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View Full Version : Feedback Request: Skill, Stats, Quest Patch



Xsyon
04-23-2012, 04:44 PM
I would like some final feedback on the upcoming patch.

The Test Server is now available with the latest changes and this patch is almost ready for the public. Actions are set to run the skill gain 50 times so that skill balancing can be better seen in action.

Here is a list of what is ready:

Combat
Per player position thread to reduce combat lag
Creatures can attack in water (animations not implemented)

Skills
Skill tracker working
Resource skills revised for balanced use of all stats
Terraforming moved to the resources group
Wainwright moved to the construction skill group
Schemes can be gained beyond skill 100
Unlearn based on current skill level (you can unlearn auto learn recipes if your skill has dropped)
Schemes can be gained on level up
Working skill soft cap
Skill balancing reduction after gains beyond soft cap
Action skills not soft capped
Construction not soft capped
Balanced decay on least used 4 skills
Skill decay chooses skills set to minus first (as if they had 0 recent uses)
Skill locking system
- Normal: skill can increase or decrease
- Minus: skill locked for decay only. Stats will not gain when using this
- Locked: Can’t change. Stats will gain when using this skill
- Plus: Can increase only. Stats will gain when using this skill
- 2 skills can be locked
Skill recent use count displayed as a tooltip on skill locks

Stats
Agility bonuses affect running
Agility affects combat speed(including bonuses)
Base movement increased
Max movement increased
Strength including bonuses affects encumbrance
Encumbrance minimum increased
Encumbrance maximum increased
Stat gain on all skillactions regardless of setting
Minor fixes to the statpanel display
Balanced decay on least used 4 stats
Stats above normal displayas green in stat panel

Health
Health based on stats andskills
Health (hit points) shows asa value on hover

Experience
Gained per action not skillgain
Stats can be gained through the level up panel for skills that are increased using experience points as if those skill were actually used

Quests
Quest expiration
Expired quest removes questfrom questor
Quest time limit (in progress)
Quest quality
Craft and hunt quest require you to craft and hunt the delivered goal items
View and drop quests fromTribe Quest Panel
Improved quest panels
Quests show tribe and creator
Quests give experience based on
- Type of quest
- Difficulty of item
- Amount of item
- Quality of item
- Distance between tribes
Experience for both questorand creator

Scroll bar
Fixed scroll bars for all panels
Town member scroll bar
Town rank scroll bar

Interface
New interface panel art implemented (in progress)
Walk mode default keybind set to G
Chat reply default keybind set to R

Chat
Pressing R allows automatic reply to last whisper
Whispers show more clear who you are whispering to receiving a whisper from

Items
Hunted items give bonus based on power of creature killed
Material items display possible bonus in tooltip
Merging stacks should properly balance bonus power (for hunted items). Quality and duration should also balance as usual
Splitting and merging stacks should properly balance bonus power, quality and duration.

I would like specific feedback on:

- Are there any critical issues or problems?
- Is stat gain and loss too quick / too slow / ok?
- Is skill balancing too much / too little / ok?
- Does skill balancing (soft cap) start too early / too late / ok?

Any other comments are welcome, but please keep comments brief and not as an argument or discussion. We would like to patch this all to the public server this week and are looking for any critical changes that need to be made before we do so.

Thanks!

Shill
04-23-2012, 05:11 PM
So far, test server shows as up, but I cannot connect (Get to log-in, type in password, 15-20 second pause, then nothing). Ready to test as soon as I can get in.



edit: Still unable to get in...same situation. Tried with both accounts.

edit2: However, the new UI stuff that's on live...is GREAT. (The right-click menu is perfect). IMHO, do the whole UI in that style (including tooltips) and you have a winner!! ESPECIALLY THE CHAT WINDOW!!! Give it that border and dark background with a transparency slider....WIN!!!!!

edit3: Also, not sure if you know or not, but going to test server seems to reset UI on live...makes it kind of a pain to test. Not the biggest deal, but haven't seen it said anywhere, so figured I'd chime up.

