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: Guys, thanks for the feedback, but we need more to go on than "rubberbanding/lag". This is a dirty word among MMO developers because it's meaningless. There are a thousand things that players call lag, rubberbanding, etc. But they aren't all the same problem and they don't have the same solution. Without specific details, we can't fix anything. So please tell us exactly what you're experiencing. I can tell there are at least two utterly different issues in this thread alone.

: First, know that there is no player rubberbanding. (It's been disabled for over a year, and we aren't turning it back until other development is closer to finished.) That means that the server never moves your character without your client telling it to. In other words, if your character doesn't seem to move when you direct it to, or or moves erratically, that is never due to the network. It's always, 100%, due to the game client, and usually due to bad framerate. So if that's the symptom you're seeing, the first thing to ask is, what is your framerate when this happens? Turn on the FPS meter so you can tell us. Turn down the graphics settings and see if it continues.

::09-26-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?769-Rubberbanding-lag&p=6214#post6214

: Nah, this is a case where it makes sense to have them separated. Much like we won't have one skill to make armor and weapons at the same time, we won't have a skill that augments all the slots at the same time. In some cases balance is much more important than the "fiction".

: The idea that, say, a leathersmith naturally can't also make swords is a fiction that happens to be useful for balance purposes. Leatherworkers obviously aren't metalsmiths, right? Even though, realistically speaking, the two skills will have very similar recipes.

::09-26-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?780-Question-to-Skill-Makers&p=6207#post6207

: While grouping should be the most efficient way to get gear, I want soloing to be viable at all levels and I agree that it's too slow to get gear while soloing at some level ranges. We'll be working on this in the future, though I'm not sure yet what form that will take.

::09-14-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?750-Loot-frequency-and-game-style&p=6032#post6032

: To repeat, again: bard is supposed to be moderately hard to level. Because we don't need 5,000,000 low-level bards in the world, so it should be something you have to work a bit for. That's how you gate things in a game where everybody can be everything: are you willing to spend a few hours to get there? If not, use Sword, it's great and it doesn't require any extra work.

: As to "what about bards requires you to grow plants", well, my idea of a bard is somebody who likes nature, so I picked nature-oriented skills. Maybe it's too hard to level right now, maybe it's too easy. It's alpha, and those are prototype prereqs. Again, we'll be revising all skill's prerequisites into their final forms in late beta after more skills are online. I don't know what the final prerequisites will be for bard, of course, because we don't know which skills will make the cut. I usually toss out about half the skills that get prototyped, so we'll just have to see. There are no planned changes any time in the near future, though we can tweak the temporary settings up or down if they've proven to be too tough.

::09-09-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?729-On-Bardin-prerequisites&p=5975#post5975

: The reason the market stalls are chopped up the way they are is for occlusion culling. Basically, it's so that your framerate doesn't go even worse than it already does in there. When more optimizations are in place, I hope we can improve the layout, but we can't right now.

::09-08-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?740-Player-Vendors-high-rent-slow-sales&p=5954#post5954

: What are you overcoming by having, say, 10 extra inventory slots? You don't overcome anything. The inventory is still much smaller than you want it to be.

: There is no artificial shortage: I'm giving out as many inventory slots as I think players should have. I didn't make that number artificially small. I assume the average player won't spend a dime beyond their purchase price, and I want the game to be fun for them.

: But I expect we'll need continuing money to keep developing the game in the long term, so we'll give players small benefits for paying a monthly subscription. I don't know if those benefits will include inventory slots, but if so, they won't get a lot of slots. It sure won't be enough to make players happy with how the current inventory system works!

: So the difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying is not semantics: it's scope. You will never be able to buy your way out of inventory management problems! But those inventory problems are real problems with the game, and I intend to improve them in the future. I definitely don't intend to let you solve the game's inventory hassles by giving me extra money. I'm insulted by the idea that I'm making the game extra crappy in order to get extra money. I'm just not finished yet. There's a lot more work to do.

::09-07-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?706-Update-Discussion-August-28-2017&p=5924#post5924

: First, there's absolutely no reason we can't reach 1000 concurrent users. That's a very modest goal. We had 250+ concurrent users TWO YEARS AGO, the last time we did a small marketing push. Those players ran out of content and wandered away a few months later, and we haven't done much to bring new users in, because the game isn't finished yet. But I am going to finish the game.

: And when the game is finished, if we can't get a measly 1000 concurrent users at peak play hour, then the game will have failed, and we will have to shut it all down. We can't even cover costs with the current user base. But I'm not fretting about it right now, because we aren't trying to bring in new players. Because the game is not finished.

::09-07-2017

::https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?706-Update-Discussion-August-28-2017&p=5921#post5921

: Actually, I haven't ruled out selling a few slots. It may happen. But if you think that's what "pay to win" means, you're wrong. Look, this thread already set me off on a bad foot by calling me Hitler -- as you no doubt know, that term "pay to win" is very offensive to game designers, and this thread is already Godwinned. Calling my game p2w shows a deep misunderstanding of what the term means.

: P2W means pay to WIN. Have you ever played a p2w game? Try beating the best players in a p2w game without paying lots of cash. You literally can't. P2W means that to be competitive, in whatever form competition takes, you have to pay more.

::09-07-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?706-Update-Discussion-August-28-2017&p=5914#post5914

: Some of the existing prerequisites will probably be replaced with different craft skills in late beta, after another 20 or so craft skills come online. For now they've been chosen because they make the difficulty curve about right. Bard is supposed to be moderately hard to level.

: (This also applies to some of Battle Chemistry's leveling prerequisites.)

::09-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?729-On-Bardin-prerequisites&p=5878#post5878

: You don't need carrots to use Carrot Power. All higher level veggies can be converted to rabbit treats, and rabbit treats act as carrots for the purposes of Carrot Power. You are not supposed to actually eat the rabbit treats.

: And yes, it's still a hard-to-use ability. In some ways it sucks to be a rabbit.

::09-05-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?726-Rabbit-form-Carrot-Powrer-is-this-a-fukin-joke&p=5877#post5877

: Knife will in fact eventually be main hand / off hand. Daggers for main hand and shivs will be off-hand. We don't have the animations for it at the moment, and it's not really a high priority during alpha, but it will happen.

::08-31-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?716-How-do-you-feel-about-Knife-being-off-hand&p=5760#post5760

: Glad you're enjoying them! We pretty much expect to keep doing weekend events forever, or at least as long as they're seen as fun bonuses. I mean, players might get burned out on them, start taking them too much for granted, and need some time off. But I'm hoping we can create a large enough repertoire of events that we can keep them varied and interesting for a long time.

: (And we do plan to do occasional mid-week events as well, for those who can't play on weekends. But not until launch, as we don't have the time to coordinate more events right now.)

::08-20-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?684-Weekly-Weekend-Events&p=5599#post5599

: All her trades are pretty simple stuff, like a spoon for a femur. The most useful to my mind would be either the goblin hairpin for ivory mandibles (swapping one gift item for a different one), or maybe the ones that give you crossing/uncrossing oil for favor. But they're not very impressive trades from a monetary point of view.

: The thing is that we want people to eventually GET RID of the Ursula curse -- I don't want people telling newbies that the "right" way to play to is "always get the Ursula curse on every character because of [the chance for X special thing]". So it's unlikely we'll make her trades more exciting for higher-level players.

::08-16-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?675-What-Can-You-Get-From-Bartering-With-Ursula-Considering-the-Fact-Wiki-Doesnt-Say-Crap&p=5558#post5558

: Only the three intermediary vegetable items are being removed. We may remove fillets eventually, but probably not any time soon. The fillet recipes give scales, which are useful, while the three recipes being removed don't do anything useful except add extra clicks to the cooking process. (They made sense once, but not anymore.)

::08-16-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?680-Question-regarding-intermediate-steps-in-Cooking&p=5557#post5557

: At launch we expect the combat skills to scale to 100, plus 25 points of synergy bonuses, for a "max level " of 125. (There will be more than 25 available synergy points for each skill, so that you can pick and choose which ones you want to earn. But only the first 25 synergy skill points count.)

: I've occasionally talked about the possibility of skills going to 125 base, plus 25 synergy, for a total of 150, but I suspect that'll happen post-launch.

::07-31-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?653-End-game-level-caps-what-to-expect&p=5366#post5366

: Necromancy already has it pretty good in this department -- they have Necromancy Orbs at all level tiers, plus various items with necro gems in them as an added bonus. This makes them vastly more versatile than, say, Sword, already.

: A living necromancer will always need a focus item to control the undead. Perhaps if you were undead yourself, that would be different...

::07-30-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?646-Necro-Gems-Not-Needed-To-Use-Necromancy-At-A-Certain-Level&p=5363#post5363

: Shieldbreaker's links are a good starting point for this topic. I can give some updates on the race development: basically, fairies are blocked by other things that need to be done first.

: Fae - We now have the needed fairy animations (just the bare-bones necessities of flying, landing, etc.), but I still need to figure out some of the systems involved in fighting-while-flying. Because it's insanely abusable atm. Fae also have a custom death system, and to integrate that into the game I need to finish changing the REGULAR player death system -- that is, changing how "Enter the Light" works, among other things. But I know that players use "Enter the Light"'s infinite-travel-back-to-Serbule feature as a fast-travel system, and I don't want to diminish that until we have other travel tools in the game. So I've been pushing on getting travel systems in. The biggest remaining one is horses -- at this point I think horses probably have to happen before fairies. And horses have their own set of bottlenecks -- the new GUI has to come online before horses, for instance. So I don't know when fairies will be ready. Their newbie area also needs lots more development, but that's fairly straightforward. (And interesting -- they have an unusual home place.)

::07-23-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?568-Fae-race&p=5235#post5235

: It's true, this is a significant oversight for bats. Bats were introduced before we decided animals should have weapon-slot gear, and I guess they never got retrofitted when we redid the other animals.

: This will be addressed at some point relatively soon -- when I do the next batch of treasure mod work -- but unfortunately it's not as easy as banging out a few new items. There really are no bat-specific treasure mods for those slots, so they need to be invented, and (if it ends up like pig, cow, etc.), we'll need to shuffle some of the existing bat mods around to other slots. Which will cause gear to go Legacy. So it'll be messy, but hopefully not too disruptive.

::07-20-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?624-Need-Weapons-for-Bats&p=5185#post5185

: If you return to the same mushroom box BEFORE its timer is expired, you should be able to start another crop of mushrooms. If you return AFTER the timer (e.g. on hour 13 of a 12-hour box) all you can do is harvest the existing crop. That's the intended behaviour, anyway! It may be buggy.

::07-19-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?618-Mushroom-Farming&p=5162#post5162

: We are wiping items and probably NPC favor levels, possibly favor-quests... the exact list hasn't been decided. But what we have always said would NOT be wiped is skills. Your skill levels will continue into the live game. People who say otherwise are trolling you or are very confused.

: (Edit: and we're not wiping things at Beta, only at launch. Beta will start when the game is on Steam Early Access -- relatively soon. Launch is when the game is out of early access -- probably late 2018.)

::07-17-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?620-Please-clarify-Beta-Launch-for-us&p=5145#post5145

: The game balance is designed around not being able to switch weapons or gear (or combat skills or ability bars!) during combat. That's why we allow you to wield both a bow and a sword at the same time -- so you don't have to switch.

: If there are cases where you CAN switch gear, those are bugs.

::07-12-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?605-Combat-switch-weapons&p=5055#post5055

: First, I want to clarify that I'm talking about the three "group dungeons". (Dark chapel, minotaur dungeon, and Gazluk Keep.) There's also lots of work to be done with the other content in the game -- especially low level content. But that's somewhat tangential here. Someone mentioned the Serbule Crypt -- that's probably the weirdest of the game's dungeons because it's literally 5 years old. It's the only dungeon from "pre-alpha 0" to still exist. It's been the testing bed for all sorts of things, so it has small group encounters, large group encounters, solo areas, quest NPCs, and a ridiculously large level spread of 25 levels (level 5 monsters in the front door and level 30 bosses at the very bottom). It's been the place we figured out how the game works. And as we understand how the game works better, I plan to redo all of the dungeon's content during beta. It'll have a much more specific level range -- maybe levels 15-20, something like that.

: So if you're concerned about low-level content -- that's completely understandable. And we would love feedback on the existing content! (Not in this thread, though, please.) We're working on a bunch of new low-level content that will be added to South Serbule soon, including several large dungeons. So even if we don't immediately change the existing content, we're taking lessons from that content as we move forward.

::07-10-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?603-Groups-of-8-vs-6&p=5001#post5001

: No, there's not a public list of bugs, that is a very difficult thing to maintain and we don't have the manpower for it. (We can only barely keep up with our internal bug DB, which is full of private player info, personal conversations, etc.)

: Please report any bugs that you see! Even if the bug has been reported before, multiple reports are a HUGE help because we prioritize based on the number of people reporting it. It also helps us correlate details to help track down what's going on. But really, the prioritization thing is a BIG deal. The only way we can tell if a bug is bothering somebody is if they report it.

:: 07-10-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?607-List-of-known-bugs&p=4999#post4999

: I'm not sure why you can't see your pins, maybe they're blending into the image or maybe they'd be visible if you made the map window larger. Anyway, there's an alpha-tester debugging command you can use to fix it: in the chat box type "/mapclear". It will wipe all your map pins from all your maps.

::07-10-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?606-Maps-and-Pins&p=4996#post4996

: But a group of six already steamrolls existing content. So I've been thinking smaller, not larger. How the heck would I make content for 8 people that's engaging and interesting when I haven't managed it reliably with 6 yet?!

: This seems like a "we can be more inclusive while we steamroll through content, yay" thing. I'm not interested in that. The point of group dungeons is to provide interesting adventures, and I need to reach that goal of being interesting and compelling.

::07-08-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?603-Groups-of-8-vs-6&p=4978#post4978

: At the moment we're only using TCP port 9002. (We have in the past used UDP 9002 also, and may again in the future, but we don't right now.)

