Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, usually the renters pay their rent. Just like the people doing the mining obviously do it in pods.Obviously the people making armor will not be the people wearing it. That is as intended."Obviously" the people gathering the materials will do it in loincloths.
In a world where PvP is important.You say you have played EVE. Ever done some mining in 0.0? You know how it ends between the miners and the people playing guards for them?
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or you have no idea what you're talking about.
Renters usually do pay their rent, otherwise they will find themselves in hostile territory, many jumps away from safety.
Your "just like" comment makes no sense in comparison. No one mines from a pod.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which begs the question--what good are nodes, then?
Nodes are the lowest tier of gathering, but any node might turn out to be a gusher. So we'll have to whack some nodes. (We've been told that drops will be less than currently - yield is artificially elevated to cover the mats we'd get from gushers).
Once the gusher is discovered something like the following happens:
The finding character has some amount of time to a) get and place a kit, b) call in friends to help gathering, c) call in help to help guarding.
When the kit is placed and as materials are removed, the gusher attracts attention. It becomes a mob magnet. (As other PCs hear of it, it becomes a predator magnet, too, like Bluddwolf hints at.)
The mobs seek to get to and destroy the kit (or maybe the mine-holder; that's not clear). Guards try to keep the kit alive, gatherers try to pull out as many resources as possible before the kit expires or is killed.
I'm looking forward to see how it's actually implemented.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which begs the question--what good are nodes, then?My guess is, gushers will be controlled and guarded. The very old DEV Blogs used to speak of kits being set up to extract the resources from gushers. These kits are owned by a company that set them up. There would be a couple of NPC guards, but nothing more unless you dedicated PCs to protecting them.
These could be raided, killing the NPC (or pcs if present) and resources that have accumulated could be stolen. The raiders would be flagged as hostile to the owners, but unless PvP occured and if the raiders waited for hostility to be mutual (allow to be hit first), they would not risk losing rep for these raids. The Dev Blog sections I'm referencing is called Going-a-Viking and Hostility.
Bottom line, unless you control the gusher / kit or you're willing to steal from it, then your only other option is to harvest from nodes.
Then you "run" away with the loot at a very low pace. Or you have a few porters with loincloths and bags.
I still have problems with the concept of playing the game as the loincloth porter. And sorry, but my experience in EVE is that even if you are an important asset you will be treated as dirt by a nice percentage of the players.
"You aren't fighting for the settlement."
"No, I have spent my XP to increase my carrying capacity."
"You must pay to stay in our settlement, leech."
"I am spending my XP for the settlement."
"You are becoming rich on our back."
and so on.
A couple of players with that mentality and a settlement atmosphere will become poisonous very fast.
- * -
We should remember that most people will not have a Destiny Twin.
T2+ bags probably will require some skill.
Strong back cost skill points and require freeholder armor to work (I may be mistaken).
The encumbrance bonus skill cost XP.
So how many weeks of training to get a good porter?
Who will do it?
How we will move the stuff from a gusher to a settlement?
- * -
Disclaimer: I like the game, I think it will have success, I hope we will find a way to make this functional and fun.
Maybe NPC hired porters?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Which begs the question--what good are nodes, then?My guess is, gushers will be controlled and guarded. The very old DEV Blogs used to speak of kits being set up to extract the resources from gushers. These kits are owned by a company that set them up. There would be a couple of NPC guards, but nothing more unless you dedicated PCs to protecting them.
These could be raided, killing the NPC (or pcs if present) and resources that have accumulated could be stolen. The raiders would be flagged as hostile to the owners, but unless PvP occured and if the raiders waited for hostility to be mutual (allow to be hit first), they would not risk losing rep for these raids. The Dev Blog sections I'm referencing is called Going-a-Viking and Hostility.
Bottom line, unless you control the gusher / kit or you're willing to steal from it, then your only other option is to harvest from nodes.
Then you "run" away with the loot at a very low pace. Or you have a few porters with loincloths and bags.
I still have problems with the concept of playing the game as the loincloth porter. And sorry, but my experience in EVE is that even if you are an important asset you will be treated as dirt by a nice percentage of the players.
"You aren't fighting for the settlement."
"No, I have spent my XP to increase my carrying capacity."
"You must pay to stay in our settlement, leech."
"I am spending my XP for the settlement."
"You are becoming rich on our back."
and so on.
A couple of players with that mentality and a settlement atmosphere will become poisonous very fast.
There is always a few combat focused characters who over-rate their importance.
I had a similiar argument with a few players on one of those chinese micro-transaction MMOs a few years ago and promptly deleted my account (not even a rage quit or tantrum, just really couldnt be bothered the game had got boring and it was like my 2nd or third server). I think they dropped from rated 2nd on the server to 6th or 7th instantly because the game ranked a guild on assets not just total standing armies :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still have problems with the concept of playing the game as the loincloth porter. And sorry, but my experience in EVE is that even if you are an important asset you will be treated as dirt by a nice percentage of the players.