MrDDT
04-23-2012, 06:11 PM
Still cant log in test.

Shill
04-23-2012, 08:19 PM
Okay...was able to log in for a bit. Started a brand new character. Leveled toolcraft from 5 to 62. Gained approx 95 recipes through autolearning. Seems about right. However, I lost NO points in any other skills in that group during the grind up. Not sure that's intended. Associated stats seemed to be increasing properly and I was gaining xp per action, not level.

Also, with the new reply function (it's awesome btw). If the last person to whisper you logs off, when you hit R, you autoreply to yourself.

Added after 56 minutes:

Also, not sure if this is a recent issue, but it still exists on test (and live). I've noticed plenty of tribes with spaces in their names, but I can't seem to do that with mine. The spacebar doesn't seem to work at all when trying to choose a tribe name.

MrDDT
04-23-2012, 10:02 PM
I like the new changes.

Stats locking seems to be working well.
Stats gain is hard to see due to 50x but seems fine.
Issues with using a skill that you dont want to mess up your stats. Is there a way to say "lock" a skill and then you dont get any stat gain thus no decay in other stats while using that skill. (No stat gain/loss while skill locked and no stat gain/loss) this will allow people to do things outside their profession without jacking up stats or skills.
Animals seem to be very weak still. 4 hitting a normal bear, and it didnt even get me to 90% life (I now have only 190HP).
Training a skill doesnt decay the - skills first, its still decaying from all unless they are locked or set to +.
Good work on the crafting notice, now can see the recipes you train.
Love the scroll bars.
When getting a recipe, or unlocking/locking/+/- skills it resets the recipe window.
Some stats even when were just used were decaying before other stats. Maybe its because they were not used much but some stats were never used and didnt decay until 10+ points change in other stats. (Only lost .1 SPI even though I changed over 15 points in stats, SPI was never used in any skill)
AGI is still wicked over powered. You now move very fast because AGI and attack much faster. At 10AGI you move about 1/3 the speed of someone with 100AGI, plus they would attack about 1/3 the speed. That's way tpp good, just the movement speed alone is hella good. I cant see anyone not getting AGI.

I cant test the soft caps as Im way over them in all pools. I always lose skills when I gain skills in any pool right now.

All the animals on test seem to be mid or slightly younger age, so I couldnt test the hunting bonuses much, nor could I see how hard things were. Also I saw no mutants after about 2 hours of running around.

With the new changes to recipes after 100, found recipes are just about worthless.

tomduril
04-24-2012, 01:00 AM
I have 75 HP on the test server - so 10% of 170 would be ~23% for my character (crafter with 60 AGI/FOR/STR)
As my combat is about 30 skill points I miss alot and have slow swings ... so a bear would kill me in about 12 hits ?

Not sure if that adds up with the experience of MrDDT - but I think hit/damage/armor of animals should be balanced for chars with grass armor and about 70 points in AGI/FOR/STR and damage of about 8 per full swing.
At the moment I land about 4 hits for each hit I get (mainly because my movement speed is low).
So an animal that has about 80 HP will land roughly 3 hits on me. Two animals will land about 6 hits in the first fight and 2 hits in the second (so roughly a total of 8 hits).

So if MrDDT says its too easy - try it with a low char (no/very cheap grass armor)
- a bear/deer should win against such a player
- coyote/raccoon/dogs should be manageable (except for very old/experienced ones)
- rats, chicks, cats, squirell and all the other small animals should be normal difficulty (so win against 1-2, start loosing at 3 at the same time) - (except for very old/experienced ones)

I know that MrDDT says that a newly created char can beat any animal in the game - I would disagree or be more specific - a "fighter" char could defeat eg a bear even at start up (if the player does not make any mistakes trough out the 5 minutes fight) - a crafter will run out of energy and be sucking in air while beeing beaten to death ...

So please try to balance the animals so that crafters stand a chance against the smaller animals - if possible ;)

Xsyon
04-24-2012, 01:05 AM
A few quick notes:

We're doing a new distribution of creatures on the test server right now, which is why they are all relatively weak (currently they are all set to the minimum adult age and none have experienced combat which makes them grow in power as well). We will "age" some of them when patching to the main server.

