CEO, Goblinworks
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I think there are 3 issues which are all intertwined.
Issue 1: Make it easy for new players
Remember in earlier iterations of Alpha there were Attribute gates almost from the start. Almost all Feats provided small Attribute bonuses. However, a substantial number of people didn't understand how that system worked and they would find themselves unable to advance and get frustrated. A big part of that is the UI issue of not being able to see what Feats increase Attributes and what fractional amount of an Attribute a character currently has. But fundamentally, it was saying to new players "here's this complicated thing you have to worry about from the very first Feat you purchase before you even really understand the game".
Based on your feedback, we changed that. We basically got rid of the Attribute gates for new characters. Now you don't hit them until you have achieved 7 levels of a Role.
The attribute gates then appear and we have the original UI issues but at least players will have spent some time with the game and the load of "learn new things" will have been substantially reduced before they hit the gate.
Issue 2: Encourage characters to be a little flexible, but don't force them
Making a character with a "clean build", that is, not a single XP spent on something other than advancing down a Role pathway is the goal. However, following that goal means that you're giving up the ability to gain a little bit of useful flexibility that might make your game more fun to play.
Specifically, you're giving up the ability to do a little harvesting & crafting. Since Role characters are essentially the Adventurers who are supposed to spend their time in the wilderness, accessing the harvesting nodes in the wilderness can add value and some interest to the way you play and then having something you can do with what you harvest can be interesting too.
Exposure to that part of the game helps set expectations for prices. It helps set understanding between suppliers and crafters of what is needed, in what quantities. It basically makes you a better purchaser by raising your overall understanding of "how the other half lives".
Deviating from a "clean build" to take some Feats that give you improved harvesting and crafting options means that you'll pass the Attribute gates and gain some breadth to your character's actual ability to play the game.
Taking, for example, the 5 Feats that affect Constitution (Miner, Sawyer, Smelter, Tanner, and Carpenter) to get 1 point of Constitution will take 24.1 days of XP accumulation. But you do not have to do this.
Issue 3: Multiclassing scares the hell out of us
For obvious reasons. People will continuously search out ways to min-max multiclassing to get ahead of the power curve for characters focused on just one Role. That's antithetical to our design - multiclassing should produce characters below the power curve, but with more flexibility as the tradeoff. More flexibility and more power means there's a problem.
The current system values may be too conservative and the tradeoff may be too substantial. We'll happily entertain lots of discussion about how to achieve a better balance. But you should be also aware that we can't let multiclassing get "too good" or it will cause systemic breakdowns in the underlying assumptions about character power and you will end up with Mandatory Builds that are just casseroles of Feats.
This relates to the change in Point #1 above. In earlier Alphas, you would have been accumulating some Wisdom for all the Clerical stuff that you were learning. But we changed that system, and now you don't start to get Wisdom in a meaningful way until you're at the 6/7/8 level point where the Attribute gates kick in.
If we left the Attribute benefits in the lower level Feats then EVERY Rogue would train a couple of levels of Cleric, to pass the Wisdom gate more quickly and efficiently. The world would be populated to divine thieves. Very weird and noncanon.
The Roles are very narrow right now. That will change, but they are Minimum Viable Product Roles today. The further you go from the core idea of each Role, the less effective your build will be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think there are 3 issues which are all intertwined.
Issue 1: Make it easy for new players
Remember in earlier iterations of Alpha there were Attribute gates almost from the start. Almost all Feats provided small Attribute bonuses. However, a substantial number of people didn't understand how that system worked and they would find themselves unable to advance and get frustrated. A big part of that is the UI issue of not being able to see what Feats increase Attributes and what fractional amount of an Attribute a character currently has. But fundamentally, it was saying to new players "here's this complicated thing you have to worry about from the very first Feat you purchase before you even really understand the game".
Based on your feedback, we changed that. We basically got rid of the Attribute gates for new characters. Now you don't hit them until you have achieved 7 levels of a Role.
