Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Forum for suggesting changes to Salem.

Should Gluttony be Evaluated?

Stahp It! Leave it alone, its fine and its only a VOCAL minority who don't like it.
20
19%
Too much change is bad. Keep tweaking it and hopefully one day we hit a good place. The core system is fine.
42
40%
Make major changes to the existing system, like removing restores. Find new ways to force variety without removing the whole thing.
13
12%
Remove the whole thing and spend your time on making Cravings the new system.
17
16%
Remove the whole thing and go with the Inspirational Idea. A simple reason to make all the stuff, without making everything so dang complicated.
13
12%
 
Total votes : 105

Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby JohnCarver » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:08 pm

I spent a fair amount of time side-tracked again based on recent discussions to run over the balance of all the food items in Gluttony. The end result, of course, is that some foods became 'buffed' to compete with the incentive to spam Bajgiels etc. etc.

I personally do not 'mind' the Gluttony system. I do not love it, but it does feel 'right' that I have an incentive to make different foods on different situations and I consider it 1000% better than the original system of "Just eat 10,000 Pumpkins". That being said, I've found that different players seem to hate it for different reasons, and the overall consensus just seems to be that it is no good. So as with the current trend of things I'm curious on a set of options that have been suggested by players in the top tiers of play.

Just let me spam thousands of the same food over and over without having to deal with the plethora of stupid recipes.
This is the only option I am not considering to be honest. If the recipes are stupid because they are too hard to make, then I am certainly open to changing those recipes. However, the idea that players want to make, and eat, one thing in Salem thus eliminating any point to adding new foodgroups, foods, recipes and crafting content is just not on the table. I like making new things, and I like the theoretical incentive of each new thing making the game more dynamic. Things that boil down to 'let me spam the same thing over and over are just going to be ignored.

Just copy the Inspirational System
I find it odd that players complain about the wealth of 'options' in the food space but nobody complains about the 'addition' of new hard to make inspirationals. "Spamming" the same inspirational has penalties, spamming the same food had penalties. I'm not sure how to reflect on that. I recently found myself spamming some inspirationals too many times out of lazyness, and will be adjusting that so its more punitive. But it was suggested to me that this was an extremely, simple, intuitive, and clean way to take gluttony. Gut the entire system, and simply make the F&F buff exaggerate based on how many times you gluttony the exact same thing. No food groups, no restores, no penalties, no variable ingredients. I hate the idea that all the work that went into that system would be removed, but a part of me does wonder if it should die, and in this way.

Just remove Gluttony Altogether
There are then players who say Cravings are now just 'better'. Concord was an experiment on how balanced growth would be without an emphasis on gluttony and its fairly conclusive that the game is far more balanced with ONLY cravings. There are players in the top 10% humours on Concord who have largely ignored the Gluttony system. This would come with two things. #1 Cravings would then have to get expanded on as the primary and 'only' way of advancement. Would feasting sets do things similar to wine? Would tables and the number of people eating at them raise the biles of everybody else at the table so you sync your cravings? Would we have to add 'spices' to our foods to make them more potent when craving or make the subsequent craving come sooner. That system has a lot going for it, but it was never designed to be the primary system.

Keep the system and remove restores
Restores are a key problem. Not everything in Salem must have a 'counter' way to get around it. If restores are removed then all food groups immediately become relevant for long sessions. Some argue the simplest solution is to just abandon restores and view the landscape.

Keep at it, you'll get it eventually
Is there a non-vocal majority who is satisfied with the system? Now would be the time to either post here or PM. Because some players certainly love the 'gluttony game'. But those players seem few and far between and most players who did like the idea of it seem to have become disenfranchised when all their work into learning how to make complex sessions got over-run by the players who learned ways to get similar effects with spamming.