Regarding skills set to minus. It should consider them as a 0 use skill. If there are other skills that have not been used or have barely been used they will decay about the same. (The least 4 used skills in the group decay). We will check this more to make sure it's working as intended. Basically if 3 skills are have not been used recently and one is set to minus, they all currently decay the same.

I am considering setting more schemes so that they are found through scavenging only (this has been an option for all schemes since the beginning. Currently only a few schemes have this setting). I would like some feedback on this.

MrDDT
04-24-2012, 01:41 AM
I have 75 HP on the test server - so 10% of 170 would be ~23% for my character (crafter with 60 AGI/FOR/STR)
As my combat is about 30 skill points I miss alot and have slow swings ... so a bear would kill me in about 12 hits ?

Not sure if that adds up with the experience of MrDDT - but I think hit/damage/armor of animals should be balanced for chars with grass armor and about 70 points in AGI/FOR/STR and damage of about 8 per full swing.
At the moment I land about 4 hits for each hit I get (mainly because my movement speed is low).
So an animal that has about 80 HP will land roughly 3 hits on me. Two animals will land about 6 hits in the first fight and 2 hits in the second (so roughly a total of 8 hits).

So if MrDDT says its too easy - try it with a low char (no/very cheap grass armor)
- a bear/deer should win against such a player
- coyote/raccoon/dogs should be manageable (except for very old/experienced ones)
- rats, chicks, cats, squirell and all the other small animals should be normal difficulty (so win against 1-2, start loosing at 3 at the same time) - (except for very old/experienced ones)

I know that MrDDT says that a newly created char can beat any animal in the game - I would disagree or be more specific - a "fighter" char could defeat eg a bear even at start up (if the player does not make any mistakes trough out the 5 minutes fight) - a crafter will run out of energy and be sucking in air while beeing beaten to death ...

So please try to balance the animals so that crafters stand a chance against the smaller animals - if possible ;)


What are you talking about the 10% of 170?
Missing has nothing to do with stats or skill points. That's just you being bad. No offense just saying.

Bears should be very hard vs most players. Even well skilled and armored players. Baby ones shouldn't be hard but adults should. Mutant bears should be 3 to 5 man groups taking to kill.
Try fighting a bear with an axe or a club. It wont go well, even for the most skilled fighters.

85HP, 35armed, 35 axes. Killed it while only taking 15 damage. 13 hits on my part. I had over 75% of my life left.
Bears should be hard, it shouldnt be easy for a solo person to kill and surely not a noob with 35 combat skills. I recorded the fight if you really want to see it I can play it back.

About fighting small animals. I agree their needs to be better tiers to animals, but that's mostly another topic. Clearly the balance of stats for players was lowered, and it effected animals. Killing animals in 4 hits on a bear is way to low.

Xsyon, it looks like thats what happened to the decayed of skills that were decaying with the - skill also. I didnt use them so they were set to 0 uses. I thought the - skill would decay, but you explained why. I will test again with using them slightly and then using other skills.

I logged in to test a bit more, and you guys are running a test on animals, so I was told not to kill them. Mihr was nice enough to spawn a bear for me to kill on my newb. I will test more on that later.

tomduril
04-24-2012, 04:06 AM
What are you talking about the 10% of 170?
Missing has nothing to do with stats or skill points. That's just you being bad. No offense just saying.

Agreed ;)



Bears should be very hard vs most players. Even well skilled and armored players. Baby ones shouldn't be hard but adults should. Mutant bears should be 3 to 5 man groups taking to kill.
Try fighting a bear with an axe or a club. It wont go well, even for the most skilled fighters.

85HP, 35armed, 35 axes. Killed it while only taking 15 damage. 13 hits on my part. I had over 75% of my life left.
Bears should be hard, it shouldnt be easy for a solo person to kill and surely not a noob with 35 combat skills. I recorded the fight if you really want to see it I can play it back.

