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→Working: Connected Bug: Added 2018 Posts. On to 2019!
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==== Ecological Voodoo ====
:Hmm... hmmm. Very interesting ideas in this post, thanks!
:: 1/6/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1906-New-Skill-Ecological-Voodoo-Do-something-(creepy)-about-those-pesky-respawn-rates&p=14003#post14003
==== Can't use First Aid Kit on sidebar ====
:First Aid Kits are "ammo" for the First Aid abilities; those abilities are what you should put on your sidebar.
:: 1/2/2019
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1920-trick-to-first-aid&p=13969#post13969
==== Twitter, Necromancy ====
:I use twitter as a way to just blast little status updates before I crash for the evening -- I rarely manage to respond to tweets, so you don't really miss much by not having a twitter account!
:There aren't new dungeons in the next update -- we have several in development (some interconnected mini-dungeons and a couple of larger experiences) but they aren't ready yet, and I actually want to dive much deeper into them and make them more interesting. So they've been pulled for this update.
:The Necromancy update has taken a lot of effort. Over half of the treasure mods have been replaced or dramatically altered, and a few abilities altered/removed/replaced as well. I'm still working on it right now, actually, trying to get the zombie mechanics in a better place. Since the skill is changing a lot, I'm focusing more on finding the big picture here: which abilities do what, how do they interact, etc. The exact stat numbers may end up being too high or low, but hopefully this update will put Necromancy on a much stronger footing. It needs to be fun and rewarding to control undead minions!
:So really, Necromancy has taken up a lot of time that I expected to work on other things this week. But it's time well spent. And I think delaying these dungeons will give us time to make them a lot more special.
:(You can find hints about two of the dungeons we're working on by noticing that the Necromancy and Rabbit skills have undergone substantial improvement.)
:: 12/15/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1899-Christmas-Patch&p=13874#post13874
==== Player Maintained Roads ====
:I like this idea. No real way to implement it at the moment but it's something I'm keeping in mind as we design the game systems for mounts.
:: 11/11/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1806-Player-Maintained-Roads&p=13590#post13590
==== Chat Channel mix-up ====
:that's very weird. There haven't been any changes to the config file system.
:We do have some code in there for the upcoming Demo version, and if that went wrong, it could explain why your chat channels were messed up, maybe. (The demo only has access to a few channels.) But it doesn't explain any other changes.
:Did anyone else using the linux version have problems? It sounds, off-hand, like a permission problem, as if the game didn't have permission to read the file for some reason.
:: 11/9/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1836-Update-Discussion-November-3-2018&p=13582#post13582
==== Dev Question: Inventory Sort Order ====
:Hi guys, I've got a question I'd like feedback on. I want to improve the way the inventory sort button works. (We'll eventually have more sorting options for inventory, with a little drop-down menu so that you can sort by e.g. item value or item name. But even when we have multiple sorts, we'll still have a default "smart sort" option, which is what the current sort will become. So I want this smart sort to be as smart as it can be!)
:The current sort hasn't been updated much since it was added in pre-alpha two years ago. It's definitely got some weird stuff in it, and some weird ordering, and that can be very frustrating when you're trying to find stuff. So if you have suggestions on how to improve it, please share! I'll incorporate your suggestions when I update the sort logic.
:Here's the current way the sorting works:
* First comes helmets. If you have multiple helmets, the currently-equipped one comes first, then the ones with highest rarity, and further sorted by item value. Broken helmets come last.
* Then come chest armor, sub-sorted in the same way.
* Then leg armor
* Then hand armor
* Feet armor
* Main-hand weapons
* Off-hand weapons
* Necklaces
* Rings
* Belts
* Racial jewelry (all of these equipment categories are sub-sorted in the same way as helmets)
* Next come "kits": first aid kits, then armor patching kits
* Next are healing potions
* Next are cheese
* Next are other prepared food
* Next are decoctions
* Next are other alchemy potions
* Next are Bottled items
* Magic oils
* Poisons
* Dyes
* Arrows (sub-categorized by regular, then barbed, then long, then dense, then reservoir, then snare)
* Fletching stuff
* Augments
* Augment-related stuff (phlogiston etc)
* Magic dusts (e.g. fire dust)
* Maps (sub-sorted by motherlode, mineral, mining)
* Treasure clues
* Treasure maps
* Recipes
* Work orders
* Other documents
* Tools
* Armor stakes
* Crystals and gems (sub-sorted only by crystal value atm)
* Metal slabs
* Leather rolls
* Tannin
* Flawless skins
* Other skins
* Textiles
* Wood
* Carpentry items (sub-sorted by barrels, stools, benches, chairs, storage crates, other furniture, then misc carpentry)
* Flowers
* Plants
* Seeds
* Skulls
* Other Bones
* Body Organs and corpse trophies
* Gadgets (e.g. vending machines)
* Grass
* Skill ingredients not yet covered (such as inks, papers, metal slabs(?))
* Recipe ingredients not yet covered (anything else that can go in a recipe)
* Fish
* Meat
* Herbs
* Other vegetables
* Other ingredients (?)
* Figurines
* Game chips
* Coins and moneybags
* "Vendor trash"
:So just typing that out I see some weird stuff. Items can only be in one bucket in this list, and they go into the first bucket that matches. So the item "Evil Grass" could theoretically fit into the "grass" category, the "recipe ingredients" category, and possibly the herbs category -- whichever one comes first is the one they get sorted into. Since the "grass" category comes first, that's where they go. And that's correct! (Although the grass category should probably be sorted closer to the flowers and plants...)
:But it's a problem with fish, meat, and vegetables -- those categories come AFTER "recipe ingredients not yet covered", which means most raw ingredients fall into "recipe ingredients not yet covered", so your meat and fish and veggies are all intermixed (sub-sorted by item value). The only thing in the "meat" category is meat that isn't used in any recipe yet!
:I'm already fixing this for the next update: I'm moving the "skill ingredients not yet covered" and "recipe ingredients not yet covered" categories to be below "other ingredients". And I'm moving the "grass" category to be right below "seeds".
:So how can I make this work better? Are there new categories of items we should add to the list? Should things be reordered?
:Again, this isn't "what kinds of different sorts do you want" -- that will come later. Right now I want to make the smart-sort button less stupid.
:I realize this is a tricky somewhat-technical topic. If the above list makes your eyes water, just let me know when the sorting doesn't work for you: "I want to find my snacks, but they're sorted in with the meals", for instance. Whatever makes you go "wtf" when you're trying to find stuff.
