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Added the rest of Citan's posts from the Second Forum.
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===== The Current Forum =====
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The following are not all of Citan's posts, but just ones thought to be important for the future, sharing his vision, and clarifying some things. Please note that newer posts are listed higher in this list. Older information may be outdated.
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===== The Second Forum =====
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The following are not all of Citan's posts, but just ones thought to be important for the future, sharing his vision, and clarifying some things. Please note that newer posts are listed higher in this list. Older information may be outdated.
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==== Steam ====
: Yes. More specifically you'll buy a Steam license and then connect your steam license to your existing account. We'll have more detailed steps as we get closer, but the important thing is you won't have to start over.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/community-questions-answers/3501-about-the-game-going-b2p#17906
==== Can't Target ====
: If tab-targeting doesn't work, the mystical command you want is "<kbd>/zapresources icefishing</kbd>"
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3482-untargetable-fishing-trap#17857
==== Map changes ====
: Thanks for the feedback! Regarding the map, we do plan to do major revisions to the map after the new GUI is in place -- doing work in the current GUI would just have to be redone, so it makes sense to wait. In the short term, however, you might find the "Objective Orienteering" ability useful -- it creates a glowing path toward your objective as long as you're in the right general map-zone. You unlock it by getting Foraging up to level 15.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3476-suggestions-review#17803
==== Asheron's Call ====
: I also want to offer my condolences to Asheron's Call players who've just learned that their home is shutting down. This is a very sad bit of news for me, although ... I hope this doesn't come across callously, but I personally grieved for these games' deaths years ago, when I first learned that Turbine wasn't going to be doing more major development on them. That hit me really hard, because the way I see it, an MMO that's never going to have big updates again is already mostly-dead.
: And I think most AC fans knew the writing was on the wall a couple years ago, when Turbine started trying to help people set up community servers: it was clear that while the staff loved the franchise, the games were not making meaningful money for Turbine. I haven't worked there for over a decade and I don't know if these games got a fair shake internally or not -- it doesn't really matter. It's still a damned shame to see them go.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3465-dev-blog-december-22#17705
==== Staff of Leadership ====
: We have no plans to make the Staff of Leadership available to non-backers. (But it might happen, years after the game has been live... never say never. But probably not.)
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/new-and-announcements/3339-project-gorgon-indiegogo-campaign-is-now-live?start=30#17612
==== Gamepad ====
: I also like using a gamepad to play, because after 12 hours of programming my mouse hand is sore. But making a gamepad configuration that easily handles all 18 ability buttons (plus everything else) is hard, so at the moment the best bet is probably a custom configuration of the Steam controller -- it can let you create overlays that let you choose different buttons easily. But eventually... probably not any time soon, but eventually, I want to be able to natively support other controllers like xbox one controllers. (There's some basic support built in now, but it's pretty buggy at the moment.)
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3426-using-a-gamepad-to-play#17576
==== Launcher ====
: The game is designed to be run from the launcher. The launcher tells the game where to save screenshots, and if you don't run the game from the launcher then it doesn't know where to put them. It saves them in a temp folder that the OS provides. (You can still get them: it pastes the exact directory into your chat.) But the bottom line is that players should always start the game via the launcher.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3404-screen-shots-not-saving-to-computer#17405
==== New Sidebars ====
: Yeah, I've said this in other threads, but we will eventually have a bar for potions and consumables, and that bar will probably also allow non-combat abilities. But I probably haven't talked recently about the flip-side of this problem. The 6-button sidebar was chosen a long time ago, when you were only going to be able to change your button layouts at certain points, not any time you want. So I expected only a few combat abilities to be on there, and the rest filled with non-combat utilities.
: Being able to change bar layouts only at designated "camp sites" was tossed out long ago because it sucked, but the sidebar hasn't been shrunk down yet. But when there's 40 or 50 additional (very powerful) sidebar abilities in the final game, I expect letting you have nine of them (six base plus three more with buffs) all at once will be way too much.