About fighting small animals. I agree their needs to be better tiers to animals, but that's mostly another topic. Clearly the balance of stats for players was lowered, and it effected animals. Killing animals in 4 hits on a bear is way to low.

Agreed!

inhabit
04-24-2012, 05:15 AM
A few quick notes:
I am considering setting more schemes so that they are found through scavenging only (this has been an option for all schemes since the beginning. Currently only a few schemes have this setting). I would like some feedback on this.

I say yes purely because this is the way I like to play the game, im always out exploring and this would give me new things to find and trade with other players. It would also add additional "rare" items to the game depending what schemes you had in mind to do this with. Personally i dont want to grind thousands upon thousands of tools for instance to unlock every recipe beyond 100 skill.
Im sure others will disagree but my vote is YES !!!!!

Shill
04-24-2012, 05:47 AM
I say yes purely because this is the way I like to play the game, im always out exploring and this would give me new things to find and trade with other players. It would also add additional "rare" items to the game depending what schemes you had in mind to do this with. Personally i dont want to grind thousands upon thousands of tools for instance to unlock every recipe beyond 100 skill.
Im sure others will disagree but my vote is YES !!!!!

Same here. Make a bunch of the recipes scheme only imho. Promote that trade!!!

MrDDT
04-24-2012, 05:49 AM
I say yes purely because this is the way I like to play the game, im always out exploring and this would give me new things to find and trade with other players. It would also add additional "rare" items to the game depending what schemes you had in mind to do this with. Personally i dont want to grind thousands upon thousands of tools for instance to unlock every recipe beyond 100 skill.
Im sure others will disagree but my vote is YES !!!!!


I would even like to take it a step more and make rare recipes.
Meaning Luthais you are out scaven and you get "Scrappers Shears Recipe of Durability" it adds +25% durability to that tool when crafted, maybe make it take aluminum bolts plus whatever it takes. This is just an idea, but you can see how some recipes would be wanted more than others and learning the "basics" would be just that. Basic. You could do this for a ton of other types of recipes.
"Ruthless Viper Wingaxe" +10 damage.
"Welmetti Rerebrace of the Feather" 50% weight.

I can think of a ton. Just saying would be nice to give it some flare for people to specialize in.

tomduril
04-24-2012, 07:50 AM
The scavenge only receipts are a nice addition - and the specialisation ideas of MrDDT are also!

but ...



Any other comments are welcome, but please keep comments brief and not as an argument or discussion. We would like to patch this all to the public server this week and are looking for any critical changes that need to be made before we do so.

tybor
04-24-2012, 08:57 AM
Critical issue:
I tried it for 3 times and always the same! I log in to Test Server which works fine. I can move around, chat but when I start any action (Fell tree, Chop Large or Pickup Log)
the connection to server is lost and nothing happens.
The ping display freezes and I can't quit the game (only by closing Window manually).

UI
Very nice! I like it (only thing I can test so far).

greetz,
Tybor

MrDDT
04-24-2012, 09:55 AM
Critical issue:
I tried it for 3 times and always the same! I log in to Test Server which works fine. I can move around, chat but when I start any action (Fell tree, Chop Large or Pickup Log)
the connection to server is lost and nothing happens.
The ping display freezes and I can't quit the game (only by closing Window manually).

UI
Very nice! I like it (only thing I can test so far).

greetz,
Tybor

Make sure you upload your crashlog file to support.

tybor
04-24-2012, 12:29 PM
Critical issue:
I tried it for 3 times and always the same! I log in to Test Server which works fine. I can move around, chat but when I start any action (Fell tree, Chop Large or Pickup Log)
the connection to server is lost and nothing happens.
The ping display freezes and I can't quit the game (only by closing Window manually).

UI
Very nice! I like it (only thing I can test so far).

greetz,
Tybor
It is working now.

greetz,
Tybor

Drevar
04-24-2012, 04:05 PM
The skills that learning schemes at 100 would affect most would be toolcrafting and architecture. Since tools aren't divided into groups for learning purposes, you can pretty much just spam them until you get the one you want. If they were actually divided up, either into types or classes, and would require reading a scavenged scheme or inspiration to break into a new group it would preserve some value on the scavenged schemes. I am not sure if architecture is the same way, but it doesn't seem to be limited by groups either as I've learned from pretty much all the groups without inspirations.