"You aren't fighting for the settlement."
"No, I have spent my XP to increase my carrying capacity."
"You must pay to stay in our settlement, leech."
"I am spending my XP for the settlement."
"You are becoming rich on our back."
and so on.
A couple of players with that mentality and a settlement atmosphere will become poisonous very fast.
I imagine that as the success of the settlement is totally dependent on its gatherers and crafters, that behavior wont be typical for all settlements, not any successful at least. And voting with your feet will be quite powerful.
Combat porter is probably going to be quite lucrative as a sideline work. Perhaps a bit boring sometimes, but depending on how the system works out in the end....|
Goblin Squad Member
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But who will train for it?
What I will do:
Destiny twin - probably switch fighter, but surely an adventuring character with a few gathering skills and a good quantity of knowledges.
Very basic carrying capacity skills at he will have plenty of skills to take.
"Main": a dedicated crafter to 1 single profession. 1.5 years to get to the top of the profession (skill 20) ......
You think that I would pay for the training of a third character to make it a porter that will be very hard to manage while controlling my adventurer character? It would make a gatherer character before a porter character.
Someone can calculate the time needed to train the encumbrance skill, strong back , the freeholder armor skill and the other stuff that you will need to make this character worthwhile in his role as a porter?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Diego
This whole game still gets finetuned. Encumbrance is in and should do some of the following:
Heavy armour will be best protection but will give you disadvantages in encumbrance and spell casting.
Naked playing is discouraged
Items and feats will help to get carrying capacity up
Everything is interlocking - especially with something as basic as encumbrance. There goal goes in the right directtion but we are now finding corner cases that are penelized and should maybe not. These are knock on effects - like a crafter unable to carry all ingredients for a single crafting session etc.
Getting this finetuning right will take input from players and time.
I saw it as a great improvement that GW changed +3 recipes and they need a lot more ingredients. But it made some now unable to do without getting stuff from the vault.
Wizards will think twice now to use heavy armour and run around in Pot Steel Plate - but it had knock on effects on fighters.
The feats added have been because player wanted them.
Getting it all balanced won't be happen at start of EE. There will be corner cases that are non-intended and there will be corner cases that can be regarded as loopholes.
GW will have failed in 1 1/2 years time if your ideas outlined which are very sensible are not possible in the game. But I would give them some time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I do think some of the increases are a bit over the top, if nothing else it mismatch with my sense of "conservation of mass".
When a crafter will have a problem moving material to the crafting station it may be a indication of something wrong and make me wonder how it will work when crafters will craft actually big things, like mining camps and such.
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Goblin Squad Member
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But who will train for it?
...
Someone can calculate the time needed to train the encumbrance skill, strong back , the freeholder armor skill and the other stuff that you will need to make this character worthwhile in his role as a porter?
I don't think we'll see combat porters. I do think that some character who need Con gains to support their ACE (AFE?) skill set will certainly scoop up levels in those skills.
Miner, smelter, sawyer, and tanner are Constitution based roles. Encumbrance, strongback, pioneer armor feat are all Con based skills. To get to skill 11 or so, those refiners and gatherers will be buying related skills to get their Con up. Will all of those refiners be DTs? No. Many refiners will be DTs at first, but in the future DTsrefiners will be normal characters. Some will be mains, if they are useful.
I think a lot of adventurers will likewise spend some points for encumbrance. Some people will insist on spending 100% of their xp within their class. Others will mix and match, spending only 60-80% of the xp in the 'main' role. Time will show which builds are more competitive overall.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm a bit confused by the issue being brought up in this thread.
The belief seems to be that harvester / pack mules will run about naked, so they can carry more. This however will make them more vulnerable if attacked, and whatever they have in their inventory will be exposed to looting.
If on the other hand they choose to wear armor, they will sacrifice some of that carrying capacity in exchange for greater defense.
This appears to be one of those "working as intended" and "meaningful choices" issues. I seriously doubt many "pack mules" will be running around naked or wearing heavy armor, but rather wearing either light or medium armor. Likewise, I expect that characters trained specifically for this role will have a certain amount of Freeholder / Rogue / Cleric training.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Basic encumbrance is 20 (currently 40 as the containers don't work).
Heavy armor weight 10 pints, a weapon 1 , an implement .5,
So as set of heavy armor + melee weapon + ranged weapon, +2 implements so that you will have your spells or maneuvers available when you switch the weapon set weight 10+1+1+2*.5= 13.
Put that way it seem reasonable,
but
the heavy armor reduce yours carrying capacity by 30%.
So you aren't using 13 points out of 20, you are using 13 points out of 14.
