Changes

Citan Forum Posts

353,201 bytes added, 20:38, 9 October 2022

Updated Citan Forum posts to 10/9/2022

__NOTOC__

===== The Current Forum =====

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 Older information may be outdated.

:: Source

-->

~~; Vanity Slots~~ ~~: We don't have any solid plans for this, but I kinda-sorta expect to implement vanity armor slots as part of the "VIP package" --~~ ==== Housing Update Summer 2022 ====: Housing hasn't started being implemented yet; it's only had some design work done. Housing is low priority because it requires a TON of engineering and art investment which need to be focused on other things right now. : We don't publish a road map because we don't use a "waterfall" design paradigm. We don't have a large staff, or an art department that's continuously cranking out assets. We're just a couple of people working on a HUGE game, so we have to be agile about what we focus on. We look at what seems most important each month, and we try to work on that. : Recently, I spent time trying to figure out why new players quit playing, and so my recent focus is... to try to keep new players from quitting. It turns out lots of players think Eltibule is especially ugly. That's is a problem because it's a new-player area. New players reach Eltibule, see those 90s-era ground textures, and they just can't deal... it's too ugly. So that needs to be the focus for the moment. : Before that, we had no plans to make big revisions to Eltibule this year. I'd made some minor improvements a few months back, fixing broken trees and such, and I was hoping that would be enough that I could focus on new areas. But I don't think it is. It still needs a lot more help! So that's delayed everything else while we get this fixed. : So anyway, that's why we don't publish a road map: because we don't use one. If we had a team of even a mere 10-20 people, we would NEED a roadmap. But we don't, and we don't! : Housing will happen when it can. But not in 2022. Same with the dwarf race, definitely not happening this year. Sorry. : We just have too much else to focus on first.:: 8/17/2022:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?3051-Player-Housing-promises-from-2015&p=21207#post21207==== Bug Reporting ====: I'm sorry you're having trouble, I'm not sure what's wrong, whether you were given a bad code or what. But please use the email [email protected], because we can't help you with this on the public forum. We have to ask questions that use private information, and we have to give you a new secret code, so we obviously can't post that here. Please use the email, that's the only way we can help you. : And please give us a few days to respond to those emails, because we are not a big company. And it's the weekend.:: 3/6/22:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2986-Project-Gorgon-Package-Thoroughbred-Breeder&p=20907#post20907==== Povus Lamps ====: Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm still interested in more feedback, wanted to answer some queries.: I think there's kind of a misunderstanding here -- I realized city fighting (as I envisioned it) wasn't going to work in Povus before we launched Povus. It went through many iterations before it launched (and then many more iterations after). When I timed myself doing the lamp lighting quest, I was using what I considered a "final density" of monsters, but they weren't the same exact monsters that I ended up using, and I underestimated how impactful that would be. (Also, the layout wasn't randomized yet, so I may have inadvertently been memorizing what happens where -- not sure how much that affected timing though.): My original intention was that lamp-lighting should be a soloable task for a single level 85 player with decent-but-not-great gear. And I still think that's a nice benchmark to hit eventually, but I also realized it's not really that critical right now: I still expect high-level monsters and players to fluctuate in power a lot, so trying to perfectly tune a huge encounter like that is guaranteed to require revision later anyway.: I think it's currently in the right ballpark. Too hard, but I could easily see it being too easy after a few more revisions. : I'm not trying to drill down as deep as you're suggesting... when I sit down to revise gear, the most important questions I want answers for are stuff like:* which treasure mods are currently popular?* which mods are seriously under-used?* which skill combinations are popular?