Goblin Squad Member
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Here we go...
Is there any plans for "retraining" feats. My question is grounded in fact that there will certainly be stuff that gradually are introduced into the game that will make you 8at one point or other) to change some core element of the character, like changing your short bow for a nice (and more fitting) crossbow for your Dwarf character.
It is a bit sad to have to start a new character everytime something new and shiny comes along.... and also a bit sad to sit there and watch those "wasted" feats (especially if you got far down the path).
The chat system, here I willingly admit my totally newbie status, the only in game commination I got any experience of the last oh, 15 years or so, is some brief Neverwinter Night exchanges.
Is there common to have click to talk features (instead of whisper commands).
what are the coverage and use of the local channel?
Will there always be a gamewide channel?
The last thing seems to me as a bit to easy to spread info in, but on the other hand there are other communication routes outside the game that do the same thing I have realised.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I doubt there will be the ability to retrain feats. You would just have to save up the XP and learn the new feat.
I'm not sure what you mean by "click to talk". The chat features are pretty much the same as most MMOs I have played as far as I can remember. The only other thing I would like to see implemented is hitting / would take you to the chat with / already typed. I could probably set that up as a shortcut though, if I wasn't lazy.
I don't know the coverage of the local channel as I haven't used it much.
The gamewide channel is normal for an MMO. I think it will get annoying though if every time someone logs in or out we get a message in the game wide channel. From what I remember of other MMOs, you could have a friends list and it would just tell you when your friends logged on or off.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah! I've not seen click to chat in any MMO I've played (EQ, SWG, WOW). The one thing I have to get used to is including the comma in whisper requests. The other games I have played don't require you to enter the full name of the player, just the first name, so there was no need for the comma.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Respecs for class: In general, I'm not in favor of doing this. It creates all sorts of problems, especially during Crowdforging. Some people will feel there's an obligation to make every XP they spend 100% perfect vs. their ideal build as we add new features; the min-max issues are extraordinary. Rather than creating a bunch of false impressions or expectations I'd rather just say that we're not respeccing for new Roles and that what we encourage you to do is play interesting characters with the content in the game, or wait until such time as the role you want to play is implemented before you activate your account. That ensures nobody is given a false expectation of some kind of future conversion or upgrade right that doesn't exist. Early Enrollment is going to be incredibly constrained in terms of how many players will be added monthly and there will be a lot of people waiting in line so if you choose not to use your game time until the role you want to play is available it won't hurt the business.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'll not be surprised if we see a right-click character-menu with the usual choices, but I've no idea how long it might take for that to make it to the top of the checklist. For local, I believe the plan is to have that channel cover the current hex one's in, and the game-wide channel may go away; many players certainly hope the "telepathy" goes quiet.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My worry is that folks will attempt to use whatever global channel there is (most likely some kind of newbie help channel) for their own purposes regardless of the stated intent. I hope that Goblinworks keeps an eye on that and keeps it from getting out of hand. It would be a tragedy if folks quit paying attention to the newbie help channel because there was so much general chatter that it was simply too cumbersome to identify the actual newbie questions.
GW Tester was saying things about Global not becoming a spam-lot, which inclines me to think they have plans for effectively monitoring how chat channels are used.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought Ryan said that General was going away?
(edit: From the alpha forums)
General is going away soon, to be replaced by "Hex" and it will be scope to the local area. A new "Help" channel will be added for those asking for assistance. I don't know how we will handle recruit,net but we'll have a policy eventually.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Last night there was a group of about 4 players who just would not get the hints about switching over to the party channel. General was bogged down to uselessness by their chatter.
Can ad hoc channels be created? I'd like to have a settlement or company general channel, but I can see that it wouldn't be worth GW's time to add those permanently.
EDIT it response to Caldeathe's post:
I wonder what the difference between Hex and Local will be. I can live without General, but I would like to have the functionality of at least finding out which members of my company, settlement, or other friends are online.
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Goblin Squad Member
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With so many new people joining us for the stress test, and more coming when EE starts, splitting General into a bunch of Hex channels seems like a very good idea.
Do we know what the range of Local will be when General is replaced by Hex?
/Join is a powerful tool. We can use it to create Company and Settlement channels, or for general interest channels like Cleric or Ripping Chains. Getting the word out about today's set of available channels would probably be the biggest barrier to participation in this kind of general interest channel.
/Join could also be used to create almost-private channels. Create a channel named something like Zx97$@ptl, and invite people in by whispering the channel name to them. With a random string of characters as the channel name, the chances of uninvited people wandering in are pretty low. It's not quite as good as true invitation-only channels, but it's not bad.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are really very few reasons to delete a PFO character*. If you've made less than optimal feat choices, then you can read up on the path you'd like to follow, and start spending your XP toward that path. If you believe in the idea that it's bad to be "behind" the oldest characters, then deleting and re-starting will only put you further "behind" than keeping your current character and shifting your training onto a different path.
In the case of a pair of weapons like short bow and crossbow, you'll probably see some crossover in your training, anyway. A crossbow, for instance, will benefit from any points you spent on Ranged Attack Bonus while you were training for the short bow. In all likelihood, a crossbow would also benefit from any points you invested in an archery-focused Role or Armor feat.
In general, in an XP system like PFO's, spent points are almost never truly wasted. If you've spent points on short bow, then crossbow comes along, it just means you're more versatile than someone new who only ever trains crossbow. If your crossbow breaks, or you find a really good short bow, you'll be in a better position than the person who never trained short bow.