I did not honestly have Gluttony on the road map for this year but I do plan to make some sweeping changes in the systems I don't love. Combat and Witch Craft were more frustrating to me, but since Gluttony keep rearing its ugly head in all corners of the forum I'm open to adding it and prioritizing it. I'm just a bit sad with so much time spent on a system that may(?) be a sinking ship? Also one final note. Should this get reworked the 'balance' of providence will be out of shift. What will NOT happen is players being left and unachievable powers. What will also not happen is a complete 'lack' of respect for the progress made under old systems due to mechanic adjustments so I would not consider a full wipe or a hard reset of all players to a specific bile. There is a reason that most of the time I break things I try to add at least a silver lining as a nod to players who are affected. Salvaging the stuff in your mines before I nerfed mines for example. But here, the solution would most likely look like a universal nerf-bat to humors. Impossible to say to what effect. But the idea owuld be that if in the new system it took X hours to get 1000 humours. Then I would make best estimates on how far one would get with X hours into the 'old' system. And adjust all players down by that ratio. 400 blood falls to 100 blood. 2000 blood falls to 500 blood. Etc. etc. so that those characters are still 'OP" but are of course adjusted to within reasonable reach of the 'new' baseline players will have access to. Its not a threat, but it is a warning to be careful what you wish for.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby Methuzelah23 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:16 pm

Ignore the squeaky wheel imo
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby TheDuke86 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:24 pm

Gluttony is fine, just make a bageal version (dosnt have to be a bageals) for every food group. Perhaps make a cabage food that has the same states as spore bageals, but needs all 4 cabbage types. Same for corn potatoes and esc. T4 or 5 food groups be based around top tier crops.

Craving system is cool imo but needs a serious buff. Sadly this is a game about Alts, and for crime and combat mass producing fruits and bageals is the most effective way to amass a crime Army. Maybe make a wine that each sip gives you a craving or if you get the exactly food you crave adds a bonus as you continue to stack them. So first is 1 to all, than 2 to all 3 to all and esc people would have more of an incentive to make all the food options. Which I found fun.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby Lusewing » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:48 pm

What if the food you are craving could buff the same food group when you glutton with it? That might at least encorrage people to try diffrent food groups, maybe the food group gives less F&F?


I mostly think there should be a big review into all the food groups with everything tweaked so that no one group is better then another. People are able to glutton with what they have avalable and the fact that the foodgroups get 'damaged' as the glutton progresses should be its own incentive to have a viriaty.

It also might be intresting to add something like the clothing system, so that the higher teired foods have 'slots' for seasons and side dishes. Sugar and spice could be the same as thread and needle.
Salt and pepper could each lower a foods F&F
A herb for each food group to push its lower values up if paired corectly (so instead of 33-37 it might be 35-37)
Sidedishes would be intresting, and give new life to the lower teired foods. Add homefries or garden veg to a food and have its stats added to the meal on the whole (this would also mean an increase to the F&F) But it wouldn't have a chance of lowering its own food group.

That way some food groups might be better for making side dishes (like the potatos which are really under used) or some for the mains. It might even drive a market from really well prepaired foods.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby lachlaan » Fri Mar 02, 2018 8:54 pm

Jesus these options are kind of scary, especially the threatwarning xD I don't think anyone complained about the system in itself, just the balance of the available options. Would you consider just giving identical options for most restores except for special food groups, and then balancing recipes as well to more similarly match one another based on ingredient spammability/difficulty? If you consider values of a food from an ingredient standpoint you'll get a much more streamlined mix of foods.

Make it so it's more or less apples and apples and oranges vs oranges for each food in its category. Sure you can have some foods meant for noobs as it is now, and other groups that unlock later meant for the 75-150ish range for poor people. But past that point there are few alternatives in terms of spammability, and while they are still viable depending on how lazy you are or what you have available, eventually they get left behind.

One silly idea i had in the past was, what if there was a second food debuff that debuffed restores of a certain food group. So that restores would restore less and less, or so that the cap could never be restored past a certain point that kept going down.

Feasting sets as it is are fun enough, and playing the guessing game with the RNG is nice enough, as often enough you think you have enough food and end up short, or other times overshoot by a lot. The main question is how long would it take to tweak everything until you had a viable system?
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby lachlaan » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:02 pm

Also consider that in the current system the value of time spent crafting is balanced oddly against the value of time spent crafting potential potions.

X time to make enough of food A for one session of 300 points and 3 days timer

Z + Y = X time spent as Z time to set up potion making and facilitate the eating of Y time worth of crafting food B for several sessions totaling 300 points and ending up with 3 days on the timer after consuming potions.

People will eat inefficient things if they're easy to craft and easy to eat restore wise as long as overall they've not wasted more time making bottles and potions.