: So most likely, what will happen is that the existing bar will shrink to 3-4 slots (plus up to 3 more with buffs like Gur-Horta), only for combat abilities, and a new bar underneath it will have additional slots for noncombat abilities and items. But this is still not something that's high-priority -- and won't happen this year -- because loadouts let you switch between non-combat and combat setups efficiently for now, and until another few dozen special combat abilities are added to the game, it's not especially game-breaking to have a sidebar full of combat abilities. (As we can tell by how many people bother to use Gur-Horta regularly to get more slots! Very few do, because there's just not a lot of pressure to choose in-combat sidebar abilities yet.)
: And before anybody suggests dropping the buff items to make more room for "permanent" slots: every player wants permanent things over temporary things, but that's not gonna happen here. Consumable items are what make MMO economies work long-term, and it's important that they have a useful place in the game or they just don't work. So as more abilities are added, there will be more and more pressure for high-level players to buy and use Gur-Horta or its cousins. Those drugs are pretty much ignored right now because there aren't that many amazing sidebar abilities. When there are more, and fewer slots, it should become a useful part of the game that helps the economy thrive for years to come. It's important, and a good thing!
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3382-second-sidebar-for-non-combat-related-skills#17381
==== Corpses ====
: If you can't open the corpse, it means the owner didn't open it to look at its loot. Since the owner still has loot-permission, you can't open it, and therefore can't bury it. Once the corpse has been opened by the killer, you can bury it if they don't.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3384-burying-surface-mobs#17341
==== Druid Emergency, Fun Game ====
: The thing I always try to keep in mind is that this is supposed to be a fun game, and we'll keep working to make it fun. Sometimes your character will take on responsibilities, like being a druid, but unlike real life, we don't want those responsibilities to be especially tedious... because, again, this is supposed to be a fun game. You may still regret your choices, because what's fun for someone isn't going to be fun for everyone forever. But the intent is that druid events should be fun. There often aren't enough players right now to tell how well the current events will work later, but we're slowly gathering enough data to make changes to them, and we'll keep iterating on them.
: Right now I'm working out technical problems with the South Serbule event; when those are worked out, I'll roll out another new event with a different pace and we'll keep trying new stuff.
: As Silvonis said, we want to make sure that responsibilities are taken seriously, because otherwise everybody would be a druid, and it loses all impact. So that's something we want to work on, too. But we'll work on it within the spirit of being a fun game. We aren't going to do something too horrific.
: As for an account-wide lock, that particular suggestion is a non-starter for me. Being a druid is a character's choice, not a player's choice, so it shouldn't affect other characters. Just like being a werewolf doesn't lock you out of all your other characters during the full moon!
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3371-druid-emergency-debuff-should-be-account-wide?start=10#17297
==== Legacy Loot, Free Loot, Halloween ====
: When I made new treasure effects, I replaced old ones. When you log in, the old effects will automatically be changed to new effects. And that's not a problem in and of itself. BUT, as I mentioned in the previous dev-blog, I had to move a lot of treasure effects so that they go on different slots than before. Maybe 15%-20% of effects have been changed to new slots. If your item has a treasure effect that now goes on a different slot, it will become Legacy. It will also become Legacy if it doesn't meet the new dual-skill requirement. Those are the two big cases here.
: And as srand explained, we've given up trying to fix these items by randomly replacing treasure effects. So many treasure effects do new stuff now... even the ones that haven't been moved to new slots... so the odds of us being able to replace the item with one that you like is pretty much nil. You're going to need to see these new effects, play around with the way stats work now, and get a feel for which treasure effects you want. Hence the loot-party we have planned.
: But to answer questions in the thread: if your item happens to meet the dual-skill requirement and none of its treasure effects were moved to other slots, it should be fine. (Its treasure effects may do different things and you may not like it anymore, but it won't be Legacy.)
