Dev Blog: How Will the Upcoming Steam Integration Work?

[Madmatx]

All throughout alpha, we've been putting our trust into Citan and the PG team to make good on the promise of not wiping our skills. As alpha players, we made a deal with you guys to test the game and report bugs in exchange for keeping our hard-earned skills.

I'm pretty sure the EULA never guaranteed keeping every skill. In fact, it says that they might need to patch or reset things for game balance.
There might be major updates to some skills that warrant a reset. Or there might be a crafting skill that is proven to unbalance the early economy at higher levels.

That said, I seriously doubt they plan to reset 49% of all skills and are being deceptive just to fool people into playing the game for free during Alpha.

[Corinthia]

Wow. Just had to chime in.

I've been playing PG off and on since 2015. The dev team has always been very upfront and respectful of us player testers. They have always been very clear they could not guarantee something wouldn't be nerfed or reset if that were needed to make the best game possible.

Over this time, I have found it a joy to play daily for a few months, then take a break. When I return a couple of updates later, I wipe my old characters and start the experience fresh just to get a feel for the changes "from the ground up."

I'm afraid I'm not being as helpful as those consistent veteran players who can jump right on the changes with immediate feedback, but I hope my ever-fresh eyes can contribute a little.

I really believe PG has the most engaging MMO game design being developed right now, and, for my part, I think it would be a shame to settle for anything less than the best version of what it can be.

[Karamasha]

Wow. Just had to chime in.

I've been playing PG off and on since 2015. The dev team has always been very upfront and respectful of us player testers. They have always been very clear they could not guarantee something wouldn't be nerfed or reset if that were needed to make the best game possible.

Over this time, I have found it a joy to play daily for a few months, then take a break. When I return a couple of updates later, I wipe my old characters and start the experience fresh just to get a feel for the changes "from the ground up."

I'm afraid I'm not being as helpful as those consistent veteran players who can jump right on the changes with immediate feedback, but I hope my ever-fresh eyes can contribute a little.

I really believe PG has the most engaging MMO game design being developed right now, and, for my part, I think it would be a shame to settle for anything less than the best version of what it can be.

Yeah it's kinda obvious the game is in a way too early state to promise the keeping of most skills.
I just wish they delay the VIP until they have a skill system they're satisfied with.
I don't want the VIP time to tick during a test version of the game.

[Silvonis]

This is very vague and what is written here worries me.

Statistically (and in this case), "most" only means more than 50%, that is, if 49% of skills are wiped at launch, then technically, "most" skills were not wiped.

That when juxtaposed with the last sentence, which essentially says, "We actually can't guarantee you anything", makes this follow-up come across as overtly ominous.

All throughout alpha, we've been putting our trust into Citan and the PG team to make good on the promise of not wiping our skills. As alpha players, we made a deal with you guys to test the game and report bugs in exchange for keeping our hard-earned skills.

As they say, if something is free, then you are the commodity. Under this arrangement then, "testing for skills", I am okay with being the commodity. However if things suddenly changed to, "testing for free", well then I would simply feel just plain taken advantage of.

No doubt, my PG experience has been great fun, but it's also been a lot of hard work. If I knew skills were going to be wiped at launch, I certainly never would have kept playing past just maxing my first combat skills, let alone running around Eltibule farming stomachs for 3 straight weeks just to max a single skill, cheesemaking.

That said, aside from this issue, the PG team has been wonderful to work with. I was truly amazed when Srand replied to one of my bug reports on Christmas Eve. This impressed me so much actually, that I went to the forums and purchased a crowdfunding package as a result.

I truly hope that I am just reading into your follow-up to Citan's post more than was intended. I would love to continue playing PG for years to come, but if a significant portion of my skill levels are reset at launch, I will likely quit forever.

The statement I shared has always been the official stance. It's in the FAQ and the Testers Guide. Please don't read into something that's not plainly stated. What is plainly stated is that we currently have no plans to remove skills and that won't change unless absolutely necessary.

[Khaylara]

Just detailing Silvonis's statement from a player's point of view. Even untill now some skillsets were completely revamped and obviously the mods went through radical changes as well (equivalent to a gear wipe). As quick examples- augmentation was completely redone at some point, some combat skills are almost un-recognizable (like lycan, the changes made to it were mostly based on players's feedback), our gear was wiped/legacied a few times. Note that the NPC that exchanges legacy gear now was only added about a year and a half ago and we didn't have that option. And it didn't prevent us from playing, at least I didn't consider it being terribly disruptive.
What they are saying is that they reserve the right to revamp skillsets completely if they need to do that in order to balance the game. Which I think it's a fair call and not something to worry about. My only suggestion to developers on this matter is to announce the changes (especially after the game goes b2play). As much as we like surprises, being stuck with a ton of useless augmentation oils or with a perfectly naked lycan character was a bit upsetting if not gamebreaking^^With proper notice I really don't think this should be a worry for the players

[Celler]

Perhaps I'm mistaken but this appears to be the first time I've noticed you are wiping NPC favor(silvonis post). Like many I have many npc 's to soulmates this will be a great loss, it will also remove most of the storages around the gameworld.
What your actually saying is everything will go except the skills and recipes that are currently learnt, we will have to re favor up all the npc's just to get any remaining skills/recipes. This gives someone who has everything from a none shopkeeper type npc a large advantage over someone that in theory has to spend masses of materials to learn the last few things.
Or do I misunderstand and will all recipes etc be lost when favor reverts to 0.