And the reason people pick spammable and domestic stuff is because it's easy to organize logistics of some things vs walking ages to gather other things. If you had uniquely forageable recipes but buffed how easy it was to obtain said ingredients or how many foods you could make out of it, perhaps it would be more bearable.

10 clovers make 5kg of "chopped clovers", recipes now take a certain weight amount of clovers. Clovers stay not pottable.

Same for some other non farmable ingredients in all recipes, as an alternative to purely farmable ones. If the cost investment is the same you might even sway people to use those due to other foraging gains and just breaking the tedium of farming.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby Taipion » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:14 pm

The one thing I hate most about the current gluttony system is, that having a high feasting set is less relevant the higher you get,
whereas it enables high end players to squeeze out low-mid lvl alts easier.

It (a feasting set) would be most beneficial to a newer player (humur lvl wise) but is (with good stats) only affordable for very advanced players.

I have not spent too much time thinking about something better, well maybe I have, but I did not come to a really refined idea yet. o.o
Anyways, I'd like to see high end gluttony sets being the thing that allows you to (efficiently) progress past 1k,
whereas there could be a different low-mid lvl thing that specifically benefits players (well... chars) at that lvl.


[edit:] some wild idea:
- double the feasting value of all artifices
- softcap bonus points at 100, maybe less, so just as an example if sofcapped at ...80, all points from 81 onwords are RNG based giving 1-4 with lower chance for higher rolls the higher you progress
- the highest humor limits your max gluttony bonus, the higher you are, the less you can gain in total, so ... again only as an example, at 1k highest humor you can only gain 200 points bonus in total ( = full bonus up to 100),
every 100 points more on the highest humor (past 1k) will reduce the max bonus by 10 points, BUT
- new 2nd effect of feasting set: counter this humor based cap, higher feasting set for higher max bonus, so ...again only as an example, a 1k feasting set would reduce the highest-humor-penalty by say... 100 points or 75% or whatever

Again, the numbers are by no means meant to be taken seriously, and only to illustrate how this could work.
The whole thing would need a lot more refined, not only on the actual numbers, and is foremost meant as an inspiration on how things could be changed to benefit both new and old players.
Last edited by Taipion on Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby MaxPlanck » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:15 pm

I noticed you mentioned reworking the spamming of inspirationals to be even more painful within the various explanations of gluttony rework.

I just want to comment about this on how much time I already consume leveling up some of my proficiencies including how many "potions" I have gulped. Oh god the potions that I have to grind to even reach that state of high proficiencies.

So when you talk about punishing studying the same item over again just think what that does to people who HAVE to study the same item over again not because of out of laziness but because even if I DID grab 5 of every single item from that proficiency tree I probably would scrape by just maxing out the bar and at that point I probably saved a bit of time making potions but then I probably in reality wasted more time devising each and every item I need and that many of the items are annoying to make for the stats they provide and I'd hate making various items more then I hate farming materials for making potions.

So if this goes through I will be stuck likely with making **** tons of potions and sitting there running from shed to shed right clicking the multitude of stupid items just to get that sweet +2 points higher and do it all over again to the point I just want to jump off a cliff and end it all in my Salem Career.
Last edited by MaxPlanck on Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby Chrumps » Fri Mar 02, 2018 9:17 pm

Mostly what TheDuke86 said. Give one good food to each of: cabbage, corn, veg, bread, pumpkin foodgroup. Not sure about fish foods. In Potato group Shepherd pie needs only some more love and will be ok (less weight, more points).
Then all these new/boosted foods have to use non-rare ingredients only (read: be spammable), use no more than 5 different ingredients - which are easy to store in mass quantities.
Points per item are important and should not be worse than in the case of bajgiels. F&F time same or proportionally higher if they have more points. Small foodgroup debuff, not worse than 35% with 15% chance. Baking or roasting is ok, boiling is ****.

Add more 5% restores to various foods, to give incentive for mixing stuff, especially for domesticated meats foodgroup and do not ever add any dedicated restores for that group above what is now.
It is better to add 2x5% restore to two different foodgroups than 10% restore to just one.

Remember that people have infrastructure for bajgiels and their habits it will take a while to change.
Implement changes carefully, the system is quite ok but needs a lot of fine tuning.

