Update Discussion: August 25, 2019

[ErDrick]

The council cost of the training gets a "not interested" from me. My general feeling is that I can make money and making money can be fun, but I'm not interested in it currently and I'd rather play than worry about training costs. Worrying about affording the level 70+ training seems to much effort in general and then there is that discount...

The difference in the training discounts between players continues to have me sulking big time. It's possibly worth noting that I appear to be the only person thus affected, but it just makes me want to not train anything. I uncapped foraging 60+ for one character which I regret in hindsight. My current game plan mostly involves pretending high level training doesn't exist. Since it looks like we may finally get a semi-weekly trio group going, flat out not training may not be possible, but I intend to put all training off as long as possible and train as little as possible. Fortunately, I don't think the pace of our group will be very fast. I have zero motivation to level past 70 on my own currently.
I'm not sure what I'll do about my crafting skills - maybe in a few weeks, my sulk will recede far enough I'll be ok uncapping them slowly, but for now I'm putting on a one-person training strike to protest unfair pricing.

This is pretty much how I feel. I want to log in but every time I do I see those costs and it isn't worth the few hundred hour grind that I know is coming just to unlock 3 or 4 combat skills and 4 or 5 tradeskills ( and then grind more to level them). On top of that since transmutation and augmentation are almost 100% required I will need a different money source then dropped equipment since I'll be decomping that stuff for a long time.

The points I keep repeating about combat are sort of related to this, since if combat was satisfying I wouldn't care about the grind 1/2 as much ( but it would still be imo excessive).

To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it. I am decently high up the tree in most tradeskills atm but I'm not about to spend 10 8hour days farming materials to last me through the next few months, I'd MUCH rather be fighting shit. This of course doesn't apply to everyone, some people enjoy it and I wish them well of it, but not everyone does.

I actually said this on patch day in game to someone, but it would be a lot less frustrating if skills unlocked automatically when level caps were increased but you put more cost into individual abilities which you still need to pay for to learn. As in, I don't need you to teach me how to swing a sword better, practice teaches me that... I need you to teach me this more powerful version of a specific sword attack for money still, though.

[Oxlazr]

This is pretty much how I feel. I want to log in but every time I do I see those costs and it isn't worth the few hundred hour grind that I know is coming just to unlock 3 or 4 combat skills and 4 or 5 tradeskills ( and then grind more to level them). On top of that since transmutation and augmentation are almost 100% required I will need a different money source then dropped equipment since I'll be decomping that stuff for a long time.

The points I keep repeating about combat are sort of related to this, since if combat was satisfying I wouldn't care about the grind 1/2 as much ( but it would still be imo excessive).

To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it. I am decently high up the tree in most tradeskills atm but I'm not about to spend 10 8hour days farming materials to last me through the next few months, I'd MUCH rather be fighting shit. This of course doesn't apply to everyone, some people enjoy it and I wish them well of it, but not everyone does.

I actually said this on patch day in game to someone, but it would be a lot less frustrating if skills unlocked automatically when level caps were increased but you put more cost into individual abilities which you still need to pay for to learn. As in, I don't need you to teach me how to swing a sword better, practice teaches me that... I need you to teach me this more powerful version of a specific sword attack for money still, though.

I gotta agree with this on the whole as well. I'm really not into the crafting side of things - I don't mind paying others for things like food, but work orders have 0 appeal for me.

I just flashback a few years ago where I did the stuff I enjoyed and passed materials to others. Augmentation was sort of the tipping point for me - it came off as an essential crafting skill that was not only tedious to level (insofar as you had to go find older items to level it up), it was also very expensive.

Similarly, I could never really figure out why you'd need a hoard of councils to unlock animal abilities. I'm all for having to actually play the game to unlock things - but having to play the economy isn't the sort of experience I'm after.

Coupled with experience & effort essentially being nullified if your cap isn't appropriately raised, you're essentially looking to grind money *ahead* of time for everything you're trying to do. It's way too hard to just log on the game, murder some stuff, and look for some rare items (even rarity has gone to heck lately).

There's a lot to break down, and naturally I and many others all likely have their own (conflicting) ideas and opinions, but what it comes down to for me is pretty simple - I log on the game and there's just a huge barrier to do.. anything. The game isn't as flexible as it used to be.

