Zhar wrote:Cherek wrote:
Gruff's stuff looks great but there are more and more concerns I'm having with the presentations. It does look great, but should we really allow people to see all of the imbuements' effects and what not right off the bat? Where's the discovery?
Thanks for the input!
Yeah, I'm with you as far as giving too much information can be a problem that harms the game rather than helping/improving the experience. The imbuements-info is a standalone thing and wouldn't have to be included in a finished customization (well, everything is standalone...), its not tied to the auctionhelper thing (which is its own script and just helps you sort and select text and commands, basically.)
About the imbuements, there was basically two reasons I added it.
First was that whenever I found some imbued item, I would hit alt+tab, command+f and search through the list published at the wiki to find out what I got. For me, the discovery part was already not there, really.
And I started doing this because having the imbuements identified cost like 100 platinum coins, and as a new player there was no way I was going to afford that.
If this is what people do, I mean if everyone uses this list to identify their stuff, then the imbuements info can just as easily be included in the client, because then it's not a series of discovery anyway, its just a question of
"who has access to the imbuements-list, and who doesn't."
Second reason; once I got restored and had easier access to the money, if I was grinding in Kabal and came across a magic item, running to Sparkle to get it identify simply means a stop in the gameplay as I need to travel to get information that isn't exactly hard to look up in another way. This was basically just being economic with time, and I think, if people play for a pretty short window of time, the discovery part (in general) can be a problem.
So, getting back at your question...
First, we could just skip it, probably the easiest option, and this might be the way to go to not hurt the game.
Another option would be to change the information that it displays, you could make it give much more general information, something like the following: All the imbuements that give +stat could instead have a message that states "You have get a feeling this object would somehow improve your stats" (or something to that effect), or with resist items it could be "You sense this object might help you protect against certain dangers."
A more vague message like this would still support the adventure/discovery/exploration part of the game, but it would give you some general information on wether this specific item could be worth identifying, or worth trying out to see if it could help.
Anyhow, love that you are giving some thoughts and feedback Zhar, it gives me more to think about and will hopefully end up with a better thing when it's done. And I do think your general idea is valid and something we must think about, that we really need to be mindful to not add stuff that just spoon feeds the entire game to the players.
Any thoughts?