: For the skills that haven't had their treasure-rewrite yet, their slots haven't been reorganized yet either, so this particular problem won't apply to you ... yet! (Although the dual-skill requirement will still apply to all gear.) Once the other skills have been revised, we'll need some other way to help those players replace their gear. I don't know what form that assistance will take yet.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3325-change-in-plans-legacy-loot-free-loot-halloween?start=10#17000
==== Item Stacking to 99 ====
: During pre-alpha, there was only room for two digits on the item display. So it's kind of a leftover.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3275-99-why-not-100#16765
==== Skill Collection ====
: I'm not going to change the system of unlocks. It works, and I like it. Yes, it can be annoying... if you're trying to unlock all the skills. But the secret is that I do not want you to unlock all the skills. The unlocks are there to make it non-trivial to have every skill in the game. They do a good job of it.
: The goal is to focus players on a few skill choices. Without that, everyone would become a jack of all trades. I realize players unlock most of the skills when they reach 60 because they're bored and there's no more content, but there will eventually be more content. In the mean time if you want to unlock other skills, you'll have to befriend other NPCs.
: Again, to reiterate: I do not want players to learn all the skills. I definitely do not want it to be trivial to learn all the skills.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3272-some-mostly-negative-feedback-on-skills-leveling-and-suggestions#16752
==== Raffle Boxes ====
: Yes, if you don't set a timer on the time-restricted boxes, they behave like the lower-level boxes. Higher-level versions would have longer max-times than 60 minutes (90 for the tier-6 one), but I really expect that when the population is decent (a few hundred people is all it should take), successful raffles will be pretty short.
: Raffle boxes have a special clean-up priority that's higher than most items' priority. They're designed to have a 60-minute "safe window" where it would take an awful lot of valuable dropped items on the ground before they were in danger of being wiped out. But after 60 minutes, they're in danger of being... garbage-collected, so to speak. And I can't really increase that window safely, or people would be able to grief others by dropping tons of raffle boxes!
: Other kinds of deployables, like cheese casks, for instance, don't have this problem because if they're removed from the world, they respawn themselves when you get near. But that doesn't work here, since you kind of need the raffle box to exist in the world even when you aren't around.
: The low population is why I haven't done anything else with rafflers. They're basically on the back-burner for now -- although I definitely appreciate people testing them! But I don't think any big changes are a good time investment until the population is larger. The priority system I've described isn't set in stone, but without lots of players using raffle boxes, it's hard to see what kind of usage patterns should be supported. Although if you have ideas, I'm all ears!
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3268-raffle-boxes-yep-still-testing-the-hell-out-of-em#16739
==== Death Penalty ====
:I want people to feel free to explore how the game works, so I don't want to penalize them for dying while experimenting. Bosses have their own death penalty, though, and there's a "hardcore death penalty mode" which you can enable, which makes you lose items on death until you return to your corpse, and I hope to make that a reasonably appealing experience for players looking for a bigger challenge.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3258-new-here-why-no-death-penalty-like-asheron-s-call#16664
==== Questing and Factions====
: It's an MMO about exploring and finding stuff, and in general I want to let players "explore by doing." Having seriously punitive consequences to NPC decisions aren't very compatible with that. It makes people less excited to try stuff out if there's a "wrong" way to do something.
: So while there ARE and will be more cases where you need to decide what you're doing very carefully because there are hard choices to make, those decision points are rare.
: I've poked around with factions, but as a game design tool, they suck. The game design benefit of factions is to make hard decisions more gradual, so players aren't broadsided by their actions. But frankly it never works out that way. Instead, you see "you lost 5 faction points with team X" and you immediately think "oh shit, I may have done something bad." And then you stop playing and you go google the factions to decide which you want to be friends with. In reality, there is no gradual process of accidentally finding which factions you want to befriend. I might as well just put up a box that says "do you want to like orcs and hate goblins or vice versa?"
: So if factions don't work for their intended purpose of easing players into a hard decision (and they don't, because they don't give enough info to make that decision within the game), then there's no real point to them besides yet another grind.
