I can't find knife blade anywere.

[MrDDT]

I told you before and I will tell you again, you will never have good economy based on restrictions and chokes, which leads to lack of population, the root of lack of population is that people pay for game and then pay $15 monthly only to find out that they are limited in a sandbox game, those new players will actually quit because of your settings, not to mention those like me who don't like to be limited and choked in any way.
Xsyon will never succeed if he keeps building this game your way, and he will loose the last chance of getting population when steam launches, I am 99% sure that people will stop trusting Xsyon after launch on steam.

You biggest issue ddt is your stubbornness.

You keep saying the "root of the lack of population" problem is due to limits, THERE ARE NO LIMITS YOU CAN HAVE EVERY SKILL! Why can you not see this? Currently there are no limits. So if limits were the problem according to you the game would be BOOMing because there are NO LIMITS!

/wipesbrow

Anyways, clearly I can't explain it to you, pretty sure like last time everyone understands that you don't know what you are talking about.

[GuideXaphan]

I'm going to leave this thread open for a little while longer, the debate is heated and points are being made. The problem with this thread is that we have personal attacks taking place and you need to refrain from flame baiting or calling someone out personally to try and make your point.

Maxing out all skills is possible with the current soft caps, you can make the argument that the soft caps need to go so everyone can max out all skills with little to no effort but I think you need to direct those sort of questions to Xsyon himself. The soft caps aren't a large hurdle to over come and I think the premise behind those caps is to promote trade for those who have put the time and effort in to a set of skills, at the moment it is hard as you say because of current population but Xsyon is looking at other means to promote trade. You could also post on the suggestion board about ways to promote trade.

[azzymor]

It has been an interesting reading of this thread. Many points have been made and.. well, some pies were hitting thin air.

If we refrain from using concrete examples of how the game should be, or shouldn't be, and instead try to nail down what makes a game "good" it would somehow all depend on how motivated we were to play that game. The funny thing about that is that not everyone find the same game good. Some hate it, others love it. Some games have huge audiences, others have almost none. All gamers are intrinsically motivated (with a few exceptions). That is what we know, and still we know nothing (just like Jon Snow).

Motivation itself could be viewed as a model with four separate driving needs (still intrinsic) according to Bartle/Radoff. These driving needs are Immersion, Competition, Cooperation and Achievement. Since we (players) are driven by different levels of these needs a game that caters to all the needs will most likely be considered a "good" game by any player. A game with a focus on immersion and almost no focus on the other aspects would be considered a fail by a player mainly driven by the other needs.

With that in mind it's easy to see that neither DDT or Znaika are wrong, nor right - hehe. They do both express their opinion on changes they want to see that makes the game better fullfill their needs, its just that their needs differ.

Making a game that caters too those needs is surely a challenge, and most likely why I'm not a game designer. I don't envy Xsyon in this, nor anyone else. I congratulate people like Marcus Person who by today is a billionaire just because he got those four driving needs right (well, not so sure about the immersion in that case).

[MrDDT]

Azzymor,
I don't mind people giving opinions thats cool. I except that people will disagree on opinion.
But saying your opinion is based on the fact of X and turns out X is not even a fact, and it's wrong. Tells me 2 things. 1)Your opinion has no worth due to your fact being wrong, and 2) You likely don't know enough to give a good opinion.

When someone says that you CAN NOT learn all the skills in the game, and gives an opinion solely based on this, I can't put value in that opinion.
We know for a FACT that any 1 player can learn all the skills. Now it can be opinion on how "hard" it is to do this, but it is still possible.

That is why I try to give all the information that I have learned about the game and let people give opinions and their own experiences also.

Opinion to me is 2 people go look for a weapon blade.
1)Says wow, I found 1 after only 20mins. It's easy to get them.
2)Says wow, It takes 20mins to find this! This is way to hard.

They are opinions based on the same facts, and they feel differently about it. I'm ok with that. But if some says it takes "weeks to find a knife blade" and the other says it takes "seconds to find them" clearly there is issue with the data/facts for people to make opinions.
Now they can explain their experiences about how long it took them personally but to say its the "normal" or "avg" time might not be correct.

So before coming to an opinion you really should also have information on why you have that opinion.
So if you tell me "I think that if knife blades take 2+ hours to get one on avg, then that's too long it should be no more than 15 to 20mins". That's a good starting point for an opinion.
If you were then to find out, the "avg" or "normal" time to get knife blades were 10mins, then you should be in agreement that it's not to hard. At the same token if you find out the avg or normal time is 1 hour, then you would say its to long.