The attribute gates then appear and we have the original UI issues but at least players will have spent some time with the game and the load of "learn new things" will have been substantially reduced before they hit the gate.
Issue 2: Encourage characters to be a little flexible, but don't force them
Making a character with a "clean build", that is, not a single XP spent on something other than advancing down a Role pathway is the goal. However, following that goal means that you're giving up the ability to gain a little bit of useful flexibility that might make your game more fun to play.
Specifically, you're giving up the ability to do a little harvesting & crafting. Since Role characters are essentially the Adventurers who are supposed to spend their time in the wilderness, accessing the harvesting nodes in the wilderness can add value and some interest to the way you play and then having something you can do with what you harvest can be interesting too.
Exposure to that part of the game helps set expectations for prices. It helps set understanding between suppliers and...
I don't understand, you don't want people to multiclass but you make it harder for those focusing on one single role to do so with the "attribute gate." That's what I honestly got from this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah thanks Ryan as always for being so honest and open. That's exactly what it feels like, as if the ability score gates that are in place to keep you from being uber wizard with uber stealth in uber plate are screwed in too tight and we are feeling it much earlier than we should.
What I see now however is a "forced multi class" down all the lines of each role.
I appreciate the balancing act you guys have to do. The previous iteration was a bit of a free for all, but this one feels like a straight jacket. Just like with the achievements, the ideal is for it to feel natural, buying stuff in the things you are using should be enough to advance in the things you are using. I'll try to take a closer look at the #'s and come up with more concrete suggestions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan
Look at the Dowser role. To advance Dowser, one needs to advance Sage, OK they go together. This does mean that Sage needs to craft Uncommon +1, +2, +3, +4 (and +4 is a slight probability with the +3). That is 4 spells when spells do not seem that common. So with the spells, both can advance to 8. 9 is only a little short of PER but hit points and the like add PER.
However the shortage to get to 10 is more than 1.0 and 1.5 shortage for 12. This can be made up as aristocrat or level 3 cantrips (0.05 per level 3 cantrip). Why would a commoner need to be mage or aristocrat?
Ryan's Fighter build
Here is a fighter build I did for "getting a fighter to Tier 2 Weapons and Tier 2 Armor as quickly as possible." Note it did not require any out-of-class feats.
But his could not currently be done with, say, a Wizard due to issues with Con advancement.
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I don't understand, you don't want people to multiclass but you make it harder for those focusing on one single role to do so with the "attribute gate." That's what I honestly got from this.
Yeah so the issue right now the feat system is incomplete. Take HP for example. A wizard cannot advance HP beyond HP 7 without also taking loads of Fighter Armor feats. This is due to two reasons: Not all the feats that grant Con for wizards are in yet AND the HP Con advancement rate is "too-little-too-late." Its not properly balanced yet.
What I read from Ryan is this:
Stephen and Lee are fully aware that the current advancement system is broken in that certain roles simply cannot be advanced in without "multiclassing" to meet ability gates. Fixing this issue is a work in progress.
On the flip side, Stephen and Lee do not want to create a system where it is trivial to multi-class and become uber when compared to someone that is pursuing a single-role. Rather, they want a system that allows a player to multi-class to gain versatility as a tradeoff to gaining power by staying the course in a single role.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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The goal is to get every role possible to the point that it has a primary ability score (that has to be kept very high) and a secondary ability score (that needs to be raised, but not nearly as high as the primary). Most roles will have an OR choice between one or both of those ability scores as it makes sense. For example, Fighters will be able to choose to focus on Strength for a melee build or Dexterity for an archery build, but will always want Constitution as a secondary (for HP and Fort). Meanwhile, Rogues will always want a high Dexterity (because all of their favored combat and skill options are Dex-based), but will (once we have Bluff working in a meaningful way) get to choose between Wisdom and Personality as secondaries.
