Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Announcements of major changes to Salem.

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby lachlaan » Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:37 pm

Oh and since we're on the note of the purity patch, myself and some friends wanted to know wether you'd be modifying food recipes to match the difficulty of getting their respective materials. More specifically, since bears got buffed will bear-oriented stuff stop sucking? :D Because, as my friend put it, "more of the same crappy meat is still crappy meat". Would like to see bluebeary and windy pooh be viable perhaps, and would like to see daring beginners tackle bears sooner for the exciting meat they could carve out of its corpse, rather than opt for purer domestic turkeys for YB gain and better pots for BB gain. Of course since the paradigm is changing, that all might not matter soon enough, but it'd be nice to see bear food match the difficulty of killing one :)
Exactly 6.022 x 10^23 worth of Lach molecules.
lachlaan
Customer
 
Posts: 2043
Joined: Tue Mar 12, 2013 3:11 pm

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby nonsonogiucas » Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:59 pm

Kandarim wrote:NO


I'm sorry, English is not my mother tongue, does that mean you feel strongly opposed to the idea?

¦]
I was lucky...
User avatar
nonsonogiucas
 
Posts: 203
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 3:57 pm
Location: Rome, Italy

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby Bearcub » Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:22 pm

lachlaan wrote:Oh and since we're on the note of the purity patch, myself and some friends wanted to know wether you'd be modifying food recipes to match the difficulty of getting their respective materials. More specifically, since bears got buffed will bear-oriented stuff stop sucking? :D Because, as my friend put it, "more of the same crappy meat is still crappy meat". Would like to see bluebeary and windy pooh be viable perhaps, and would like to see daring beginners tackle bears sooner for the exciting meat they could carve out of its corpse, rather than opt for purer domestic turkeys for YB gain and better pots for BB gain. Of course since the paradigm is changing, that all might not matter soon enough, but it'd be nice to see bear food match the difficulty of killing one :)


Strongly agree about bears. The main problem- it won't be in time, as everybody who wanted to use those yb-turkeys already used :lol:
But for the rest of the people it'd be reasonable to hunt not just for a skin/claw/paw
Trade is the first step to the diplomacy.
Diplomacy is a tool for unification.
Then be honest with your customers to make new bonds!
User avatar
Bearcub
 
Posts: 408
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:22 am
Location: Dalian, China

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby Kandarim » Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:57 pm

nonsonogiucas wrote:
Kandarim wrote:NO


I'm sorry, English is not my mother tongue, does that mean you feel strongly opposed to the idea?

¦]


figured i needed to send a strong signal. Artificially and directly restricting the number of professions a character can be effective in is an asinine stopgap to cover up larger design flaws. I would much rather see it move in the direction we are currently going in: a character can only practically master a number of crafts (due to inspiration limits), but with enough perseverance (aka potions) you can master all of them if you want (which I typically do want).
I have neither the crayons nor the time to explain it to you.
JC wrote:I'm not fully committed to being wrong on that yet.
User avatar
Kandarim
Customer
 
Posts: 5321
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:18 pm

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby nonsonogiucas » Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:41 pm

Kandarim wrote:Artificially and directly restricting the number of professions a character can be effective in is an asinine stopgap to cover up larger design flaws
...
...master all of them if you want (which I typically do want).


I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound polemic, but you are saying that a soft cap is bad because it doesn't let you do what you want... but it's not true...

Consider that the tendency at this point in time seems to be that in order to isolate a profession (a part from the introduction of new skills) the skills required to master it get spread over a much larger prof range. I argue that this has the potential (I'm exaggerating a bit) to degenerate in large numbers of mediocre jack-of-all-trades getting very fast all the "simple" skills while the few motivated will take the time to master many if not all of them.
As I see it, the result is not much interdependence and trade in the end...

