Goblin Squad Member
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We know that experience points are a "gain over time" or a purchase from the cash shop in lots of some amount system. We know that they will only be earned at a certain rate and that they will only be spendable on certain skills that require "merit badges" and certain other prerequisites.
Some of the prerequisites are previous purchased skills and some are minimum ability score. Some require in game activities or accomplishments. Most a mixture of all those.
My question is for the Developers:
What is the current thinking on the "average time of play" that you would like to see required to be able to meet the requirements for spending experience about as fast as it is gained?
For the players:
What do you feel the "average time of play" would be, that you would like to see required to be able to meet the requirements for spending experience about as fast as it is gained?
Edit: If this is already laid out, please correct me with some appropriate quotes or links. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Rather than "Slay 1000 boars" I'd like to see it be something like "Slay an ogre chieftain." Rather than "Use power attack 10,000 times" I'd like to see see you have to spar against the skill trainer in a fight where power attack is enabled for you and win. Rather than "walk 100,000 meters" I would rather see "Reach the top of X mountain." Rather than "make 1000 daggers" if rather see "make an intricate ceremonial dagger."
In other words I wouldn't like to see them be grinds. I'd like to see them be interesting. They shouldn't take long to complete if you apply yourself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Andius
I would rather that they be interesting than grindy also. I am curious, though, what the Developers are thinking will be a good amount of time that the "average" player will need to spend, in-game, to keep up with his/her exp accumulation.
Obviously they want they game to be populated as much and as often as possible to keep things interesting and entertaining. Not all players will be into spending all of their time gathering or trading or guarding or hunting mobs/badguys. Some are not as interested in just hanging out to chat.
So, what is a good "average" amount of time per week to play (applying yourself to the tasks necessary) and keep up with your exp pts as fast/slow as they roll in?
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Goblin Squad Member
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What do you feel the "average time of play" would be, that you would like to see required to be able to meet the requirements for spending experience about as fast as it is gained?
Just a rough feel here: ~4 hours a week to do the skill-validating feats/achievements. That way even the 2 hr/day people can earn skill and additionally make some progress in resource accumulation, socializing, crafting for coin, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can't really say. I could see some of the tasks I listed taking 5 minutes and others a few hours. When you are gaining a lot of these kinds of tasks at the low level it might be a few hours a week but when you are up in the top levels with skills that take over a month to train it could be an hour or so every month or two.
Thinking about it in those terms most low level skills should be doable at the training facity within a few minutes or you'll drive newbs off with ridiculous amounts of merit badge seeking.
Let's say no more than an hour a week. Many people are picking PFO to avoid having to do content they don't care about just to progress.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that whatever the time requirement is, it should be low, at least for the low-level skills. I'd rather be actively putting skills to use than spending all my game time improving skills to "get to the fun part" like so very many MMO's are nowadays. This is one of the big draws of the time-based skill advancement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have to agree with the replies so far. Little time or effort for the lower skills, more for the higher or more powerful. If the skill is really just a "stack" onto some base and equivalent then the time required should be relatively equivalent, though the task should be equal to the skill level.
The actual "time" on average should be enough to keep the exp over time system worth the benefits and far less than the traditional "work to gain" method. Otherwise, what is the use?
Now, all of this could, possibly, be damaging to the average online pop if the time is too little and enough people decide to just "sit tight" off line, until their toon is "ready".
Not a loss in revenue but a loss in interact-able bodies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think any individual component of an in-game requirement should take more than an hour to complete - so, for example, Andius' "reach the top of X mountain", if a single-step skill requirement, should be doable in that time frame. For more advanced skills, I'd prefer to see a longer list of one-hour-or-less components strung together, so those who play for long periods can accomplish all the steps at once, while those who might play only an hour a day can still make incremental progress each time they log on. In that case, "reach the top of X mountain, cross Y river, and explore Z cave" might be the complete in-game requirement, and a time-limited player would be able to complete one step per session.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There should definitely be minimal Time Requirements for skill and character progression. I would say it should be measured in hours per month. Imagine a working person with family and kids. Let's say they have a very restricted 4 hours a week. Do we really want someone with Real Life Priorities to be stuck working on skill training 100% of their play time?
Remember, the power curve from raw skills is relatively flat compared to other games. The true difference comes from gear with keywords to take advantage of. Someone who sits tight until their character is ready is not really progressing compared to the active player.
