WHERE DA HALLOWEEN AT ? (or other updates)

[jcwilk]

Well, for what it's worth, we've been testing two different systems over the past week or two, but weren't quite happy with them. We're now working on our third attempt.

Thank you for your thoroughness

[alprice]

Any and all updates are very much appreciated.

[TeckXKnight]

Well, for what it's worth, we've been testing two different systems over the past week or two, but weren't quite happy with them. We're now working on our third attempt. :)

Don't suppose you could expose a bit of light onto what displeased you about them? I'm curious for curiosities sake.

[RonPaulFTW]

Well, for what it's worth, we've been testing two different systems over the past week or two, but weren't quite happy with them. We're now working on our third attempt.

Don't suppose you could expose a bit of light onto what displeased you about them? I'm curious for curiosities sake.

Don't let the pursuit of perfection stop you from a solution that is good enough

[loftar]

Don't suppose you could expose a bit of light onto what displeased you about them? I'm curious for curiosities sake.

Well, what we've been changing this time is actually not the gluttony system, but the proficiency system. Expounding on the reason we want to change the current system takes a bit of text, so here's a wall of such. ^^

Primarily, we realized that the current proficiency system is a constant grind that one isn't really allowed to relax from, since every second not used for grinding proficiencies is a second lost, which is, we believe, why the game feels so extremely character-grind-heavy, and which also detracts from the more creative and playful aspects of the game, like exploring, building a base or just durdling around; and especially in the early-to-mid-to-semi-late part of the game, when skills are arguably the thing primary sought after. It easily leads to a mode of playing where one haunts the world like a vacuum cleaner, looking for the next inspirational to consume, and is especially aggravated by the fact that each individual inspirational gives such insignificantly small amounts of points that one needs an almost constant stream of them in order to be able to advance (Potjeh put it well at one time when he said something along the lines that the pacing of the inspirationals is slow enough that one constantly has to wait for them, but fast enough that one is never allowed to divert one's attention from them). The fact that each inspirational gives rather small amounts of points also makes them unnecessarily indistinct from each other, with too little reason to advance in the tech tree to obtain more advanced inspirationals.

In an attempt to remedy this, we first tried a system with the following characteristics, not entirely uninspired by Haven's curiosity system. We made each inspirational give a lot more points (25 times more), but was instead consumed over a long time, yielding its points slowly into a "point pool" for each proficiency. This slow studying also happened while the character was logged out, but on the other hand the points in the pool had to be converted into points in the current meters, for a black-bile cost equivalent to the current system. In effect, the point pool replaced the grayed-out meters of the current system, but could overflow above the cap of the meter; while the meters themselves continued to work identically to the blue parts of the meters in the current system. In order to preserve the meaningfulness of choosing when to level up a proficiency or buying a skill, the pools still drained when the meters were full, so that one had to balance between, on the one hand, filling up additional meters to level up multiple proficiencies along with the one chosen to level up two steps; and, on the other hand, not loosing points from inspirationals in the meters that had filled up. While the inspirationals were being studied, they took up a "slot" each, there being one such slot per proficiency. An inspirational would only fit in a slot for a proficiency for which it gave points, and only one of a certain type of inspirational could be studied at a time.

This system certainly did work too badly, giving the following characteristics:

• One wasn't hurt by diverting attention from grinding proficiencies even for extended periods of time; there was no opportunity lost in doing so.
• Likewise, there was no opportunity lost in logging out at least for the time the inspirationals were being studied. The grind was not constant.
• On the other hand, the fact that black bile was needed to converted points in the pool into the meter, and also the fact that proficiencies had to be prioritized between and monitored for overflow meant that one couldn't just have an alt and swap inspirationals every few days, as in Haven. There was a need to actually play the characters to level up, but it had, so to speak, diminishing returns in terms of real time spent actively grinding proficiencies, as opposed to doing other things in game.
• The fact that attention didn't have to constantly be diverted to grinding proficiencies meant that, for the first time, we actually wanted to add other mechanics and things to do to the early game than just more inspirationals to forage for, which felt very nice. :)

On the other hand, the primary problem with the system was that the spilling over overflowing meters meant that the system had no "stable state". One still had to remain constantly vigilant of the proficiency values and choosing in time to level them up. This constant peeking into the character sheet was an unwelcome distraction. On the other hand, we realized that removing that part of the mechanic meant that there would be no meaningful choice anymore, and the proficiencies could just as well autolevel whenever as soon their meter filled up, apart from allowing the ability to keep them for a bit for buying skills. The character sheet was also quite uglified by adding point pools in addition to everything that's already there per proficiency.

To remedy this, we tried a modification of that system whose primary characteristic (among others, however) was that we removed the meters entirely and only kept the unlimited pools, into which the inspirationals drained over time. To make the choice of which proficiency to level meaningful, we instead made it so that an amount of points were lost from every pool whenever a proficiency was chosen to level up, proportional to the proficiency value currently corresponding to each pool. This solved the problem of having stable states, but we soon found that the choice of which proficiency to level up was pretty much an illusion of choice, giving that one virtually "had" to always level up the value into which points were currently filling up the slowest. Leveling any other proficiency meant giving up the ability to level up the slowest one, so they never really were a choice. On the other hand, points kept filling up into them uselessly.

So now we've thrown both of those out, along with the mechanic that inspirationals drain over time. We're now trying a completely different system. I'll refrain from speaking about it until we've tried beating it into shape, however. We also have quite concrete ideas for how to want to remake gluttony, but I'll wait with speaking about that as well, for now. :)

I apologize for the confusing text and poor language, but it was hard to boil the analysis and descriptions down even to this length. I hope you found something useful in it. :)

[MagicManICT]

So now we've thrown both of those out, along with the mechanic that inspirationals drain over time. We're now trying a completely different system. I'll refrain from speaking about it until we've tried beating it into shape, however. We also have quite concrete ideas for how to want to remake gluttony, but I'll wait with speaking about that as well, for now.

Better not to, I think. Peter Molyneux has proven that it just generates useless noise way too frequently.

[Kandarim]

Thank you for posting your long wall of text.

I'll just say that I'm a bit disappointed that it seems that you once again abandoned the remake of gluttony in favour of another system. It may be that this was your plan all along, but as I have understood earlier posts by you, it seemed to me you wanted to get the gluttony remake out of the way before you turned your attention to any other part of the game. Why then did you put it aside to remake proficiencies, contrary to your own argument that the gluttony remake is the foundation of any future balances?

[RuneNL]

Thank you Loftar,

That was quite interesting and exciting to read that we can expect quite the overhaul from the current system.
I hope it makes the game .

[Darwoth]

what is the direction you are leaning toward how long it should take to make an advanced character?

after everything is said and done and you find mechanics you are happy with will it be "harder" or "easier" to make a 500 stocks and cults character? or will it be "easier" in that it takes less effort, but "harder" in that it takes longer as with havens current system?

same could be said with gluttony, what is a "titan" in your view when things are how you want them?



most importantly will these changes when they are done be applied to the existing servers/characters or will there be a wipe? will current end game characters suddenly be rendered into an early/mid game status when the changes are made? i certainly have no interest in continuing to grind out hammer and nail or stocks and cults if it is not a long term investment of my time or if under the new system 1000 stocks and cults will be about as impressive as 200 is now.

[Thor]

Well it's quite sad that you are yet again pushing gluttony aside for something else.
I mean, not too long ago proficiencies were actually tweaked a bit (and for a better direction too).