The ability score requirement is a soft gate. One of its purposes is to keep players from climbing like a laser to high level (was that metaphor too mixed? Do lasers climb? I dunno.). Through the dark art of feat pricing, sometimes there are cost differences in what's "essential" for a level of a role. For example, we don't require you to buy any specific weapon attacks for Fighter. But you totally need to buy weapon attacks to be a Fighter. A Str or Dex ability gate is a way of saying "you should buy a bunch of attacks for a variety of weapons to really get what you need to be considered a Fighter" without having an exhaustive OR list of possibilities for advancement, and which also allows for "If you want to just buy a couple of weapons and also pick up a few skills, that's cool too, follow your bliss." But either way, it keeps you from rocketing up the levels because you're ignoring all the important but non-required stuff that makes your math work basically the same as all the other roles.
Your ability to progress a "clean" build will continue to get better as more feats get developed. But it's not intended to be so clean that you can just take the bare minimum, but more "I am a Fighter. I only have stuff useful as a Fighter. But that still means I'm good at several weapons and armors."
And, obviously, as in all things, we need better in-game guidance on what to do (which we're working on).
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about the thought of giving some of the gate points pretty hefty stat boots to get on to the next plateau? That way getting through at least one gate gets you well on the way to the next one?
Or having qualifying for a role give a bit of each of the stats it's feats use? IG; fighter roles give a bit of Str, Dex, and Con? Or is that in already and I'm making an ass of myself for not knowing the feats well enough :P
I guess maybe a simplistic example would be the distinction between:
"Hello, I am a fighter."
or -
"Hello, I am a sword wielder."
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Goblin Squad Member
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The goal is to get every role possible to the point that it has a primary ability score (that has to be kept very high) and a secondary ability score (that needs to be raised, but not nearly as high as the primary). Most roles will have an OR choice between one or both of those ability scores as it makes sense. For example, Fighters will be able to choose to focus on Strength for a melee build or Dexterity for an archery build, but will always want Constitution as a secondary (for HP and Fort). Meanwhile, Rogues will always want a high Dexterity (because all of their favored combat and skill options are Dex-based), but will (once we have Bluff working in a meaningful way) get to choose between Wisdom and Personality as secondaries.
The ability score requirement is a soft gate. One of its purposes is to keep players from climbing like a laser to high level (was that metaphor too mixed? Do lasers climb? I dunno.). Through the dark art of feat pricing, sometimes there are cost differences in what's "essential" for a level of a role. For example, we don't require you to buy any specific weapon attacks for Fighter. But you totally need to buy weapon attacks to be a Fighter. A Str or Dex ability gate is a way of saying "you should buy a bunch of attacks for a variety of weapons to really get what you need to be considered a Fighter" without having an exhaustive OR list of possibilities for advancement, and which also allows for "If you want to just buy a couple of weapons and also pick up a few skills, that's cool too, follow your bliss." But either way, it keeps you from rocketing up the levels because you're ignoring all the important but non-required stuff that makes your math work basically the same as all the other roles.
Your ability to progress a "clean" build will continue to get better as more feats get developed. But it's not intended to be so clean that you can just take the bare minimum, but more "I am a Fighter. I only have stuff useful as a Fighter. But that still means I'm good at several...
Thank you, this was very informative.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am honestly having a hard time seeing what the value is of the attribute system is at all. Each level increase requires an ever larger expenditure of exp. If a player wants to focus only on being very good at a few things, then they've made their choice how to play and they have decided that the trade off isn't worth it. Instead of gating and forcing people to take skills they don't need or want, it should be looked at to determine *why* people don't want those skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If a player wants to focus only on being very good at a few things, then they've made their choice how to play and they have decided that the trade off isn't worth it. Instead of gating and forcing people to take skills they don't need or want, it should be looked at to determine *why* people don't want those skills.
Do you feel there is a limit to giving people everything they want?
Here's an absurd example. If a person wants to buy a million xp at the start of early enrollment and spend it however he wants immediately because it would make the game incredibly satisfying for him to feel so powerful then why not let him?