The active player gains the following benefits
1) Social networks
2) Wealth
3) Multiple sets of gear such that they can afford to lose some
4) Actual experience using the skills they have been training
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This looks to be a good thing to discuss and get some input in so kudos on that. Nice to see a "fresh" topic to discuss.
Being a father of 3 under 7 and working part time and college full time, I can relate to those who "have no game time." That being said, I do intend to spend as much time as granted by the Wife Goddess in game. While in game, I am not intending solely focus on training and earning "merit badges" after all, this is an alternate life to live.
That being said, I think a mix between the "walk to the top of X mountain" and "walk 100,000 steps" type of merit badges would be ok. I think it would depend on the skill being increased. For crafting as an example, in most crafts, there is skill gained through repetition. Even math is one of those skills developed through repetition. As boring as it would be in game, it also makes sense to have "make 100 daggers" be some sort of achievement or merit badge. At the same time, I think throwing in some specialty things like "craft 1 ornate mithral dagger of assassination." This way, you get better through repetition and also get to fill your shop/wagon with goods to sell, while special items would give access to "rare" recipes or special materials or something like that.
Non-crafting skills could function similarly. If you want to learn to swing a sword proficiently, you need to gain that muscle memory through repetition. I wouldn't say to "swing your sword x # of times" but more like "kill 100 goblins" or maybe even "slay 100 enemies" which would be more sensible as that would include PCs (for PVPers) and any type of monster (for PVEers) or a mix for those who do both.
Armor skills could be something like "wear it for x # hours" as this would condition the body to get used to and be more comfortable in the armor, or (take x # of hits while wearing armor" as a way to simulate conditioning the body how it feels and what not.
These are just my ideas on the matter. Most of these could be done at the same time, like weapon and armor skills, crafting (as I suggested) could potentially be done while offline if there is a queue system similar to Eve.
For skills like Perception and Stealth, maybe starting ranks (1-3 or something) would be "tests" performed in the training center by the trainer. Something like "sneak up to the guard there at Gibb's slap him without getting caught pre-Gibb's slap" or "Find the hidden lamp of training, hidden somewhere inside this area." Later ranks could be something more "in the world" type like find a needle in a haystack on Bob's farm, maybe for stealth/pickpocket could be "sneak into x settlement and steal the crown of their king." Anyway, I think I have explained my thoughts decently.
/endwalloftext
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's a good point Goodfellow. Although many people don't like to be forced into grind, a large chunk of those people are okay with some grinding, as long as it's on their own terms. I think optional achievements that are grindy in nature and maybe give small benefits are good for the people who actually want to do that sort of thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We'd have to be careful with specific location requirements. I can imagine that if walk to the top of X mountain existed, some group would eventually try to set up around and lock off X mountain to prevent anyone from reaching it.
And they will be successful for a short time, and then EVERYONE ELSE in the game will declare war and attack them, creating great content for everyone, and a few days later the people who were blockading the mountain will get bored and things will mostly go back to normal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am personally a big fan of adding a bit of realistic realism to any RPG game I play. This is a personal enjoyment and not for everyone. That is mainly why I brought up the "grindy" achievement idea. It makes sense in a realistic manner. Now I hate grinding as much as the next guy, but I understand why it is needed and (for me) makes the game more believable and enjoyable. Weather GW does it that way or not, that is their choice. Maybe we crowdforge vote on it or something, and either way I will live with it. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there.
The blockaiding idea is something I will bring up to Bludd. Maybe the UNC can set up "protection services" for those not combat trained who wish to gain those achievements.... :-)
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Goblin Squad Member
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There aren't any mountains in the area of the RK that we're starting with, unless they just ditch all of the established stuff or change their plans and move PFO to some other part of Golarion. Both of those would render the River Kingdoms PDF we got as a backer reward somewhat pointless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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THis is just a guess, but early on experience will be gained and spend at about an equal rate. After a few weeks when the core skills are behind you (there will 10-20 no-brainer skills for each "class/role" a character wants to play). Then you will have to start performing some of these tasks to qualify for a higher level skill, and either you accumulate spendable experience in "the bank" or you end up spending it on a skill you may not prefer but don't want unspent XPs to "go to waste". (The latter example is similar to what happens in EVE if you don't slot a skill in the training queue for a day and realize that training day is lost forever.)
Hopefully as the experience accumulates you can keep busy in advance of the need (say, crafting that intricate ceremonial dagger Andius mentioned above) so when you have the XPs to spend that checkbox is already complete. The trainer might say "Well, well, I see you have already crafted that dagger, and a fine job you have done on it too! Let's start your training right away!" Otherwise you couldn't begin until the dagger is crafted.