: Anyway... this came off as a bit negative. I'm not saying you're wrong or dumb for wanting hard decisions in an MMO. But that's not the main mission of this MMO, because it contradicts exploration too much.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3223-disapointed-with-questing#16469
==== Bees? ====
: Heh, I'm not sure where the bee thing started, but there will indeed be bees in P:G. But not necessarily ones you want to meet in an idyllic garden... Fae Bees live in the fairy realm. They're tameable by fairy animal handlers.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3227-omg-charged-bees#16501
==== Druid Event Free Loot ====
: Good feedback here, though I think a lot of the issues aren't really related to the druid events in particular.
: Regarding "people coming to get free loot" -- as I said in the big catch-all blog post, we'll need a general solution for this problem. Right now, players can do Manticores up to 24 times a day. The loot may be a little worse, but the sheer amount of it is overwhelming. This is the same problem as ANY scenario where there are group monsters on the landscape.
: The answer isn't "don't ever have group monsters outdoors", and it isn't "don't let them have any treasure", because both of those things are suck. The answer is a complex treasure-determining algorithm so that you can't just get free loot by running around.
: But as I said in the blog post, that's not something I'm working on right now, because there's bigger fish to fry first! Right now, with the tiny populations we have, it's absolutely not an epic problem for people to get free level 30 loot from the kraken event. Getting an inventory full of level 60 loot from the Ilmari event is a bit more troubling... but tagging along with a group to do the minotaur dungeon will get you statistically better-quality loot anyway -- and a whole lot of it.
: The point is that the "free loot" problem is not something specific to druid events, and just as I'm not going to shut down manticores or the lab dungeon over it, I'm not going to shut down druid events because of it. We'll address the issue in time. Right now I have a bunch of more fundamental changes to make before I can get to that problem.
: That said, I have nerfed the quality of loot from Druid event monsters in the next update, because it was too good regardless. Will this change keep every non-druid away? Nah, probably not. But that's okay by me. I don't want druid events to only have druids in it, as if druids are the only people who care about nature. I want the events to be druid-LED, not druid-ONLY.
: I guess I should step back... there seems to be a big misunderstanding here. Being a druid is not a curse like Lycanthropy. It's a calling. They are both permanent decisions, but they don't have to be the same level of drama.
: It seems like some of you are of the opinion that you should have a big down side for having flight forms. But the REASON you have those flight forms is to get to the druid events quickly! (That's also why there won't be any "free teleporting" to the events -- that'd be spitting on Dreva's blessing of flight.)
: But also note that bird flight is not the only kind of flight in the game. It's probably the only easy flight at level 50, sure, but high level players (in the 100+ range) will be able to get flying mounts.
: In a game with flying mounts, why should being a druid have huge negative repercussions? I don't think it should.
: The down side of being a druid is that you need to drop whatever you're doing and go flap to the crisis at a moment's notice. Well, that's the down side I need to make happen, anyway.
: It's already annoying if you log in to level your brewmaster skill and have to drop everything to flap your ass to the desert. I don't think there needs to be a "punishment" beyond that interruption. But the events obviously need to last long enough for this to be a thing you can't ignore. Most of the events right now are so short that you can probably just sit it out... or go for a coffee and come back later. That's something I want to address.
: Regarding Dreva blessings: all participating druids get the same number of blessings from an event. Really: every participating druid gets the same number of blessings from the event, whatever level they are. If the monsters are too dangerous for you to attack, you can stand back and heal, or debuff, or drop Sanctuaries, and still get blessings. That probably makes less sense when there are a hundred or more druids online at once, but I think it's probably a good approach for now.
: Sometimes newbies literally can't reach the events in time ... but hey, sometimes being a druid is a hard life. You'll level up and it'll get easier to survive some areas. And when the events are longer it'll be less of an issue.
: Please keep the feedback coming, but keep in mind that:
: - most druidic emergencies involve dangerous changes to the whole landscape, so naturally everyone can participate, not just druids.
: - the reason you can fly is specifically to get to these events more easily. There will be faster flight forms for high level druids, but there won't be a "druid teleport" that obsoletes your flight forms.
: - loot quality from druid events is going down in the next update.
