Goblin Squad Member
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So, having had a chance to play a bit with the new encumbrance levels, I would like to acknowledge that things are not as dire as I feared. With an empty inventory, heavy armor, and a single weapon, my encumbrance bar is lower than it was on the previous build. I am able to carry about 23 arbitrary encumbrance units worth of stuff before going into the next bar, which is easily enough to allow the adventuring goals I mentioned earlier.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Did some more focused testing on Capturing a Tower controlled by Phaeros (Phaeros).
Dramatis Personae:
- Decius of Phaeros (Phaeros)
- Banesama of The Seventh Veil (Phaeros)
- Dazyk of The Seventh Veil (Phaeros)
- Hex Avari of The Seventh Veil (Phaeros)
- Nihimon of The Seventh Veil (Phaeros)
- Chadrina(sp?) of Keepers of the Circle (Keepers Pass)
- Dorin of Keepers of the Circle (Keepers Pass)
- Nadya of Keepers of the Circle (Keepers Pass)
(nb: it would be much easier to describe this accurately and clearly if Phaeros wasn't both a Company and Settlement name.)
The folks from Keepers Pass entered the Capture Area and began accumulating points as expected. It appears that the center of a Character must be inside the wall to gain points.
When Decius entered the Capture Area, we were somewhat surprised to see that KotC continued gaining full points. I think we expected his presence to decrease their gain by 1 per tick, but it did not. At that point, the rest of us entered the Capture Area and confirmed that KotC was still gaining full points.
When KotC vacated the Capture Area, while all the folks from Phaeros Settlement were still inside, we were again somewhat surprised to see KotC's points begin decreasing by 6 per tick. We understand their points would decrease by 1 per tick even if no one else was present, and expected Decius's presence to cause their points to decrease by an addition point per tick, but were very pleasantly surprised to see that everyone from the Phaeros Settlement counted as "Defenders" for the purpose of decreasing other Companies' points.
I'm not sure if it's a bug that KotC kept gaining full points even while Decius was present inside the Capture Area with them. It makes sense in a way, since it forces the Defenders to clear the area of invaders, but it seems contrary to what had been described.
I'm also not sure if it's a bug that everyone from Phaeros Settlement counted as a Defender for reducing Attackers' points, but I very much hope it's working as intended.
We need to do more testing with additional Companies, preferably representing at least one more Settlement.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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Lesser Token of Curing still says it heals 100. but is only healing 50.
...derp. I forgot to update the non-smart tooltip descriptions. It should be right once you've slotted it and moused over the entry in the action bar to get the smart tooltip. I'll get those fixed in the morning (though I dunno when they'll actually make a build). Good catch.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, having had a chance to play a bit with the new encumbrance levels, I would like to acknowledge that things are not as dire as I feared. With an empty inventory, heavy armor, and a single weapon, my encumbrance bar is lower than it was on the previous build. I am able to carry about 23 arbitrary encumbrance units worth of stuff before going into the next bar, which is easily enough to allow the adventuring goals I mentioned earlier.
This is why:
Temporarily doubled the base Encumbrance threshold since we don't have bags and backpacks in yet. Once those are in, the base encumbrance is planned to gradually come back down to its original level.
Packs and patches I don't know about, as that is a part of the reason they doubled our encumberance.
I think they are trying to do a second build today, which will probably include the commoner fix since it was just a coding typo, not a major bug.
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So, having had a chance to play a bit with the new encumbrance levels, I would like to acknowledge that things are not as dire as I feared. With an empty inventory, heavy armor, and a single weapon, my encumbrance bar is lower than it was on the previous build. I am able to carry about 23 arbitrary encumbrance units worth of stuff before going into the next bar, which is easily enough to allow the adventuring goals I mentioned earlier.
Kuddos for having the courage to acknowledge this!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fighters in heavy armor, are fighters. They are not going to be fighters in heavy armor and pack mules.
Agreed. I am not trying to load the fighters down to carry stuff from town to town. I'm just saying that if I want to walk from Tavernhold to Forgeholm without stopping to do any gathering or mining, but perhaps fighting some mobs as I see the opportunity, I should be able to get at least to Alderwag before I start having to throw loot away to keep moving.
Agreed, but that is an issue with auto looting and not one with the limitations that come with wearing heavy armor.
Remember the battle scene in Braveheart where the Scots defeat the English at Stirling. All that armor and thousands of weapons on the battlefield, and none of the Soldier were looting. They were tired, wounded, loved ones were there searching for their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons (it was very common in that era for there to be many bystanders watching the battle if the fight took place anywhere near a city).