At the higher levels we will surely have to bank a lot of XPs to train advanced skills. Mastery level skills for any occupation should be high, as we all want our hard earned skills to have meaning, and the fewer players that have those skills the more in demand your particular character will be.
We'd have to be careful with specific location requirements. I can imagine that if walk to the top of X mountain existed, some group would eventually try to set up around and lock off X mountain to prevent anyone from reaching it.
thats the beauty of the sandbox, creativity, meaningful, dynamic, unpredictable content.
This ("lock off X mountain to prevent anyone from reaching it") is exactly what Ryan is trying to prevent when designing the game world. As he should.
u can
a) reason with the group
b) rally ur guys to wipe them
c) cry to the devs (like the entitled/spoiled themepark brat)
d) try to ninja up there
e)join them
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd like to see "time" linked to exp gain, and "meaning" linked to prerequisites. We already have a time proxy in the game, in the level accretion of exp for all active accounts. That's the proxy for the time it takes to learn, grow, get better, and that's purposefully set to be equal for all.
So let the prerequisites be solely about meaning. So "Climb Mtn X" makes sense, as does "defeat monster y," or "craft an item of quality Q." The moment it moves to N number of whatevers, whether it's 10 or 1000, you're back to time proxies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Any feat or merit badge that requires a possibly dangerous activity and is limited to only one local to achieve, will probably be "farmed" by different types of farmers. I don't think that limiting dangerous tasks to single point acquisition is a good idea.
At the start of the game that may not be so easy to overcome as territory will be limited and possibly crowded.
Edit: It can be mitigated with group activity, though. Which is a goal of design. It may not matter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think earning merit badges should be relatively simple tasks. Just enough to make sure you've actually played the game and not just paid a subscription for a year and now you're level 15 when you decide to start playing.
So what if they do? They're still supporting the game for everyone else. Then when they finally show up, they still have to go do the deeds to meet their skill prerequisites, pay for akill training with no coin earned, and they'll be doing so in a world where everyone knows what's going on better than they do.
u... ur...
Are you trying to speak Dutch? English does have a few one-letter words, but 'u' isn't one of them.
I'm also not sure how the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur is relevant here.|
Goblin Squad Member
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I just hope they don't decide to go with Eve's progression table. Ain't nobody got time for that! Seriously, I would like a hybrid of "number of times skill used" and "trainer".
They are using a similar "table" to EVE. The rough time to "max level" in a particular dedicated role (Fighter, etc.) is 2.5 years.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just hope they don't decide to go with Eve's progression table. Ain't nobody got time for that! Seriously, I would like a hybrid of "number of times skill used" and "trainer".They are using a similar "table" to EVE. The rough time to "max level" in a particular dedicated role (Fighter, etc.) is 2.5 years.
Yes, although there's an experience 'pool' to collect the experience points paid for, unlike the Eve system which is use-or-lose since you must keep skills queued in order to actually get what you've paid for. The ability to collect experience separate from training gives GW the ability to insert the deed system which might require forging a masterwork ceremonial dagger, swimming upriver for 3 hexes, or whatever.
It also opens the question of whether the experience pool will be tied to one particular character at a time, or whether it will be tied to the account so all characters on that account can draw from it. If it's tied to a character, then in order to move experience across the account, you'd have to sell it to your other self, which seems silly. I'd rather the experience collect at the account level and just have a limit to how much can be used by any particular character on the account.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It also opens the question of whether the experience pool will be tied to one particular character at a time, or whether it will be tied to the account so all characters on that account can draw from it.It is absolutely tied to a single character.
Citation?
Seems stupid to have to sell experience to myself, but hey, why make it more convenient to keep one's characters on a single account rather than each character having its own account?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Keovar
heres a link to the thread Are you Experienced?
That seems to have been written from the perspective of having and playing only a single character, but it does mention a desire to avoid forcing players into making a lot of permanent decisions up front. A system in which a character has their own experience pot rather than access to a portion of an account-level pool would push people to predict a lot about characters they may eventually want to have and design their permanent features like name, race, & looks up front. You couldn't simply pay for an extra experience-over-time subscription and leave that to accumulate in the account pool, creating the character to use it later when more options have opened up. I'm not suggesting that a character be allowed to train any faster, but for each character to only have access to as much of the common pool as they would have if they were assigned the experience individually.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Citation?It also opens the question of whether the experience pool will be tied to one particular character at a time, or whether it will be tied to the account so all characters on that account can draw from it.It is absolutely tied to a single character.