:I won't be able to make everyone happy -- a single sort can only be so useful -- but it can definitely be improved!
:: 10/27/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1825-Dev-Question-Making-the-sort-button-better&p=13463#post13463
==== Metal Armor Crafting ====
:I don't think it's too late for new ideas here, but I do want to make use of low-mid tier metal ingots, because they're relatively unused and will basically always be relatively unused. (Actual metal-armor-smithing is a level 80 thing, so while it'll be possible to hammer up some level 40 platemail, it's unlikely to happen often.)
:So if people have ideas for other ways to "dangerously" (riskily) augment gear, using metal ingots (possibly among other things), that they think will work better for the target level range, please share!
:: 10/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1815-Update-Discussion-October-18-2018&p=13448#post13448
==== Notes about New Recipes ====
:Some notes about the new recipes:
:@Yaffy - I did see your post about the new recipes and, obviously, I disagree with your assessment. It sounds like you will never be happy with anything that might destroy a weapon. That's fine. I understand that concern -- we've had this discussion with players before during alpha, and my takeaway was that I should make certain that you don't NEED to risk your equipment to be successful. And that will remain true: you will always be able to have really amazing builds without risking your gear, even at max level. But there will be many ways to alter gear. Dozens of ways, eventually.
:These recipes are intended for about level 30-40ish players. That's obvious, right? It's in the level 40 city and has relatively easy prereqs. Yes, you can use them on high-level weapons, but you certainly don't NEED to "dangerously improve" a weapon to have a successful high-level build. In fact, players at level 70 could ALREADY be really, really overpowered. As in: soloing elites, often soloing bosses... very overpowered. Too overpowered? Yes, but not as overpowered as it seems at first glance... because those gear sets are insane! Getting 50 treasure mods that synergize takes a lot of time and work. Shouldn't it be kind of broken? It should! The exact amount of overpowered is a question we'll have to figure out, but I'm not trying to balance the game around players having perfect gear at level 70. You can get that, and it's cool, and I want you to feel like a badass for all the work you did. I do not, however, have any personal need to let you have "the best possible" gear. If the argument is that you just want to have the absolute very best stuff and it's too hard now... I don't care. But if players feel like they NEED to dangerously improve high-level weapons, that's wrong and I'll fix it. Right now, certainly, they don't.
:The new city (the casino) is for level 40s, because that's where we lose players. Somewhere after the 30s, but before the 50s, players get exhausted. There aren't (weren't) enough goalposts, so the goals feel too distant and the game feels too grindy. So the casino is a hub for new kinds of goals. Those earlier goals (like running GK, or learning Battle Chemistry, or whatever thing they're working on) are still there, and I don't want to take away from them. But there need to be lots of new goals, new ways to improve, new things to do.
:This being a casino, it's obvious that there should be some high-risk, high-reward techniques. Again, getting the exact numbers right will take time. But I think I'm right that this is where a risky technique should fit into the game, and I'm pretty sure I can make it work. (Eventually.)
:Players in this level range tend to have several weapons they've been holding on to, but none of them are very good. Adding 100 simple damage to one might make it last another 10 levels, though, and if they get one to +300 and end up feeling overpowered for a few levels, GREAT, I love that. They worked hard and they should feel overpowered for a while.
:But just to be clear: in the final game, I can't imagine anyone with legendary level 70 gear risking it in one of these recipes, because why in the everliving FUCK would they do that? That's a terrible risk for tiny reward. Keep in mind these players will probably only have one or two legendaries at that level at most, since they won't be staying at level 70 terribly long. I don't currently see a situation happening at level 70 that's comparable to what level 35 players are experiencing. But if I'm wrong and these recipes end up seeming "mandatory" at higher level, I'll limit the recipes further until they aren't. Surely by level 120 a recipe that "adds 2 simple damage with a 3% chance to destroy your weapon" is a terrible, terrible deal. There will be other better ways to enhance top-end gear.
:I still need to tweak these recipes more in the future; I'm still trying to figure out the right risk/reward, and what sorts of limitations they should have. They use a new type of damage so that I can organize the calculations in different ways as needed. When I'm happier with how they work I'll add versions for more skills, but right now it's nice to keep it contained a bit.
:(Edited to add: I might add one or two more recipes soon in order to get more data and feedback coming in. Not a lot of people are testing the Knife one, which is the one I'm most worried about, balance-wise, because you can dual-wield knives and double stack the simple damage.)
:: 10/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1815-Update-Discussion-October-18-2018&p=13445#post13445
==== Damage Calculation Formula Feedback ====
:Yaffy, thank you very much for taking the time to write that all up! You are right that the way conditional multipliers work is unintended -- they should be added to your other multipliers, not multiplied by each other. I knew about that bug but I've not considered it to be a pressing one... I don't think I really realized how many mods fall into that category, or that there were lots of large mods in there (such as the knocked-down damage mod on Seismic Impact). I may try to get that fixed for the next update; otherwise the one after.
:Just to be clear, I suspect this gear+ability combination will still be overpowered even after that fix! Figuring out how to untangle the different damage sources is an ongoing process, because most of the big problems happen when players have a lot of high-level mods that synergize... and I want to fix the problems in ways that don't overly hurt people who DON'T have legendary gear. But fixing conditional damage mods is a step forward, and I appreciate the help!
:(For people trying to repeat this technique, note that it takes a whole lot of specific gear mods plus a long chain of abilities -- for this one I think you'd need to use Way of the Hammer, Reinforce, Reverberating Strike and Leaping Smash all in quick succession before finishing with Seismic Impact.)
:: 10/14/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1801-Damage-Calculation-Formula-amp-Why-Deadlier-Weapons-are-so-Strong&p=13327#post13327
==== Deadlier Weapons Recipe ====
:As Greyfyn said, we could use more info. I don't know how people are converting a few hundred damage into the vaguely-reported "over 10k extra damage!!!!!" stuff. I really don't see how that's possible; the damage should only multiply to a couple thousand extra, and that's only with TOP-tier level 70 gear, AND only when using the heaviest-hitting attacks in the game.
:Nobody I've asked will explain these mega numbers they're supposedly getting. I've seen people mention it in chat yet when asked about it moments later, they'll ignore me or even quickly log out. I've downloaded the characters of those people bragging in chat, and I still can't replicate it even with their exact characters. In other words, some of these people are trolling. But not necessarily all of them! So that's an open question.