Looting in the battlefield is left to scavengers. Autolooting will quickly fill a player's pack, and in a large battle it would be a terrible idea.
On the other hand, being a pure opportunist, hovering around a battlefield and looting corpses could be very lucrative, but expect that character to be reviled everywhere but at the pawn shop.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Remember the battle scene in Braveheart where the Scots defeat the English at Stirling. All that armor and thousands of weapons on the battlefield, and none of the Soldier were looting...
Looting in the battlefield is left to scavengers. Autolooting will quickly fill a player's pack, and in a large battle it would be a terrible idea.
Auto-looting is limited to PvE. A large battle like that seems distinctly PvP to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1- A bit frustrating to see tweaks involving skills not trainable yet.
(see 'weapon proficiency 2' in patch notes, etc) . Turn on tower bonuses/limits to trainers any time ; )
2- Casting minor cure on myself causes master of opportunity: stumble to proc and halt me in my tracks. Often. Longbow attacks also do this.
2a- feel free to unroot ranged any time ; )
3- All mineral nodes in the SE mountains have stopped giving iron ore, and otherwise behaving oddly.
I and others have 'bugged' at least one of those already, I will try to get on once a day during the holiday week and keep the bug reports flowing.
Re: Encumbrance, it is great. Naysayers: How much of your complaints involve trying to do things solo ?
I was in a group of 3, killing escalation groups and harvesting for over an hour without getting slowed down by encumbrance. 2 shooters in med. armor, 1 naked gatherer, & none of us had to destroy anything. Steady killing. Nodes everywhere. And going back to town less than once an hour is honestly more risk than chore in an open pvp game.
TL/DR; Ignore complaints, focus on bugs/broken things. Doing well, keep it coming.
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Servers just went down for daily maintenance, during which we'll be patching to a new build to fix some inventory issues. Downtime might be a bit longer than usual, though hopefully not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Not sure if it was a server issue with loads of people logging in last evening to try the new build, but I couldn't do anything with my toon - both keyboard and mouse commands failed to do anything. After 15 mins of this I gave up :(
And, no, it wasn't an encomuberence issue - I had dumped all my stuff in bank weeks ago. Only have a spar wand, staff and robe on me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just noticed that the Inventory and Vault UIs now display Variety, Encumbrance, and Tier properly, and allow sorting.
Just need to make the windows a little wider so we can see the entire line of text, and change that dark blue to something actually readable on a dark background :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thank you, I know that, but they do tend to quick fix obviously broken things quicker than the next major patch. They could have fixed it Friday pretty quickly. Since none of the proficiency 2s have an icon, chances are they could do a server side change without even having to patch the client.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They have done server side patches before, or at least claimed to. What the requirements for doing that is, I really have no clue of and will not speculate about.
Server side only patches require that ONLY the server knows about it's working and not heavily linked on the client.
And since I'm not a dev, and don't know what functions are where.
I can't come up with good examples, as every programmer has different methods of how to handle things.
4 days since this patch went in and still no sign of Short Bow proficiency 2. The Devs really love the rogues.
They are planing a patch early this week to fix the Nodes. This sounds simple enough (as in, changing things in tables) to fix as well, so hopefully it will be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Server side only patches require that ONLY the server knows about it's working and not heavily linked on the client.
And since I'm not a dev, and don't know what functions are where.
I can't come up with good examples, as every programmer has different methods of how to handle things.
Only the server needs to know if they change the rate of finding gold in a mineral node from 0.02364 to 0.02434. Both need to know if the duration for swinging a sword goes from 0.8 to 1.1 seconds. Only the client needs to know if your elf's ears are 10% shorter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This patch did address a few things that we asked for. I feel like it is par for the course that it also breaks a few things and that some things got forgotten or overlooked. Possibly those things were not intended for this patch, but I think they just got missed. I am talking about shortbow. I don't use it but can sympathise with those that do.
Most of us feel that splitable stacks, scrollable windows, better tooltips, an easier to read chat box, different text colors on certain things, a more user friendly AH, etc... are pretty important. We are unclear as to why they weren't done differently to start with. We aren't the ones working on a project with 10,000 things that need fixing, adjusting, tweaking. Only so many can be addressed at a time. Many systems are intertwined and have to be done in a certain order that we don't understand (or don't agree with).
I will put forth a suggestion for the Devs: If there are going to be features that are missing, partially there, or on hold for now, make what we do have to play with user friendly. It feels like a stretch to be enthusiastic about a game that suffers more negative interactions than positve. Make a large part (of what is in) easy to use and working right, if possible.