My idea was to actually give the bonus of a faster skill progression to someone that wants to specialize in as fewer roles as possible.
In practice, if you specialize, the skills are spread over a shorter prof points range, if you want to master everything the prof range will get gradually higher.
I think that this has a higher potential of motivating large numbers to players to start as highly specialized and interdependent characters while not restraining the few who want from mastering everything.
It would be easily made so that the total amount of proficiency points required to master all professions in this system would in the end be the same as the one from the other, for one like you only the path would change, not the goal.
I was lucky...
User avatar
nonsonogiucas
 
Posts: 203
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 3:57 pm
Location: Rome, Italy

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby Kandarim » Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:01 pm

i must admit - I hadn't read the part about it being a soft cap.

I still think such an artificial limitation makes no sense whatsoever; the benefit to people specialising vs jack of all trades is simply that they will be able to reach the end of their "tree" faster than the others. I wasn't even talking about it being practical to master all trades, just it being possible - that could easily be done through high enough proficiency requirements.
I have neither the crayons nor the time to explain it to you.
JC wrote:I'm not fully committed to being wrong on that yet.
User avatar
Kandarim
Customer
 
Posts: 5321
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 4:18 pm

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby Feone » Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:09 pm

nonsonogiucas wrote:
Kandarim wrote:Artificially and directly restricting the number of professions a character can be effective in is an asinine stopgap to cover up larger design flaws
...
...master all of them if you want (which I typically do want).


I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound polemic, but you are saying that a soft cap is bad because it doesn't let you do what you want... but it's not true...

Consider that the tendency at this point in time seems to be that in order to isolate a profession (a part from the introduction of new skills) the skills required to master it get spread over a much larger prof range. I argue that this has the potential (I'm exaggerating a bit) to degenerate in large numbers of mediocre jack-of-all-trades getting very fast all the "simple" skills while the few motivated will take the time to master many if not all of them.
As I see it, the result is not much interdependence and trade in the end...

My idea was to actually give the bonus of a faster skill progression to someone that wants to specialize in as fewer roles as possible.
In practice, if you specialize, the skills are spread over a shorter prof points range, if you want to master everything the prof range will get gradually higher.
I think that this has a higher potential of motivating large numbers to players to start as highly specialized and interdependent characters while not restraining the few who want from mastering everything.
It would be easily made so that the total amount of proficiency points required to master all professions in this system would in the end be the same as the one from the other, for one like you only the path would change, not the goal.


I don't think it's neccesary to add limitations or hurdles to mastering all trades.
Every single character is vulnerable to death. Mastering everything on one is a bad move simply because it puts all of your eggs in one basket. All it takes is one death to rob you of all the hard earned professions. On top of that the increased time spent on said character proportionally increases the risk of this death occuring.

It makes sense to specialize characters. Both for hermits and teams alike. That alone should be sufficient to make professions attractive.
Feone
 
Posts: 810
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2013 8:38 pm

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby ImpalerWrG » Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:24 am

Just using a bunch of optimized/specialized alts isn't the same as 'Professions', sure it's tactically smarter but it has no charm and it forces everyone to play in a specific way and not everyone wants to have a bunch of alts. I personally find it immersion breaking and time consuming to switch between them, and as I like the sense of danger and risk this game provides and I don't want to reduce that by using alt-insurance.

I think that what we want in Professions is for the PLAYER to think of themselves as a particular profession, "I am a Farmer" or "I am a Carpenter" or "I am a Gunsmith" and you do that by making the internal mechanical complexity of each crafting system very high and very unique. Look at the difference between the Farming system and the Artifice/Clothing system one is slow and predictable, the other fast but risky and they have nothing in common. Systems that feel very different are going to be more or less attractive to different personality types and people will gravitate to what they like to do and are good at doing. Most people will simply not have the attention span or brains to master all the different system regardless of the number of alts being used because the profession is in the PLAYER first and the character secondarily. If your some kind of genius or no-lifer and can master all of the crafting systems, then more power too you I have no problem with you literally being Leonardo da Vinci either on a single character or in totality of 20+ alts.

Imagine a conventional class based MMO like WoW, each character has a rigidly defined rule and ridged game mechanics that optimize them for that role. But at the high levels of play a player has to be an expert in how to use their character and how to support their raid group, even in the absence of the classes a typical player would still be an expert at a very specific role because of the knowledge required. Even in MOBA games like LoL you see players at the highest level of competition being VERY specialized in their role because of the skill focus needed and the match between the role and the players personality.