On a cynical note, over the long haul, nerfs and buffs tend to be cyclical. Stick around long enough, and you'll probably see the balance of power alternate between short bow and crossbow several times.
In an MMO without a re-training system, it's generally pretty hard to future-proof your character, to make sure that you will never have spent points in something less than optimal. Expansions and updates can always introduce an option you wish you had available in the past. When Ranger enters the game, for example, the folks who trained fighter/clerics to mimic a ranger will wish they could have trained as a ranger from day one.
In an MMO with a generous re-training system, somebody will devise the Optimum Build of the Moment, and you'll see hundreds of copies of that build until the next Build of the Moment arrives.
Eventually, in a game like PFO, you've got to bite the bullet and play with what's available today, because unless the game is going under, there will always be something shiny on the horizon.
*A terrible reputation among other players (the purely social kind, not the game mechanic) is one of the few really good reasons I can think of.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Treat it as like real life.
Sure you never use those hamburger making skills you needed for the part time college job ever again now your a lawyer but they sure were handy at the time and paid your way through college.
This training system is like EVE and in EVE people regularly train things early like mining skills becasue they are useful at the time - even though they fully intend later on to dedicate the character to flying a super or hauling in a freighter or any of a 100 other things where mining skills serve no purpose.
Its an open ended training system with no XP cap.
The idea that "wasting XP is suboptimal and will nobble your character" has no place in PFO that concept is coming across from old-school XP capped MMOs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do we know what the range of Local will be when General is replaced by Hex?Aren't Local and Hex going to be the same thing, thus meaning we'll need only one of the two?
I don't know. I tried to read the announcement on the Alpha forum, but I don't think the link above sent me to the right page.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It doesn't mention the "local"
It's page one of th thread:
Home /
Community Arena /
Keeping /General Clean
Thanks. That got me to the right place.
General is going away soon, to be replaced by "Hex" and it will be scope to the local area. A new "Help" channel will be added for those asking for assistance. I don't know how we will handle recruit,net but we'll have a policy eventually.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wool from Nature nodes may feel wrong, but by calling them nature instead of plant, I have come to accept them (should put a bleeting sheep on them tho).
The middenheaps could do with some love I think. Now they are just another node, something to fill the gap between the mining and the nature 8i think, could be wrong on that). But I wish they could be a bit more thematic, like dropping really crappy raw materials, but totally independent of the landscape around. All should be diluted (etc) and also these scraps of peasant clothing and such you can find as drops now and then.
And when I on it I just want to add:
Silver and copper should switch in frequency
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wool from anything is a bit wrong when you never see any sheep. I assume the sheep are invisible and the plant nodes have thorns, thistles and teasels on them that gather the wool as the invisible sheep pass.
The trash heaps definitely need some love. They are too rare and their contents tend to be stuff I would expect from shiny rocks or uninteresting plants. I want more armour scraps and broken weapons etc...
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Goblin Squad Member
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- Midden heaps will drop things that you can't normally find in that hex. So if you are in a forest hex, you have forest nodes, essence nodes, and midden nodes. There are no mining nodes. So in midden nodes you might find coal or iron or gems, as well pelts and other midden-specific things. In other hexes, the middens drop other things, things the nodes in that hex don't drop.
- Silver is required for a lot of Tier 2 and Tier 3 armors and weapons, so the drop frequency might be set the way it is to support that future need.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see high escalations start diminishing the number of resource nodes (either the mobs themselves are using/spoiling the resources or they are simply making the area unsafe for gathering). To balance this, when you end an escalation by killing the boss, all of the escalation-related mobs disappear, leaving trash heaps that may contain the appropriate type of salvaged resources. (one heap per group of mobs, not individual, obviously).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really like Ulfs suggestion!
And for silver needed for T2+ equipment, there is need for copper at T1 ... So far the only copper I have seen are broken goblin stuff. I think I have seen all other T1
Tonight I'm perhaps gonna climb the mountain and check the rumours of gold, I mean copper!
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I'm not keen on Ulf's suggestion there.
100% Escalations are already proving notoriously sticky and difficulty to knock down. To add further penalties related to them would, to me, just make resources simply more scarce. Not enhance the game play in any serious way.
In some ways those high Escalations do already deminish avalible nodes, when they spawn inside the detection range of a mob pack. Or inside the group of mobs itself. This means you either have fight the mobs for it (assuming you can) or be such an Expericenced sneak that you can get in and out without alerting them.
A compromise would be to bias the spawn system in high escalations toward putting Nodes closer to Mob spawns instead of just being kinda scattered randomly. Thus increasing the proximity of danger without actually reducing the total number of node spawns or the rare. Or make changes to the AI so they are inclided to come "investigate" nodes being harvested near them.
Personally not in favor of either, but they are options.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In some ways those high Escalations do already deminish avalible nodes, when they spawn inside the detection range of a mob pack. Or inside the group of mobs itself. This means you either have fight the mobs for it (assuming you can) or be such an Expericenced sneak that you can get in and out without alerting them.
Sneaking around escalation mobs is relatively straightforward you probably only need to put 500 or so XP into sneak to be good at it.
The big issue is that escalation mobs seem to change the drops in the nodes. I am not sure if this is a bug or by design but once an escalation starts spawning what you find in that hex can totally change.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah! Neadenil, that's interesting. I have running all around the map and tried to survey the findings and ... concluded that there is a very wide assortment of node drops. With some stuff dropping a lot more often (Tansy Leaves I look at you). But it could of course be due to an un checked parameter.
Bha! *throws a stack of notes in the air*