:Anyway, we'd already realized it was bugged and overpowered, which is why we disabled it in the hotfix. Remember how the hotfix patch notes said:
::''- the "Dangerously Improve Weapon" recipes were enhancing the wrong attribute, leading to more damage than intended. These recipes have been temporarily disabled --they can't be purchased, and if you already have them, they do nothing. They will return in a future non-hotfix update. Items that were already enhanced with the earlier recipes will be updated at that time''
:That is exactly what's going to happen in the next non-hotfix update, which is next week.
:If you have one of these weapons and can get HUGELY broken numbers (instead of just somewhat overpowered), please explain how it's done so I can confirm that my fix is going to address that scenario. Thanks.
:: 10/12/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1778-The-casino-deadlier-weapon-blacksmith-Recipies-have-broken-the-game&p=13313#post13313
==== New Employee II ====
:You've probably seen Sims in-game or on our forum (or the reddit forum... or the Steam forum... or any number of other forums...). We're happy to have Sims join our team to help with community outreach and growth, as well as helping with customer service and in-game events. When Sims is playing in his employee capacity, you can find him as Admin Lemon. (I didn't pick that.) Please join us in welcoming him to the team!
:: 10/3/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1788-New-Elder-Game-employee-Sims!&p=13222#post13222
==== Casino Delay, Feedback, and Minigames ====
:What a thread to wake up to. I'm not sure how "we are delaying the casino so we can make it a hub city worth using", turned into the idea that we're adding hundreds of minigames. So to set expectations right: there are only two actual minigames in the casino and you've seen them in screenshots. There are no others. I cut the other games because they weren't fun enough... and I did that a month ago.
:On the one hand I'm definitely still working on minigames: I spend about an hour at "breakfast" each day testing these two games, banging on them, tweaking them. And there are some other gambling diversions in the hub city that I'm trying to make worthwhile. But the majority of every day is spent making regular old MMO content.
:First, the visuals of the casino didn't pan out. In a nutshell, we tried a new idea and it didn't work: it was slow, ugly, and would be hard to improve in the future. So we had to return to our traditional approach, which is working fine, but means we we basically have to remake the whole casino layout.
:But the visuals are just visuals. Think about all the other work needed to make a good hub city: new interesting NPCs to raise favor with, new player vendors, new storage, new recipes, new abilities, new favors, new hangouts, new work orders, on and on it goes. It's a LONG list and it takes time. None of the remaining work can be outsourced, so it's being done by just srand and I. And we're crunching. We literally cannot go any faster than this, so please bear with us.
:I really hope you'll like the two minigames we're adding, but if not, there will still be stuff for you to do in the casino. If you're bored right now, I seriously suggest trying WoW for a while, the new expansion is out and it's a fun game with a ton of content. And no, I'm not back-handedly disparaging WoW -- I like WoW as a second game. I think it's great for MMO players to play several MMOs. That's because no single MMO can stay fresh forever. You need to rotate between a couple of games. Don't burn yourself out on this game. (Please!) Just take a break.
:Thanks for your support, and I'll be back soon when we have more news to share.
:: 8/30/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1741-Dev-Blog-August-28-2018&p=12817#post12817
==== Spring Fairy Dye ====
:The color is always the same, but the lighting in the area makes it look different. The dye is applied to an underlying grayscale texture, and the part of the texture that's the "straps" has a slightly different shade of gray than the leggings, so non-ambient light sources show up at a slightly different shade. (Probably exacerbated by some outdoor areas having slightly yellowish or reddish light.)
:So it's an art issue, basically, due to how we added dye support. This suit of armor was made early on, before the dye-map technology existed, and it was retrofitted after the fact. It will probably never be perfect.
:If we ever have this armor set remade, though, we'll make sure that dyes apply perfectly.
:: 8/14/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1726-Dyed-Spring-Fairy-armor-Is-this-what-I-am-supposed-to-look-like&p=12707#post12707
==== New Employee: Rummencola ====
:You may have chatted with Rummencola in-game as a volunteer Guide. He's now also an Elder Game employee!
:We're still working through growing pains as a company, so we haven't ironed out his exact responsibilities or job title. But you'll see him in-game as usual (possibly on his admin alter-ego Jackencola), so please help us welcome him to the team!
:: 8/3/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1702-New-Elder-Game-employee-Rummencola!&p=12621#post12621
==== Crafting Profit ====
:Leathercrafting and other recipe groups that generate wearable equipment don't generate profit. The idea is that they have intrinsic combat value that the NPC market can't possibly recognize. This breaks the rule of thumb that crafted items generate at least some profit. But it's necessary to make other parts of the game make sense. (For instance, similarly magical loot-drop items are not worth thousands of Councils, so there needs to be parity.)
:The early recipes that don't require gems are literally just to let you grind up XP, and they are probably a mistake since people use them much longer than intended. So I will probably remove or diminish them so that people don't grind to 70 on newbie recipes. I want to flesh out the versatility of the crafting skills a tiny bit before doing that, though.
:: 8/1/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1695-question-problem-with-leathercraft-amp-other-skills&p=12583#post12583
==== Noob Experience ====
:This is good feedback, thanks! It does sound like there's a couple of bugs in there: the high-level pocket gear should have a default Endurance prereq so that literally-brand-new players can't wear them. (That's a long-standing bug that I didn't address for a long time because we didn't have "default-prereq" tech, and I didn't want all crafted cloth gear to be saddled with Endurance reqs... but it's a bug I can and will fix now.)
:And healing is supposed to generate a fair amount of aggro... so it's probably broken for Priest in some way that I'll have to investigate. Or it could have gotten entirely broken again. Aggro is one of the hardest systems to balance and maintain, in large part because it requires a group, which is hard to emulate during development! But we'll get it right eventually.
:But anyway, thanks for the insights!
:: 7/29/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1691-One-Month-In-The-quot-PG-Noob-Experience-quot-Streamer-s-Long-Winded-Comprehensive-Feedback&p=12513#post12513
==== Vampires? ====
:The game isn't finished yet, which is why it's in Early Access. We haven't cut vampirism from the full game. We haven't cut dwarves or housing or horses either. We've promised things and we're delivering those things, so there is no misrepresentation here.
:I'm not going to waste my precious development time cutting new videos every month when something changes. We'll do an updated video eventually, and people will have something new to bitch about and the circle of life continues. It's never possible to make a video that people don't bitch about.