The armor skills are okay, as you will only learn new patterns until you fill out the sets you already have learned. Then you need an inspiration or scavenged pattern to unlock a new set.

I think the real fix will come in the future when there are so many different armor sets that we will have a hard time deciding which to drop and which to keep. Right now, even with the number of leather sets compared to the others, a lot are pretty ugly, and one offers no advantage over another (lighter, more armor, etc) and aren't really missed.

MrDDT
04-27-2012, 10:37 AM
There needs to be a way to lock a skill so you cant change your stats.
It should be that if skills are set to - that it doesnt gain any stats either. The reason for this is to allow people to do things they dont want to skill and also dont want it to effect their stats. Without something like this, people will be hard pressed to solo without jacking up stats all the time.

Shill
04-27-2012, 12:08 PM
There needs to be a way to lock a skill so you cant change your stats.
It should be that if skills are set to - that it doesnt gain any stats either. The reason for this is to allow people to do things they dont want to skill and also dont want it to effect their stats. Without something like this, people will be hard pressed to solo without jacking up stats all the time.

Skills
Skill tracker working
Resource skills revised for balanced use of all stats
Terraforming moved to the resources group
Wainwright moved to the construction skill group
Schemes can be gained beyond skill 100
Unlearn based on current skill level (you can unlearn auto learn recipes if your skill has dropped)
Schemes can be gained on level up
Working skill soft cap
Skill balancing reduction after gains beyond soft cap
Action skills not soft capped
Construction not soft capped
Balanced decay on least used 4 skills
Skill decay chooses skills set to minus first (as if they had 0 recent uses)
Skill locking system
- Normal: skill can increase or decrease
- Minus: skill locked for decay only. Stats will not gain when using this
- Locked: Can’t change. Stats will gain when using this skill
- Plus: Can increase only. Stats will gain when using this skill
- 2 skills can be locked
Skill recent use count displayed as a tooltip on skill locks

Think what you've suggested is already in place...unless it's not working atm on test...

MrDDT
04-27-2012, 12:23 PM
Then its not working on test when I tested it for about 15 hours. If a skill was set to - I could still gain stats.

tomduril
04-28-2012, 01:58 AM
Then its not working on test when I tested it for about 15 hours. If a skill was set to - I could still gain stats.

Stats gain/lost should not depend on skill use (as described already) - and I also support this! - Its not a bug, its a feature and imho it should stay that way. Providing players with a method to "lock" skills is already giving you a "meta method" to manipulate your skills - the stats should just represent what you are doing (again imho).

Please donīt change that!!!

MrDDT
04-28-2012, 02:29 AM
Stats gain/lost should not depend on skill use (as described already) - and I also support this! - Its not a bug, its a feature and imho it should stay that way. Providing players with a method to "lock" skills is already giving you a "meta method" to manipulate your skills - the stats should just represent what you are doing (again imho).

Please donīt change that!!!


Where was explained? Can you please quote it?

If stats are not depended on skill use what should they dependent on? What do you mean "What you are doing"?

tomduril
04-29-2012, 01:22 AM
Sorry I am so off :-( ... stats should not change on a "-" skill - as explained by Xsyon on the first page...

Was wishful thinking on my part :-/ because it gives the players too much control over the stats

IMHO: the stats should represent which actions you are performing ... if I dig the whole day in the dirt, but set terraforming to "-", the character wont gain Strength (but it should mess with your Stats imho). It breaks the "sandbox" effect - same like the locked baskets on public land ... (that will be soon over)

Deacon
04-30-2012, 03:37 PM
I cant stay connected on test server......within mins, or seconds of logging into test,I lose connection. I've stopped logging into it...cant play...why waste my time trying.



my ping during combat is iffy on live, but have no issues staying connected there