* which abilities are used in each skill? : I've routinely used this sort of data in the past, but I've realized it's becoming inaccurate at high level due to the low number of samples. I'm not expecting to be able to actually "balance via data", as you can do when you have millions of players. ("Looks like the Sword of Godhood is OP by 5.4%!") But I can definitely get enough data to answer basic questions about how players are playing the game. : The first goal is to have enough data to detect the majority of currently-active skill combinations. Right now for some skill combinations, there's only one or two players using it at high level. But they are absolutely dominating the game with those combinations, which tells me that... there's not enough players, basically. Otherwise more people would have picked up on it. : Ideally I could get enough data bulk to tell which mods are used with which skill combinations. I hate when I make the mistake of replacing treasure mods that seem like junk (and are under-utilized, based on my data), but are actually critical for a certain skill combination. The data is too thin for me to pick up on that sort of thing, so instead of nurturing a weird combination, I accidentally snuff it out. That sucks. : That (Question about a server if needed)got edited out of the blog post because when I mentioned that in Discord, people assumed it was a sure thing, that we would 100% definitely add another server when we leave beta. But that's not something I can predict. If the beta population becomes huge right before we leave beta, then we could launch a new server right after beta. But if populations are low leaving beta, I'm not going to open a new server -- that would split people up too much. : I'm also not going to force people to play on an overcrowded server if I can help it, even during beta. We have another year or so of beta remaining. If we suddenly get really overcrowded next month, I'm not waiting until the game launches to open a new server! : So I don't want to put ideas in peoples' heads that there's a certain timing that I can predict. We'll open more servers if and when the in-game population merits it. : Thanks for the input everyone!:: 2/26/2022:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2983-Discussion-Dev-Blog-February-2022&p=20886#post20886==== Content Stoppers ====: Thanks for the feedback! I hope that the introduction of mounts improves travel time. : One thing I want to focus on (for newish players) is "content stoppers" -- times where a new player just doesn't know what to do or where to go. Obviously the game doesn't have a specific path through the content, but I also don't want things to be so nebulous and broad that you have no idea what to do next. : I think a lot of new players hit one of these spots where they don't know where to go, and they just give up and quit. So if you've run into those situations, please share the details! : (Of course, asking in-game will usually get you a good idea of where to go next, but most players won't ask, so the game needs to do a better job of broadcasting some of that info.):: 2/9/2022:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2946-First-impressions-from-a-new-player&p=20823#post20823==== Moderator Concerns ====: There is certainly a lot more history to your account and behavior, which I've researched. But to your inquiry, we won't be posting lengthy rules about what can be said on Discord, because the specifics change often based on many factors -- often changing day to day. The rule is just to follow moderators' requests. You don't have permission to "challenge the moderators" when they give you an instruction to stop talking about something. : If you feel a moderator is being unreasonable or abusive you should send in an email ticket to [email protected] so that we can evaluate the situation. However, I have preemptively evaluated this situation, and I encourage you to drop it.:: 10/9/2022:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2972-Clarify-Discord-Rules-amp-Regulations&p=20822#post20822==== Orc Soups ====: I like this. Looks like good Orc racial content to me!:: 1/31/2022:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2966-Hot-Orcish-Soup&p=20805#post20805==== Resource Availability ====: Hm, I'm not sure what sort of answer you're looking for with this? If you're looking for a set-in-stone guiding "design principle", there isn't one. We take each situation on a case-by-case basis, and change our mind when it seems like we're doing it wrong. We tend to leave things open to cross-character assistance by default and correct that decision when needed. : For one thing, if you want a game to have broad, open systems (for instance, where you can throw arbitrary items on the ground for other people to pick up), you simply can't prevent some level of cross-character aid. And the thing is, players like doing it because it makes them feel clever. A huge part of Project: Gorgon's design is about letting players feel clever. : It only becomes a problem when players are in competition, and suddenly "multi-mule-farming" becomes a competitive requirement, and a burden on other players who don't want to bother. In cases where that happens, we can either make the resource account-limited, or we can just out-level that resource's requirement with something new. Or both. : I guess another way of answering that question is: what particular resources are you concerned about? It might be something that "solves itself" as you level -- I mean like milking cows. You can make milking mules if you want, but soon enough milk won't be the resource that's gating your progress. : But other things may be a problem and need fixing. I actually expect

