20,097
edits
Changes
→Dragons: Added up to today!
:: Source
-->
==== Item Management, Do Everything, Grind ====
:Thanks for the feedback! One thought and one question. (Edit: and another thought after that, plus parentheticals.)
:To some extent, item management is just something the game will have to deal with, because that's the bones of this game. There are thousands of types of items, and probably a thousand more to come, and I can't really give people enough storage to store everything they find. (And if you think managing your current storage is bad, think of what it'd be like with 1000 more storage slots! Bad.)
:The intent is to get players to sell the items they don't need right now, and buy them from others when they need them, facilitating trades and transactions. But combined with not having an auction house (they speed up moment-to-moment gameplay but hyper-inflate game economies, so I'm using slightly-slower alternate sales systems), players feel friction in letting go of stuff they don't need right now, because they really will probably need that item some day in the future. It's just not worth the hassle to store it for the next 100 hours before you need it, but how do players know how soon they'll need this thing? They can't. I've been working hard to make that more obvious (with more improvements to the "Item Info" window being my next stab at it), but I don't think I'll ever perfectly succeed here.
:The way items work is critical to how I want the game to evolve, with new skills and areas and content being added every month or two, literally for as long as I can keep making the game. This type of free-form expansion requires a LOT of items, so that old items don't become too over-used. Actually, there are a lot of benefits to the game's item design, and only one serious down side: the "everything is useful to somebody so nothing can be thrown away" problem. I've kind of made my peace with the fact that it will always be a sticking point, because the benefits are too important. I'm not removing a thousand types of items, and I'm not giving players a thousand more storage slots, so the problem... will always be a problem. No game design is perfect. If that's the game's big flaw, eh, I'll live.
:(Just to clarify: there ARE more storage slots coming, plus more item-management tools. Mounts have a "send to saddle bag" system that I'm hoping will reduce in-dungeon item management. But in terms of the bigger picture, there will always be more kinds of stuff than there are places to put the stuff. So there will always be friction here, because players will always have to make decisions about what they want to keep and what they want to sell.)
:NPC favor, on the other hand, shouldn't feel grindy. "Grindy" just means boring. Leveling anything in any MMO is repetitive, and if you really notice the repetition it's called "grindy." NPCs favor is just a generic leveling mechanism, so the actual way that you raise favor can change. Maybe I should reduce the focus on item gifts by adding a few hundred more favor quests. (They'd naturally have to be very samey, but then, so is gifting right now.) My question is: do you think having a bunch more directed leveling goals for favor (kill-ten-monster quests, fetch-the-gizmo-from-the-dungeon-chest quests, etc.) would be worth the effort?
:(Some individual skills, recipes, etc. are too punitive or costly and need more tweaking, like bear claws not dropping enough. But those are individual balance problems and I'm talking about the general design here, which OP seems to be referring to.)
:---
:You mentioned "everything I do seems to spiral out of control" and that's pretty much the "I want to do everything" problem: the game lets you do everything, every skill, every NPC, every city faction, every dungeon, everything. But if you try to do everything at once, it means you NEED literally everything, and that just exacerbates other game problems. The design intent is that you'd pick up missing stuff from fellow players, but since you don't HAVE to do that, players tend not to. It often seems like crafting the thing you need won't be that hard, so you just take a detour and do that. And suddenly you're mired three crafting-skills deep, nowhere near the actual skill you cared about.
:This isn't exactly the player's fault -- it's a sandbox problem, where the goals are nebulous and self-chosen, so the goalposts tend to move as you decide that no, what you really want is this OTHER thing first. No, wait, it's this other thing... etc. But there are tiers of "sandboxyness", and I think many (most?) players want the game to be a LITTLE bit more directed than it is right now.
:So the more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to add new restrictions to help here. Not as limits, but as structure, rails to help players. For instance, maybe I should let you only pick one or two major crafting skills at a time. When you get a skill to 100 (or whatever), you can add another skill and start leveling that, but you have to focus on only a couple at a time until they're "done". Just one example idea.
:I want the game to be very free-form and open, but I don't want to burn players out with a lack of direction and a lack of movement on their goals. It may seem paradoxical, but in MMO design, adding more restrictions is often the way to help players feel less frustrated and have more fun. If you have ideas about how to approach that, please share your thoughts!
:: 5/8/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2529-This-game-ultimately-feels-demotivating-to-me&p=18282#post18282
==== Damage Vulnerability Calculation ====
:The attacker's damage is calculated using the steps I listed above, then that amount is applied to the target(s). The target subtracts their mitigation, then multiplies the remainder by the appropriate damage-type vulnerability.
:There are definitely exceptions and lots of special cases -- a few are intentional one-offs, but others are bugs, or works-in-progress. An example of the latter -- we recently added new vulnerabilities based on attack form: Melee Vulnerability, Burst Vulnerability, etc. You would think those would be applied at the same time as the damage-type vulnerabilities, but right now they're applied earlier, before mitigation is applied. That's a bug -- but one I decided wasn't important right now, since we barely use those vulns yet. It'll become a higher-priority issue when we use them for more stuff.
:If there's something in particular that doesn't seem to work right, it's not a bad idea to report it -- even if it's a known issue, seeing someone report it means that somebody cares about it, which raises its priority at least a little bit!
:: 5/5/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1674-Developers-or-experts-please-help-Cow-Unarmed-and-mitigation-questions&p=18243#post18243
==== Animal Husbandry Species ====
:Depending on the schedule, it's possible that bees (and possibly rats) will get their genetics later on. But if timing works out right, it'll work with bees too.
:: 4/10/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2491-Next-Major-Content-Update&p=18125#post18125
==== Fairy Magic Items ====
:Thanks for the write-up, and to the first point you're maing: you're right -- and I realized it was going to be an issue, but didn't have time to rewrite the transmutation table yet. But I've got it encoding the needed info already.
:Whenever you loot or craft an item that has a Fairy Magic power in it, that information is being encoded into the item. In a month or two (when I'm next working heavily with treasure), I'll change the transmutation table to use this information. It'll look to see if an item has the "fairy magic" flag, and if so, all fairy magic and mentalism abilities will be available in all re-rolls. This will also mean you can roll fairy magic off an item, and later roll it back on, if you wanted. That will make it more practical to have two Fairy Magic abilities on an item.
:I'll also be adding a few more Fairy Magic treasure mods at some point in the future. (None picked out yet, or I'd have added them already, but there's space for a few more which haven't been filled in yet.)
:: 4/10/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2483-Sub-skill-re-rolling-fairy-magic-transmutation-feedback&p=18124#post18124
==== Animal Husbandry ====
:The next dev blog is still a week away, so I'll share a little info, sure.
:We're never exactly sure when all of the assets we need for something will become available, and the pandemic has made some things take longer than expected. So this next update is different than I'd expected the April update to be. But it's something I've been excited to work on for a while: Animal Husbandry!
:Animal Husbandry will let players breed Animal-Handling animals (and eventually rideable horses). We're modeling the genetics after a simplified version of real-world genes, with dominant and recessive genes, mutation rates, that sort of thing.
:This means that Animal Husbandry is a long-term skill. Even with the special gene-viewing powers we'll give you, it can still take many hundreds of generations to get the "perfect pet", and each generation takes a few days. But when you have offspring you're proud of, you'll be able to sell pet-only offspring (without breeding rights) to other players, so you can make a name for yourself as e.g. the vendor with glowing-eyed cats, or the breeder who makes the super-tiny grimalkin, or the blue-bear breeder with the extra painful bite.
:It's definitely not something every player will be excited about. But for a certain small percentage of players, I think this will be an AMAZING system, perhaps the best genetics simulation in the MMO space, which entertains for years to come. For everyone not excited by that... well, everyone will eventually reap the rewards of fancy pets and mounts when they're on the market.
:We're busy building the artificial genomes of rats, cats, and bears, and it'll be another couple weeks before it goes live. We've replaced some animal models to give us more possibilities for appearance mutations.
:Aside from Animal Husbandry, there's also various UI improvements, including a couple from the recent forum thread, some more fae stuff, and probably some more content in Sun Vale/Fae Realm if the timing works out.
:One thing that probably won't get much attention in a dev-blog, but which I'm happy about: I finally managed to repro the "cursor is stuck in the middle of the screen" bug. It is indeed a Unity bug as suspected, but once I was able to reproduce it semi-regularly, I was able to find a workaround. So the next update should see the end of that one. (This also fixes some of the "cursor got stuck as a certain shape" bugs, but not all of them, I suspect. But we'll get there.)
:: 4/10/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2491-Next-Major-Content-Update&p=18120#post18120
==== Forum Feedback ====
:I don't think trying to gatekeep opinions based on play time makes a lot of sense, because it's hard to know where the cutoff should be for feedback. In general, if someone has a first-hand opinion about a skill, I want to hear it, even if its ill-informed, because that can still tell me something. And the amount of playtime is really not a good indicator of how in-depth someone's experience is, either. But that doesn't mean their feedback is bad.
:A few years ago I remember getting feedback from an avid Druid player, who gave very detailed info on all the pros and cons of every ability, but when it came to the Healing Sanctuary ability, their only feedback was "it doesn't have listed heal amounts, so I've never bothered with it." But in fact Healing Sanctuary was even more powerful then than it is now (for then-max-level content). For a healing druid to ignore it was... crazy! In the end, my biggest takeaway from that multi-page list of feedback was: I really needed to get some numbers displayed for Healing Sanctuary. (Which I did, as soon as I could.) If even a die-hard Druid player wasn't going to bother experimenting, I couldn't expect more casual players to do so. It reinforced that I need to get as much info on the in-game ability popup as I can.
:So that was very useful feedback. And feedback that only a long-term player could have given me. And feedback that they didn't exactly intend to give me. And feedback that, if we got it now, would get attacked by other players because they obviously don't know the skill as well as they think they do.
:That's the danger in gate-keeping. I don't have a good way of protecting this sort of very valuable feedback, feedback that's objectively WRONG but still subjectively PRECIOUS because it represents what lots of players may be thinking, and needs to be addressed in-game somehow.
:So I don't want to do anything that would intimidate other players into not posting feedback. If you have first-hand experience with a skill and want to share it, I want to hear it. Hopefully we can create a culture where we can respect that feedback for what it is, rather than worry about the exact "correctness" of said feedback.
:: 4/4/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2487-Good-Afternoon&p=18099#post18099
==== Augment Loot ====
:There haven't been any changes to how loot is generated that I'm aware of. I'll review it, but I don't see anything obvious that may have creeped in. Randomness is streaky though, so it's difficult to get a picture from a handful of data points. One thing to keep in mind is that the skills are determined independently of the item's rarity, so you should keep track of the total number of inaccurate items, not just the ones that are really high rarity. If you got 50 blues and greens with correct skills and 4 yellows with wrong ones... that's just bad luck.
Anyway, I'll look further for any weirdness that may have creeped in, but there haven't been intentional changes in that system.
(Also important to know: loot-dropped augments do NOT use the same system and are MUCH more likely to be for random skills.)
:: 4/1/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2471-Update-Discussion-March-20-2020&p=18071#post18071
==== Loading Crash, Force Low Res ====
:The usual reason for game crashes is that the video card runs out of memory. Setting the graphics to "poor" is a good start to diagnosing, but since that didn't help, the next step is to make sure no special settings are causing the problem. Next time you're logging in to Kur, hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard. The login button will change from "Enter World" to "Enter World FORCE LOW-RES". This turns off all overrides and uses "-2: Retro-Terrible" graphics settings.
:If you still crash, then we can rule out the usual causes and the next step would be to email me the output log from your crash so I can see if I can spot a problem. But usually the next step is more annoying: it will work fine in that extreme low-res mode, but when you raise it up again it'll crash. In that case I would turn off all graphics overrides (and if that doesn't help, perhaps even delete the local config file) to see if that fixes it. Changing something like View Distance can make a big difference to graphics memory used.
:There were no changes (that I can think of) to Kur in the last patch. Did you your video driver update very recently? That could also be a culprit.
:: 3/30/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2480-Kur-Mountain-Issues&p=18055#post18055
==== Fae Magic Bug ====
:Yep, it's a bug that non-fae can get access to the Fae racial skill. Even though they can only access the first few levels of the skill, it's still too much, and we'll be wiping it completely for non-fae -- all levels and associated recipes and rewards will be revoked in the next update.
:: 3/22/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2471-Update-Discussion-March-20-2020&p=18006#post18006
==== Dungeon Flight ====
:Some dungeons also need their ceiling collision geometry improved. But yes, once I'm confident that the perching code is robust (which will take a while), I plan to open up dungeons to flight on a case-by-case basis as it becomes possible.
:: 3/20/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2322-Update-Discussion-November-22-2019&p=17988#post17988
==== Unarmed ====
:@Yaffy - Great write-up, thanks! I'll keep that in mind as we go forward. For the record, the removal of those mods from Unarmed was twofold: at the time I felt Unarmed was a little overpowered (when taken as a whole), and more importantly, removing them made room for some Evasion mods. I figure if there is any (non-animal) skill that can focus on Evasion, it has to be Unarmed, so I wanted to at least get the basics of that slotted in for the skill. Of course, evasion has its own problems with interactivity (or lack thereof) which need improving...
Since the old mods weren't strongly themed, they can get slotted in anywhere -- I figured I'll reuse them for the last tanky skill I'll be eventually adding. Or it may make more sense to use a similar mechanic when revising the existing tanky skills.
:: 3/19/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2467-The-design-behind-quot-Tanking-quot&p=17959#post17959
==== Fae Update ====
:A quick status report, since I mentioned the next game update would be soon -- it'll be soon A few more days. It started as a quick bug-fix update but then I had to go and add new game mechanics (like the aforementioned stun-decay tweaks), which always take a ton of testing. And meanwhile Sandra's added a bit more fae newbie improvements.
:So probably Thursday, Friday if we're unlucky.
:: 3/17/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2455-Update-Discussion-March-9-2020&p=17912#post17912
==== Event Looting ====
:We have to walk a fine line here. We've heard resentment from players in the past about ninja-looting during free-form events. It can really spoil the event for people and it can even create a negative impression of the entire game community. I don't want a few bad eggs making these events less fun.
:On the other hand, we can't perfectly tell who is helping "enough" and who isn't. Live events are chaotic and messy enough as it is, and sometimes we'll get it wrong. But I still suspect we should TRY to stop ninja-looting, rather than turn a blind eye to it.
:So even though we get it wrong sometimes, we'll keep trying to improve our methods and tools for live events, to make them more fair and fun for everyone. It'll take time and experimentation, which is why we test. Thank you for helping us test these events, and for letting us know how the events are working for you.
:: 3/15/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2462-Testing-of-the-world-boss-event-held-by-Jack&p=17893#post17893
==== Convenience ====
:The problem here is you're selectively ignoring convenience. A fairy ice mage has a TREMENDOUS convenience of not having to research any of their spells. That is a ton of work... and even unlocking the ice magic skill is hard. You've chosen to ignore all that and say "but AFTER all that convenience, what do they have? They suck!"
:But if you're going to completely ignore convenience, then fairies are obviously superior to other races. They lose 16 inventory slots but have a fairy-only storage spell that gives them access to 30. 30 is greater than 16, case closed. Fairies are better if you ignore convenience factors. (They can't use metal armor? That just an inconvenience while finding gear -- we'll ignore it too.)
:The point is you can't just selectively ignore convenience. If you want to argue that the inconvenience of accessing those extra slots is worse than the inconvenience of researching 100 levels of ice magic, that's an argument you can make, but that isn't the argument you're making. You have to take all the costs and benefits into account, not just "what have you done for me in the last five minutes of gameplay in this dungeon."
:---
:In general, I think we'll have to wait some time to see how people feel about the race's tradeoffs. I count it as a win if long-term players aren't incentivized to reroll as a fairy because of obvious mathematical combat superiority. The advanced races are going to be all about tradeoffs, conveniences versus inconveniences, doors opened vs. doors closed. And I'm basically aiming for contention. Because if everyone agrees that the tradeoffs of one race are better than another, I've done a poor job balancing. If there's a fair amount of argument about whether the tradeoffs are worth it, with some players liking the tradeoffs and some disliking it... that's a sign of good balance. So I'm going to mark you in the "not good enough tradeoffs" column, but we'll see how some more players feel before making changes.
:: 3/15/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2455-Update-Discussion-March-9-2020&p=17882#post17882
==== Stunning ====
:- It's not intentional that fairy magic be usable from the sidebar, that will be fixed soon!
:- Elites and bosses use all kinds of different rage attacks besides aoes, but the fact that you only remember the aoes probably indicates just how ineffective those other attacks are...
:- Stunning IS supposed to have diminishing returns. But it diminishes slowly from a 4-sec down to a 1-sec stun, which takes a while. It was designed around a 15-second battle duration, which has never actually happened. Should be less of a problem when combat is longer, but yeah, maybe this is a system that I should crank up, at least temporarily, to move people away from stun-locking.
:: 3/14/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2455-Update-Discussion-March-9-2020&p=17873#post17873
==== Elite, Thorns, Fae ====
:A few answers to questions/comments:
:GK elites: Previously, GK bosses received cranked-up chances for Exceptional, Epic, and Legendary gear, above and beyond what bosses already were supposed to receive. They also got bonus health (between 9000 and 15,000 extra), and a bit more damage. In contrast, GK elites received a smallish health bonus and a damage bonus, but they weren't supposed to have extra chances for high-rarity loot. The elites in question (like the yellow Lieutenants) used one of the bonus-tables intended for bosses instead of elites. So they had +9000 max health instead of the intended +6000, they dealt something like 30 more damage per attack, and also had +20% chance for exceptional, +10% chance for epic, and +2% chance for legendary gear. They ALSO had their bonus chances from just being elites (which gave them e.g. +25% chance for exceptional already), so the stacking effect really made them a goldmine. I knew they gave out too much high-rarity loot, but I didn't put together why until just a bit before the update when I was cleaning up the entity files.
:Thorns changes: I forget which thread it was in, but someone mentioned that thorns shouldn't do health-bypassing damage, and I realized that no, they weren't supposed to! Meaning that the damage-calculation spreadsheet assumes they deal regular damage. But then I implemented them as direct-health damage. So that was basically a bug fix, a no-brainer fix for me. That helped me understand where things were breaking down in my spreadsheet math. Even so, I still think thorns damage is overpowered when farming weaker monsters, and I'll have to address that at some point.
:Fae newbie area: we'll make the trolls a fixed rate spawn so that they don't overwhelm the newbie area. Will also work on the newbie quests a bit more to try to make that intuitive. We'll do another client update with more bug fixes early next week!
:Fae hives: these are definitely overtuned at the moment, meaning they are way too hard. They also have really cranked-up loot profiles, so it sort of works out, but not really. Will work on rebalancing those soon, but since these are large outdoor elite encounters, and I don't have a lot of experience making those, I expect it'll take some time to figure out how to make them flow.
:: 3/14/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2455-Update-Discussion-March-9-2020&p=17863#post17863
==== OP Necro? ====
:In case there's any doubt: yeah, Necro has some overpowered combinations. It's not the only skill with them, either. I do plan to fix those problems, but in this upcoming update I've had to focus on other things. So it'll stay OP for a bit, but not forever.
:: 3/4/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2447-NecroHammer-40k&p=17740#post17740
==== Purple and Gold Items, Complaining. ====
:Ugh. I'm tired of this petty cat-fighting, every thread seems to devolve into it, and I'm just going to start deleting posts that are off-topic. Sorry if I also delete something important you wanted to say -- feel free to repost it without snark and bitching. I know snark and bitching is natural, and I'm not really a fan of censoring, but I just can't handle it. I have to read all this stuff, and if your posts put me in a bad mood, it disrupts my day. That means I end up just glossing over certain posters because they constantly put me in a bad mood. I can't afford that. I have work to do. (Ever wonder why dev teams don't seem to read forums very often? Because it's physically exhausting. Weird but true. In other jobs, I've sometimes had producers tell me not to read the forums at all because it can sink productivity so bad.)
:Thank you for your understanding.
:---
:I didn't make it clear enough before, but purple and gold items are inherently overpowered items. I balance around a good set of red gear (that is, red gear with well-chosen mods). That's why I said that the drop rate of purples and golds is too high in groups -- those items can break the power curve, and when you're in all gold, you're VERY overpowered.
:It feels good to be overpowered, though, and I want to let you beat the game's difficulty curve. This is a game where you SHOULD be able to stomp the crap out of enemies if you try hard enough. But I am not obliged to make that easy. And I won't be making it easy. In fact I'd sooner drop gold-tier items from the game than make gold the balancing standard. Seriously. Those items already make my life VERY difficult while balancing. (e.g. "This content is too hard for a balanced group... but if even one group member has all golds, then it's too easy...")
:Now, getting a good set of red gear IS a bit too hard at high level when you're just soloing. I acknowledge that and I'm working on it. But I'm not going to be handing out purples and yellows like candy.
:---
:Also, please consider how you frame your complaints. If you're complaining that it's hard for a max-level player to get amazing gear, you are NOT a newbie player. If you have even one skill over level 60, you are most definitely not a newbie. I know there are other players with REALLY overpowered gear sets, and everyone wants to be like them, but their existence doesn't make you a newbie. It makes them crazy overpowered, yeah, but some of them have put THOUSANDS of hours into the game. Just... incomprehensible amounts of time. Even so, if you've played for 50 hours, you are not a newbie.
:Another framing problem: I mentioned this in another thread and I don't want to harp on it, but maybe I should: getting "only" a few hundred hours of gameplay out of an in-development MMO is GREAT by any reasonable standard. Stop trying to say that's not impressive. Stop pretending that you'll be able to play the same game literally forever. You can keep coming back and I'll keep adding stuff, but you'll eventually get bored and have to wait for new stuff. That's life. Not even WoW can keep people engaged literally eternally, so why would I be able to? Please be more reasonable with your framing.
:: 3/3/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2443-Tuning-Non-Elite-Mob-Availability-and-Drop-Rates&p=17699#post17699
==== Overpowered Transmutation ====
:Yes, I would in fact say that making overpowered items is in a good place. Players need to keep in mind that legendary items are inherently overpowered. I don't balance against having legendaries -- having them means you will be doing more damage, healing more, etc. than the game plans for. You are becoming overpowered. And yeah, that takes a while. So what?
:Look, if you're bored at max level and think everything seems boring, STOP PLAYING. Take a break. If you hate grinding, then don't grind. Come back in a while. Or decide that having spent HUNDREDS of hours in this game is enough, and you're full up on Gorgon, and you can move on. All of these things are okay with me.
:Intentionally making it even easier to get overpowered gear -- and thus making it even harder for me to create some sense of challenge for you -- is not in the cards, no.
:: 3/3/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2445-Transmutation-of-mods-needs-some-serious-help&p=17698#post17698
==== Monsters and Augments ====
:One of the changes in the next update is relevant here: random augments will drop in loot. (They'll be more common at low level than at high level, and at the eventual max level they won't drop in loot at all -- that's to avoid making high-level Augmentation crafting useless.) My goal with loot augments is to help players get through the tricky parts of the game's difficulty curve. It's not the only needed step, but its another step in that direction. So we'll take that step and then see what the next step should be.
:It's not intentional that solo loot is "pointless" compared to group loot -- at any level. Group loot should be better, but exactly how much better? That balance-point has changed many times during development. Right now the scale is tipped too far in favor of group loot. I intentionally cranked the rarities of group loot (during pre-Steam testing) to encourage alpha players to group, because I desperately needed feedback and data on grouping -- and it was VERY hard to find a group with so few players on, so it needed to be REALLY worth it. Now that it's a bit easier to find a group, elite monsters' rarity-chances (and/or possibly the sheer amount of equipment dropped) feels too high to me, and I may tone it down a step. (Just a step -- I don't want to overshoot the mark by nerfing too hard.)
:Solo monsters also need a bit more oomph, too, but not all monsters need the same thing. Loot is very personalized, and VERY complex. Every monster has its own loot profile, and many solo monsters just need some general tuning up: the goalposts have moved since their loot profiles were made, and newer monsters are better. I've been working on those behind the scenes in recent updates. The harder ones are the ones that need new content. For instance, a level 70 polar bear drops a single Tuft of Fur 25% of the time... that seems especially poor. I mean, when that bear drops flower seeds, the seeds are pretty high-tier. But you get the same Tuft of Fur from every bear in the game, whether they're level 40 or 70. Tufts of Fur are important for crafting across many levels, though, and its important that you be able to gather crafting needed materials in high-level areas -- I don't want to intentionally send high level players back to kill newbie bears. So fixing this bear will involve creativity, which takes time. Maybe high-level bears drop Massive Tufts of Fur, and I retrofit some recipes to use that instead of plain old tufts. (And maybe you can tear a Massive Tufts of Fur into three smaller Tufts of Fur, a la Perfect Wood. In fact, the reason we have Perfect Wood is to solve this exact sort of problem.) Or maybe in this case I decide its not worth the trouble. Maybe I can just have level 70 bears drop TWO Tufts of Fur. Does that make them worth killing for anyone, ever? I dunno. Whatever I end up doing to the bear, that'll fix one single monster. Then we need to repeat for ... every monster in the game, eventually.
:Anyway, figuring out how to improve solo loot will take time, and I'll do it in steps. The next steps are in the next update!
:: 3/3/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2443-Tuning-Non-Elite-Mob-Availability-and-Drop-Rates&p=17679#post17679
==== Lock UI ====
:Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. I don't want to add the "Lock UI" feature until I've rooted out all the bugs like the chat window moving. Because the Lock UI option wouldn't fix those bugs... it would just mean you had to unlock the UI to be able to manually fix it.
:Do you shut down the game by using the Steam overlay's quit option, by chance? (It's one of the causes of chat-window problems.)
:: 3/1/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2430-Interface-Suggestions!-A-list-before-implementing-housing&p=17658#post17658
==== Teleport Binds ====
:I don't plan to add any more new ties/binds in the immediate future; I still need to think about how the pacing will work when everyone has a mount! For now I think teleportation is in a good place, in terms of how many different places you can get to at once. We may add some more ways to get to those same points, though.
:: 2/25/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2428-Some-new-teleportation-spells-please&p=17574#post17574
==== UI Updates ====
:There were no new features in UI revamp?! Prior to the big UI update you couldn't reposition most of the UI elements at all, so a "lock UI" feature would have been... a bit premature, let's say. That update also added everything from item-highlights when gifting, to right-click item menus, the ability to get more info on items, chat tabs(!), the ability to scale the UI at all(!), and that's just a few off the top of my head. I'm sorry you think its uglier, but there were definitely new features -- features I worked really hard on, and am proud of.
:And since that update I've continued to work on the UI, including the crafting panel, the group panel, dialogs, the sales screen ... my point being that I do in fact improve the UI, and I do want suggestions. So please don't tell people what I will or won't add. Let people offer suggestions.
:: 2/25/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2430-Interface-Suggestions!-A-list-before-implementing-housing&p=17573#post17573
==== Elves, Adult ====
:Elves are frank and honest about their sexuality, and in-game humans behave much as you do: with disgust. So it sounds like you should play a human and not an elf. In any case I'm certainly not toning anything down about their (honestly extremely tame) dialog. So you can deal or not, it's up to you. End of discussion.
:I closed the previous thread because this topic is not up for debate. Please stop restarting the "tone" debate, because it only causes flame wars. The tone of the game is not changing, and I'm not going to discuss it further with you.
:: 2/23/2020
:: Source
==== Critical Healing ====
:I'm working on relevant changes to monster stats and higher-level combat for the next update, stay tuned for more on that.
:: 2/18/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2412-Critical-Healing&p=17414#post17414
==== Holistic Wellness Continue Bonus ====
:I like this idea a lot. I don't have a way to implement it right now but I'll keep it in mind as new features become available.
:: 2/17/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2410-holistic-wellness-not-so-holistic&p=17383#post17383
==== Match-3 Cheats ====
:I think you're wrong that we haven't acted on your cheating reports in the past. But if you know of someone who has definitely cheated at the match-3 game and who is still playing a week later, please let me know who. (For privacy best to send in a new ticket in-game with their character name.)
:It's possible to cheat in the match-3 game by using 3rd-party software. We easily detect this (since it doesn't send the correct mid-game metadata to the server), and we routinely perma-ban for it. It usually takes a few days for the ban to happen, since I manually double-check the logs before actually doing the banning. We don't bother to clean up the scoreboards -- their scores roll off the list after a week anyway. There isn't an exploit per se: it's cheat apps. I could do more to block this type of cheating, but it's so easy to detect that it hasn't been a priority. Plus, it acts as a honeypot for cheaters, letting us detect and ban them.
:That said, the person in this screenshot claimed to use a different exploit method -- one that doesn't involve third-party software (although it registered in our logs as cheating anyway). Given the bug report, some other details, and lack of prior cheating attempts, we're investigating before taking action.
:I would normally not discuss matters regarding banning on the forum, but given that their name is plastered on the high-score lists in game, I guess it's unavoidable.
:: 2/16/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2409-Quite-the-exploit&p=17375#post17375
==== Cheating ====
:Please report cheaters via the in-game report tool, because obviously a forum post saying "there are cheaters" isn't something we can act on. But yes, we ban for multiboxing, and we've had to ban more people for it recently, so I can understand that misinformation is spreading. Please help fix that problem by spreading correct information!
:Our terms say that you can't multibox for any reason. In the past, for people who unwisely chose to buy multiple accounts, I've given a VERY RESTRICTED permission to log multiple characters online in order to trade items. But only to trade items, quickly and efficiently.
:Some players have started twisting that generosity into exploits. I'm not even talking about using multiple accounts in combat, which is obviously cheating. I mean AFK-cheating. Such as:
:"I'm just muling... while my mule plays music in the garden". No, that's cheating.
:"I'm just leaving my mule AFK here next to this poetry podium while other people recite poetry." No, that's cheating.
:"I'm just muling while my mule gives out battle chemistry buffs." No, that's cheating.
:As those examples suggest, just being AFK on multiple accounts is often cheating. That's because it's easy to help others earn XP while AFK, and doing that with multiple characters at once is unequivocally cheating.
:It's also cheating to leave multiple characters online in order to wait out timers or debuffs (e.g. cow milking mules).
:In fact, given the number of cases we've had to deal with recently, I will go further and say: if both of your characters aren't actively trading items with each other, one of them should be logging off. That's just a rule of thumb to help you avoid being banned.
:I feel that I was being very generous even letting players item-mule between accounts. But I'm not willing to go any further than that.
:And if you see people cheating, please report them in-game so we can investigate.
:: 2/11/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2381-Having-a-second-account&p=17307#post17307
==== Activate Pack ====
:The old pre-Steam packages from over a year ago, like the one you bought, have to be manually processed and imported, which I do just before a game update -- which in this case is a weeks from now. (This manual processing step is why we switched systems!) I'm sorry it takes a while, but none of the benefits of the packages are in-game yet, so you aren't missing out on anything.
:(Edit: unless your package has a title, which IS implemented, but still doesn't happen until the next game update, regardless of which system you bought from. Titles have to be baked into the game client so they happen alongside Steam patches.)
:: 2/4/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?755-How-will-my-quot-PACK-quot-be-attached-to-my-account&p=17250#post17250
==== Fairy Questions ====
:There isn't a hard lock on running the WN quest so it is possible to carry someone through it, probably, if they are extremely careful. However, the new-player fairy experience is not easy, and it assumes you are reasonably competent at the game. For instance, you need to make your own ice knives from frozen ice that you conjure, which means using several recipes and abilities in conjunction. This isn't super hard stuff, but a complete newbie will be totally overwhelmed and totally lost, and the newbie experience for fairies doesn't cover any of that stuff at all. (It's busy teaching you the new stuff specific to fairies.)
:A new fairy will start at level 30 in a couple of skills. There are four combat skills being developed for them, and I think you'll be able to pick two of the four. (Not quite sure yet. Could be you can pick from two skill combinations, or something like that.) After the newbie experience you can always start new skills as usual, although being a fairy means that some skills are a bit harder to learn than they are for humans, elves, and rakshasa -- while others are a bit easier. I don't want to get into what that means exactly, because I'm still fiddling with the details.
:Some of the fairy's abilities and restrictions are permanent in every form, but most physical attributes are tied to their physical form. So a fairy turned into a deer will play pretty much like a regular deer.
:We aren't designing the experience with the expectation that fairies are receiving support from other characters on the account. That said, no, we won't be adding more character slots for them, sorry. (But the eventual VIP service will include another slot or three.)
:The fairy is pretty far out there in terms of design. What I mean is, it has a lot of weird mechanics that may or may not work! But the game's in beta, and this will be a soft-launch of the race, so players just need to understand that the mechanics will probably change over time. I don't think setting up the test server will be too helpful, because I think most of the tricky changes will take weeks to gather useful feedback on. Well, maybe I'll rethink that. But right now I intend to use the main server for testing.
:: 1/29/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2384-Some-General-Fairy-Questions&p=17183#post17183
==== Blocking Stance Upgrades ====
:The first few tiers differ by having lower Power costs until they are free by tier 3. Tiers after Blocking Stance 3 are supposed to have a small Armor-heal (healing about 25 armor per tier), and they do in fact do that, but the display data got screwed up somehow, so I don't think the armor healing is displayed. I'll take a look at it for the next update.
:: 1/20/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2376-Blocking-Stance-upgrades&p=17114#post17114
==== Large Conch Shells ====
:Shells come in three sizes, small, medium, and large. Small ones are mostly what appears on the beach, and they have extremely low chances of being a Large Conch. But the large shells you find deep in the coral reefs have better chances of being large conchs.
:Not every skill needs conchs, so if you're a bard trying to make a horn, you can buy them from other players. Since this is an item that can be obtained by level 30 players, a level 80 player can just pony up some cash for a work order to get the conchs they need.
:: 1/17/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2362-Update-Discussion-January-9-2020&p=17081#post17081
==== Damage Type Immunity ====
:Damage-type immunities are an important tool in my game-design toolbox. I started to write out an explanation, but it's turning out to be way too long. (I'm trying to post more on the forum, but my posts always take hours and I can't afford to stop working for hours... which is why I normally just lurk.) I'll try to organize my thoughts about immunities and turn it into a dev-blog at some point.
:For now, I'm not going to talk about immunities in particular, but I wanted to say a few things about damage types in general.
:The most important thing to know is that monsters' damage-type vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and immunities aren't particularly balanced yet. More content will smooth out some of the imbalances, and other imbalances will be fixed by changing monster types, but most of that type of thing will happen in late beta. In the short term, I'm mostly taking a hands-off approach because I think micromanaging this aspect of game balance would be bad. Here's why.
:Damage-type stats are broken up by "monster type" to make it easy to learn and remember their resistances. You can learn early on that skeletons are weak to Crushing damage, and that is true with both a level 1 skeleton and a level 125 skeleton. However, I haven't made level 125 content yet, so I don't know how many skeletons are going to be in it. If a lot of level 120 content takes place on Skeleton Island, then that sounds like a big buff to Crushing damage! But I won't know minutia like that until we get there.
:This kind of problem happens on a micro scale all the time: I look at an existing area of the game and say "hmm, there needs to be more herbivores here," and just like that, I'm subtly altering the "balance" of damage types based on how many of each type of monster spawns there.
:I change other types of things all the time (like ability damage, or specific gear mods, or whatever). But I feel like damage-type resistances are more broadly relevant than that. It feels like "player knowledge" that should be respected. If you've learned that skeletons are weak to Crushing, and you leave the game for six months, when you return and discover that's changed, it feels a little insulting, like the game didn't respect your previous learning. Actually, you wouldn't think twice about one or two little changes, but if the damage types are different every time you come back to the game, that just feels demoralizing somehow. There's a difference between "all the mods for Sword have been revised... again" and "all the monster damage types you learned over 200 hours of play have changed... again."
:So I don't want to constantly change monsters' damage type vulnerabilities. And right now isn't the time to focus on them. I'm struggling to explain why... how about this: imagine the game's balance as a tree. Its roots are the core game rules, the trunk is made up of all the combat skills, and the branches are all the game's dungeons and areas. The specific monsters in each area are leaves on those branches. Right now, not all the branches exist yet, and parts of the trunk are missing, and some of the roots are kinda scraggly... they may need to be replaced. Focusing too much on the leaves now seems shortsighted.
:My current plan is to make only a few surgical changes during beta, just fixing whatever is really broken. In late beta when I know more about the shape of the game's balance, I can do one big revamp of monster damage types. (Of course, I'm not planning to stop creating content, so things will likely get out of whack again pretty quickly... but it'll at least be at kinda balanced for a little while. Balance is hard.)
:---
:Anyway, what concrete info can I give you? I can dredge up a lot of minor design goals -- the most obvious one is that Darkness and Fire damage are supposed to have more resistant/immune monsters than other damage types. But even those ideas aren't locked down and could change.
:There is one important over-arching design goal that won't change: I want the game to HEAVILY encourage players to have two damage types in their build, not just one. They can have a "main" damage type, but they should also have a secondary damage type that can be used in a pinch. Or barring that, some friends. I'll be keeping that goal in mind as I balance the game. (I have lots of reasons for that design goal, which I'll try to go into in a blog post, but suffice it to say that it isn't likely to change.)
:I also wanted to warn you that if you're choosing a damage type because very few monsters are resistant to it... I didn't do that intentionally. It may or may not be something that sticks around. By the way, I also haven't intentionally made lots of monsters resistant to Nature damage. That just happened organically, and I expect it'll work itself out in the level 100 area, which is full of demons.
:I'm open to making strategic changes to vulnerabilities right now, if a few surgical changes would make a big difference to game balance in the present moment. (I don't know what those surgical changes would be, off hand, but I'll be lurking if you have opinions.) Otherwise I'm content to wait until more of the game's content is added before making lots of broad changes.
:(And I've spent over three hours on this "short" post and I need to get back to work! I have edit-itis and I could spend many more hours trying to make this really concise and clear... but hopefully this is at least coherent! Forcing myself to stop editing.... now.)
:: 1/17/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2370-Damage-Type-Immunity&p=17080#post17080
==== No Character List ====
:Try temporarily disabling your virus-protection, my guess is something is forcefully disconnecting (or otherwise blocking) the game almost as soon as it gets the connection going. Which we've seen from some overzealous antivirus programs.
: Actually, I see a server-side error that may be related to your character -- if so, you won't be able to log in until I can fix that in a day or so. I'm sorry about that! But point being, if the virus-protection isn't the cause, then I think I know the cause, and its on our end.
:: 1/11/2020
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2363-Cannot-login-since-downloading-recent-patch&p=17004#post17004
==== Turn off camera follow. ====
:I don't really understand this one... if camera-follow was turned off, the camera would just show the player getting further and further away until they were off-screen. The camera has to follow you to be useful. I'm sure you mean to turn off something else, but I'm not sure what!
:: 12/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2338-Camera-Follow-OFF&p=16919#post16919
==== Retroactive favor? ====
:This can happen if you did a Hangout with the NPC -- they will do their level up the next time you talk to them.
:: 12/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2140-x-Favor-from-gifts&p=16918#post16918
==== Stun Trap ====
:Stun Trap had one nerf to its damage. ONE. The rest were mechanics fixes, in my book. The mods that give it random extra traps are powerful as hell, but not reliable -- that's their down side. But I'm willing to talk about other options, sure. Deflating those bonus-trap mods to make room for more reliable damage is an option. But before we can talk about that, though, I have to be clear: I'm not going to avoid fixing things because other things also need fixing.
:If a skill can be used to efficiently kill Elites, I'm going to fix it. Yes, that means Fire magic is probably due for a nerf also. What else needs nerfing? Help me out here, I'll fix all the big offenders at once and we can have a more level playing field. It feels like its about time to get it over with, doesn't it?
:So what else is more overpowered than Stun Trap was? What yardsticks are people comparing everything to? I need to know what those are so I can fix them too. (Edit: and yes, I really want to know what those are, or at least what people think those are, so I can look at them more closely!) I can't afford to think "Well I can't nerf THAT because that OTHER THING is SO overpowered, I just have to leave this problem FOREVER". I'm one guy trying to make an MMO balanced, along with six or seven other jobs I have to do, and it's hard as hell. I make mistakes and I have to fix them, retry things, sometimes retrying over and over and over. That's just the way it is.
:People want me to play this shitty trick on myself where any mistake I make, I have to leave it forever. "Why not just buff everybody else?" Because then I have like 50x more work to do for myself. And when everybody can kill elites, I have to add Mega-Elites and Ultra-Elites just to compete with the growing power curve. Great, even more work for me. And for what? I do tons extra work just so beta-testers don't have to suffer a small power change? How is that sane?
:The game is in beta. It needs nerfs as much as buffs. Probably MORE than buffs. So you'll need to get used to nerfs because its going to keep happening. In cases where I can catch myself and fix an obviously-overpowered problem quickly, like in this case, I think it makes sense to do the nerfs fast. But that doesn't mean longer, slower-burning problems in other skills won't get fixed eventually.
:If you want to discuss the pros and cons of different ways to change the skill, I am all ears. I'm willing to talk about how to make each skill work well. But I'm NOT playing the "other non-mentioned things are more powerful so you are forbidden from fixing problems" game.
:Agreed?
:---
:If so, then let's talk about options for Stun Trap. It's now in the damage range of several other skills. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. One benefit is the ability to pre-cast. Fire Breath costs a ton of Power, and you pay that cost in combat. Stun Trap's power cost is paid out of combat, so you can just wait a few seconds before starting the fight and its like the spell was completely free. That's a big advantage. The two-second casting time more than counterbalances that, but its not something we can just ignore. That said, I'm willing to entertain other ways to organize the skill.
:My thoughts on the extra-drop-chance mods: they're VERY powerful, but they're unreliable, so that makes them much less powerful. It's super tricky to find the sweet spot for mods like this. But I think they're fun, so I want to keep them if possible.
:I'd frankly like to go for a bit more utility on Stun Trap instead of yet more damage. It's a STUN trap, after all. Maybe those mods could become something like "and the target gets stunned again five seconds later" type thing. Mrm, yeah not a lot of room there between exciting and overpowered... but the point is I'm not sure Stun Trap needs to be more DPS. It's in the proper range: it hurts things real bad. And also stuns them. I want to make sure the damage-boosting mods are worth having, but I don't think it needs to be, like, the best burst damage in the game or anything.
:: 12/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2347-Death-of-the-beast-forms&p=16916#post16916
==== Indoor Flying ====
:About flying indoors: in some dungeons it's possible to use flight to perch monsters without any danger. We've generally just brushed those issues aside because we have bigger issues to deal with, but as I prototype the upcoming playable fairy race, it becomes more pressing. Fairies, who have access to all combat skills, make it really obvious how broken indoor flight can be. I think the sanest solution is to just turn off flight in dungeons, so that's what we did.
:As for why we didn't ground bats indoors in the first place, it was due to a technical limitation of how the giant bat flight was implemented. We couldn't disable giant bat flight indoors without stripping it off of them permanently (until they stopped being a bat and became a bat again). So we just left things kinda-exploitable until we had a better solution.
:RE: giant bat flight speed, isn't there a flight-speed boost jewelry just for them already? If not they're probably due for one. We may also end up giving giant bats an improved innate indoor floaty-jump bonus, to allow for a bit of acrobatics in-dungeons. (Stuff we're experimenting with for fairies... if any of it makes the cut, we'll backport it to bats.) I also have some fun ideas of how Giant Bat will tie into Vampire synergy... though that's farther off.
::Two random things:
:- I agree bats should be able to fly in the casino and will make that happen
:- I fixed a scripting bug with Sugar the deer, who now has the usual talk/gifting options (but no Favors just yet). It didn't make any patch notes because I edited her script live, so I wanted to document it somewhere.
:: 11/22/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2322-Update-Discussion-November-22-2019&p=16795#post16795
==== Astounding Winter Leather Recipe ====
:It will get added soon. It just keeps getting bumped down the to-do list, but I suspect we'll manage it soon -- not in the next update (which is in QA now) but probably the one after.
:: 11/7/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2299-astounding-winter-leahter-recipe&p=16722#post16722
==== Future Update Features ====
:Yes, as I discussed in blog posts, the mount system and the animation system have run into technical problems, so in the short term we've reordered the schedule to focus on rolling out new/updated land areas instead.
:The animation update is necessary for mounts to work, so it can't really be abandoned -- but the method we tried hasn't panned out, and we're trying a new tack. This is programming work that we've contracted out, so I don't have anything close to an exact timeline, but I can say it's not happening before the end of the year. We're going to have to switch from Unity 2017.4 to 2018.4 in order to make it work, and that's a very BIG technical hurdle that we're slowly working through behind the scenes in each update (e.g. replacing particles that aren't supported anymore in the next version, that sort of thing). And beyond that there are a bunch more steps involved before we get mounts into the game.
:In my ideal ordering of features, mounts would be added before we added tons of new outdoor areas, because obviously it's not ideal for beta-testers to have to run everywhere on foot. On the other hand, we're trying to create new content in a way that most benefits beta-testers. The next area we're working on is a complete replacement for Sun Vale, making it much larger, because the game needs more level 30 outdoor adventure areas. (This new Sun Vale will also serve as the Fey race newbie-hunting area, as fairies will start with some combat skills in the 30s.) After that, we'll be pushing on to the lands past Rahu and on to Statehelm in the first part of next year. (There's other lands beyond Statehelm, mainly the "end game" lands in the Crone Hegemony, but they're not in our pipeline yet, so I don't have any idea when those will show up.)
:There are other big technical tasks that are happening behind the scenes, too. Due to the animation delays, it's looking much more possible that the first version of instanced housing will happen before mounts do. I dunno for sure. But mounts will happen when they can, that's all I can say right now.
:: 10/10/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2283-ETA-on-new-Animation-system&p=16602#post16602
==== Kremmu the Warden ====
:Kremmu doesn't currently spawn, but will eventually return!
:: 10/1/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2267-Kremmu-the-Warden&p=16572#post16572
==== Respawns, App Focus ====
:Aggro didn't change in Kur at all (or anywhere else, except possibly some tweaks in the Fae Realm), so I don't really know what that's going on there. Respawns likewise haven't been changed, so I'll need more information to try to figure out what's wrong.
:If you're being surprised by spawns, do you have the recipe that gives you spawn premonitions? It sounds like that may help. (And will also help us tell if the problem is from extreme respawns or extreme monster aggro.)
:RE: app focus: here I have some bad news -- I promise that the game isn't the one changing your app focus. (The Unity engine doesn't really even give me the programmatic ability to change focus, probably because of Unity's multi-platform nature. I could write special focus-changing code that's specific to your OS, but I definitely didn't.)
:It does sound like something's interfering with the game's focus, but it's not caused by the game. It could be caused by software that came with a new peripheral, for instance... it's not really something I can debug from here, but try the usual things: shut down everything you can, temporarily disable virus protection, etc., and see if you can isolate the cause.
:: 9/26/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2265-Update-Discussion-September-20-2019&p=16536#post16536
==== Mod Triggering ====
:Things that have a % chance to activate are pretty much always rolled separately. (Things that add a % of damage are a different story!) Having both mods that give a 5% chance to stun means you have two 5% chances. They can both trigger at the same time, which in this case does nothing (since double-stun isn't a thing). But the Heal Undead mod you mentioned works the same way, and you'd get two stacking mitigation buffs if they both rolled successfully.
:: 9/1/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2256-A-question-about-mod-triggering&p=16421#post16421
==== Dropoff XP Bug ====
:It is indeed unintended that bonus levels affect XP drop-off. Another bug: hoplology, phrenology, and similar recipes are not supposed to have XP drop-off at all; they just got marked incorrectly in data, and will be fixed in the next hotfix or update we do.
:: 8/26/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2251-Update-Discussion-August-25-2019&p=16372#post16372
==== Mogyar Cheese ====
:It's true, this cheese is much rarer than it used to be. I'll work the recipe into a drop sometime soon-ish, so that it can be grown like other cheeses. The recipe doesn't exist atm.
:: 8/6/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2240-Mogyar-cheese&p=16280#post16280
==== Zoning Lag ====
:The lag you're experiencing is specific to your computer, it's not network-related. In a nutshell, it happens when the game loads blocks of data (from your hard drive) that are too large for your computer to handle elegantly.
:Because of how scenes are built in the Unity engine, the first piece of data we need to load (the scene's terrain) is really massive, and although we tell Unity to do this in a responsive way, if your computer is slower, it can end up being unresponsive. The biggest cause of this is a slow hard drive -- using a faster drive or an SSD will make this unresponsive time much smaller or go away entirely. (The other cause is a slow video card, but in my recent experience the hard drive speed is by far the biggest bottleneck.)