:And Spider, you know that people always complain about every game trailer... so this whole post frankly seems like just a new way for you to complain about wanting vampirism again. But it won't make it come sooner. At this point vampirism is probably six months away or more. It has to come after horses and fairies because it uses tech features from them. If I was pressed to do vampirism right now, with the tech and assets I have, vampirism wouldn't be nearly as fun and impressive as it will eventually be. Early Access requires patience.
:: 7/25/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1682-Um-I-dont-know-if-im-the-only-one-who-saw-the-huge-flaw-in-the-steam-trailer&p=12442#post12442
==== Treasure Mods Calculation====
:Generally speaking:
:If a treasure mod says there's a percentage chance of something happening, those percentage chances are always rolled separately. If you have two "10% chance to blah" mods, that's two dice rolls for a 10% chance, not one 20% chance.
:Additive bonuses for damage, mitigation, and everything else I can think of stack. (There are probably exceptions, but not for typical combat stats.)
:Multiplicative bonuses for damage and mitigation also stack. They are added together before multiplication. Two "+10% base damage" mods give you +20% base damage.
:When calculating damage, the order of calculation is:
::- additive damage for that ability (e.g. +5 to Slashing Strike)
::- additive damage for that damage type (e.g. +5 to Slashing Damage)
::- multiplicative damage for that ability (e.g. +10% Slashing Strike damage)
::- multiplicative damage for that damage type (e.g. +5% Slashing damage)
:(That's off the top of my head, and there's lots of weird cases because there's hundreds of weird stats, but that's the gist for basic damage.)
:Bubble mods ("magical field that protects") are a special case of the usual stacking. They are real procs ("procedures") in the old-school sense, meaning that each bubble adds a little bit of code to your character briefly, and that code intercepts the damage calculation to mitigate damage by X%. If you have two of those, they both apply, but since they are separate code snippets, they don't combine; they are each applied one by one.
:Example: if you have two 10% mitigation bubbles and take 100 damage, then the first 10% mitigation would remove 10 damage, and the second one would see the damage as being 90, so would mitigate 9, for a total of 19 mitigation. (If they were additive like other percentage mods, two of them would mitigate 20, not 19.)
:Bubbles, reflections, drains, and anything else that falls outside of the basic combat flow are implemented as callbacks (or procs if you prefer) that intercept the combat flow and change the results. Those are applied individually, one after the other, in the order they were buffed onto your character.
:(At the risk of making this more complicated than necessary, I wanted to add that percentage-chance-to-do-X mods are also implemented as callbacks, which is why they are each rolled separately. And since the MUD term "proc" means both the callback ("procedure") and the act of the procedure going off (or "procing"), you could say that the mod "21% chance to conjure a magical field that mitigates 10% of all physical damage" is a proc that can proc a proc. And that explains why I don't usually use the term "proc" for anything!)
:: 7/22/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1674-Developers-or-experts-please-help-Cow-Unarmed-and-mitigation-questions&p=12404#post12404
==== Free Trial Please ====
:Given that there's not a demo yet, I think it's perfectly reasonable to buy the game, test if performance is good enough for you, and if it isn't, seek a refund via Steam. But please remember:
::You must request the refund before Steam shows you having 2 hours of time in the game. After that point, it's not possible to get a refund.
::Make sure you experience performance in the large outdoor areas like Serbule before making a decision, as the newbie tutorial area isn't as graphically expensive. Two hours should be more than enough time to get off the tutorial island, but if you're stuck on the island and you're getting antsy to test performance elsewhere, you can use the cheat command /leavetut (type this into the chat window and press enter). This will teleport you to the mainland; you can go back to the island later. But note that the game won't let you use that cheat unless you've already made efforts to leave on your own!
::We definitely don't ban or punish people who get Steam refunds! I don't actually think many developers do that. However, Steam has said that if you request refunds for too many games, they'll stop giving them to you. If you haven't refunded many games, I wouldn't worry about it. I've refunded a few games and my account is fine.
::It may be impossible to re-buy a game that you requested a refund for. (I'm not sure.) In which case, if you get another PC later, you still won't be able to play. (Edited to add: it seems like I can re-buy the games I've gotten refunds for, so it's probably fine.)
:: 7/19/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1666-Concerned-about-hardware-Free-trial-perhaps&p=12373#post12373
==== Hard Core Broken Gear Location====
:What did it say when you right-clicked and used your broken items in the inventory window? Like Niph said, it should either tell you how far you have to go, or if you're close to your death spot, it should fix the item.
:If it doesn't do that, what does it do?
:Those names aren't very reliable yet because some dungeons are shared with others, and the group of shared dungeons currently has to share one name. And one of the server areas with the name "Caves Beneath Kur Mountains" does have the winter nexus in it.
:So if you go in there it should give you a distance. If it's insanely long distance, then it's in a different dungeon... probably one that is actually beneath Kur. (If it's a medium-large distance, it could just be in the deeper parts of the nexus, past the boss teleportation spot.)
:: 5/20/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1497-HC-gear-locations&p=11170#post11170
==== Zone Performance ====
:In terms of server performance they aren't connected. Each time you see the loading screen, you're moving to a different server area. The outdoor zones all have their own "areas". Some dungeons share an area (like, say, the two goblin dungeons, or the Serbule crypt and Serbule Sewers), and if a dungeon in a shared area gets too busy we can break it out to a new area (like we did for Gazluk Keep), but that's not what's happening right now.
:There are performance problems with monster AI, which I think I made worse in the most recent update. So anywhere there's a lot of players fighting is going to be sluggish. The next update has fixes -- and I was hoping it'd be ready for this weekend, but it didn't happen, so I'm going to shoot for the middle of next week. (In other words, in time for NEXT weekend, but with some extra time to test, and fix bugs, and sleep some).
:: 5/18/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1489-Question-about-server-zone-architecture&p=11129#post11129
==== Gorgon Shop Open Yet? ====
:We are integrating some aspects of the shopping process more directly into the game server so that there's less manual labor (on our parts). That integration will be done in the next game update in a couple weeks, and the shop should go online around then.
:: 5/10/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1469-ETA-on-Gorgon-shop-going-back-up&p=10951#post10951
==== Code of Conduct Confusion ====
:The code of conduct is not up for debate. It demands civility, which is a social skill, and one that I realize some people have trouble understanding. But that is not my problem. Bottom line: if you don't quite know what's civil then we will tell you when you are over the line, but if you keep being over the line, then you lack the social skills to play the game and will have to leave.