And you suffer the same reduction for your extra encumbrance.
A few copper pieces? A extra weapon because one of your weapons is near the end of its life?
You are already over the unencumbered threshold.
A bandit that wish to steal some stuff will be unable to carry his loot and still move at a decent pace.
A miner will get very little material.
And so on.
On the other hand we have camps to set up gathering spots ad temporary depots in the wilderness. Gushers that will produce large amount of materials and will be the main source of the raw crafting items.
Protection and capability to move the gathered materials. I don't see the two things coexisting in the same character. So it will end with characters in armor doing guard duty and specialized characters doing transport duty simply because it is the most efficient way to do it. But that most efficient way will relegate some character into an extremely narrow role. I see that as a dangerous thing, as some people will be pushed in that role and will find the game boring and unrewarding and abandon it.
It sound perfect for a sweat shop interested in selling gathered stuff for real money.
Boring and repetitive? You are paid to earn money, not to have fun.
Who will attack a caravan of gathered goods? No one as they will be unable to move the loot after the victory.
I don't see how piece A engage with piece B to make it work as intended.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A very significant portion (perhaps even "most") of a Freeholder's carrying capacity comes from the +3 Encumbrance Per Keyword on their Armor. They won't be running around naked. I expect most will also equip Attack Feats they're comfortable with.
From the blog:
Added a per keyword encumbrance bonus to Freeholder and Expert Armor Feats (+3 for Freeholders, +1 for Experts). This bonus was originally scheduled to go on their Feature Feats as a flat bonus, but has been moved to the armor to encourage not going naked to create more space for components. Friends don't let friends carry components naked.Applied percentage encumbrance penalty for Medium and Heavy armors (when worn, the armor reduces your encumbrance threshold in addition to the weight of the armor itself). Heavy armor reduces your encumbrance to 67% of its normal maximum and Medium reduces it to 90%.
So, heavy armor weight 10 points and reduce your carrying capacity by another 6.5 points out of 20, 13 out of 40, 33 out of 100 for the maximum carrying capacity with 10 levels in the skill.
4 keywords at +3 is 12 point of encumbrance, it don't allow you to recover that penalty.
Attack feats require weapons, weapons have a weight.
It all return to the usual basic question:
- how much you will be capable to transport against what is needed to build something?
- how useful is to gather stuff away from home or from a gusher if then you need to move at a crawl to bring the stuff back home or you need to do teens of voyages?
- how long is the specialized training needed to get the feats?
My opinion is that the current balance is off. Maybe it is because I am gathering coal and iron, but the cost in time to transport the raw materials seem high.
essentially I don't see how "Friends don't let friends carry components naked." will be reached with the current rules.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Diego
Gathering and heavy armour might be a bad combination.
GW will fix it if you can carry heavy armour and weapons as this is the role of the fighter and he has to be able to move.
Heavy armour and gatherer, crafter, trader or wizard might be roles that deliberately are crippled as combination.
I'm certainly rethingking my own build for my primary character Thod as a heavy armor gatherer. It doesn't mean I go to the other extreme and will go naked.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Gathering in Light and Medium armour seem the best bet so far.
Heavy armour is more the the PURE combat type of player/character.
Even with Medium armour I can carry about say 120 units of raw iron/coal/lodestone etc.
So if you want that heavy armour for gathering you'll be investing A LOT into the encumbrance feats.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Its all academic at present, it depends entirely on game balance.
In PFO Alpha before encumbrance you gathered in a full combat ready character.
On the other hand in EVE, 9 times out of 10, mining fleets are better off optimizing for maximum yield and writing off the occasional loss to ganking as part of their running costs. If losses get too high change systems.
This is partly due to the way the game is balanced and partly because mining in EVE is an AFK activity and defenses are useless if you are AFK. Even then, Eve miners tend to be a bit less blasé about losing support ships like Rorquals and Orcas.
Hopefully PFO will be somewhere in between.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To me it seems it is most Diego who complains and the rest of use defending the system...
To me it seems several of us have expressed concerns about the encumbrance system, but because we've done it one at a time, you have been able to use schoolyard call-outs to ignore any points we make.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, heavy armor weight 10 points and reduce your carrying capacity by another 6.5 points out of 20, 13 out of 40, 33 out of 100 for the maximum carrying capacity with 10 levels in the skill.
4 keywords at +3 is 12 point of encumbrance, it don't allow you to recover that penalty.
Attack feats require weapons, weapons have a weight.
It all return to the usual basic question:
- how much you will be capable to transport against what is needed to build something?
- how useful is to gather stuff away from home or from a gusher if then you need to move at a crawl to bring the stuff back home or you need to do teens of voyages?