: The exact features of ensouling are still in flux so I don't want to say much about it right now, but you can't do anything with souls right now. But you will in the future! And yeah, sentient weapons are one of the ways that can go.

: But I will spoil a tiny easter egg on that particular claw, because I'm not sure how well it works: it is supposed to be able to emote in text, making hissing sounds, purring, mewling, etc. depending on what you're doing (and whether you're paying it enough attention). It's very similar to how ur-bacon can talk. But I'm not sure if it's noticeable enough. Have you ever seen it happen? I want it to be very occasional, not more than once every hour or two, but happen enough to notice if you carry the item around a while.

::05-25-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?521-Ensouled-Gear&p=4497#post4497

; ==== Storage ====

: I should mention again that we're also planning some bigger storage-management features as well. The biggest feature is that all the storage boxes in a particular land area (e.g. Serbule) will be accessible from a tabbed GUI interface, letting you quickly manage all of them without having to run from building to building. It will be a while before that feature's ready, but we're slowly evolving things in the back end to make that possible.

::05-07-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?468-Item-Search-feature&p=4088#post4088

; ==== Missing Blog ====

: We don't have time to keep the wordpress blog software (and its plug-ins) up to date, and after it got hacked for the second time in a year, we just took it down. But we'll bring it back eventually!

::05-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?467-Old-Eldergame-Blogs&p=4074#post4074

; ==== Scamming, Success, and "Being a Dick" ====

: Since this thread seems to somehow just keep going, I figured I'd weigh in with some thoughts.

: First, I don't want scamming in the game, where players lose items or valuables to other players due to trickery. That's a form of PvP, really: it's tricking another player and causing them misery for your joy. It's a terrible fit for this PvE game.

::05-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?163-Scamming-What-s-your-take-on-it&p=4072#post4072

; ==== Flammable Dwarves ====

: Hundred-year-old beard hair goes up like kindling!

::04-25-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?414-Dwarven-Culture-(Warning-strong-language)&p=3882#post3882

; ==== Optional Cursor ====

: An optional custom cursor is on the to-do list. It's pretty far down the list, but it will happen eventually!

::04-22-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?433-The-In-Game-Cursor&p=3833#post3833

; ==== Treasure System ====

: Hey guys, when it comes to the treasure system, I usually need VERY specific info, right down to the exact mods, monsters, items, and skills in question.

: I'll use the discussion about transmutation as an example. You say there aren't enough mods showing up when Transmuting? There's at least three possible causes for that:

::04-22-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?335-Armor-crafting-augmenting-and-legacy&p=3831#post3831

; ==== Brewing ====

: All possible buffs and benefits will be brewable by every player. The recipes to get those results will just be different!

::04-12-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?415-Dev-Blog-April-9-2017&p=3655#post3655

; ==== Performance Problems ====

: Let me rein the problem in a little here: there are lots of known performance problems! But most are caused by problems with the assets or the level design -- there's too many visible monsters around the lake in south serbule, for instance. Those will get fixed in time. Even I get framerate spikes when turning in Serbule and South Serbule (more often at high graphics settings than low). But my FPS display bobbles when that happens, at least a little bit.

:: 04-08-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?412-Stuttering-Choppiness&p=3549#post3549

; ==== Loading ====

: prior to the April 1 update, the game did in fact load every asset it could need when you entered each zone. And with an 8gb video card you wouldn't have needed to even swap assets. After the April 1 update, it loads-on-demand for some resources, but slowdowns due to loading would definitely be visible in the FPS display. (And a little hourglass would appear in the top right for a split second -- near where the "sprinting" and "in combat" icons are.) What FPS do you get when it ISN'T locking up?

: The FPS display not hiccuping is a big clue because it rules out a lot of causes. Hm, it could be caused by constant exceptions in the client's main thread, maybe -- can you grab the output_log.txt from your installation and email it to [email protected]? It might have a clue. (It'll be in a subfolder of wherever the game has been downloaded to -- but NOT the patcher's output_log.txt, that's just for the patcher program.)

::04-08-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?412-Stuttering-Choppiness&p=3545#post3545

; ==== Bat Form ====

: I wanted to drop a note about the bat form. The old bat was a store-bought model -- we use third-party art for a lot of our monsters, and then alter them as needed -- that lacked some of the technical bits that would make it look good in the future. As we slowly evolve the game's graphical assets, we need to phase out models that lack things like normal-maps, because eventually they'd stick out really badly. SO! When the artist who made the original bat had an "upgraded" version of the bat, we grabbed it, because it has the missing technical bits. However, it wasn't an upgrade -- it turned out to be a complete remake.

: It's hard to gauge the overall popularity of this model versus the other, especially since the old one isn't readily available to look at. But I'll keep listening (in this thread and others). In the last major update, I turned off the blood on the bat's fur. Whether this is an improvement or not is up in the air -- what's your opinion?