Sorry, I posted that quickly as I was heading to bed.
The most direct quote I can find right now is this:
If you've not designated a character to receive training, the time is lost.
This makes it clear that training time (xp gain) is designated directly to a single character.
Many, many other posts make it clear that you can have multiple characters training on an account at the same time. You can pay a double subscription and always have two chars training, or you can buy various sized Goblin Balls and allocate that training time to single characters. I get the impression we might even be able to buy training time 1 hour at a time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Seems to me the answer is perforce 'variable'. It is unlikely to require the same investment to make a daisy sunshine potion as it does to master the reposte. Since the PvE will be limited to escalations I suspect these skill training activities will replace PvE as our meat-and-potatoes playtime, spiced or sweetened with a liberal dollop of PvP if we so choose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So that'll be a fun time, as 8000 accounts hit the server all at once and people end up burning hours of paid time trying to get on with no experience accumulation to show for it. Even when there have been stress-tests something tends to crash differently in live. If it happens before someone is done creating their characters, then they're losing experience because it has nowhere to go. Maybe GW will let us pre-design settings like Dragon Age did, so we can tinker with various looks without feeling rushed, and upload those ahead of EE launch. Or maybe they'll realize that holding the experience gain at the account level until it's used just makes more sense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If it happens before someone is done creating their characters, then they're losing experience because it has nowhere to go.
In games where you subscribe Per Account, it's not possible to start the subscription before the Account exists. Why would you expect them to make it possible to start a Per Character Subscription before the Character exists? The devs aren't stupid.
Or maybe they'll realize that holding the experience gain at the account level until it's used just makes more sense.
It seems like it's a much bigger headache to try to keep track of how much XP each character is allowed to spend from that account pool. I certainly don't want someone who's training 4 characters simultaneously to be able to spend all 400 XP per hour on a single character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If it is that much of a problem, it wouldn't be too difficult to allow Day one EE players access to log in and create a character a week before EE begins. You can't play the game, but you can pick you race, appearance, and so on and your character is there ready to start receiving XP the minute they open the faucet.
If not, then a few hours worth of XP isn't going to be that big of a difference either way in terms of character ability.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@keovar, from reading your posts here I think you are misunderstanding the idea behind exp gain and accounts. This isn't really intended to be like your typical theme park game where each player has multiple characters on the same account. Yes there is the destiny's twin that will allow you to gain exp on 2 characters tied to the same account. As there is no class structure as there is in theme parks where your locked into the class once chosen, PFO will make each character different in the choices they make for training, the order of which is decided by the player. All characters have the potential to be able to do everything, train every skill and be every class, so the only benefit to having multiple characters is the speed at which you would acquire those skills. What I mean is if my first character starts by training fighter type skills, but I decide to play a mage, I could stop my fighter training and start leveling mage skills, or make a new character (either destiny's twin of a separate account) and start mage skills from the start. In a theme park, you MUST start a new character to be a mage.
There will be a pool, tied to the character that is gaining the experience. This is to collect it until you have enough or have the time to find a trainer and spend it. There won't be a pool account wide that is accessible by each character to be spent on as the player wishes. The destiny twin accounts will have 2 characters, each with there own exp pools. Does this clear it up a bit more for you, and anyone else confused over the exp gain in PFO? (remember this is currently as it is designed and is subject to change at the devs option.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As for the login issue and the start of exp gain, I would be ok with some sort of "pre-start" character creation that would give everyone coming in on day 1 an even exp gain. If it starts only after you have got on and created the character, we may run into a situation where player 1 doesn't care about looks and just types in name, picks race and takes default appearance to get into game ASAP, while player 2 takes 2 hours looking at all options and choices before deciding on an appearance, but is now 2 hours behind player 1 in exp gain. (using the 100/hour idea that is 200 exp which may or may not make a difference.) Again, I understand and am included in with those who want to be on an even playing field with the exp gains, but I also understand if the devs feel it isn't important enough to change it. I am no programmer or developer so I am not sure what would be involved with doing a "pre-start" character generation that would allow for an server wide start of exp gain, those it seams like an easy and simple solution. I have voiced my concern with those that have also and will accept how ever the devs decide to do it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every indication is that each character will have separate experience pools that increase either through paid subscription or through the application of goblin balls. There will not be a single "account pool" of the sum total of paid subscriptions or applied Goblin balls.
