Long/Random Feedback Thread

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  • #2325
    Seryn

    Lvl 300 USEast2
    Skeleton
    Posts: 166

    ~~ A thread in which I unload about a lot of stuff. ~~

    Knitting Needles cannot be enchanted.

    Achieving a high level in knitting is difficult. Because there is already armor and accessories that boost the knitting skill, the first two items you should enchant are a shield and knitting needles. Not being able to enchant knitting needles reduces the possible benefit from enchants by 20%, which is severe for what is probably already the hardest skill in the game to get a high level in.

    I don’t think this is intentional, I just wanted to draw attention to it so it could hopefully be fixed. Also I was surprised I could equip a shield with knitting needles, since I assumed they would require both hands to operate. I would like to know if they will be made a two-handed item in the future before enchanting a knitting shield, so at the moment I am at an impasse.

    Obtaining Wool & Sheep Corralling.

    It was sweet for a while when we could use Chaos to farm wool, but now that the honeymoon’s over and we’re back to 3 wool per healthy sheep I’m not sure how to progress. Even without the XP gain penalty (huge thanks btw) I still need 1K+ wool per level in the 40s, and if crafting is anything to go buy the chance of proccing a +3 won’t cross 1% until you have a level in the 90s.

    This means I’m either tens of thousands of wool or tens of thousands of gems from even being able to fish for +3s, which feels very paralyzing. On top of which there doesn’t seem to be a good way to actually raise sheep to produce wool. If I could raise a herd and shear them every few hours it’d be something, but there’s no effective way to keep them healthy or protected from predators.

    But even if this were the case the amount of wool obtained from shearing is extremely low.

    Possible Sheep/Cow Corral Design.

    I would like to be able to raise sheep (and cows for that matter) in an enclosed and floored room to protect them from predators. Inside I would like to be able to spread feed to keep them healthy. I would like animals to stay healthy longer–even in the wild sheep and cows can have trouble producing good wool or milk. And I would like to obtain a better quantity of wool and milk per sheep and cow.

    Even if this doesn’t get me all the wool I would need to level by myself very quickly, if there’s at least an effective way of obtaining wool then I can barter with other players to get more. Right now though getting any quantity of wool seems next to impossible without some very creative theoretical engineering to pull off a Chaos sheep farm despite the recent updates.

    Relocating Animals.

    It would also be glorious if there was some way to “capture” animals and bring them to your farm (including chickens). The dog UI may be applicable here, if we can feed animals and have them follow us, or leash them in some way–even if the leash has to be an equipped item. It’d still be time-consuming but at least it would be a method. And chickens at least could arguably be caged and carried.

    Dyemaking: Make it a Skill?

    Dyemaking and smelting are easily comparable, except that you can smelt any quantity of ore at once and the process is super quick. Dye on the other hand can only be made one at a time, and each time the bucket has to be refilled from a water source and stones reheated, then dropped in the bucket, then waiting for the bucket to heat, then dropping the ingredient to make the dye.

    If we could make a lot of dye in one go like with smelting ore or cooking food that would be phenomenal, but I also wonder why dyemaking isn’t a skill like smelting already. It takes a heck of a lot more work and we don’t even get the chance of proccing extra dyes. This essentially bottlenecks knitting twice, as obtaining wool is difficult and obtaining dye is intensely laborious.

    On a positive note though the farming update is great for obtaining dye ingredients, so I also want to make sure I express my genuine thanks for that. I don’t mean for this thread to just be a long list of complaints, I just want to give feedback on some of the more persistent difficulties and bottlenecks I’ve run into while playing the beta. I hope it’s useful info for you.

    Aside: Fishing for +2s/+3s (Knitting/Crafting).

    Going by crafting, my testing so far shows the chance of a +2 proc to be 4-5% by the 70s, and 8-10% by the 90s, which is okay I guess. It’s something that can be worked towards and leveling crafting isn’t as difficult as knitting, although the present state of the weight limit makes gathering materials for it more difficult–the upgrade system may help with that though, waiting to see.

    However the proc chance for +3s appears to stay repressed below 1% clear into the 90s, and doesn’t break 3.5% until level 97. That seems like a really really high bar for a chance to get a proc even for crafting, and the thought of getting knitting that high almost makes me faint (not really but you get the idea.) I think the proc chance curve could really be evened out.

    If the chance for a +3 proc could be in the ballpark of 3.5-5% by the mid-70s I think that would at least give players the chance to get a pretty high level in the skill, reinforcing it with a few enchants, then gather materials for one or two hundred crafts, and at least have a fair chance of getting a few +3s out of it. As it stands the current implementation is extremely daunting.

    (Data: I’ve recorded 1000+ crafts per level at 75, 76, 80, 84, 85, 89, 94, 96, 97, and 99 as benchmarks, with 250-500 crafts per level at 77, 79, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, and 98. While the whole span from 75-99 is still incomplete this does give me a substantially satisfying look at the general curve with a reasonably low error margin.)