Now in order to get to the point I'm describing would require each crafting system to be at least as complex (and probably more so) then the Farming system which is currently the most complex. None of this 'ingredients in your inventory and hit button stuff', that's good for foraged Curios but not REAL crafting worth of being called a "Profession". But at the same time you need to have these crafting system be easy to get onto, a players can start with very little knowledge about how to craft and they should get low end product when ignoring most of the higher variables. Then as your knowledge and care increase you get better results, character and infrastructure improvement are going to be involved but to the maximum degree possible player skill should be what unlocks the highest value products.

Now with regard to soft-capping, if we wanted to do this then the simplest way to do it would be to just switch the caping methods used in Gluttony and Proficiency systems. Currently your highest Humor determines the cost to raise any Humor, but Proficiencies all advance separately. If the highest Proficiency determined the cost to raise all of them then their would be a big incentive to just focus on a few core ones and ignore others. A jack-of-all would still be possible but would be a real pain and would advance a lot slower. Gluttony might even be improved, I've never heard of anyone who ever advances their humors unevenly, when the lowest humor KO's you that is all the incentive we need to spread the points around without the additional penalty imposed on raising other humors.
User avatar
ImpalerWrG
 
Posts: 293
Joined: Mon Dec 10, 2012 11:42 pm

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby JohnCarver » Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:36 am

lachlaan wrote:Oh and since we're on the note of the purity patch, myself and some friends wanted to know wether you'd be modifying food recipes to match the difficulty of getting their respective materials. More specifically, since bears got buffed will bear-oriented stuff stop sucking? :D Because, as my friend put it, "more of the same crappy meat is still crappy meat". Would like to see bluebeary and windy pooh be viable perhaps, and would like to see daring beginners tackle bears sooner for the exciting meat they could carve out of its corpse, rather than opt for purer domestic turkeys for YB gain and better pots for BB gain. Of course since the paradigm is changing, that all might not matter soon enough, but it'd be nice to see bear food match the difficulty of killing one :)


Every single food recipe is being rebalanced with the purity patch. Bear will have a higher coefficient bonus to blood than another animals bonus to its respective humor. We obviously wont get it perfectly balanced on our first go. Just like we are still tweaking some combat moves. But I can confidently say i consider the efforts a massive step in the right direction.
ceedat wrote:the overwhelming frustration of these forums and the unnecessarily over complicated game mechanics is what i enjoy about this game most.

Nsuidara wrote:it is a strange and difficult game in no positive way
User avatar
JohnCarver
Site Admin
 
Posts: 6826
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2014 3:02 am

Re: Let's Get Ready to RUMBLE!

Postby DarkNacht » Sat Aug 30, 2014 6:08 am

ImpalerWrG wrote:Now with regard to soft-capping, if we wanted to do this then the simplest way to do it would be to just switch the caping methods used in Gluttony and Proficiency systems. Currently your highest Humor determines the cost to raise any Humor, but Proficiencies all advance separately. If the highest Proficiency determined the cost to raise all of them then their would be a big incentive to just focus on a few core ones and ignore others. A jack-of-all would still be possible but would be a real pain and would advance a lot slower. Gluttony might even be improved, I've never heard of anyone who ever advances their humors unevenly, when the lowest humor KO's you that is all the incentive we need to spread the points around without the additional penalty imposed on raising other humors.

Having the prof's cost linked to the highest would discourage specialization not encourage it, just like it currently does with humours. Yeah some people would ignore a few they saw as unnecessary but most people would probably keep most skills close just in case they ever needed them, and even if you did narrowly specialize this would force you to focus on keep all the profs you may ever need very close, which would be a huge pain for anyone with a specialization that has one primary prof and several secondary ones, such as every specialization.
DarkNacht
 
Posts: 2684
Joined: Thu May 02, 2013 11:24 am

PreviousNext

Return to Announcements

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests