Srand Forum Posts
From Project: Gorgon Wiki
The Current Forum
This table does not contain all of srand's posts, but most of them. Please note that newer posts are listed higher in this list. Older information may be outdated.
The Second Forum
This table does not contain all of srand's posts, but most of them. Please note that newer posts are listed higher in this list. Older information may be outdated.
Extra Character Slots
- Unfortunately, adding new slots for each testing scenario isn't something we can do. But since this is a throw-away character just to go through and test the dungeon, you might make a second account for it.
Buff without name.
- That's the buff that keeps your floating gem floating. It's supposed to be hidden (since you don't really need to know about it or have it cluttering up your buffs), but it got unhidden by accident in this last update. We'll hide it again as soon as we can!
- (Great screenshot by the way! My first question would have been "Are you wearing a floating gem headpiece thingie?" but with the screenshot I didn't have to.)
Beards
- Now I am picturing cows with beards.
Legacy Loot, Free Loot #2
- Good question! If the extracted mod has changed, the augment will automatically change - not to something random, but to the new version of that mod. (Tech details: The underlying ID of the mod, which is what the augmengt stores, hasn't changed in many cases - just the text, effect, stats, etc - so it looks entirely new to you but not to the augment.)
- HOWEVER - and this is important! - in some cases this can leave you with a mod that is normally impossible - say, a foot-augment for something that now belongs on hands. If you apply this augment, the item you apply it to will become Legacy. So you'll want to be very careful about that. Check out the new version of the mod before you apply the augment!
- By the way - and this is also important - it is possible that because of the massive changes to mods, some items may be marked Legacy when they really shouldn't be. If this happens to you, don't panic! The new Alpha Tester golem who trades out Legacy items for random new items will tell you (before you do the final trade-in) exactly why he thinks your item is Legacy. If you think he's wrong, send us a screenshot of that info and we'll check it out. And hold onto the item in the meantime, because if he is wrong the item will become un-Legacy when we fix the problem. (This info will be in the patch notes also, so don't worry about it being hidden down in this thread.)
Don't whack people with free beer!
- Well, perhaps not completely free in the classic free beer sense - you not only need to show up, you also need to take a whack or two at something (which is something you shouldn't do to someone who is handing you free beer, by the way), or get in a group with someone who is whacking. As it were. But I've been told that the events are very liberal with loot. In other words, you shouldn't have to work too hard to get yourself equipped with a decent suit of the updated stuff.
- Err ... I think my analogy went way off course, there. Sorry about that. Did I help at all?
Legacy Loot, Free Loot
- Way, way back in the September 15 Dev Update, Citan talked about a preliminary plan for handling the major, major changes coming to abilities and treasure. It involved an NPC who could help you adjust your old equipment to meet the new 2-skill requirements by turning non-Generic effects into Generic effects for free.
- After extensive testing, we've thrown that plan out.
- Why? Because abilities and treasure have so many changes - in base stats, in mod effects, in the equipment slots that a mod can fill, in everything important - that merely changing your old equipment to fit the new requirements is mostly going to leave that old equipment in a sad, sad state compared to the new loot. It's just not worth it for you - you'll be much better off with new loot - and it's not worth it for us to spend more time testing this NPC when you won't want to use her anyway.
- So here's how it's going to work instead:
- When you log in after the update, any equipment you have that doesn't meet the split-skill requirements (described in more detail here) will become Legacy - which means it will keep working for 30 days only. After that, it can't be equipped.
- Starting with the update, we'll be running one or more exciting (and probably Halloween-themed) events that help everyone get new loot. If you remember last year's Halloween event, for example, it involved a way to summon horrible undead - of various levels - that dropped a lot of very shiny loot. We'll leave the events running long enough for folks to gather a decent set of equipment - not only to replace any Legacy gear, but to get a start on all the sexy new mods too.
- But! - you say - But! How will I fight the legions of doom when my old equipment sucks? What if I can't log in during the events and I don't get any shiny new loot?
- Well, here's the thing: Because a lot of mods have changed slots, a lot of players will find themselves doubling up on mods (intentionally or not) as they change out their equipment. In other words, during the 30 days after the update, some of you are going to be a bit overpowered. And that's okay - because we expect you to use that power for good, to help your less fortunate brethren get themselves up to date. This is alpha, but it's also a community - and it's a damned good community.
- Now this *is* a complication with testing - it's harder to get good data during a major switch-over like this - but in the end we decided that this was the best way to handle the situation without completely screwing you folks over. And as I've said before, we try hard not to deliberately screw you over when we can. :)
- So that's the plan. Tell me your thoughts, ask me questions, and I'll do my best to answer!
Treasure Combos
- I think some of the confusion here is coming from the source - what you've got so far is a couple of sentences in a somewhat stream-of-consciousness (sorry, Citan!) blog post.
- I can tell you that the goal isn't to tie you down to an set order of operations, but in fact just the opposite: to let you choose different treasure effects that work with your own ability choices in different situations.
- But I know that just telling you the goal doesn't really help until you have some details - to see if you think we can reach that goal with this change.
- As I understand it, if you want the 'organic combo bonus' to Fire Bolts + any Core Attack, you'll be giving up other treasure effects that are potentially more useful to you - depending on how you choose to use your abilities. (And you may well have multiple load outs, with and without that treasure mod.)
- However, having said that, I will see if I can get a better example out of Citan to illustrate what he is thinking and/or has coded this week - in the next blog post, at least, if not before. Hopefully that will help lay some of your fears to rest, Roekai. (And if not, we'll see what we can do to address them!)
- In the meantime, this part of the discussion doesn't have enough info to keep usefully going at this time - so I'd ask you to drop it for the moment and wait for more details. (And, as always, let's keep the all discussion calm and polite!)
Moderation
- If you have any questions about specific moderation actions, please contact [email protected]. Thank you!
MajorMUD
- Wow - it's been a long time since I thought about MajorMUD! I played a Kang Witchunter.
Mining
- I'm enjoying this thread, learning about what you like and don't like with mining. PG is all about iterating, so having "this is good, that could be better, and that other thing is really tedious" is very helpful when it's time to tweak the system. (Just remember that those tweaks can take a while - so many, many systems to iterate!)
Craft All button?
- I'll see if it's feasible to hack something in for now, but if not we will definitely address this after the UI update.
Druid Perks
- Nope. The inhabitants of Animal Town are well aware that those sneaky druids can turn into birds. So they assume all talking birds are druids and (therefore non-animals) when they see them.
- I just wanted to clarify that. :) And I do believe there are other non-druid group activities in the same vein coming, as well as hordes of skills and ... specializations? Is that the words I want? ... that haven't made it into code yet. You have to start somewhere, after all.
- But I wouldn't be too worried about non-druids being left out just yet.
Connectivity Issues
- Ack! I didn't even think about this, and I apologize - but Citan just reminded me that client.projectgorgon.com uses a completely different machine (in a completely different data center, even!) than the main game server. If you are having problems getting the launcher to connect, client.projectgorgon.com is the thing to tracert to, but for in-game disconnects it doesn't tell us as much. I am terribly sorry I didn't think about that when I first responded.
- I did poke the data center for the website/launcher, but Citan is following up now looking at connection status for the main game server
Display Prefs
- I wasn't sure this would work, but there is a preferences file in a different location that you can delete to set prefs back to the defaults. The file (on Windows) is "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\LocalLow\Elder Game\Project Gorgon\GorgonPrefs.txt".
- Note that that's in AppData\LocalLow instead of AppData\Local, so it's not necessarily deleted with an uninstall. (Which is probably a bug.
AFK #3
- First off, I want to say right up front that disconnecting a player after they have been inactive for a certain period of time - henceforth 'the AFK timer' for the sake of brevity - changes the way that some players have been playing the game, and changes it in a way that takes something away from current players. In that sense, it's a nerf. And some players are rightly quite annoyed about this nerf because it's not obvious why you were nerfed. Alpha is all about changes - nerfs and buffs and experimental new systems that don't always work the way they should - but when you get nerfed, it can feel really malicious if you don't at least have some idea what the hell the devs were thinking.
- Aside: I had mentioned in Global chat just after the update that I hadn't spent much time thinking about the AFK timer. That was me personally, by the way, not the dev team! But the fact is that I hadn't thought about it much personally because I'm used to playing games that log you off after a period of inactivity. I knew it was on the to-do list and would happen eventually, and I didn't consider it a big deal. Again, that was me personally. Reading all the comments here, I can see that I was missing a lot of the finer points about how players were using a limitless AFK. I apologize for that. I have a much better idea now why some folks are feeling attacked by the change. Since the update I've talked to Citan extensively about the AFK timer and his design goals - and it became very clear to me that he had done a lot more thinking than I had, especially in the context of performance skills and other game systems. (I'll get to that in a second.)
- So let's start by talking a bit about why we implemented an AFK timer, as well as why we didn't:
- The AFK timer and the druid events are entirely unrelated.
- The AFK timer is not directly related to the implementation of the new dance skill. That is, we didn't add an AFK timer in order to force you to level dance the 'right' way. The timer is indirectly related to the larger goals of the performance skills - again, I'll get to that in a second.
- The AFK timer isn't specifically intended to help with server lag. As Silvonis said, it can help with crowd control - that is, how many people gather where doing what - and that can help a lot with client lag. That's not the only reason that this change happened now, but it is a common reason that most games log you off after some period of inactivity, and a big part of the reason that the timer was on our eventual to-do list from the beginning.
- Okay, so what about the AFK timer and performance skills? Isn't it kind of mean that we made a system that encourages you to stay online AFK and then nerfed your ability to do just that?
- I touched on this briefly in another thread, but basically the goal for the performance skills was to be a fun social activity. More than that, gathering a bunch of folks to be social, play music, and dance was supposed to be an event. Not a druid-event kind of event, but a weekly-poker-night kind of event. A social event. We really didn't intend that you feel obligated to have a full-power music buffs in place every time you went out hunting. But as many of you have pointed out in this thread, that's exactly what is happening right now. You need people playing in town, even if they are AFK, so you can get your buffs and be as effective as possible in combat. (Or gardening!)
- The current system isn't what we were trying to achieve, and in a lot of ways it's just not fun. In fact, a lot of the feedback in this thread is really about the weaknesses in the current performance system, and why those weaknesses make limitless AFKing the logical way to play.
- So given the current state of performance skills, there are three tacks we can take:
- 1. Nerf the effectiveness of the performance buffs so they don't feel obligatory. (Of course, then they'd be worthless.)
- 2. Accept the fact that performance buffs are obligatory and nerf XP across the board, so that the planned leveling curves aren't thrown all out of whack by the buffs. (Ouch.)
- 3. Change the performance skills to move them closer to the original goal of a fun, voluntary social event.
- In case it's not obvious, we're aiming for #3. :)
- Okay, you may be saying, but given all that - why did we implement the AFK timer now instead of waiting until we had a better performance system ready to go? There were logistical benefits to adding the AFK timer now, but much more importantly: it's really hard to judge the success of a change when that change is overshadowed by the existing system. Iteration is the heart of our development process; every system goes through many iterations as we try things out, find out what works and what doesn't, and decide what needs to go back to the drawing board. There are almost certainly going to be many more iterations on the performance skills before we're satisfied. But if everyone is doing their normal obligatory-AFK-music-buff thing, then any changes we make as we iterate are going to be so overshadowed by players' existing behaviors and assumptions that we won't know if we're getting closer to fun or not.
- I hope that helps explain why we implemented an AFK timer in this last update. I've actually really enjoyed reading through all your comments and suggestions and I learned quite a bit, not only about how you play the game but also how you think about it. And that's really valuable. We can tweak the timer a bit if necessary. What's going to be harder - and what's going to take a lot of testing, feedback, and patience from you - is getting the performance skills right.
AFK #2
- Minor thing, but I just found this out and thought it might be useful to clarify: pretty much any sort of client interaction will keep the server from marking you as AFK, including in-game chat. (We can't tell if you're babbling away on Discord, unfortunately.)
Disruptive Druids
- I'm not surprised that the druid events are causing some consternation. They are intricate and complex code, this is their first contact with the enemy, and - let's be honest - there are some major bugs!
- We're not going to rip druid events out immediately and for good. We're going to fix the bugs as you folks find them, fix the rough edges as you folks report them, and then see if there is a fun event under there.
- This discussion is a good start! Just remember that there are bugs, and lots of room for tweaking.
Tanks
- I'm really enjoying this discussion. Since I haven't played a tank myself, I especially like to hear the about how it feels to you folks who have - what you like about being a tank, what you don't like, and how that works or doesn't work with where the game is right this second.
- Because you know we're not going to suddenly rip the entire concept of tanking out of Project: Gorgon - at least I hope you know that! - so getting a solid feel for what you folks are finding fun, or not, is the best place to start talking about any changes that may need to be made.
Feedback
- Feedback is good. Constructive feedback is even better. I know the knives are causing some consternation, from reports and from the forums. I know a number of other crafting changes are as well. But what I need from you is not bitching (as you said) but details about how these changes are affecting you.
- And I know you, McNasty, have sent me some specific reports on this already, so this isn't aimed at you in particular - but I've also gotten quite a bit of reports that can be summed up as 'you suck' and not a lot else. (I don't mind the 'you suck' part so long as it's not egregious - people get passionate about things they love - but I do mind reports without any details!)
- Anyway.
- This is an alpha. You know first-hand how much gameplay - combat and crafting and skills and everything else - can change. You also know - I hope! - that we aren't trying to screw you. So please, if you would, set aside the feelings of betrayal and give us substantive, detailed feedback on how the changes affect you so we can move the discussion forward in a constructive way.
AFK timer
- I also wanted to say a bit about the /afk timer. As I understand the design, music and dance are really intended to be a fun social activity to do during your downtime in town. We didn't really expect players to spend hours AFK playing music - and honestly, we really don't want to make hours of AFK time feel 'obligatory'. We'd much rather have this system be a fun, social (that is, present at the keyboard!) activity.
- Of course, what players actually do is rarely a perfect fit for how a system is designed. :) We don't really want you hanging out for hours AFK, but there was a reason people were doing that - so now the discussion can center on the reasons players were doing that and ways to make that work better for everyone.
- Btw, I'm not ignoring the other things brought up in this thread so far - I just wanted to drop this quick comment before I go back to juggling bugs. Remember to send an in-game bug report for all the bugs, possible bugs, and oddities you see. Feedback and suggestions on the changes are also a huge help for us, but may not get a lot of personal response from us until we get the blocking bugs out of the way. Feel free to start discussions with your feedback here on the forums - preferably in a new thread so I can keep track pf the topics better! - or use the in-game suggestion if you have thing you'd like to discuss less publicly. (Just remember to be polite!)
Guild Quest Rewards
- I just wanted to clarify that the current rewards were set more for ease of testing than anything else - so we could more easily back-calculate the progress if something blew up during early testing. (Which it did!) I expect those rewards to get tweaked again (and again and again), but at the moment they are especially egregious.
Bugs, Exploits, and You
- Note: This post is rather long. You can skip to the bullet point list at the end if you like - unless you plan to argue with me, in which case I strongly suggest reading the whole thing. :)
- In the May 23 update, we fixed a bug that allowed monsters to "see through walls" in many situations. That fix involved rewriting the entire monster-visibility system, so we knew it would probably have a lot of bugs at first.
- And we were right - there are a lot of bugs with monster visibility right now! For the most part, though, these bugs are less about monsters still seeing you when they shouldn't and more about monsters failing to see you when they actually should - like when you are right in front of them but at a slightly different height, or you've been knocked back into a wall, or you are standing in a bush ... or standing on their head.
- Yeah ... Monster AI isn't all that intelligent at the moment.
- Now most of you have been excellent about reporting these problems whenever and wherever you see them and then moving on with your regular gameplay. That's excellent! We love that! You rock!
- Some folks have been a little less forthcoming, though, and some folks have actively exploited these bugs to let them kill stuff fast and easy. This is a problem, not just because deliberately exploiting will get you banned - which it will - but also because we are currently gathering combat metrics to help with balance tweaks and planning the next set of combat skills and abilities. So if players get sneaky about hiding their exploits, then the data we get might show people killing stuff way above their level - and we may end up thinking that we need a major combat rebalance that we don't really need and screw up the fun for everyone.
- Now we know you can't avoid these buggy situations all the time, and we're definitely *not* saying that we will ban someone who stumbles into a buggy situation or one they can't avoid. But deliberately exploiting bugs like this for your own benefit is another thing entirely. This is, first and foremost, an alpha. We trust you folks to help us make the game better for everyone by reporting bugs instead of taking advantage of them.
- And let me assure you: We *are* working on fixing these monster visibility bugs. It's important. It also complicated and running smack into another priority, which is integrating the new UI system so we can fix some of those really bloody annoying UI bugs.
- So, to sum up:
- Do not *deliberately* exploit obvious monster visibility bugs like standing in a bush or fighting from a slightly different elevation.
- If you do, you will be banned.
- If you run into a monster or a location that is obviously bugged:
- Send us an in-game bug report with the monster name and a short description of what's happening - for instance: "It's on a hill," or "I got knocked into a bush and it can't see me." (The location is included in the bug report.)
- Most people are already doing this. Thank you! Did I mention that you rock?
- If you see someone who seems to be deliberately abusing a situation:
- Send an in-game abuse report with the name of the player and what they are doing - for instance: "He's hiding in a bush!"
- Don't get into fights with possible exploiters - just report them! But if anyone seems unclear about any of this, you should definitely refer them to this post.
- http://oldforum.projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/2676-monster-visibility-bugs-exploits-and-you#14453
Shipping Skill
- Well, I don't know what Citan will say but I think it's a great idea!
- (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for new features.)
Bug Reports
- On a personal note, I need in-game bug reports with specific details - skill levels, abilities used, pets used, pet attacks used, equipment mods, and autopsy reports are a great start! Getting some comparisons between correct-ish behavior (if and when you see it) and buggy behavior would be helpful also.
- And please do submit them in-game rather than on the forums - it makes it a lot easier for me to track all the variables and respond to you when I need more specific info.
- (And a big thank you to those who are already submitting reports. We're a bit behind in responding but nevertheless actively compiling the info.)
The First Forum
No information can be gathered from the first forum for the game.