::04-08-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?298-Bat-Form&p=3533#post3533

; ==== Skill Purpose ====

: In general the question "why does one skill work differently than another" comes down to design intent and balance concerns. In this case, I wanted to give support characters another interesting choice for offhand weapon without requiring them to drop one of their two main combat skills. If you're building a mentalism+psychology healing setup (for instance) and decided you wanted some extra ranged power, crossbow is for you.

: Remember that there will be literally hundreds of sidebar abilities in the final game and most of them won't be useful to every player. If every sidebar ability was useful to every player in every situation, then only the six "best" abilities would get used. Right? So let's not do that. Over time there will be lots of powers with different requirements and restrictions.

::03-21-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?305-Crossbow&p=2885#post2885

; ==== In-Combat ====

: Thanks guys. The ten-second thing seems like it might be relevant somehow -- there is a ten-second check in a certain situation (mainly, part of the PvP in-combat checks)... I can't see how it would apply when fighting monsters, but if it's lasting exactly ten seconds, that's a pretty interesting clue. I'm exploring that part of the code now.

: The intention is that you should stop being in-combat about 4 seconds after killing the last monster that knows about you. Regarding groups, anyone in the group who's "in combat" will keep all nearby group members in combat. That's by design to prevent exploitable situations (such as when a support character has basically infinite Power by staying out of combat the whole time). For similar reasons, if your pet is in combat, so are you, and vice versa.

::03-20-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?340-Lets-slow-it-down-way-down&p=2845#post2845

; ==== Combat System ====

: As you know, we're still working on the in-combat system, specifically in making combat end quickly. But finding the exact scenarios that cause problems are difficult. Most reports are just "I'm in combat too long", which doesn't help us any. We need specifics! We need to work out the situations where it's happening so we can fix them.

: First step is to see WHY you are in combat. Hover your mouse over the "in combat" icon at the top right of the screen. It will say, for instance, "You are in combat with Rat and two other enemies" or whatever. How long does it stay that way? Is it just one creature, far away, keeping you in combat? Does the rat ever show up? What is going on? Do you see a pattern?

::03-18-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?340-Lets-slow-it-down-way-down&p=2796#post2796

; ==== Direct Damage ====

: The way it works is this: "direct" damage is the number at the top of the ability description. If it says it does 500 damage, that's direct damage. "Indirect" damage is damage added on from other sources. If it says at the bottom of the ability "deals 40 damage over 10 seconds", that's always indirect damage. Direct = the attack's actual damage, indirect = anything else.

: : It's still pretty fuzzy, but I haven't figured out a better terminology yet. I considered calling all the indirect types by other names, so direct fire damage would be Fire and indirect would be Heat damage (for instance). The problem there is that we have buffs that boost all direct or indirect damage types. So giving them other names just seems to make things more confusing, not less.

::03-16-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?253-Trying-to-understand-Ring-of-Fire-Backfire&p=2745#post2745

; ==== Bug Report Time ====

: We're a tiny team, just a couple of people. We try to read over bug tickets daily, but we can't possibly respond to a ticket within minutes or hours or sometimes even days. And frankly, dealing with tickets like yours, that don't actually have a bug, are very low priority. This is alpha, the game is very far from being finished, and the top priority is finishing the game. So alpha testers must have patience -- that's a requirement of playing at this time.

: : We've never banned anyone due to the contents of a single bug report, regardless of what it says (so far, at least), but sending in DOZENS of back-to-back tickets is intentionally clogging up our ticket system, and that wastes our precious development time. So stop it.

::03-16-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?329-Banned-ingame-for-submitting-a-bug&p=2737#post2737

; ==== Trash Loot ====

: Also, just a note on "trash monsters" -- there are some trash monsters, but Elites are never trash. They drop top-tier equipment and have a chance for top-rarity mods. Even if the only thing your group can do in GK is kill elite monsters, you will still accumulate great loot and wealth, and that's by design. I know rewards are always perceived relative to other rewards, but elites are NOT trash in my book!