It was a good move to work on the mouse control issues. They are improved. Great work. Encumbrance is in, and even if it needs tweaking, that is forward motion. You upped training lvls at the NPC facilities. We can now progress. That is good to keep interest up. Great move. The escalations are tweaked to recover slower and the quests to last longer. I actually finished some of the hard ones this weekend. There is no real reward except a sense of accomplishment. That works. Much appreciated. :) I believe that the reactives were fixed? Excellent!
I still see progress. It always brings new problems. We seem (at least to me) to be at a crucial point. Things are happening. Like previously, new things bring new bugs. We (the testers) need to keep in mind that we are supposed to be more tester than player at this point. We have nothing but more of this ahead. We have to suck it up and help how we can. Those that are willing, of course.
Besides fixing newly broken things (multiple durability hits, nodes, etc...), a heartfelt suggestion would be to ask for priority on stack splitting, readable chat and tooltips, encumbrance tweaks or bank-station links, AH overhaul. Fix what you "gots in" so that it is fun to use!
Have any Devs tried starting with mats in the bank and tried to craft a suit of armor from refining through crafting? It is kinda frustrating. :)
My greatest concern is that it feels like many frustrating problems are being left behind (to be fixed later... 1st quarter 2016....). To me that seems like an unwise move. Games do survive with tons of bugs. At least for a little while. Those games are largely FTP.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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We are focused on fulfilling the plan we outlined in Closing the Gap to Early Enrollment.
These are the things that have to work before we start Early Enrollment.
Here's a current update:
Server Performance
Improved. System no longer puts you into a new hex when you desynch. Numbers of desynchs reduced. We found and fixed several bugs that were contributing to performance hits on the server. Still not at the goal for performance and stability but progress being steadily made.
This is a perfect example of the integrate, test, diagnose, plan to fix loop. All the low hanging fruit has been harvested. Now we're looking more deeply into the code to find places where we can optimize. Of everything we're doing, this is by far the hardest. It's taking the time of multiple programmers.
Customer Service Refund Tool
No update - status unknown to me at this time. We have a "worst case" system that involves Customer Service making a request of a programmer who has to do some manual work to instigate a refund. Clearly that's not optimal.
GM Accounts
Code complete, scheduled for test this week.
Exception: We do not yet have a command that lets us boot a player off the server. That has to be done before we can start Early Enrollment.
Combat Logging
Logging is now possible but a UI for us to see the logs has not yet been built. Scheduled for this week, maybe testable this week.
Remove Leave Button from Company UI
Deployed Alpha 12.2
PvP Windows And Tower Capture Mechanics Need to Work As Designed
Deployed Alpha 12.2
Changes to the Chat Channels
Code complete, scheduled for test this week.
Fixes to Company and Settlement Management UI
Deployed Alpha 12.2
Speeding Up Turn Rates for Mouse Users
Deployed Alpha 12.2
Feats Don't Appear on Paper Doll
Deployed Alpha 12.2
Changes to Reputation Calculations
Deployed Alpha 12.2
Destiny's Twin
Code complete, scheduled for test this week.
New Player Packs
Code complete, scheduled for test this week.
The Mac Client
This is the biggest unknown. We are continuing to work on problems related to the Mac client including performance and including the patching issues discussed in this week's blog. We are likely going to have some in-depth Mac conversations this week to try and narrow down our range of options.
Everything else waits until the above list is finished (and very occasionally a programmer can pick up a lower-priority task when they have a few minutes between larger tasks.)
There are a handful of "bugs" that are really errors in the back-end system we use to package data for the game. Those don't require programming to fix, they just have to be corrected in the back-end system. So things like missing or incorrect prerequisites, drop rates for loot, harvesting node changes, etc. get picked up and fixed continuously as we identify them, but they don't appear in game until a whole new build is created and deployed. We should be very "clean" on the list of such bugs when we get to Early Enrollment and we're building a plan to validate a lot of these systems before we go to Early Enrollment to raise our confidence level that the system is working as intended.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry Bringslite, I have to disagree. The focus should be on functionality, not being super user friendly. It's about building the house before painting it. It could be a waste of time to smooth and beautify something that is just a placeholder or will need to be reworked later.
So if it works, great, move on to the next thing. Polish can come later.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Kero
It has been suggested before that there would not be "global" chats or markets for the purpose of requiring travel and if you will, "local area knowledge"
As you have pointed out, most will use third party voice programs anyway.