My answer is community balance. It's not just about what one person wants; GW must consider what is also fair to the entire community they choose to invite to their customer base.
The reason for grouping training into ability score prerequisites is to prevent individuals from tailoring characters into specific builds that may be disadvantageous to the health of the community.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The reason for grouping training into ability score prerequisites is to prevent individuals from tailoring characters into specific builds that may be disadvantageous to the health of the community.
But those builds will still exist, they'll just take a little longer to get to. People who don't want to harvest will train the skills they are required to, and then proceed to ignore them and focus on what they wanted to do anyways.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But those builds will still exist, they'll just take a little longer to get to. People who don't want to harvest will train the skills they are required to, and then proceed to ignore them and focus on what they wanted to do anyways.
Are you dismissing your original complaint that attribute requirements force players to take skills they don't want or need?
I am saying that if the system is forcing a player to do one type of training as a prerequisite for another then it can be validated as a system build balance need. Whether it's reasonable or not I can't say, but that is the reason.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But those builds will still exist, they'll just take a little longer to get to. People who don't want to harvest will train the skills they are required to, and then proceed to ignore them and focus on what they wanted to do anyways.Are you dismissing your original complaint that attribute requirements force players to take skills they don't want or need?
I am saying that if the system is forcing a player to do one type of training as a prerequisite for another then it can be validated as a system build balance need. Whether it's reasonable or not I can't say, but that is the reason.
I'm fine with skills building off of each other, that makes sense and helps create trade offs.
My question is to the point of the ability score system. Skills are already in a tree, so why do we need the ability score gate at all? I'm not opposed to it in principle, I just am failing to see an added benefit to the game by including it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In many games, I've seen players say things like, "my character is mining (logging, digging, etc) all of the time - he should be a little stronger from all of the work he's doing."
And here it is. We gain strength by mastering various skill trees, constitution in others, other attributes elsewhere. The weaponsmith and armorsmith have some small advantage when they turn to war, they are already part of the way to the strength they need. And fighters can exercise their strength as well, eith on the practice field (progressing up additional fighter skill trees) or doing laborious tasks.
The main problem I see is the lack of avenues for some attributes.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The Attribute score gate is a mechanism as Stephen said earlier to allow us to batch up a whole bunch of requirements all at once without putting a tremendous amount of "logical or" statements into the game.
The way they are priced and prerequisited determines that there's a pathway through the gate which channels (but does not force) you to spend XP in a Role appropriate way. But we don't have to tell you exactly how to do that. You get the flexibility of developing the character in a broad sense ("which weapons or cantrips/orisons will I train?") and we get the ability to avoid multiclassed over-powered characters ("doesn't matter to us, but you have to focus on something!")
It's supposed to take a lot longer to be an X/Y character than a pure X character.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, I have to say that Attributes are core to the d20 experience from which Pathfinder descends. Not having them would be a bad break with the tabletop game. Making them present but irrelevant would be a bad break with the tabletop game. Making them work like the tabletop game would result in Mandatory Builds, a pressure in MMOs overwhelmingly greater than anything you're likely to see on the tabletop. So using them as gates is a compromise with a good mechanical rationale (as described in my previous post).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Skills are already in a tree, so why do we need the ability score gate at all? I'm not opposed to it in principle, I just am failing to see an added benefit to the game by including it.
How are skills in a tree?
I think the intention is to place pretty much everything you train into 1 of 6 attribute categories. The benefit of this grouping is for build balance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think I understand the design goal behind ability score gating a bit better now. I can understand extending the base of skills that modify your primary or secondary ability score out of your role to include some "basic survival skills" like gathering. I understand that this will go through iterations for some time to come. But in the end, if my rogue has to train as a cleric, something has gone wrong. For now, it's Alpha and we'll see what happens.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
And, obviously, as in all things, we need better in-game guidance on what to do (which we're working on).
I'm very glad to hear that you're working on it.