::03-11-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?319-Dev-Notes-March-10-2017&p=2626#post2626

; ==== Behaviour Report ====

: Thanks for the feedback and help with playtesting this! I've made some small tweaks to the /behaviorreport command for the next snapshot, and will be adding some more functionality to make it easier to do these in the future. But I could still use more ideas regarding how to keep egregious "twinking" behavior from running rampant -- it's a shared world, so some level of interaction is going to be unavoidable even in a "challenge" contest like this, but I'd like to come up with some ways to reduce its impact, or at least tell when it's happened. (The most important "twinking" scenario being "a high-level guy goes ahead of you and kills the bosses in a dungeon, so you get credit for killing bosses without being in any real danger." And similar scenarios.) If you have ideas that aren't in the thread yet, please voice them!

: : Also congrats to Cocytus, who is the winner of the unofficial contest!

::02-22-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?214-Unofficial-quot-Iron-Man-quot-Permadeath-Challenge&p=2129#post2129

; ==== Ring of Fire ====

: The effects are rolled separately, so you have two separate 5% chances to take damage when you use the ability. (It's rolled per ability use, not per target). I suspect what you're seeing is just one of the mods going off (the 128 one), but your indirect boost is applied, like this:

: : 128 * 1.96 (your indirect fire mod) = 250

::02-18-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?253-Trying-to-understand-Ring-of-Fire-Backfire&p=2015#post2015

; ==== Streaming ====: Yep, you're allowed to stream the game on twitch or put gameplay footage on Youtube. We ask that you mention in the title or description that it's alpha footage; ====otherwise there aren't any requirements or limitations.

::02-18-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?236-Posting-In-game-Content-on-Youtube&p=2014#post2014

; ==== Loot ====

: Well, no system is perfect, but I actually found the opposite. As a templar in EQ2 I routinely helped out others, just for the sake of being nice, and because of the locking system, it was understood as a nice gesture instead of an attempt to steal a kill.

: : In Gorgon right now, you can "help" somebody, but if you do more damage than them against a solo creature, you stop being a helper and start becoming a kill-stealer. And since XP is split right now, many players will resent your "help" because you're inevitably slowing down their leveling.

::02-11-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?219-The-Zerg&p=1789#post1789

; ==== Zerging ====

: Hey guys, love getting feedback but this thread feels very vague. It'd be really useful if people gave any sort of specifics. "Zerging" where? What levels are you? How many people are involved? Without specifics I can't give specific feedback. Here's some general feedback that I've posted before on the old forums (more or less):

: : Some low-level dungeons, I honestly don't care if you bum-rush them with a million people. If a high-level player wants to organize a bunch of newbies to kill Gajus? I can't really bring myself to give a crap. It's not important in the scheme of things. But if you're doing high-level content in groups of eight or ten, that's a bigger problem, one that we're aware of and that's on our to-do list to fix.

::02-10-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?219-The-Zerg&p=1787#post1787

; ==== Multiboxing ====

: Eh, okay, I'm pretty convinced that multiboxing is going to cause too much trouble in the long term. The problem is that it's very hard to differentiate "fair multiboxing" with "bot-assisted multiboxing". Detecting bots is already hard enough without giving people more wiggle room.

: : So, starting now, I'm rescinding my temp-approval. You are not allowed to multibox for anything other than item-muling. Sorry, fans of multiboxing! We'll adjust the code of conduct to make this explicit.

::02-06-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?179-Multi-boxing-multi-account-activty&p=1466#post1466

; ==== Broken Items ====

: There's no fixed duration for tombstones to exist. They clean themselves up when there's too many other items on the ground in the same zone. Hardcore players' tombstones are higher-priority than non-hardcore tombstones, meaning that they will last longer. But their duration can't be guaranteed.

: : As others have said, though, the tombstone is just a shortcut. It's the item itself that stores where its "broken pieces" are. Broken items can be right-clicked to track down your death-spot, and right-clicked again to repair the item. The interesting thing about this is that since it's stored on the item, not the player, there's no time limit: as long as the item exists, it can be repaired by going to the right spot. So you can store your broken items for later, or even give them to a friend to go repair for you -- anyone can repair it!

::02-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?190-Death-penalties-damaged-gear-and-lost-tombstones&p=1458#post1458

; ==== Hammer Bonus Levels ====

: It was an oversight. Most of Hammer's bonus levels will come from skills that aren't done yet, but a few existing skills such as mining and blacksmithing should have bonus Hammer levels. This will be fixed soon!