:The setting that Shieldbreaker mentioned may be useful to you in reducing that time window, although it probably won't remove it entirely. The important thing to know, though, is that your computer is NOT locked up, and is NOT doing nothing -- it's just doing something that's taking so much of its processing power that it can't even get around to updating the screen. So reducing that locked-up time may paradoxically not be what you want, because it may make the total load time slightly longer.
:: 8/6/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2241-Zoning-Lag&p=16279#post16279
==== Invisible Players ====
:I think the "people are invisible except their items" problem is a bug with the SphereCull special setting, which we haven't tracked down a fix for yet. (It looks like it may need to wait until we upgrade to Unity 2018.4 later this year, but I may find a fix sooner.)
:: 7/8/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2205-Graphic-settings&p=16133#post16133
==== War Cache Runes ====
:We've patched a bug that caused some bosses to be unable to spawn portals (or do other things) when they die.
:There's another bug I've seen reported a couple times which I can't reproduce in a development environment: some people are seeing no clue-runes in War Caches, the little plates are just empty. If this happens to you, please try relogging and seeing if that fixes it. And whether or not that fixes it, please let us know in a bug report! Please report the results of your experiment whether it fixes it or not. That'll help me understand what sort of problem it is. Thanks!
:: 6/27/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2189-Update-Discussion-June-26-2019&p=16030#post16030
==== Unarmed Equipment ====
:The new unarmed equipment (that buffs evasion) explicitly states that you must be using Unarmed, of course. And if it isn't working as listed, PLEASE report that, as it is obviously a bug. And if it wasn't listed that way (which it is), THAT would be a bug, too. Obviously. At least I think it should be pretty obvious... okay, I guess it isn't obvious to other people, so let me put it another way:
:If you find something insanely out-of-whack from the norm, which doesn't mention being unusual, it's probably a bug and it would be really helpful if you reported it. For instance, if literally ALL skill-specific gear requires the skill to be active, and a powerful new piece of skill-specific gear showed up without that requirement, the first thought shouldn't be "I guess this piece of gear is going into ALL my skill set builds forever! Nice!" but rather "That's a bug, I should help Eric make the game work by reporting it."
:I'm not talking about when something is EXPLICITLY different, such as the special fireball abilities that say they can be used even when Fire Magic isn't active. I'm talking about things that don't say that they're breaking the general rules, but are. If it's not explicitly an exception to the general rule, then ... it's probably a bug.
:: 6/27/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2189-Update-Discussion-June-26-2019&p=16021#post16021
==== Telka's Teeth ====
:personal insult? Give me a break. These are separate development topics. You want me to quickly remove parts of a design because you said something on the forum a few days before the update went live?
:First, you shouldn't be able to retain the powers of Telka's Teeth in an animal form; that would be a bug. So let's skip all this werewolf stuff.
:Second, like I said before, these are supposed to be rare. They aren't supposed to be something you can use constantly. In the same way you can't use Eternal Greens to just zerg through hard dungeons forever (due to a lack of said items), you shouldn't be able to use high-level Telka's Teeth constantly either. So if they do become popular the rarity will make it obvious how impractical it would be to use them every fight. And if that doesn't happen then I'll be decreasing their rarity, so they become a powerful prized possession. Something that will be mimicked in other ways for other races.
:Third, I'm working on adding the necessary counters to evasion to make it more balanced -- hence the monsters with Accuracy in this update as a starting point. A few points of evasion isn't really going to be worth rerolling a character for, at the high levels, I think. And if I'm wrong when all is said and done, I'll fix it.
:Fourth, stop with the persecution complex. I'm trying my best to be responsive, but things take time. You need to either give me space to do so or just give up on the game, because this whole "you offended me by ignoring me" thing is not okay. I value your feedback, both in the past and the future, but it should be clear by now that I'm not going to delay an entire beta update because you think it will be more imbalanced for a bit longer. I have schedules to keep; that doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. Stop it.
:: 6/26/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2189-Update-Discussion-June-26-2019&p=16021#post16021
==== Secrets in Update ====
:There are more "secrets" in this update than usual, mainly due to experimental ideas that didn't pan out, but which left behind something interesting. Some of those are actual literal secrets (such as hidden rooms) but others are just little interactions or items that didn't merit "patch note" status. But one change that maybe should have been added to the notes: there's a book on Joeh's counter in Serbule which teaches new players how Augments are supposed to work. It gives a bit of Lore XP when read.
:: 6/26/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2189-Update-Discussion-June-26-2019&p=16014#post16014
==== Gazluk Caves ====
:I actually thought most of those Gazluk caves were full of level 70 monsters already. It's unfortunately too late to adjust much for tomorrow's update, but I'll plan on making some changes there for the update after.
:: 6/25/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2185-Some-Meaningful-Level-70-Solo-Content-Please&p=16003#post16003
==== Value of Mitigation ====
:Yeah, in retrospect I should have left this alone as I suspect it's going to derail Yaffy's excellent thread. Well to bring it back around to mitigation: one of the trickiest things is that different content will be very different. Orcs are predominantly melee martial fighters, so that's sort of GK's thing, but at higher level we'll have dungeons full of demons, snake people, and all kinds of other stuff that are less inclined to use swords and hammers. (That said, I expect physical mitigation will always be a bit more useful than the others, just because so many monsters have claws and pincers and so on.)
:Since I'm still using GK as the prototype for group combat, I've already made some changes to it for next update -- and I may make a few more based on this thread, just to make it a bit more varied. GK is a really big place, after all...
:: 2/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2180-Estimating-the-Value-of-Mitigation&p=15943#post15943
==== Limited Secret Skills? ====
:I don't think I want to move toward a "super l33t powers that are intentionally limited to a tiny group" game design. I can see why it's exciting, but from my viewpoint as a game designer it feels... well, kind of psychologically manipulative. We get everybody playing in the hopes of getting this amazing thing, and then only give it to a tiny fraction of people. In that case we might as well just implement paid loot boxes... at least I'd get money out of it that way!
:Kidding aside, there are some ways that can work (e.g. when there are scores or even hundreds of weird overpowered things, and each is super rare). But I don't think that's an approach we'd want to take for this particular game.
:: 6/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2178-A-realistic-way-to-add-dragons&p=15940#post15940
==== Dragons ====
:I don't think I want to move toward a "super l33t powers that are intentionally limited to a tiny group" game design. I can see why it's exciting, but from my viewpoint as a game designer it feels... well, kind of psychologically manipulative. We get everybody playing in the hopes of getting this amazing thing, and then only give it to a tiny fraction of people. In that case we might as well just implement paid loot boxes... at least I'd get money out of it that way!
:: 6/21/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2178-A-realistic-way-to-add-dragons&p=15940#post15940
==== Combat Length ====
:In terms of combat length I'm basically trying to get battles to last long enough that there can be nuance and difference to each monster. I've long since realized 40 seconds (or even 20 seconds) isn't going to be possible without a lot of annoying restrictions. EverQuest has a lot of very forceful game systems in place, including trash monsters that require grouping, punitive XP formula if a group has members with too divergent of a level range, HUGE level-up power increases combined with huge monster XP drop-offs to push people to new content every level, etc.