:If you think you're being mistreated you can send in Abuse reports about the incident, but fair warning: I've seen your name in abuse scenarios already and I do not feel you have been mistreated in the episodes I've reviewed.
:: 5/8/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1460-Code-of-Conduct-Confusion-and-Questions&p=10893#post10893
==== Admin message about behavior ====
:Yeah, I saw you were being a total douchebag in chat. What is the exact point of bringing it to the forum, though?
:(And the context that prompted that response was THIS specific bit of asshattery, from your long and tedious day full of asshattery:
':'Global: when dumb people ask the same dumb questions all day its more fun to string them along'' )
:: 5/6/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1450-i-got-this-message-today&p=10822#post10822
==== Lycan Bug ====
:Hmm, there haven't been any changes to the wolf system in a long time, but we actually had somebody with a very similar problem in the past few days. In that case, the cause was a bugged item obtained via a very weird method -- have you created and used any gadgeteering vend-o-matic machines recently? (I don't mean buying items from other peoples' vendomatics, I mean setting up one yourself.)
:: 5/5/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1445-Critical-lycan-morph-bug&p=10796#post10796
==== Confirmation Prompts ====
:That sucks, I'm sorry that happened to you. (We don't have a way to do confirmation prompts on recipes yet, but I'll add it to the to-do list.)
:It sounds like you've gotten about as much fun as you can get from the game right now anyway, so yeah, seems like it's a good time to take a break. When you come back, there'll be tons of new stuff to try out! We'll see you then.
:: 5/5/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1446-I-m-quitting-for-a-while-because-I-made-a-big-mistake&p=10794#post10794
==== Ability Unlock Order ====
:The intent is that you must learn the earlier levels of anything numbered (Ability #5 requires knowing Ability #4 ), and similarly for any recipes with clear level steps ("Decent" is a prerequisite for "Nice" recipes). When you find a case where that doesn't happen, it's just a data bug, please report it in game!
:(And yes, we've gone back and forth on the pros and cons of this during development, which is where lots of the data problems came from: different iterations of ideas. There are some quality-of-life benefits to letting you learn recipes out of order, but ultimately I decided that the negatives far outweigh the positives. For a long time I was trying to find a way to hybridize it: to let you learn the low-level recipes out of order, but then start having requirements at 50 or 60. That change is too abrupt and unintuitive, though, as this thread shows! So now all recipes should have their earlier versions as a prerequisite.)
:: 5/2/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1434-Amutasa-the-Carpentry-trainer-or-why-consistancy-is-important&p=10720#post10720
==== PVP for Better Economy? ====
:Hey guys, we aren't going to add PvP centric features, and we aren't going to add item destruction (which is why PvP can onstensibly help an MMO's economy). Those are not the only way to make an economy work, and in my opinion they cause a million times more problems than they solve.
:We've already tried the notion of item destruction with our player base during alpha (in the form of crafting recipes that have a chance to destroy your items -- nobody used them no matter how good they were). Losing items is literally never a fun thing to happen. If the game offers any alternative methods to get or use gear that avoids a chance to lose items, players will always take those routes every single time. Human beings are loss-averse. We could MAKE players lose items by forcing universal item loss. But this is a fun game, not a punishment simulator. We are not going to be destroying players' items.
:And even if we did, PvP economies are always shitty anyway. Yeah, the crafters get more work, but players are miserable, always hoarding their best gear and never using it because it might break or get lost. Using "good enough" gear all the time, and always trying to make sure you have a big pile of shit gear to use in case problems arise. That's not fun. It's boring meta-management in order to prevent bigger losses. We already have plenty of meta-management and I'm not adding more in order to appease PvP hawks.
:---
:That said, don't mistake the in-game item creation recipes for all of the game's crafting. Those are recipes for solo players -- or players with close friends who also play -- to create gear. They aren't supposed to replace group hunting for gear. Group monster-hunting and solo item-crafting are two alternative ways to reaching the same goal of having good gear. Neither are designed with inter-player trading in mind.
:At the highest levels of the game (which are not yet implemented), crafting will take on additional roles in the form of temporary but long-term buffs (e.g. sword makers can add +10% damage to your sword that lasts for a real-time month). Other transaction-based crafting interactions already exist, such as trading augmentations.
:Those sorts of interactions will become more critical at high level. But they will never be needed at low level because low level players already have more than enough things to worry about as it is.
:---
:The idea that PvP or item-loss "fixes" a game's economy is based on the notion that players will stick around and suffer through a lot of punishment, literally suffering for years because the game is just so damned good otherwise. The idea that a UO-style Trammel scenario could work in a major modern game is 100% fantasy. Players have hundreds of MMO choices now, and since they don't HAVE to suffer through that shit, they simply won't. Rule of thumb: if a game design requires the constant anguish of players in order to work, it's not coming back.
:But hey, maybe there's a game design that's fun enough for that. (This isn't it.) And maybe there's a community out there willing to slog through constantly being beaten back to the stone age in order to play this fun game for years. But Project: Gorgon's community has not shown any willingness to do that. I guess more importantly, I personally am not willing to do that, so it ain't happening.
:But if you have a brilliant idea for how to make it work, a way to keep PvPers from the inevitable burnout that creates ghost-towns ("it's dead now, but it had a great crafting community for a while" being the epitaph of too many MMOs), then I encourage you to give it a shot. I'd love to cross-promote with other indie MMOs who tailor to different audiences. But please don't try to shove those ideas here where they very clearly don't belong.
:: 4/25/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1402-The-Economy-is-lacking&p=10505#post10505
==== Skill Wipe AMA? (No) ====
:That really seems like you're trying hard to read malicious scheming in there. You have not uncovered a secret plan to wipe 49% of your skills. Come on.
:We have no plans to wipe any skills. But designs change and problems sometimes arise. We've had to wipe a few skills in the past when the design changed too much, and if that happens again during beta, it happens again. But it will be a limited thing. As limited as possible, whatever that happens to mean.
:In all likelihood, the total number of skills we'll wipe will be exactly zero. But beta is going to be long. Maybe we have to wipe something. We'll do what we have to do to make the best game we can.