: : If there are other combat skills that don't have bonus levels (but do have abilities that can't be obtained without bonus levels), those would be bugs too, so please report them! (Via the in-game ticket system.)

::02-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?186-Bonus-Hammer-Levels&p=1457#post1457

; ==== Behavior Badges ====

: This is very cool, and it's something I imagined the "behavior badges" would eventually be useful for. For instance, if you want to do a no-shirt challenge, and you live long enough, you'll eventually get the Shirtless behavior badge, which is proof you didn't cheat. The down side of the current system is that you have to stay alive for a few weeks before the badges kick in. But it's something we might be able to evolve in a way that helps make player-challenges more enforceable. If this challenge (or challenges like this) catch on, we might give that tech a bit more priority than it would otherwise have.

:: 02-02-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?152-Community-Challenges-Guilds&p=1351#post1351

; ==== Bandwidth ====

: I haven't gauged bandwidth usage in a long time, so there's no official answer to this right now.

: The bandwidth won't depend on your screen resolution or other graphics settings. (It used to matter if you had "Experimental Optimizations" checkbox on, but currently no configuration options affect bandwidth.) But bandwidth WILL change based on the number of players and moving monsters in your general area. Standing in Serbule with dozens of people and pets running all around is a pretty high-bandwidth scenario. If I had to guess where the worst-case bandwidth area is, it'd be standing just outside of Rahu, where there's like 200 monsters walking around in one small patch of desert.

::02-02-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?178-Project-Gorgon-Data-usage&p=1332#post1332

; ==== Unarmed ====

: It's intended that you can make really good energy-shield-oriented Unarmed builds... the idea is that the shields last longer than one combat, so you can stack them up. That said, I'm sure they are wildly imbalanced at the moment, and may or may not make sense at various level ranges. It's something on the list to work on eventually.

::02-02-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?182-Unarmed-shielding-mods&p=1331#post1331

; ==== Multiboxing ====

: The very honest answer is we haven't decided yet whether multiboxing will be allowed in the final game. But I am leaning towards not allowing it. In games where multiboxing is actually hard, it's not much of a problem, but when it's easy, it creates a lot of envy and anger from other players, and I don't need that. And would it be hard here? Probably not. When I add features like auto-follow, and when you've found powerful "hands-off" support builds (a battle chemistry/mentalism combo comes to mind), it's a pretty dramatic increase in power for little effort, and it's something that has historically pissed other players off.

: Yeah, I can tweak the game to make multiboxing harder and more "fair", but I don't want to have to think "wait, what does this design decision mean for multi-boxers?" every time I make a change.

:: 02-02-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?179-Multi-boxing-multi-account-activty&p=1329#post1329

; ====Fun Areas====

: So basically the areas with more of their content completed are fun, and the ones that aren't done are not fun. Thanks for the feedback.

: Seriously, though... obviously there are mechanics we're still working on, like cold weather. They take time to iterate on. You're allowed to find them un-fun, and I want you talk about them, and I appreciate the feedback when they aren't fun -- or when they are.

::02-02-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?157-Objective-Analysis-of-PG-for-now&p=1328#post1328

; ====Lycanthropy====

: Yes, you have to occasionally find time to play during a full moon to get the most out of lycanthropy. That's not a bug, it's a feature. In exchange, werewolf players, and ONLY werewolf players, can buy their level-ups and abilities before they meet the prerequisites. They can also pay for it in "tokens", which, it turns out, are a whole lot cheaper than Councils. I'm sorry that the full moon falls pretty far from this update, though.

::01-23-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?129-January-22-2017-Update-Discussion!&p=774#post774

; ==== Raven ====

: Generally the problem here is that raven is not an animal form. Animal Town citizens can smell that you're still a druid, and it doesn't count. Switching any forms is also unlikely to work -- you need to stay in one specific animal CURSE form -- deer included, although it's not a curse when druids do it -- for three hours of in-game time. We'll work on making this clearer somehow in a future update.

:: 01-20-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?100-Animal-Town-NPCs-still-rejecting-me&p=609#post609

; ==== Underwater Nodes ====

: Thanks for the feedback! Underwater nodes are intentional, and they're supposed to be a logistical problem to figure out. I'm open to improving how things work there, but in general, I don't remove content because it's too hard -- I want to refine systems until it's achievable instead.