But, I believe the lack of a global chat does have some positives that go along with that decision.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sorry Bringslite, I have to disagree. The focus should be on functionality, not being super user friendly. It's about building the house before painting it. It could be a waste of time to smooth and beautify something that is just a placeholder or will need to be reworked later.
So if it works, great, move on to the next thing. Polish can come later.
It isn't really polish that I am after. Features that work (without player work arounds required) would be pretty neat though. Features that aren't so frustrating that they are avoided by the majority would be alright as well.
Now, as noted above, I am not designing this or planning the path. People that have much more riding on the outcome (than myself) are doing that. I don't have to agree with the way they are doing it. I just have hang in there and hope it starts to gel into something attractive.
Ryan's post (after mine) was a pretty good outline of whats going on. I can be onboard with that. With 12.2 we may see some fixes. There will probably be more things broken from it. That is expected.
I agree that stability comes before final polish and should absolutely have priority. I disagree that ever more features on top of barely or non working features is really a good way to go.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just a few hundred people would utterly swamp and destroy a general chat channel. So as soon as we're over 1,000 active players.
Just look at Jita chat. Several thousand people in the same chat is not a good and seemly thing.
As far as PFO general chat there have already been incidents:
- one player got very angry and upset about people discussing TT games when he was trying to ask questions about where to find resources and getting ignored
- another player got very angry abut people role playing river pirates as he felt general chat should be reserved for new player help and trade posts
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Hex-chat is all we need, when it comes to a general channel. Beyond that, Settlement chat, group, Company, /say and /whisper or /tell
This also means that there will not be a general /trade channel, I presume.
I am wondering about something: I think the plan is to let players be able to browse the AH's across the world from one spot (since else someone else would offer such functionality out of game anyway). I wonder if that tool would allow us to post messages? So not a chat but rather a bulletinboard, built into the AH-UI.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan
Thanks for the Mac client progress update. Always appreciated, even if it's just "working on it". It does bring to mind an old comment of yours about potential problems developing the Mac client scaring the bejeezus out of you, but I keep hoping for a report on a breakthrough moment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Assuming you are able to check off every object on the list except the Mac client, are you going to hold off EE until you have that client as well?
To my limited understanding, it seems the server stuff and the Mac client are the things that could potentially take a lot of time to get done.
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Goblin Squad Member
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....
I am wondering about something: I think the plan is to let players be able to browse the AH's across the world from one spot (since else someone else would offer such functionality out of game anyway)....
I believe the plan is every AH is local only.
The One in Talonguard does not have access to the one in ThornKeep as an example.|
Goblin Squad Member
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....
I am wondering about something: I think the plan is to let players be able to browse the AH's across the world from one spot (since else someone else would offer such functionality out of game anyway)....
I believe the plan is every AH is local only.
The One in Talonguard does not have access to the one in ThornKeep as an example.
I believe the eventual plan is that we can see what is in other auction houses but not buy it, or perhaps that buying from the auction house deposits the purchase in the bank where the auction was posted from. I think (hope?) there are similar plans for the banks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I'm not sure such tool would be popular among the settlement leaders...
Pathfinder's take on sandbox economics sounds interesting, and very much like Eve, at first glance. Perhaps too much like Eve in the sense of the speed and miraculous availability of information the description implies to me.
Information will propagate instantly, whether it is done in-game or out-of-game. It's trivially easy to ensure that you have up-to-the-second pricing and availability info anywhere that you care about by using alts.
So rather than put players who don't understand that at a disadvantage, we'll just provide those tools to everyone automatically.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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Mark thinks we may have a Mac client test build this week. There is a worst case scenario where we just don't use a patcher and Mac userss have to download ~5.5gb every time we make a new build for a while, but we are still hoping to avoid that.
Ouch, in that case my girlfriend will be difficult to convince .... But if I download it to a USB and snailmail it ... :-)
Mark thinks we may have a Mac client test build this week. There is a worst case scenario where we just don't use a patcher and Mac userss have to download ~5.5gb every time we make a new build for a while, but we are still hoping to avoid that.
What is the largest patch we have had to date, in terms of file size?
Of course, 5.5 Gb for a Mac person when the PC patch is only a few megabytes will stink.
Keeping my toes crossed for a node fix today, and maybe even a little patch, in the hopes that the GW staff gets a nice long Thanksgiving weekend.
Mr. Bob said no patch today, maybe one for tomorrow- though I would personally condition that with who ever works tomorrow being home in time for a feast.