[Leodane]

It's nice to know I'm not alone. Seeing the amount of cash required to be put into a single skill to unlock it is daunting. I've kinda resigned myself to capping at 70 for now, and have taken to leveling skills for fun, looking for interesting combos. At this point, ment, bard, ice, druid, psych, and necro are at 70, and fire, spider, and BC are over 50...I know I could have taken all those councils and just picked two of those skills to get to 80, but I think it has something to do with the psychology of investment and reward. Taking 50 hours worth of farmed councils and spreading it over 200 hours worth of advancement of 9 skills to 70 has given me a steady drip of achievement. Taking 50 hours of councils and sinking it into raising 2 skills from 70 to 80 (no idea, but lets say 15-20 hours of play) just doesn't appeal. It feels too much like work, and not enough like fun.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying collecting skills, rather than maxing them - I feel like I'm learning a ton about the interplay between skills. I just hope that we'll continue to develop fun things to do that are level-independent, rather than put the lion's share of development focus on the "end-game" (whatever that means.) Obviously, the game needs to be finished, and the unfinished part is upper level content...just don't forget about us folks who only play 10 hours a week and love the world which has been built =)

[Tagamogi]

I love crafting and I enjoy work orders, but I kind of feel I've done enough of them for the time being. I like using work orders to slowly level crafting skills but I'm much, much less excited about just grinding out a bunch of orders for maxed skills to make money.

This reminded me of a somewhat different topic: I'm not really a fan of the new crafting xp penalty. To me, it actually encourages grinding more than the old system since there is now a clear best path to leveling: Grind out lower recipes with easier mats until you get an xp penalty for them, and only then touch the shiny new recipes that you actually want to make. The old system was much more flexible since you didn't lose any xp when making recipes in a different order.

This may be a matter of personal playstyle, but largely I feel I have not been xp grinding on any crafting skills previously - I've just been making what I want and slowly leveling, and stopping lower level recipes when I thought they were no longer worthwile. My threshold for stopping lower level recipes is probably 20 levels or so, so bigger than the new xp penalty. For leatherworking, I will do lower recipes when I need money but don't really enjoy it because it's boring; for other skills, I don't find the hassle of gathering materials worth the councils and xp reward of doing a lower level work order.

The skills I did do some grinding for:
- Alchemy. I was 45ish when the new battle chemistry requirements were announced, so I made a bunch of some kind of potion to get to 50. For my 2 alts, however, I've been leveling up alchemy slowly with mushroom suspensions that I need anyway, and I'm maxed on one and one level away on the other. I don't think the xp penalty would make a difference for me there since I'd be doing the suspensions regardless, and mushroom farming and cheesemaking need so many suspenions I could still easily use them to level alchemy.

- Cooking. This one probably remains my least favorite crafting skill. It takes a lot of xp to level and I always want cool food that matches my combat skill levels long, long before my cooking skill catches up. It's definitely gotten better with more recipes and higher drop chances for Muntok peppercorns, but it still feels to me it takes forever to get to the next level, and many levels to actually be useful.The new xp penalty will affect me a little bit here, but I've mostly not been doing lower level recipes anyway because they give so little xp compared to what I need.

- Meditation. My grand strategy there is afk'ing with a pile of mushrooms until I hear the level ding. It's likewise not a skill I like much - it feels it's not something you could level naturally by doing meditations for unarmed since you are going to gain unarmed xp much faster than meditation xp if you only meditate when you need to. The main reason I've been bothering with meditation is that I need x levels in it for my battle chemistry haste concoction (and yes, I know there are resistance meditations, but again it's a grind to get to level x, rather than wanting to do the meditation at the level I'm currently at). Anyway, the xp penalty likewise doesn't affect my grinding here much - if the choice is getting less xp for a mushroom vs growing an expensive flower, I'll always pick the mushroom, probably right to the point where the mushroom gives zero xp.

So, I don't think the xp penalty is a big deal but I feel it doesn't really add anything to the game for me besides a sudden need to grind lower level recipes before I outlevel them.

Actually - if the purpose of the xp penalty is to discourage grinding, how about having an xp penalty for how many times you completed an item, rather than having the penalty be level-based? Afer the 200th time of making a recipe, it kind of makes sense you'd no longer get xp from it, regardless of your level...

My idea would introduce a problem if the level cap is raised since capped crafters could have been making the highest recipes they could for a while and then cannot gain xp from them if the cap changes.

[Ranperre]

So I didn't play EQ or AC, I spent 500+ days in FFXI. How does the actual leveling experience compare to those games? Because leveling in PG is easy, super easy, with a decent profit. I leveled two class combinations 70-80 grinding astounding skins. I got 1000 or so astounding skins through each iteration. This represents a 200-250k profit at a minimum and should pay for each of your ability unlocks. Frankly, the fact that you can make a significant amount of money while leveling is amazing.