: So it sounds like the key problem is not having enough breath? There are ways to increase your breath meter, including randomly-generated treasure items, low-level words of power, and raising your Endurance. Are these not easily accessible, or have you found them and they're still insufficient? I can certainly add more ways to raise max breath -- in fact there should be a low-level alchemy potion for it coming soon. (The potion exists already, but can't be crafted, only found.)

::01-19-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?49-Underwater-Motherlodes-have-to-go&p=566#post566

; ==== Feedback ====

: Thanks for the feedback! I consider newbie-questions to be invaluable feedback, because it shows what isn't intuitable about the game. Not everything is supposed to be instantly intuitive, necessarily, but most game mechanics should make sense within their own context. But because we change things around a lot, systems that may have made sense once don't always stay sane. Boss monster difficulty is one such area -- bosses were once easier than they are now, and while I toned some bosses down when we changed monster difficulty, it's especially hard to find the sweet spot for newbie bosses, because it's hard to tell how powerful you're going to be at that point.

: The rhino boss in the crypt is almost certainly too difficult ... or, perhaps another way to fix that is that the monsters near there need to be tougher. But probably just toning down the boss in this case. Another SUPER-unfortunate boss is 'Tremor' in the myconian dungeon. His curse is supposed to be annoying -- back when basic attacks weren't that important, it was an annoying curse. But we made Basic Attacks much more important recently, and now Tremor's curse is one of the worst in the game... and it's in a low-level dungeon. (We'll fix it soonish, but the point is just that changes do have unexpected side-effects, and I rarely find all of those on my own -- I only realize there's problems when I get feedback.)

: As far as finding research components, it's supposed to be time consuming and/or expensive. Keep in mind that other skills have other time-consuming and/or expensive aspects that aren't necessarily obvious. For instance, to make the Staff skill really shine, you need to find the Hoplology skill, which is in a difficult level 40 dungeon. Prior to that, the skill is good, but not amazing. Similarly with Mentalism -- some of the best powers will be missing for a bit until you can come back and get them from the myconians.

: But saying it's supposed to be expensive and time consuming is just the general goal. Precisely how difficult should it be? I dunno. It's alpha; ====we're mostly winging it based on feedback and, sometimes, metrics. And it can see-saw back and forth a bit. I suspect part of the problem with fire magic is that I recently made getting Fire Dust a bit too easy, so it seems extra-weird that the later components are so hard to get. The fix is probably to make fire dust a bit less common while also making higher-level components a bit more common. You'll see in each snapshot build's patch notes where I attempt to tackle one or two of these kinds of things each time. (How many arrows should a "bundle of arrows" generate? How hard should it really be to level up First Aid? On and on it goes.)

: Bottom line is mostly: it's alpha, I dunno, please give feedback (as you have!) when something seems amiss -- either too hard OR too easy -- nobody ever reports the too-easy stuff. We're going for an organic difficulty, where not everything is necessarily as hard or easy as everything else, and that means we don't have to make everything perfectly orthogonal, but it can also be an excuse that hides major content problems.

: I'll talk with Silvonis about setting up an area of the forum where newbies can give their first impressions about things in a safe environment -- that is, one where people don't say "learn to play noob" etc. (That doesn't happen much around here, but when it does happen, it makes newbies shut up, and that's bad.)

: In the short term, the advice in this thread is pretty good. If you have trouble with boss difficulty levels, the wiki can help. If you can't find something you need, try checking the Used tab of vendors; ====if that doesn't work, try using the user-requested-items board in the back of Serbule. There's no level or skill requirements there. It acts as a sort of reverse-auction-house. Try requesting 1 saltpeter at whatever price you can afford, and see how it works out. And having level-appropriate gear is at least as important as having level-appropriate abilities, so when you're stuck on one, try working on the other.

: Alpha can be a rocky time, but it definitely has its up-sides, too. Hopefully you can work around the difficulties, and if you continue to give us feedback when you find them, the game will get better as a result.

::01-18-2017

===== The Second Forum =====

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.

:: Source

-->

==== 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.

===== The First Forum =====

No information can be gathered from the first forum for the game.

<noinclude>[[Category:Game Blogs]]</noinclude>