I am not clear, but believe that each player could have a separate login or account for each character; or choose to have them all on the same account. Little fuzzy there....
I don't think that Keovar is misunderstanding anything, but is advocating for a different system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Every indication is that each character will have separate experience pools that increase either through paid subscription or through the application of goblin balls. There will not be a single "account pool" of the sum total of paid subscriptions or applied Goblin balls.
YES!!! YOU USED GOBLIN BALLS!
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Goblin Squad Member
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YES!!! YOU USED GOBLIN BALLS!Every indication is that each character will have separate experience pools that increase either through paid subscription or through the application of goblin balls. There will not be a single "account pool" of the sum total of paid subscriptions or applied Goblin balls.
I keep my eyes peeled for any official use of the term beyond Ryan's terse - but hopefully not overly irritated - statement:
The system won't be called goblin balls.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Keovar, from reading your posts here I think you are misunderstanding the idea behind exp gain and accounts.
I am not. Was there a point not based upon that incorrect assumption?
I know, most themeparks are experience via content completion, many sandboxes are skill-gain via skill-use, and for Eve and (as projected) PFO, skills are trained by spending XP, which is gained directly from subscription time, except for in certain conditions.
Eve has a problem in which purchased experience time could be lost if it has no designated skill to flow into. If you finished training the skills you had queued before putting more items in line, you just lose any XP after that. PFO is looking to fix that by putting an XP collection point between the subscription faucet and the skill training mechanic. This not only prevents that sort of waste, it lets them put skill training into the hands of player-run settlements, so getting friendly with those who have the skills you want becomes a type of content.
The problem as I see it is that there's still the problem of XP flowing into a void if you don't have a character ready to receive it. I'd rather not have something I paid for getting dumped as waste because I wasn't able to have a bucket ready when the faucet was turned on. Hours-long server crashes are a common occurrence in MMO launches. Letting us pre-create characters would solve the issue of launch/crash day waste. It could also give us more time for tweaking looks without feeling rushed.
I'd also like to see a post-creation window so you can tweak a bit if everyone ends up picking most of the same features; a problem in City of _ and Guild Wars 2 was that height had no trade-off, so if you didn't max out your height slider you looked as if you were shrunken.
With Destiny's Twin or an extra subscription, you'd need to predict a lot about what characters you might eventually like to have even though you have no practical knowledge of the game yet. Before I can play my first character, I need to log off and create the others so they aren't wasting potential XP while I'm off playing the first. Worse, the name, race, looks, and other permanent choices have to be made at that point, though I may have no idea what I may eventually want to do with the character. I'd rather the experience collection pool at the account level.
I certainly don't want someone who's training 4 characters simultaneously to be able to spend all 400 XP per hour on a single character.
I am trying to figure out another way to explain, once again, that a situation like that is not what I'm talking about. Maybe there could be undefined character 'blanks' which could serve as XP collection points starting from the point of purchase rather than the point at which permanent features are set? Whether I decide to make an archer or weaponsmith could have a big impact on the name, race, looks, etc. I choose. I would rather not be pushed to make those choices before I have any information on what I'll eventually want.
GOBLIN BALLS!
:vomit:
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am trying to figure out another way to explain, once again, that a situation like that is not what I'm talking about. Maybe there could be undefined character 'blanks' which could serve as XP collection points starting from the point of purchase rather than the point at which permanent features are set?
This seems it could be a good idea. Every new account would have one character blank (or two for Destiny Twin kickstarters) that begin accruing XP as soon as the account subscription is activated. If folks are paying for their training time, it doesn't make too much sense to just let it fall off the cliff. A user who doesn't play the character for a while will end up with a backlog of exp but will only be able to get the most basic of skills without spending some time seeking merit badges. This is not very different from creating the character up front and letting them sit and collect XP. In both cases, Merit Badges are still serving their role of Minimum Game Engagement to advance.
I support the idea.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I certainly don't want someone who's training 4 characters simultaneously to be able to spend all 400 XP per hour on a single character.I am trying to figure out another way to explain, once again, that a situation like that is not what I'm talking about. Maybe there could be undefined character 'blanks' which could serve as XP collection points starting from the point of purchase rather than the point at which permanent features are set?
When you buy a 30-day game card from a game store, the time doesn't start counting down the minute you check out, but rather when you activate it by attaching it to an account. Why would you expect anything different from a character-based system?