    So yeah, if the strike zone for fishing for +3 procs was brought from the 90s to the 70s I would consider that to be super super super duper thrilling.

    I don’t understand the design behind Chaos NPCs.

    In particular their ability to attack walls and dig–I do understand how they spice up the overworld for high level players during play sessions, for example if I were to go out mining or something. But right now it feels like Chaos means that: if you are level 80, and you log out in a bed within aggro radius of a wandering Chaos NPC, you will wake up dead. It is literally the only outcome.

    Given the complete lack of defenses we have against this threat I don’t understand why it was implemented. Arrow towers are useless, the only effective way to hurt a Chaos NPC is to bypass armor and even if arrow towers did that the Chaos NPC would just retreat at 50% HP and come back at full health until all the arrows were spent. And they dig through moats and smash through walls, so–I’m at a loss.

    The risk-reward seems imbalanced as well, besides a chance at a little gold killing Chaos NPCs is a rather thankless task. Especially considering how incredibly overpowered they are; eliminating them is a valuable public service to the server but you get almost nothing for it. It could be nice if they dropped chests like reapers or something, and if chest drops were rebalanced* to be more useful on average themselves.

    *(That may have to do with my lower questing level though, not sure.)

    But yeah, Chaos NPCs confuse me. They’re a catastrophic threat, especially to players who aren’t even online, and they aren’t very rewarding to hunt down and eliminate. I would much prefer a design philosophy that said your base is safe from NPC threats and keeping raids/murders a PvP-only factor. That is a compelling part of the game–being randomly killed in your sleep by the game to me is not.

    Base Defenses.

    This touches on another issue which is bases are very hard to defend. Walls can be broken fairly quickly, and the more walls you have the more repairing chores you’ve got to keep up with, and there’s no active defenses against attackers while you’re offline besides arrow towers which are A) fairly weak and B) the attacker can simply soak up all the arrows running in and out of range, then kill your wall.

    Frankly I’d like to make raiding my base a game in itself. I want dragonfire traps and poison traps and arrow traps and pitfalls and golems that will come to life and throw boulders at invaders within a fixed aggro radius. Right now the solution is put all your valuables in a tiny vault and beef up the walls with dragonscales, which works pragmatically but really isn’t much fun for defenders or attackers.

    Although right now the solution is actually to make an alt who carries all your valuables and just log them out when you’re not around–making sure they’ll log back in on a safe square when you need something. Which is even less fun, I’m already being forced to log out without a bed to avoid Chaos NPCs killing me in my sleep. I like the idea of staying in the game while I’m gone, I just need good defensive resources.

    (Actually at the moment I leave my characters asleep in an underground bunker; fingers crossed Chaos NPCs don’t somehow find them there as well while I’m gone.)

    Decay.

    While we’re speaking of walls. I like the hunger bar mechanic for characters, as long as you eat periodically hunger doesn’t damage your HP. But with walls they start falling apart right away; you have to repair them religiously or you’ll be at a disadvantage. I’m pretty sure you can have walls at 50% HP in 3 days or less although I haven’t timed it, but that’s scary and a big defensive weakness.

    Couldn’t decay act like a hunger bar, that after it goes to 0 then walls start falling apart? This doesn’t even mean walls have to last longer, I just want them to stay at 100% HP for a decent period between repairs (as far as decay is concerned anyway; obviously players could directly damage walls whenever). If we get fancy decay states could be shown with mossy wall sprites, but either way.

    Second Decay Idea.

    Another possibility that I like even more is to protect enclosed “interior” walls from decay entirely. I love having a bunch of interior rooms, it adds character to have individual store rooms, crafting rooms, bedrooms, etc.; but it skyrockets the amount of repairs that have to be done. Not to mention storage, dye-making, and leveling stations for cooking/smelting all require substantial space.

    Rather than having a repair mechanic punish you for how many walls you build, shouldn’t it be a limiting factor in terms of the overall circumference of the structure? That way players still have to keep up the exterior wall, but can then build happily to their hearts content within that space. This would also allow for the construction of the layered wall defenses that are actually necessary to defend your base for any length of time while you’re offline.

    Also my rock-throwing golems. Please. I really want those…

    Anyway.

    Think that’s everything on my mind the past couple weeks. The farming update is amazing, and all this inventory space makes UW trips much better. The weight limit is still very very limiting but I’ll wait to see how the upcoming upgrade system works. Please let me enchant my knitting needles. Please. I’m starting to get into cooking now to make +stat food, definitely like the idea.

    Oh also could milk stack? It seems a strange that it doesn’t.

    #2326
    Kaylovespie

    Lvl 2 London
    Skeleton
    Posts: 173

    Hey Seryn, great feedback post!

    I agree knitting needles should probably be two handed and smithable. The farm animals, crafting, towers/traps, etc are all things that will need some attention as well. JVH has been pretty busy with mapping and upgrades so hopefully sometime after that ^_^
    Oh and Chaos NPCs are just one of his many experiments.. he may completely change or remove them at some point who knows 😛 Thanks for your suggestions! They’ll definitely be considered for future patches 🙂

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