[Tagamogi]

The favor wipe was mentioned as "probable" by Citan a couple months or so ago, likely in one of our periodic wipe anxiety threads. I'm too lazy to search for it right now, sorry. Before that, I hadn't seen any information on it one way or the other.

The favor wipe sounds pretty reasonable to me as part of the economic balancing. And yes, players that do not have to level up a trainer NPC will have an advantage, but I don't think that's nearly as big as letting everyone keep their soulmates storage and bought bank slots. I expect most players will eventually work on getting back to soulmates again anyway, necessary or not. Also, there's the new year's gift celebration as incentive to level to at least Like Family.

[Madmatx]

It may have been posted before but this was from a month ago:

[First, a reminder that the item-reset happens when we leave steam early access, and that's a year away. (And that's being kind of optimistic.) So I wouldn't worry too much about it personally.]

Yes, NPC favor levels will be reset. The biggest reason we're doing the item-reset is to reduce inflation and give the game's economy a little bit of breathing room. Because favor gives you so much added money-making power, I think letting you keep your favor will undermine the point too much.

On the other hand, your favor-quests will also be reset, and with higher level it's likely that you'll be able to breeze through a lot of the favors to easily get the first few favor levels. So you'll still have a very significant advantage. But hopefully not "potatoes are trading at 1k apiece in the first week" levels of bad.

https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...ull=1#post7799

[Citan]

Silvonis was reminding people that the game will change during beta. This will be a working beta, not a PR beta. Lots of big games these days use the word "beta" to mean "free play time," and you can expect very few changes during those betas. But we will be working very hard on the game design so a lot of things will change.

We do sometimes need to dramatically redesign skills, and basically reset them as a consequence. That's only happened a couple times during the game's long development time, so I expect it'd only happen once or twice during beta. But I don't know for sure. That's not even related to the "partial wipe". That's just something that might happen as we work on balance.

Much more likely than actually "wiping" a skill is changing it to the point where it's unrecognizable. I've talked about changing Battle Chemistry very dramatically by breaking it into two skills, and that still may happen. So what you currently call Battle Chemistry may not be the parts of the skill you love; they may be moved to a new skill. And if that happens, you'd need to level up that new skill to get it back. Other skills may get reworked in similar fashion.

And I can pretty much guarantee that your favorite abilities will change their stats, gear mods will be revamped multiple times, monsters' relative power will go up and down as we try to bring this very complex game into a basic sort of balance. (It'll never be perfectly balanced, as that would be impossible and also super boring. But it will be a lot more balanced than it is now.)

---

Let me put it another way. If, during beta, we realize something needs to be changed, we will NEVER say, "no, we can't make that change -- it's beta! Too late! The players' current characters would be impacted too much!" No. It's beta, meaning that it's the perfect time to make critical changes. So please expect them.

Also expect that we'll do our best, given the circumstances of each individual change, to lessen the impact of those changes. For instance, when skills have changed really dramatically in the past, we've given players free gear transmutations for a week to help get them back into fighting form. Or when an item is changed too heavily for the auto-updater to automatically rebuild the item, it becomes "legacy gear", which means it keeps working in its now-imbalanced state for 30 days to give you time to find a replacement. That sort of thing isn't always practical or called for, but we'll do what we can to keep beta players happy and engaged.

But yeah, changes. Tons of changes. Often uncomfortable nerfs. That's to be expected during beta. And if you don't want to deal with that, and want to wait until the game launches, that's entirely understandable.

[Karamasha]

Silvonis was reminding people that the game will change during beta. This will be a working beta, not a PR beta. Lots of big games these days use the word "beta" to mean "free play time," and you can expect very few changes during those betas. But we will be working very hard on the game design so a lot of things will change.

We do sometimes need to dramatically redesign skills, and basically reset them as a consequence. That's only happened a couple times during the game's long development time, so I expect it'd only happen once or twice during beta. But I don't know for sure. That's not even related to the "partial wipe". That's just something that might happen as we work on balance.

Much more likely than actually "wiping" a skill is changing it to the point where it's unrecognizable. I've talked about changing Battle Chemistry very dramatically by breaking it into two skills, and that still may happen. So what you currently call Battle Chemistry may not be the parts of the skill you love; they may be moved to a new skill. And if that happens, you'd need to level up that new skill to get it back. Other skills may get reworked in similar fashion.

And I can pretty much guarantee that your favorite abilities will change their stats, gear mods will be revamped multiple times, monsters' relative power will go up and down as we try to bring this very complex game into a basic sort of balance. (It'll never be perfectly balanced, as that would be impossible and also super boring. But it will be a lot more balanced than it is now.)

---

Let me put it another way. If, during beta, we realize something needs to be changed, we will NEVER say, "no, we can't make that change -- it's beta! Too late! The players' current characters would be impacted too much!" No. It's beta, meaning that it's the perfect time to make critical changes. So please expect them.

Also expect that we'll do our best, given the circumstances of each individual change, to lessen the impact of those changes. For instance, when skills have changed really dramatically in the past, we've given players free gear transmutations for a week to help get them back into fighting form. Or when an item is changed too heavily for the auto-updater to automatically rebuild the item, it becomes "legacy gear", which means it keeps working in its now-imbalanced state for 30 days to give you time to find a replacement. That sort of thing isn't always practical or called for, but we'll do what we can to keep beta players happy and engaged.

But yeah, changes. Tons of changes. Often uncomfortable nerfs. That's to be expected during beta. And if you don't want to deal with that, and want to wait until the game launches, that's entirely understandable.

Thanks for making these things more clear, keep up the amazing work!