real advantage to them. Do you get a bonus for never dropping your bardic implement or never swapping out Fire on your toolbars? Why would animals be different in that regard? Or penalized even further when cursed into the wrong animal form?

If you want people to choose not to de-curse, you'll need to give them things to do for every thing you take away. And honestly, separate is rarely equal.

To encourage people not to de-curse, they have to be able to not have thrown away a huge portion of their leveling to do so. Otherwise they're always going to want to go back. Making them want to not de-curse is key. Penalizing does the opposite of 'want'. Carrots, not sticks.

Anyhow, I think there's lots of ideas here, hopefully alot of them will make it into the game, if at least as flavor-text!

[Oxlazr]

It's a bit of a tangent. I'm not too fussed either way, but I feel like restricting access to the storage given how easy it is to curse/decurse at the moment feels a bit redundant. The other aspects of permanent forms have been discussed to death already.

At the moment there's just not enough reason to stay in a particular animal form, it gets pretty boring unless there's some larger goal or challenge. I'm personally against animals having access to that storage, but at the moment there's really no reason not to allow access to it.

[Tagamogi]

I like Niph's NPC pet idea. Keeping the current storage option would also work for me.

I have actually not become an animal in the past, specifically because I didn't want to deal with the storage. I thought about spending a couple hours sifting through Marna's and Joeh's storage, deciding what could stay there and what I might need as an animal and would need to be moved elsewhere, and it just wasn't worth the hassle to me. I'd rather just play.

[Tagamogi]

Thinking about this a bit more: Once Sunvale gets centralized storage, the argument can then also be made that the best way to play a non-animal is to become an animal for a while to unlock all the animal storage options. I really don't think it's a huge problem either way if some players have more storage available because of their previous animal or non-animal form unlocks.


Storage could also be changed so that it's really just central, and not tied to specific NPCs. Gaining favor with certain NPCs could still increase the total available storage slots, and some animal or non-animal NPCs could have overlapping unlocked storage. For example:
- up to 100 slots possible by purchasing slots from Hulon
- up to 50 slots possible by gaining favor with Sie Antry
- up to 50 slots possible by gaining favor with Raul (animals only) OR Marna (non-animals only). The highest favor with either of them would determine how many slots get unlocked.

From a game-flavor perspective, having storage tied to specific NPCs is neat. I have a lot fun imagining how Sie Antry's spare room looks with all my junk shoved into it. From a game-playing perspective, now that we have central storage I probably won't spend a lot of time talking to Marna or Hulon anymore - I'll just go directly to the bookshelf. As much as I like Marna, I like not wasting my time running back and forth more.

Getting rid of zone-specific storage would solve the problem of the animal and non-animal storage NPCs mostly not being in the same zones. I'm not quite sure I like it from a game-flavor perspective. I think it may make actual playing simpler. If I could access all my stuff in towns other than Serbule, I might actually spend more time hanging out in different zones instead of committing suicide every time my inventory is full because that's the only way I can keep my storage sorted. There could still be zone-specific favor quests in order to acccess any storage at all while in a particular zone...

[Crissa]

+1 Tagamogi.

I hadn't thought about my behavior, but that's literally what I do. I don't stay an animal because I need to level all the animal NPCs. I don't stay in other zones, because I have to go back to Serbule to get to Marna's storage to finish some recipe or other. Even as I try to get favor, it's still just easier to go back to Serbule.