Also: storage. Sucking factor of several foods is increased by the fact there is no good storage for ingredients like:
- fiddlehead fern, (garden veg and others) - veg bag or another bag
- baby corn (several foods, notably fyne salad) - veg bag or another bag
- bones (sauce chasseur) - stockbin
- potatoes - bag
- pumpkins - stockbin
- cabbage - stockbin
- fish - no good idea here - normally that would be salted fish in barrels

Taipion wrote:The one thing I hate most about the current gluttony system is, that having a high feasting set is less relevant the higher you get,
whereas it enables high end players to squeeze out low-mid lvl alts easier.


It also works great in a town helping new members to get reasonable biles.
The issue with feasting above 1k should be solved with foods which give more points per inventory slot but are more expensive.


Regarding inspirationals - the current system is mostly OK, except we suddenly have more C&D stuff after removing PP.
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Re: Gluttony Rework Mega-Thread

Postby strpk0 » Fri Mar 02, 2018 10:04 pm

Gluttony system is fine as it is IMO.

You can't really expect to build a system that players will use in a way you like, most often than not they will simply find ways to game it and optimize their sessions over time so that they require the least amount of effort and time possible, while maximizing profits. This is very likely why bajgiels and fruit foods are as popular as they are.

After all, why spend hours upon hours tediously farming for items that are either unreliable or unpredictable to obtain (and therefore don't qualify to any player that truly cares about getting good at the game, as the RNG factor would simply point them to look elsewhere), that cost silver to obtain, or quite simply, why deal with recipes that give hours upon hours of full and fed up when you have options that the community as a whole have figured out are much better, less tedious and painful?

A good player will always look to optimize things, sort of like a little machine that just tries things to see what works best, and eventually that knowledge will spread amongst the community and then everyone will be spamming the same "best" foods over and over again, even if fruit and bajgiels were nerfed into the dirt.

So my suggestion is this (admittedly coming from a player that isn't nearly very experienced in this game but has attempted to learn over time atleast):

Learn just what makes fruit and bajgiels so appealing, what aspects of making those foods makes them the default go-to, and then apply those properties to the rest of the food groups, either by adjusting the recipes to be more reliable and something you can count on being able to get enough of for a good session, or by adding food recipes to each food group that mimicks what bajgiels and fruit already achieve so well in the eyes of the players.

And don't worry too much about trying to discentivize people from "spamming the same thing", it simply shows that the other food groups/food types are lacking in comparison, it doesn't make anyone lazy nor a bad player to simply pick the best option available to them. Implementing "punish mechanics" simply annoys the player and further unnecessarily complexifies what is already a time consuming task. They're not going to be like "Guess I should make 30 different food types for this session!", they're instead going to be like "This system sucks and I don't really wanna have to deal with it, there's other things in-game I could spend my grinding time on.".

I think if gluttony (and the food recipes in general) became more of a
"What do I feel like farming this week, do I feel like dealing with cabbages, getting by with wild meats, making a few bajgiels, or do I have fruit available to me right now that I can use instead? I mean they're all equally good, but I already made a crapton of bajgiels last week, and I don't really feel like running around picking fruit right now, guess I'll just farm a nice amount of cabbages and make something with those."

... instead of a
"Ok well all of these foods sound nice in paper, but they have too long full and fed up/the satiations are costly to deal with or too harsh, the ingredients are a pain to get and I could simply do fruit/bajgiels/whatever the next "best" food is instead."

... type of a choice, then a lot of players would naturally want to try out different things over time, just to have more fun building their gluttony sessions, and to avoid burning out from making the same foods over and over.

When every food group offers equally good options, then you can think of dynamically "micro-nerfing" foods over time if you feel like the players are sticking too much to one thing, as by then one food getting slightly nerfed doesn't mean their gluttony job just became awful by now having to instead deal with the "bad" recipes, but instead they'll just have to pick the next, good recipe, amongst the remaining others.

TL;DR: the problem is that bajgiels and fruit are much better than the other foods in comparison, and making the choice to not use them makes absolutely no sense to a player that wants to get the most out of their playtime, and quite simply instead of nerfing the "popular foods" then perhaps those properties of said popular foods can be applied to every food group/food type, so that it's a balanced system that makes sense to the players that work like machines to figure out the shortest and best path to gluttony, not just to the ideals of the developer. Implementing "punish mechanics" to discentivize behaviour you, as a developer, dislike simply adds another variable that the players will do their best to optimize around anyway, or just another reason to avoid the system entirely.
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