time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

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What should be done about the current state of affairs, in which everything saves until it breaks?

Keep it just as it is - perfect.
27
53%
Go back to the way things used to be.
11
22%
Find some kind of middle ground.
13
25%
 
Total votes: 51

sylphan
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time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by sylphan » 30 Nov 2018 04:20

I do not know what motivated the change from the way things always (as far as I know) had been to the current situation, in which everything saves until it breaks. But I think it might be time to give the wizards feedback on how the community feels about the present state of affairs.

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Cherek
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by Cherek » 30 Nov 2018 15:46

sylphan wrote:I do not know what motivated the change from the way things always (as far as I know) had been to the current situation, in which everything saves until it breaks. But I think it might be time to give the wizards feedback on how the community feels about the present state of affairs.
The main motivation for the change was that we for quite a long time received a lot of feedback from new players who were both confused and put off by the old way of things. Which is kind of understandable, because our system was very different to most other games, and it was also pretty confusing for new players with stuff glowing or not glowing seemingly at random. For example, when I was AoP I received numerous bug reports from players who thought the game was broken since "Random items were lost when I quit". Also, "Where did my items go?" was one of the most asked question on the ntell. We felt that the old system might stop us from attracting and keeping new players. Letting things autosave also seemed like it could benefit a big portion of our old playerbase, especially more "casual" players who might not always have a lot of time to play. Eliminating the need to gear up and always return home saves a lot of playing time, and eliminating the worry about LD-ing out with stuff is also beneficial to casual players.

As you probably know we've discussed various solutions for quite some time, both here and elsewhere, and eventually this current system ended up being the thing we decided to try out. As Gorboth mentioned in his common board post there are likely to be tweaks and adjustments coming though, based on what we learn, and it will be interesting to see what this poll says.

sylphan
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by sylphan » 30 Nov 2018 16:29

I should have been more precise. I'm not sure why the road taken was to move to the absolute limit of the other end of the spectrum: everything saves forever, until it breaks. I get that lots of newbs were confused and dismayed by the system as it worked for decades. What I don't get is why the response was so extreme.

First, the tutorial could be clearer than it is about saving items. I don't think it's unclear, but obviously, lots of people leave Tutori still not getting it - so it's not clear enough. That could be changed.

Second, as lots of people have commented here, one consequence of the system as it is now running is that more and more people will be imbued from head to toe, which (as Goldbezie and some others have discussed) has implications for balance.

Finally, here are some thoughts to consider:

1. We should move much closer to the way things were, such that gear-hunting becomes once again a thing that unites teams and gives added significance to guilds.

2. The tutorial should have a whole segment about saving / non-saving items. For example, once you've finished a certain quest, you get an item that saves, and the game forces you to log out before you can "graduate" to the full game. The item could maybe be the pearl-handled sword. And it saves at first, but when you wake, it's no longer saving. This isn't quite perfect, as newbies rely on the thing for a while once they enter the game, but that's the general idea. The experience of saving and non-saving is built into the architecture of Tutori, so it's not possible to complete the tutorial and still not get it.

3. We've been asking for lockers or something along those lines for a long time. A place where you can put, say, two items, and they will work as usual except that it's totally private and secure. The way imbuements and racks work makes this necessary since custom-imbuing your own stuff is such a massive individual investment, and thus should give a payoff that is also individual, and not dependent on the ethos of a guild or the whims of the realms (in terms of hiding it or something).

Thalric
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by Thalric » 30 Nov 2018 20:00

Oh, but how bad can it be?

Seeing mages running around with intense+pronuonced+faint int and wis, as well as intense haste and who knows what else.
Calians and others using non-break weapons with intense some-kind-of-damage imbuements and stocked totally up on strength, dexterity and haste.

People who has been around for long enough to have experienced the good times of imbuement-drops are having a huge advantage in these days. But, well... isn't that what you're supposed to get for supporting a game for so long?

I'm sure it will only add a whole lot to the already large gap between new and old players.

cetsuo
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by cetsuo » 30 Nov 2018 20:11

Im new to the game so i dont really know my way around that much, but I've read several postsabout items and thought about this:
what if imbuements made items break sooner? Like the power of the imbuement was too strong for them? More powerful imbues could have an even stronger effect on durability.

Syrk
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by Syrk » 30 Nov 2018 20:21

cetsuo wrote:Im new to the game so i dont really know my way around that much, but I've read several postsabout items and thought about this:
what if imbuements made items break sooner? Like the power of the imbuement was too strong for them? More powerful imbues could have an even stronger effect on durability.
I can not stop myself from asking:
How many items have you imbued?

Also the solution to the problem would be:
removal of the imbue system (bye, bye to all imbues).

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Cherek
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by Cherek » 01 Dec 2018 03:22

Sylphan: Ah. I thought you meant what made us want to change things in the first place. As for your more detailed questions, those are probably better answered by someone in the balance team. I can really only refer to Gorboth's post on the common board, that this might not the final system in place, and that things will be evaluated and potentially tweaked.

Now, potential problems that I have heard about are:

- Non-dulling weapons.
- Eventually all elite players will have their own intense-imbued FBBs and ironstone-imbued MBPs. (or similar)
- Ironstone imbues become very powerful.
- People not tanking will never lose their mega-imbued items.
- People who collected imbues before the imbue change will benefit more after the recent changes to how items save.
- Quit-teleport is a bit silly and makes many teleport spells and Zodiac gems obsolete (should be solved now after Cotillion's fix)

Anything big I've missed?

Now, I am not sure everyone see these as problems though. I guess it depends on who you ask, as with anything.

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Cherek
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by Cherek » 01 Dec 2018 03:29

cetsuo wrote:Im new to the game so i dont really know my way around that much, but I've read several postsabout items and thought about this:
what if imbuements made items break sooner? Like the power of the imbuement was too strong for them? More powerful imbues could have an even stronger effect on durability.
That's not a bad idea, and it would make sense thematically I think (although Gorboth is the expert on the story behind imbuements). I think it's an idea that might be worth exploring, however, it takes a long time to collect the stones needed to imbue something, and if it became too fragile most people would probably not find it worth the effort instead.

sylphan
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by sylphan » 01 Dec 2018 05:40

Cherek wrote:Anything big I've missed?
Well, unless you meant "ask the balance team" to cover everything you didn't address, yes. You missed 2 of the 3 big points I raised.
  • *That gear hunting used to bring teams and guilds together, and I think it should again.
    *That saving / non-saving would be less of a thing for AOP or whoever to deal with if the Tutori experience were made to more explicitly and experientially teach those concepts.

sylphan
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Re: time to evaluate the perma-everything change?

Post by sylphan » 01 Dec 2018 06:08

I'll add that before the everything lasts forever change, the game was was already doing exceedingly well (per Gorboth's own numbers), so it's not as though the saving / non-saving EQ learning curve was make-or break for the game. Of course it may be for players, maybe even lots of them. But 1. We are never going to be mainstream, nor would most of us want to be; 2. The ramifications of gear saving forever change the dynamic of the whole game we have loved, whereas having frustrated newbs leave because they have to hunt for gear does not. For lots of reasons, newbs will leave. That didn't prevent us from enjoying a historic level of player-base health.

In short, I still don't get why people felt we had to accelerate to nine hundred seventy-four, when we were cruising along just fine at forty-five.

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