After spending a few hours helping newbies since the Stress Test started, I've come to the conclusion that the lack of in-game guidance is the single biggest problem PFO has right now. I cannot count how many times I've told people "The only way to know how X affects Y is to search for it on the Paizo forums." Unfortunately, even that is difficult for new people, because there's so much terminology overlap with tabletop Pathfinder.
It's interesting to me that, in contrast to this board sometimes, a lot of newbies say "I'm impressed with how good this game looks for an Alpha."
Top 10 Things I've Been Telling Newbies:
1. The generic answer to any weirdness in Alpha is to quit to the desktop and re-load. If that doesn't work, quit the game, re-load, move to a different hex, and try again.
2. Watch out for wolves in town. They're unusually crafty wolves, who have escaped several extermination attempts by Goblinworks. When the wolf brings its Thornguard friend to attack you, don't strike back at the Thornguard. She will never forget or forgive. Run away or let them kill you.
3. No, there's no way to read the full description of an armor feat in game. It scrolls off the screen for everyone, not just you. Search the Paizo forums for the full text.
4. Reassigning keys (movement, etc.) requires editing a text file out of game. Search the Paizo forum for instructions.
5. If you already bought Toughness, don't worry about completing the tutorial. You can play just fine without completing it.
6. All Alpha characters will be wiped at the start of Early Enrollment. Don't be afraid to spend some of your xp on a little bit of everything right now. You won't be "behind" anyone in the live game because you "threw points away" in Alpha.
7. Some goblins are bugged. If you can't hit them and they can't hit you, attack different goblins.
8. No, you can't make the chat window bigger, or change its transparency value, or change text color, or change font size.
9. Think long and hard before you delete your first character. You won't have 30,000 XP on the next one you make.
10. Sorry, it's Alpha. It'll get better.
(Comedy Bonus:
11. Yes, that's the moon. Don't look directly at it.)
Edit: I should have left room in the list for "You automatically loot everything you kill. Look in your Inventory to see what it dropped." That one confuses a whole lot of newbies.
Oh yeah, and "When you want to whisper, the comma between the name and the message is absolutely critical. It won't work without that comma."
And "You can skip all the comma stuff by typing /r when someone whispers to you."
(I better stop now, or this will be a Top 40 List. That's radio, not late night TV.)
Karlbob wrote: 5. If you already bought Toughness, don't worry about completing the tutorial. You can play just fine without completing it.
I was absolutely shocked and amazed that a player deleted their first character and started over just because they couldn't complete an introductory quest. Really people are way too highly trained to the old MMO style of, "Oh you didn't do that beginner quest? You can't advance to level 10 now."
Kudos to GW for not building another game like that; buy really might ought put up a disclaimer about the absolute total UN-importance of the quests in this game (or atleast the introductory ones). Also, a warning about not recovering the 30K exp might have been helpful to some folks...
That players are reacting this way to introductory quests when they don't need to is a good sign. It points to the simple fact that, so far, GW has done a very good job of not building a stereo-typical Themepark MMO. But it is still probably an important thing to emphasize in the introductory email: Introductory quests are optional. Not completing them will not hurt your game experience in any way. It will not put you behind other players. It will not prevent you from doing anything, whatsoever.
In short, new players will have some UN-learning to go along with their new learning when first starting out with this game.
Gremlins ate my long reply...ugh.
Tl;DR: please contine to add typical q&a, very useful to other guide.
Whenever I see there is even a slight delay in my long post going up, always hit "Ctrl+A" then "Ctrl+C"- saved by the clipboard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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5. If you already bought Toughness, don't worry about completing the tutorial. You can play just fine without completing it.
I'm pretty sure that one-paragraph quest actually says that you can buy any skill to advance the quest, if you've already bought toughness.
It's a challenge, frankly. Many people don't read forums, user guides, direct email from GW. I don't think some read stuff in game, either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There should be no unkillable goblins. It is likely you're being disrupted/interrupted, not that they can't be killed.