: - eventually when there are 1000 players online, we'll need more than one simultaneous druid event! That's why I don't want people to fret too much about newbies fighting alongside level 60s, or level 60s being bored by newbie events. There aren't enough players online for it to make sense to have lots of different level ranges active at once, but when we have a basic outline for how these should work, we can expand it as necessary to fit the population.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3055-druid-event-feedback?start=30#16520
==== Treasure Effects ====
: First, when talking about treasure effects that suck please include as many specifics as possible. I never sit down to make treasure effects and think "this skill's treasure should do something completely unrelated to the point of the skill." That has never been the intention a single time. So we're on the same page about intent, but not specifics. That's why details are critical! Now, talking about ones you mentioned in particular:
: The fire magic effects involving + Power were vociferously defended when I nerfed them, as being critical to survivability with the fire magic skill. That was a long time ago and these sorts of concerns fluctuate as balance changes, so it may not be relevant at the moment, but I do think it's a good idea for each skill to have some abilities that can give a small return on Power. (Could those abilities be implemented as "costs less Power" instead? Yes, and they will, but that's a polish thing, as that involves making a new Attribute for each one and it's more work. When I'm reasonably confident an ability will work that way, I do set up attributes for it.)
: When I add Health to something it's often to give it scale. If I decide that the most Power saving I can give is, say, +4 power, I may add in some Health healing to give me 6 levels of the ability. I try to have 6 or 12 levels of each ability, and sometimes that involves tossing in some extra buffs of a small variety. I also include several "survivability" effects in each skill to give players options in how they stay alive. I don't generally think of those as being a burden to players. Healing is rarely perceived as burdensome in my experience, unless you're trying to build an insanely overpowered DPS set, and in that case I don't care if I'm burdening you.
: Which brings me to one of the bigger problems with treasure right now -- "single-skill" treasure builds can be far, FAR too powerful right now, and I have to fix that problem. Having 30 treasure effects for a single attack skill obsoletes the need for survivability because you just kill everything dead.
: So I'll be taking slightly drastic action to subvert that -- I'm currently looking at completely removing the notion of single-skill equipment. If an item has more than one treasure effect, it will always be for both of your skills, not just one. And crafted treasure simply will never have only one skill on it. I need to do something drastic like this in order to push people into working out both skills relatively equally.
: I bring this up because when players are more equally splitting their gear mods between two skills, you may be right that survivability effects make less sense for combat skills -- and I may end up reducing the total number of treasure effects across the board. We'll see when we get there. Right now if I removed them, I have nothing to replace them with. In most cases, every attack already has as many murder-boosting treasure effects as it can have. The other effects can either fill out the skill's role in other ways or add survivability, or... not exist.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/support/3225-themed-treasure-effects#16468
==== Signature Debuff ====
: As to why certain skills don't have any -- it's just a practical thing. There are certain requirements for abilities to be eligible for these tags. For instance, for "Signature Debuffs", the ability needs a reset time of at least 10 seconds. (Otherwise giving back Power when you use it would be much too good.) Some skills just don't have any abilities that meet the requirements for any of these special tags. But that's something I'll work on as I evolve the skills some more. Ideally each skill would have at least one of the set: either a Signature Debuff, an Epic attack, or a Major Heal.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3131-signature-debuff#16235
==== Bug Reports ====
: Guys I want to ask again to please report bugs in game, and if the bugs persist a month or more and they are annoying you please re-report them. There's two reasons for this. First, there is no way for me to tell that something I think is fixed ain't fixed unless it gets reported again. (I believed the screenshot issue was fixed in a Unity update a while back and I haven't heard otherwise from anyone in months.)
: Second, this helps me prioritize. If I see you re-reporting an issue, that suggests that it's hampering your play experience, so it's something I should look at sooner than something nobody really cares much about.
:: http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/3130-project-gorgon-screenshot-project#16234
==== Engine Switch? ====
: Huh? You had network-latency lag. Whenever you have lag that can be felt by other people in other zones, that's never, EVER due to Unity.
:: http://projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/36-project-gorgon-s-game-engine#147
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