:: 4/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1392-Conflicting-information-from-the-AMA&p=10423#post10423
==== Another Kickstarter ====
:I think doing another Kickstarter right now would be kind of... weird. Kickstarter is for things that probably wouldn't exist without it. And I don't want people to worry about that -- the game will reach completion! (I can't guarantee when it'll leave beta, but I'm comfortable that we'll make it there.)
:And I guess the real scary thing is it would probably need new stuff -- in my experience successful Kickstarters really need exciting stretch goals. And I really don't want to add more stretch goals to our to-do list! Since we're still heavily in development, we haven't yet delivered on most of the package features of the first Kickstarter, let alone the stretch goals.
:We'll be bringing the Gorgon Shop back soon, though, with add-on packs you can connect to your Steam account that will give you many of the same benefits that Kickstarter/indiegogo backers received (once those features are implemented). Some of the benefits aren't coming back -- I think I have to write like 20 gossips for Rita and Blanche, which is already a pretty daunting task! -- but we'll introduce some new things people might be interested in.
:: 4/23/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1376-Another-Kickstarter&p=10405#post10405
==== Server Reboots ====
:The past week hasn't been especially bad. It's just been the first week that I had enough info to start isolating server performance problems, so I've been patching bugs in the server each night, then getting new logs the next day, rinse and repeat.
:So the number of server reboots doesn't indicate we're having more problems than before -- hopefully less, actually.
:This evening, though, the server got bogged down by something and had a hard time recovering. That's about all I can tell just yet. If I can fix it, or at least add more debugging info to help find it if it happens again, we'll do another server patch tonight.
:: 4/23/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1384-Anyone-Else-just-get-kicked-and-cant-log-back-in-or-is-it-just-me&p=10404#post10404
==== Epic Crop and High Yield Mushroom Boxes ====
:You need to do a particular thing for those. They are his secret reward recipes, and they probably should be hidden entirely until you meet the requirements.
:: 4/20/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1370-Mushroom-Farming-Recipes-Glitched-and-unable-to-be-learned&p=10327#post10327
==== Quest Directions ====
:The quests don't give specific directions because we are still moving stuff around and the text seems to CONSTANTLY become wrong, and it's impossible for us to maintain right now. And having wrong directions is much worse than no directions. Quests will eventually give general cardinal directions after the geography of the world is more locked down.
:Also note that as you raise your skills you will get some tools for finding quest points. For instance, there's an ability that will orient your character toward the goal spot (if the objective has a specific area). There will eventually be an ability that marks it on your map for you, akin to how surveying maps work. The quest-objective-finding feature is kind of limited right now -- for instance, if you need to get something from a dungeon, it doesn't point you in the direction of the dungeon, it just says "not around here" -- but we'll eventually make it fairly robust.
:: 4/19/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1364-Couple-of-QoL-Suggestions&p=10323#post10323
==== Free Trial? ====
:We do plan to have a free trial. But there's a lot of questions to answer first. Some thoughts:
::Mikhaila's points about paying=investment are really important. The game requires you to pay attention, at least for the first few hours. And maybe that's a hard sell in a demo.
::We're still heavily improving the game in terms of performance, graphics, balance, content... and we'll keep improving in leaps and bounds for a long while, before we eventually settle down into more careful tweaking and tuning. So does it make sense to wait on the demo until things settle out more? Maybe... but maybe a demo is necessary sooner, to help keep server population at a lively size. It's a little too soon to tell there.
::We'll need to restrict them to a special chat room ("Demo" room) so that some asshole can't just make infinite Steam accounts and keep spamming everyone with vitriol. (Which happened a few times during alpha, but I'd like to avoid a return in beta.) But locking everything down to a single chat room will take a lot of client-side code, and it may not be a good enough solution. Do we need to separate "DemoChat" from "DemoHelp"? Do we need a "DemoLocal"? I dunno.
::Gold-farming (!!) could be possible with trial accounts unless we carefully restrict every method that trial acocunts could use to transfer their items/gold
::Assuming we've reached our target audience with this demo, I'm not 100% sure the island is enough content to let them make an informed decision. Maybe we need to give them access to a bit more. For instance, if they have access to the island and the island's dungeon, maybe there's a secret way to teleport to one other dungeon. Say the Serbule Crypt. Or that might be overkill...
::The island is also the newbie experience for non-demo players. Will having an indeterminate number of demo-players muck up the experience too much? I'm not too worried about loot items, because we already have "instanced loot" on the island -- there are certain mushrooms, spoons, bottles, etc. that are always there for every player, just to make sure there's enough to go around. But are there enough monsters? In short, do we need a separate island for demoers? Maybe make the existing island bigger, something like that? Not sure.
:Anyway, the demo version is definitely something we're thinking about. And we'll definitely have a demo -- the only real question is when, and in what form.
:If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that getting the demo out was a top priority, but now I'm not as sure. It may make more sense to first focus on the existing players for a while, working on performance, graphics, and content first. But I may change my mind again next week.
:: 4/18/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1361-Early-Access-Cost-solution-Island-only-Free-Trial&p=10281#post10281
==== Custom Player Music ====
:This has come up before, and the answer is still basically the same: probably not happening until post-launch. There's no open-source library for any of this; AFAIK every company that's produced this feature has independently implemented it. It's definitely possible to add, and it's something I'd expect will get added eventually, but engineering resources are allocated for other things (like housing, new skill mechanics, etc.) for a long, long time. The thing is, it's a big chunk of programming time with only one cool feature as a result, whereas the engineering time for something like instanced housing may result in tons of other new features and tricks.
:: 4/17/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1353-Music-System&p=10245#post10245
==== Alpha Account Recovery ====
:If you send an email to [email protected] with your alpha account info, we can decouple your Steam account from the new account you made, so you'll be prompted again to enter an alpha account name. Two caveats: it takes us a couple of days (on average -- lots of tickets right now), and the characters you've made on your new account will become inaccessible. We don't currently have a way to merge characters between accounts.
:: 4/14/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1332-Merging-Alpha-Account-with-Steam&p=10148#post10148
==== Server Lag ====
:We're exploring the causes of server latency (when the server is slow to respond to interactions with NPCs or entities). That's probably the most serious kind of "lag" because it means the whole area you're in will be experiencing the same lag. However it's not immediately obvious what's going wrong. It seems that a particular "thing" people are doing is causing much higher impact than usual, and it only happens under high loads. It could be something like the poetry podium, or the player work-order board, or perhaps player shops, or... well, lots of other things.