::07-06-2017

::https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?593-Which-Ports-to-open&p=4951#post4951

: We don't have any solid plans for this, but I kinda-sorta expect to implement vanity armor slots as part of the "VIP package" -- the optional monthly subscription that gives you some little extra perks and features. I haven't planned out how they would work, but I liked the EQ2 system and thought it worked pretty well.

::06-25-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?579-Vanity-Armor-Slots&p=4855#post4855

: Right now, I'm sticking to "personal quests", where each player gets their own copy of the quest and can complete it at their own pace. I really like the idea of "group events", and it's in the plans to support them, but right now the tech isn't ready yet. The existing "group quests" (guild quests and druid-event quests) each have some specialized code hacked in just for them, and they aren't very reusable for other activities yet. That will change as we progress with other content... and actually, I could "fake it" by using an NPC to tally completions, such as "NPC Bob needs 500 people to complete this solo quest" -- that would be a sort of hybrid solo-group activity. But for the next few events, I'm just going to stick to fairly straightforward solo-able quests.

::06-25-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?573-Weekend-Events-Feedback-and-Ideas-official&p=4854#post4854

: Frankly, you'll just have to trust me that we already give you the very best info I have available. I think some of that should be obvious. I mean, in your example about making cheese more valuable, I was summarizing my specific recipe changes. Remember the list of exactly which recipes were changed? That's what I was referring to.

: We don't give drop-rate changes in exact percentages because I don't know those percentages. The systems don't work on percents or anything like them. They're complex nested tables with complex weighting systems that can vary per player and per monster. They work well, but they're hard to talk about. So I tell you what I know: something changed by a lot or by a little. That's what we got, so that's what you get.

::06-20-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?576-To-Citan-Comments-about-player-feedback&p=4825#post4825

: They come from different countries, but there's currently no in-game difference (and the eventual difference will be minimal -- backstory differences).

::06-19-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?575-Elvan-Subrace&p=4822#post4822

: The other thing to remember here is that the complexities of the game mean there's lots of manual work involved. For example, I've tried to manually adjust recipes that use cheese-based ingredients to have something else nice going for them, to justify that extra work. But it's an entirely manual process. I may have missed some, not done enough, etc. Saying "high level recipes aren't good enough" doesn't help me fix any recipes. For people skimming this post, let me emphasize that point: Since almost all of the game's content is made by hand, I can't just change a number somewhere to fix all the problems -- I need to know what specifically needs fixing. That may be the value of certain items, the rarity, the potency (when eaten or used), the gifting potential, so on and so forth.

::06-14-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?557-Long-Post-Concerns-about-Cooking-Butchery&p=4731#post4731

::06-01-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?531-Knife-fighting-damage-too-low-balance-issue&p=4563#post4563

: Also, the "cruel" description of the baking system comes from srand after she heard the plans. I never intentionally make cruel designs on purpose! But I want different crafting skills to fit different kinds of player personalities.

: This one's not for everybody, but I think it's actually easier than, say, cheesemaking... as long as you're patient and good at timing things.

::05-30-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?530-Dev-Notes-May-30-2017&p=4544#post4544

: I've basically held off on using stuff like a Rage meter because I don't want to add yet another meter to the game. Even if you don't count the metabolism bar (since it can be turned off), three resource bars is already a lot!

: I may eventually just say "screw it" and add some more resource bars, and Rage is a good choice... but for now I'm trying to work with the bars we have.

::05-25-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?438-Where-s-my-rage-meter&p=4498#post4498

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

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

::05-25-2017

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

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

::05-07-2017

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

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

::05-05-2017

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

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

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

::05-05-2017

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

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

::04-25-2017

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

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

::04-22-2017

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

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

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

::04-22-2017

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

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

::04-12-2017

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

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

:: 04-08-2017

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

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

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

::04-08-2017

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

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

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

::04-08-2017

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

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

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

::03-21-2017

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

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

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

::03-20-2017

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

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

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

::03-18-2017

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

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

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

::03-16-2017

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

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

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

::03-16-2017

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

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

::03-11-2017

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

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

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

::02-22-2017

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

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

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

::02-18-2017

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

::02-18-2017

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

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

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

::02-11-2017

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

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

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

::02-10-2017

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

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

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

::02-06-2017

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

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

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

::02-05-2017

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

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

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

::02-05-2017

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

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

:: 02-02-2017

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

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

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

::02-02-2017

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

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

::02-02-2017

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

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

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

:: 02-02-2017

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

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

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

::02-02-2017

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

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

::01-23-2017

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

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

:: 01-20-2017

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

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

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

::01-19-2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

::01-18-2017

:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?97-Seeking-Understanding&p=537#post537

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