If you don't enjoy any money making activities in this game (work orders, doing surveys, skin farming), and you don't really enjoy combat grinding (GK or elites in fae), I'm not sure what to tell you. All of these activities can make 30-60k/hr or more, consistently. Uncapping skinning from 60 to 80 is a big deal. Furthermore, I do not believe that a 10 hour money grind per unlock is unreasonable, with the money and jelly for specific abilities being made during the leveling process as noted above. The complaint that money making isn't scaling with unlock costs is valid. Unlocks will cost us 1-2mil at 90 and 3-4mil at 100 and I do agree that a 100 hour grind for uncap to 100 is unreasonable.

[Daguin]

Ramblings on new zone (Fae Realm):

Unlocks are expensive... Everyone has obviously noticed this and a lot of people seem to be raging. I was a little shocked at first too, but I have been able to unlock my two main combat skills (and some accessory stuff like flower arrangement, gardening, cooking, cheese). I didn't have a million councils saved up when the update hit, but I know how to make consistent money IG (work orders, skins, loot runs). It takes grinding like almost any MMORPG and this can all be done solo so I don't feel like it is too much trouble. People seem to be complaining because they can't get everything at once, but these players also complain about "not having mats", "not having time", "not having crafting skills", etc. and that seems to be the wrong way to look at the game as a whole. It's like saying, "Well this is what I like so I will just do this one thing until I hit a wall then complain that the game doesn't let me do this one thing easily anymore". The last update was the TOP TIER content in the game, and it is starting to force us to choose what we actually want/need and specialize in certain areas. There will always be jack-of-all-trade players, but it will get increasingly harder to do so at max levels. If you have reached lvl 80 without accessory skills, mats, or whatever then you have just skipped a lot of content in game. It really is about the journey sometimes! Go back, revisit stuff, and if you don't enjoy the process then you might be burnt out by rushing through. There is A LOT to do in the game so it's easy to get overwhelmed, and tunneling down on small goals is pretty rewarding in itself.

Mobs are hard... But the regular trash mobs seem perfect difficulty (bears, bees, wasps, carnivines/spriggans, pixies, rhinos, etc.) and I like how it gets harder as you go South so there is some kind of progression to the zone. The night/day spawns are really fun and really frustrating when you are trying to farm or completing quests and the mobs you need won't be back for a while. This causes groups to hang around a lot, but generally isn't a huge issue. The outworld bosses are cool (but they have strange immunity), and I like the daily/hourly quests that entice people to actually be in the zone and do things together. The Lethargy Puck should probably have rage tuned down so it doesn't curse passing travelers, but that is also hilarious, so..... Sometimes the damage dealt does seem to fluctuate wildly, when we can duo a couple elites and one of the same mob will then splat us in seconds even with mitigation (noticed this with Pheonixes and Droaches mostly).

Jelly is plentiful once you do a couple barters/quests, and I like the honey comb functionality as is. It really forces you to team up and utilize some advanced tactics to take down the harder spawns while the easier ones seem just right.

Final thought... Why do you hate Fire Magic users so much?

[Coglin]

. To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it.

So because you are either too lazy or too unwilling to utilize the tools available to you to earn a greater I come, you demand they lower the bar to meet your needs.

I feel the more Intelligent solution is to expect you to step up and put in the effort to earn the current designated amount rather then lower the bar to the level that meets your refusal to earn

[Oxlazr]

So because you are either too lazy or too unwilling to utilize the tools available to you to earn a greater I come, you demand they lower the bar to meet your needs.

I feel the more Intelligent solution is to expect you to step up and put in the effort to earn the current designated amount rather then lower the bar to the level that meets your refusal to earn

It's a game, not a job.

I want to enjoy the game, but I'm not looking to spend hours crafting to that end. Playing the game is optional >_>; if the means don't justify the ends people are just gonna do something else.

[Tagamogi]

It's a game, not a job.

I want to enjoy the game, but I'm not looking to spend hours crafting to that end. Playing the game is optional >_>; if the means don't justify the ends people are just gonna do something else.

Yes, that, thank you, Oxlazr.



I'm much more picky these days about what I consider enjoyable and what motivation I need in order to want to engage in less enjoyable game play. It's entirely possible that 99% of the player base disagrees with me on what constitutes enjoyable game play - all I can do is provide feedback on what I like and don't like, and why.

( And just to be clear, this is not intended as a "make the game exactly as I want or I'll quit" message - there are many, many things I love about PG and that I enjoy doing in it. As long as I can reasonably avoid the things I consider less fun, I'm fine, and I'm not in any danger of running out of stuff I'd like to try yet. )

[Coglin]

That's all fine and dandy, and my point is exactly that if you don't enjoy it it is probably wise for you to go play something else instead of suggesting changes that destroy it for the rest of us.

If you don't enjoy any money making activities in this game (work orders, doing surveys, skin farming), and you don't really enjoy combat grinding (GK or elites in fae), I'm not sure what to tell you.

Completely agree with you here Ranperre