I've had no problem killing things, or being killed by things. *cough* undeath squad *cough* That's just something that I've heard pretty often from new players. I figured it might be a glitch, like the stacks of overlapping goblins.
I understand the players being interrupted while trying to hit goblins. I wasn't expecting the players to interrupt the goblins so often that they can't complete any attacks, either. The interruption stalemate is lasting long enough to make new players believe there is a glitch.
(Come to think of it, one-on-one archery duels with bandits and skeletons tend to take a while, too.)
From now on, I'll explain that they're interrupting each other.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think some read stuff in game, either.
I've actually heard "That should happen automatically", about a variety of things, several times. I wonder whether what people have experienced in other games turns out to be something like hand-holding; there's casual play, and then there's something beyond...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have answered all the following questions HERE in my guide. These have by far been the most questions asked, over and over and over again. The Tutorial should hit on all of these things.
Q. How do I access the Crafting Window?
Q. How do I whisper someone?
Q. How do I trade with someone?
Q. How do I make a party?
Q. How do I switch my weapons?
Q. Why is all my stuff I just put in the bank in Settlement 1 not at Settlement 2?
Q. Why isn't my attacks/cantrips/orisons better after I level them up?
Q. What is Damage Factor and how does it work?
Q. What are expendables? Where do I find them? How do I learn them? How do I slot them? How do they work?
Q. How does Armor work? (How do I stop taking so much damage?)
Q. How do I gain Experience?
Q. How do I loot from NPC/Monsters? From Players?
Q. How do I use Salvage from the Salvage tab?
Q. Is crafting suppose to be this hard?
Q. How do I gain Achievements (Category Points)? How do I count how many points I have?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There should be no unkillable goblins. It is likely you're being disrupted/interrupted, not that they can't be killed.
It happens occasionally. Happened last night to me out in the wild. Fought a single Goblin Warrior, couldn't damage him with bow, switched to great sword, still no damage. He was damaging me. About 3 seconds of that, then i fell through the world, had time for one attack animation up in a star filled sky, then client crashed. Used to happen more often, only once so far in Alpha 9.
In previous patch, i've had similar and run away, avoiding a crash in those circumstances.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And, obviously, as in all things, we need better in-game guidance on what to do (which we're working on).I'm very glad to hear that you're working on it.
After spending a few hours helping newbies since the Stress Test started, I've come to the conclusion that the lack of in-game guidance is the single biggest problem PFO has right now. I cannot count how many times I've told people "The only way to know how X affects Y is to search for it on the Paizo forums." Unfortunately, even that is difficult for new people, because there's so much terminology overlap with tabletop Pathfinder.
It's interesting to me that, in contrast to this board sometimes, a lot of newbies say "I'm impressed with how good this game looks for an Alpha."
Top 10 Things I've Been Telling Newbies:
1. The generic answer to any weirdness in Alpha is to quit to the desktop and re-load. If that doesn't work, quit the game, re-load, move to a different hex, and try again.
2. Watch out for wolves in town. They're unusually crafty wolves, who have escaped several extermination attempts by Goblinworks. When the wolf brings its Thornguard friend to attack you, don't strike back at the Thornguard. She will never forget or forgive. Run away or let them kill you.
3. No, there's no way to read the full description of an armor feat in game. It scrolls off the screen for everyone, not just you. Search the Paizo forums for the full text.
4. Reassigning keys (movement, etc.) requires editing a text file out of game. Search the Paizo forum for instructions.
5. If you already bought Toughness, don't worry about completing the tutorial. You can play just fine without completing it.
6. All Alpha characters will be wiped at the start of Early Enrollment. Don't be afraid to spend some of your xp on a little bit of everything right now. You won't be "behind" anyone in the live game because you "threw points away" in Alpha.
7. Some goblins are bugged. If you can't hit them and they can't hit you, attack...
Made my morning, thank you :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Is it possible to play a "fighter" to whatever cap is, then start developing other unlrelated skills to become an effective hybrid?