:I may end up creating a debug build of the server with lots of logging enabled, and run that for a day or two to see if we can track it down. That will mean worse performance in the short term but hopefully will let us find and fix the culprit.
:---
:The chance of dropping items based on your active skills is exactly the same as pre-patch. The chance of it being exactly mapped to your two skills (and not generics or randomly-picked skills) is only like 65-75% or so, and always has been, so we often get reports that it's broken after each game update. But it's just random, so give it a bit of time to average out some!
:---
:RE: panthers - we haven't altered spawn density or anything like that since the update. Spawners have random spawn profiles, so sometimes there will be more or fewer panthers than at other times. It should average out to a fairly high number of panthers in general.
:: 4/11/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1298-Discuss-the-Update-April-7&p=10073#post10073
==== Gorgon Shop Closed ====
:We've just now closed up the Gorgon Shop; it will probably return in a month or so. We've discontinued the old bundles, so we need to create new ones (which are still TBD), and we're recoding the shop to remove some manual-labor steps that were making purchases very slow.
:The new Shop packages are still up in the air, but the general idea is that you can buy an "early access bonus package" that gets attached to your existing Steam account.
:And, of course, the game is for sale on Steam!
:: 4/4/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1284-Shop&p=9770#post9770
==== Damage Calculation ====
:Thanks for the bug reports!
:The mods that boost or multiply an ability's damage are calculated first -- deltas are added first, then multipliers are applied. So if an ability deals 100 damage and you have a +100 mod and a +25% mod, it'd do (100+100)*1.25 = 250 damage.
:Multipliers on a skill's "base damage" are calculated separately from other mods -- they don't stack. So in the example above, if you had a third mod that added +20% base damage, that mod would add +20. And it will always add +20 regardless of other mods.
:: 4/2/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1272-Staff-Mods-for-Strategic-Thrust-are-not-working-correctly-Images&p=9696#post9696
==== Mouse Cursor Stuck II ====
:Hmm. Well, I'm still stumped, so please bear with me -- gonna be a little long-winded and try to explain what's going on and what will help me track this down!
:This must be caused by not leaving mouselook mode cleanly.
:I've double-checked the code, and there's only one time when we ask Unity to put the game into "stuck in the center" mode: when you right-click your mouse while the cursor is over the game world (not over a UI window), and drag the mouse a bit, you enter mouse-look mode. That hides the mouse cursor, and sticks the mouse in the center of the screen. Each frame we detect how much the invisible mouse cursor has moved from the center, and we pan the camera by that much. Then Unity snaps the mouse back to the center and we do it again the next frame. That's how mouselook mode is implemented in Unity games.
:When you let go of the right mouse button, it unhides and unsticks the mouse.
:The previous bug was actually a Unity bug: sometimes Unity failed to notify us when you let go of the right mouse button. So the fix was to constantly poll the mouse every frame, and if the mouse button had mysteriously been released, we un-stuck the mouse. (We already had code that did this exact thing, but it only un-HID the mouse cursor, it didn't un-stick it. That's why you could see the cursor but not get it out of the middle of the screen.)
:That hack seemed to fix the problem. Incidentally Unity fixed this bug in a patch a few weeks ago -- but I'd already added the code to constantly check, and we'll just leave that in forever in case Unity screws up again.
:So we have code in the game right now that CONSTANTLY tries to fix this condition... but apparently there's a scenario where it still doesn't work. I can't really come up with a reliable scenario where it could break, either. It seems impossible. But obviously it isn't.
:Does entering mouselook mode and exiting it again fix it?
:If your mouse cursor is stuck in the center of the screen, you should be able to fix it 100% of the time by right-clicking IN THE WORLD (not overtop a GUI screen), moving the mouse a bit so that the camera pans, and then letting go of the right mouse button. That should fix it reliably. But the problem is that if you have a GUI window in the center of the screen when your mouse gets stuck (like a corpse window), you can't do it: you can't click outside of a GUI window, because your mouse is stuck overtop a GUI window! But any other time, that should fix it.
:So, for anyone experiencing this bug: can you enter mouse-look mode, then leave mouse-look mode, and the mouse is still stuck in the center of the screen? Or, perhaps, can you not even enter mouselook mode at all while this is happening? Or does it only ever happen when a GUI window is in the dead center of your screen?
:Invisible boxes
:Now, there's one additional variable: there are actually invisible GUI windows overtop selectable entities in the world. (That's how you can click on monsters and items and stuff in the world.) But these boxes don't normally count as UI windows. After all, you can enter mouselook mode even when the mouse is overtop a monster. But we're looking for a weird scenario, so maybe they're involved.
:The reason I'm suspicious of these invisible boxes is that we recently added an optimization: when there are shit-tons of selectable things on the screen (more than 15), the invisible boxes are slower to reposition themselves -- they update every few frames instead of every single frame. That helps performance a lot. But if your framerate is low, maybe the optimization is buggy somehow: maybe a window gets stuck taking over the whole screen or something. Lots of "maybes" in any scenario I come up with, but... <shrug> maybe it's buggy.
:Another reason I'm suspicious: the bug seems to happen when there's lots of stuff on-screen, judging by the anecdotes so far... and that further points the blame at this optimization.
:That's why I'd like anyone affected by this bug to add the word NoSlowBoxes to their special settings window. This turns off the optimization! It would be really helpful to know if NoSlowBoxes fixes the issue or not. If so, then I have a much better idea of where to look. If not, then I can look elsewhere.
:External app interference?
:Brainstorming other ways this could happen, maybe there's another program interfering somehow: maybe a popup from a chat app, or the Steam overlay screen itself. Something like that. When this happens, are you in full-screen mode? Are other programs taking focus from the game around the time it happens? I'm looking for any clues that might help track this down.
:I know this stuff is tedious, and I'm sorry it's interfering with your gaming! I'm hoping the answers to these questions will give me a clue about what's happening.
:: 4/1/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1056-Bug-Cursor-Stuck&p=9666#post9666
==== Group Combat Roles ====
:We'll definitely see more group roles in the future... and we've had tanky content in the past. In fact, I can probably restore the "tank" role to Gazluk Keep with a single change that gives group mobs their hit points back. They were nerfed because when there were ~50 people online, there were simply no tanks available. Most players do not want to tank at all. It's not a popular role in general and never has been. And while it's definitely possible to build practically-invincible tank characters, they do take a lot of preparation. Lots of gear.