So as you can see in this topic many parts of it is from some people lacking the understanding of how often or the "normal" drop rate or system works. Which can be address as another topic of "learning the game" but saying they are too rare might not be a good opinion because they are unaware of how to get them.

Same goes for much of the topic about how skills are a "choke" or "restriction" when the fact is there is no choke or restriction at all.

Once you get past that, you can then start getting into opinions and where to take some of the ideas from there, true problem solving.

[azzymor]

MrDDt,

I don't disagree with you. In fact I have a much easier time following your line of thought than I do with Znaika's and it is more appealing to me.

What I was trying to get to was that to me Xsyon have shortcomings in all four categories of motivation. It isn't immersive enough for me, it isn't competitive enough, it isn't cooperative enough nor do I find it rewarding when it comes to achieving. So to me the whole discussion regaring if it is hard or not to find a knife blade (or old sawblades) is a little ... amusing. It's like sitting in a boat that is floundering and arguing over which kind of wood the oars are made of.

To me it would be better to ask the questions "how do we make the game more appealing to those driven by [immersion|cooperation|competition|achieving]"? Would Public Rankings appeal to those driven by competition/achieving? Would pvp-zones appeal to those into competition/immersion while still not deter those into other motivational factors?

Anyway - I know I'm way of the OP's topic and apologize for that.

[MrDDT]

Yeah, but you have to start somewhere, hammering out objectives even if they are minor like filling a bullethole in a boat that is sinking fast doesnt mean it's not something that can't be addressed easy or quickly.

Also in this case here, making the game better is going to take time, and effort and not going to be done overnight. So getting a few things done even small improve the game overall. It's like building a house brick by brick. It will take a lot of bricks, but you have to start somewhere.

My main issue is you want to start with good points from an factual standing, and not base it off misunderstanding of what is really happening.


Another example is I know a lot of people say things like, "Animals are too hard, I can't even kill a deer". Well it might not even be the animals that is the problem but simple misunderstanding that the animals are not to hard, its that the person doesn't have any gear and expects to kill them naked.
Now getting gear or clothed might be very hard, giving the impression that animals are too hard.
So they often end up offering suggestions to make animals easier "they should attack slower, and not for as much damage". Only that could be the very wrong answer because when the person then finds out that clothing isnt hard to get, or when clothing is easier to get, then animals are too easy now.
This last point has been an issue many times, Xsyon himself has said that he has got information from players only to end up changing things back (or many changes back and forth) because of misunderstanding or players lacking information.

Xsyon relies a lot on player feedback, he doesn't know how hard or easy many things are, and something being "hard" is relative. You could find running across the map to be a "hard" activity because you get lost easy, while someone else not only thinks its easy, but is very fun to see the world like that.

I'm sure I'm kicking a dead horse here, but the overall point is that informed players make better opinions and advice on doing things. New players have their place in offering advice on what they can (new experience) but advanced opinions/advice should be for players who are with enough experience or understanding of that advanced system.

[znaiika]

DDT, that's what I said, I spent a whole day scavenging and I could not find one blade, I went through half side of the lake scavenging that is, I don't think this is normal, and that is why I protested, it is way too much frustration for supposed fun game. And of coarse I would agree with you disagreeing with me If I would sit close to my totem and just scavenge for 20 minutes, but spending a lot of time and not being able to find what I need is that's my concern.

And I don't say animals should be easier, I am just saying other means should more accessible, even if they are lower quality.

[GuideXaphan]

Some areas will have a better % to find a certain item than others, distance from your totem in relation to where you are scavenging, and skill.

There are the bone knife options that don't require any blades and means of trading with other players for blades, these are all viable options if you can't find one based on skill, location, or you're scavenging to close to your totem.

[znaiika]

GuideXaphan, can you be more specific on that bone knife, which dose not require knife blade? apart from bear claw and dear antlers.

[MrDDT]

GuideXaphan, can you be more specific on that bone knife, which dose not require knife blade? apart from bear claw and dear antlers.

You have 2 options.

Scavenge or kill those 2 animals to get the knife parts.

I don't think that's hard.

I'm not sure why you can't find them but maybe ask in game where people find them. If you can figure that out, you know where to look. Like I said they are not that rare just uncommon. Which means they are not as common as something like dollar bills, but also not as rare as say stainless steel items.