Update Discussion: August 28, 2017

[srand]

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:

• Level 65-70 Gear Mod Changes
• Augmentation and Transmutation Changes

Now that you've read all that ... discuss away!

[cr00cy]

"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

[Tagamogi]

"Bottles of milk stack to 5."

YES! OMG best change ever, 10/10.

Overpowered! But I'm ok with that. And very happy, too.

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:

But on the other hand, I need to make the gear mods for the golem's abilities worth using, or they won't get used. And I realize many of these mods are still underwhelming.

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.

Is there someone who is actually using the golem for dps who could comment on what mods they would find attractive?

[kazeandi]

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.

[ErDrick]

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)

[Easylivin]

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)

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.

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.

[Easylivin]

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.

What do you mean by "always"? Fire was the damage king for at least 3-4 months in my almost 3 years of playing.

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?

[Khaylara]

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).

[Malice00]

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..

[jaspen]

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.