:So anyway, right now, the monsters can all be burst-DPS'ed to death, and so people do that. If I give group monsters more mitigation, armor, and health, players won't be able to DPS them efficiently -- meaning they'll have to take lots of damage in the fight -- and support and tank roles will be more useful. Lots of tuning needs to happen beyond that, of course, but often in the past what has happened is that players just choose to solo instead. There weren't enough players to form groups. We do have a lot more players online right now... and probably enough to reliably have some tanks and supports... but I'm not sure if enough are high level yet.
:So I'm torn -- I may restore GK elites and bosses in this upcoming update. That would be useful because we can see where things are at, and what needs to change. But I don't want to make GK basically unplayable again. So might wait another few updates for more players to get higher-level. (The somewhat lower-level dungeon known as the Labyrinth could also be made more tanky pretty easily, but again, pretty high-level.)
:Also: as you may know, we have another support skill, the Priest, waiting in the wings. I haven't bothered getting it ready to go because, well, no grouping means no need for healers. But it can be made to go with a couple weeks' work. Combined with the existing healing builds, that will give us lots of coverage of the basic trinity roles. I'd like to add some other roles as well, including armor-removal and crowd control. It will take iterations and lots of feedback, but it'll happen.
:: 3/31/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1231-Improving-on-the-solid-foundation-that-is-the-Combat-System&p=9619#post9619
==== Computer Crash ====
:If your computer completely crashes when you play the game then it's not going to be due to the game. If the game crashes, or even if the video driver soft-crashes, there could be things the game is doing... but when the whole computer reboots, it's outside of our ability to help you. There is something wrong with your machine. It is probably hardware, but it could be a driver issue.
:I'm sorry we can't be of more help -- the usual steps to try to help would be to lower the graphics and see if you could play that way -- sometimes in cases where the video card is overheating, using lower-res graphics lets you play even though your machine is damaged. But you already tried that. So unfortunately you're out of luck: there's nothing else we can do from here.
:: 3/31/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1261-Trying-to-launch-the-game-but-it-crashes-and-restarts-my-PC-Help-please&p=9613#post9613
==== Level after soulmates? ====
: Nothing yet!
:: 3/29/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1254-Is-there-a-favor-level-after-soul-mate&p=9560#post9560
==== Moue Cursor Stuck ====
:So what you're seeing is that you can move the mouse, but when you try to click, it jumps back. Or is it that whenever you mouse over certain rectangles on the screen it jumps back? Hmm. That's super weird. A few more questions for you:
:Does right-clicking and dragging the camera around (then letting go) fix it for a while?
:What sort of framerate are you getting when this happens? (If you enable the FPS indicator, it'll give you a color-coded number -- I'm wondering if it's red, yellow, or green when this happens, basically.)
:Also, please try opening up the Settings window and adding the word "NoSlowBoxes" (without quotes) and see if that fixes it.
:: 3/29/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1056-Bug-Cursor-Stuck&p=9550#post9550
==== Linux Support ====
:Because we use the Unity engine, we can only support what it supports. Officially, I believe that means we can only officially support Ubuntu (and that's what we test against here). But I know other distros have been used by other players successfully. Hopefully someone who uses a different distro can comment here...
:Where does the error message appear? Is it showing up within Steam before you download it, or is it showing up after you've downloaded the game and try to play it?
:Oh, it's not a 32-bit version of the OS, is it? We need a 64-bit OS.
:: 3/29/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1251-linux&p=9545#post9545
==== Gorgon Shop ====
:We expected the deluxe purchases to be picked up by existing or returning players -- in other words, players who already had an alpha client. So waiting a few days isn't expected to be a huge burden, because you can still play, and none of the special-package features are live yet anyway. I really appreciate the purchases of people who hadn't played before now, though, and I see where it breaks down for you: you don't have the alpha version because we just rolled out a brand new front-page site which doesn't have the link anymore (since the alpha version will be going away in a couple of days).
:By using the link I posted above, you can play via the alpha launcher through this weekend, and if you haven't gotten your code yet, please use this to play now! (You will be able to transition your alpha account to Steam painlessly via an in-game screen once you get your Steam key.)
:As to the shop -- it isn't automated because it was designed to do a one-time-email burst. When the game became available on Steam, we burst-emailed everyone who'd bought a special package. But before we took the shop offline we kept getting a few more straggling purchases -- and still do -- so we're doing new mini-email-bursts every few days to process them.
I:t's obviously not ideal, and not sustainable, but the store is literally going away in a few days... so there's not much we can do with it at this point that wouldn't just be more work and more chaos during these last four days of its existence.
:(And if we have another "shop" site in the future, which is up for debate, we'll definitely fully automate it! Because this sucks for everyone involved.)
:I appreciate your patience, and I'm sorry for the lack of communication here.
:: 3/28/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1247-I-bought-the-game-at-the-Gorgon-store-and-nothing&p=9535#post9535
==== VIP ====
:We'll find ways to address this going forward. The VIP plan will definitely be able to help there, but we'll have other ways to make muling practical for people who don't use VIP. For instance, maybe the instanced housing system will be the answer -- park your mules in your house and dump your items on the floor. I don't know yet. It's a problem we weren't really thinking about too much before Steam, and we have aggressive schedules to keep (or try to keep...) so I don't want to try to code a complex technical answer that ends up costing us lots of development+maintenance time, or limits us in other ways... but that said, when I'm confident I can squeeze a solution in somewhere, it'll happen. I understand it's a problem for you NOW, but I hope you can bear with it for a while.
:: 3/2//2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1245-Tedium-is-a-game-killer&p=9495#post9495
==== Working: Connected Bug ====
:Those symptoms usually mean that you can't get a stable connection to our main server. The game can make a connection, but then there's too much packet loss to transmit anything, and the connection breaks. The game keeps retrying though, and eventually one of the unstable connections manages to generate some invalid data before hanging up. (That's what the 256 error is, a corrupted game packet. It's generally a symptom of the same problem as the constant disconnect/reconnects.)
:: 3/24/2018
:: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1168-Getting-Disconnected&p=9382#post9382
==== Bug Reports ====
:Thanks for reporting it! But we still appreciate reports from other players too to help us gauge the importance of a bug. We have several thousands open bugs at any given time. (Every MMO does, including fully-launched ones.) Many are tiny issues, while others are a big deal... but figuring out which is which in a hurry isn't easy. We're a tiny team and we have no full time QA people, so we rely on player input to help us gauge priority.