'An effective hybrid' is precisely the anathema Ryan warned of.
The developers do not want the freeform skill system that allows multiclassing to put players into a mindset that only through a hybrid can one have an 'effective' build.
As a 'fighter' you should be specialized at killing certain types of creatures that should be more likely to produce unique recipe drops. As PvP becomes more important you should find utility from playing a 'fighter'. You should already be effective and not need unrelated skills.
Now, what is 'related' or not is one of the issues being debated here. The developers feel that a rogue needs wisdom, and currently to obtain wisdom you need to spend training points into knowledge skills and in some cases cleric training.
I would like to see Ryan provide training samples for a Rogue and Cleric. As people have mentioned Fighter is the easiest to showcase. A wizard isn't too difficult as far as selecting training but they are squishy and those hundreds of solo kills will take longer at first.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm talking about 5 years or so down the line.
Say you've done all you can or want to with the fighter stuff.
Can you start exploring other skills with the same character, if you start at the bottom again? Basically unslot all of your fighter feats and things, and equip wizard stuff? Or rogue stuff?
I understand there may not be a whole lot of synergy as you progress (the elimination of "hybrid" feats to slot would prevent this), but is it an option? That way you can play as a wizard OR a rogue OR a fighter, depending on what your team is lacking, and be decent/great at all three, just not at once?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There should be no unkillable goblins. It is likely you're being disrupted/interrupted, not that they can't be killed.It happens occasionally. Happened last night to me out in the wild. Fought a single Goblin Warrior, couldn't damage him with bow, switched to great sword, still no damage. He was damaging me. About 3 seconds of that, then i fell through the world, had time for one attack animation up in a star filled sky, then client crashed. Used to happen more often, only once so far in Alpha 9.
In previous patch, i've had similar and run away, avoiding a crash in those circumstances.
If you change hexes and come back you will be able to damage them.
More often I have a problem where... after I switch targets, my first attack feat will not work. No matter how many times I hit it, my character will just stand there. If I use another feat, that one will work, then I can go back to the original and it works.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Can you start exploring other skills with the same character, if you start at the bottom again? Basically unslot all of your fighter feats and things, and equip wizard stuff? Or rogue stuff?
I think you should be able to quickly train high enough to use higher tier gear and you already have high resistances, high hit points and high attack bonuses from whatever route you took. You just won't be able to activate all the keywords without training, and there's no way to get the achievements and experience points. Even if you played 24-7 with the help of a guild to to catch on the achievements you will still have to wait months or even years for enough experience to 'effectively' swap and fill in with other equal leveled party members.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm talking about 5 years or so down the line.
Say you've done all you can or want to with the fighter stuff.
Can you start exploring other skills with the same character, if you start at the bottom again? Basically unslot all of your fighter feats and things, and equip wizard stuff? Or rogue stuff?I understand there may not be a whole lot of synergy as you progress (the elimination of "hybrid" feats to slot would prevent this), but is it an option? That way you can play as a wizard OR a rogue OR a fighter, depending on what your team is lacking, and be decent/great at all three, just not at once?
Yes you can. Your progression would be "faster" because there are some cross-class abilities that you would have already trained (hp, power, base attack bonus...)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Can you give some examples?
The most-common is one with which we're already quite familiar: that monsters are auto-looted, and that the user interface doesn't tell you what you just got. Some folks seem to think that if they're not doing their own looting, or haven't chosen an option-box making it auto, they're "getting ripped off".
Others focus on tooltips they believe should be interactive (we dream of that, too), the lack of quests (PVE being primarily a source of crafting materials gives some pause), and my having to direct them to others to find answers about crafting, as I've done none beyond the tutorial. The oddest comment I've gotten is "I shouldn't need to ask other players for help, I should only need to play"; at that point, I talk up our great community, and hope it makes an impression.
EDIT: I've just read the FAQ at the head of Cheatle's Guide, and I caught myself smiling and laughing at the similarities. I've got a new place to point folks.