- how long is the specialized training needed to get the feats?My opinion is that the current balance is off. Maybe it is because I am gathering coal and iron, but the cost in time to transport the raw materials seem high.
essentially I don't see how "Friends don't let friends carry components naked." will be reached with the current rules.
Your math is wrong. Advanced keywords count as 4 basic; therefore with 4 keywords matching (3x basic, 1x advanced) you would have 21 bonus encumbrance (9 for basics + 12 for advanced).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I haven't done much gathering so far. I picked a bad weekend to try to level up a Freeholder :)
I have done some Crafting though, and being required to form a bucket brigade* to get the mats to the Crafting Facility leads me to believe there will be significant tweaking to the various weights in the future.
* I literally had to leapfrog two characters, trading the mats to each other and then moving the one who could move a little bit closer to the Crafting Facility each time. For the record, I was trying to queue up a set of the Level 0 Heavy Armor using Salvaged goods.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Renters usually do pay their rent, otherwise they will find themselves in hostile territory, many jumps away from safety.Your "just like" comment makes no sense in comparison. No one mines from a pod.
Why, then, do you think that people would gather naked?
In EVE, the 0.0 miners that hire guards are called "renters", and the guards patrol an area much larger than the area of operation of the miners. Because of that, the miners face little risk and can fit towards the high-risk/reward side of possible ship types (flying ships that e.g. cost 4x as much, mine twice as fast, and provide minimal defensive ability).
I see one reason to believe that the PFO dynamic will not at some point enter something like that- the absence of many chokepoints that potential enemies must traverse.
Of course, there are regions of the map that have such chokepoints.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To me it seams Diego is focused on making sure that any flaws in the roles he's interested in are intended and not accidental.
Partially it is that and partially I am trying to a void this:
I haven't done much gathering so far. I picked a bad weekend to try to level up a Freeholder :)
I have done some Crafting though, and being required to form a bucket brigade* to get the mats to the Crafting Facility leads me to believe there will be significant tweaking to the various weights in the future.
* I literally had to leapfrog two characters, trading the mats to each other and then moving the one who could move a little bit closer to the Crafting Facility each time. For the record, I was trying to queue up a set of the Level 0 Heavy Armor using Salvaged goods.
Probably my focusing on the heavy armor is damaging my position, but I see a % reduction of your carrying capacity in addition to the weight of the armor as a bad mechanic.
So let's divide the two things:
Medium and heavy armor
1) Medium and heavy armor should either have a set (high) weight or a % reduction of your carrying capacity, not both. I am in favor of increasing their weight and removing the % reduction.
Currently heavy armor is almost useless if you want to attack a group or settlement to raid its stores.
2) Same thing if you want to hunt NPC an keep the salvaged items. Salvaged goblin armor, weight 1.3 and the broken weapons have comparable weights ...
3) As a side suggestion, giving the heavy armor users some keyword to lighten it seem in line with Pathfinder tabletop rules (the fighter armor training ability).
Encumbrance and gathering crafting materials
My guild is in the South. We are discussing preparation for EE and one of the things that was said is "if you are born in the north bring coal and pine logs when you move your characters here."
Logic, as coal is rare and pine logs non existent in the South.
Now we look where we can find that stuff, how much can gathered and how much can be moved.
Pine log 0.5, coal 0.5, pine is found only into the north, 60% of the coal is in the NE highlands.
Current encumbrance 40 + 40 unskilled (to be reduced to 20+20).
Wow, current I can move 80 points of coal without being encumbered.
1/3 encumbered slow me down noticeably but I can still move. So let's say I can move about 110 units of coal or pine logs.
Let's look the smelter basic recipes:
We have 3 steel XX +0 recipes, we need to craft them to get the achievement points. That are 30 points of coal.
We move to +1 steel plates? 14 points of coal.
The 110 units of coal you have brought South moving at a slow pace without bringing any other equipment will disappear simply to train the smelter enough that he can learn a further level of his skill.
To make a +0 pot plate you need 11 units of steel plates +0, that is 22 units of coal.
+1? 33.6 units of coal.
And coal is used for the medium armor and the metal weapons.
Essentially someone would have to make a encumbered trip every couple of day from the north to the south simply to get enough coal to equip a couple of martial characters.
Even more fun: steel blanks require coal and they are needed for arrow. As soon as we start using ammunition there will be a lot of work producing them.
At least the north part of the trip wouldn't be wasted because the guy going north to get the coal/pine logs would be moving yew there for the people that use bows. (And yew is needed to make arrows too)
Pine logs: no tier 1 wand and staff without it. Sure, you need less of it, but we are still speaking of supplying a lot of people.
That numbers don't mean "a big convoy every so often", they mean "a constant stream of characters moving north to south and south to north
to move what is needed".
So I see a lot of work for a relatively low reward if we use "normal" characters. We can use purposely trained characters to get maximum carrying capacity but so far no one has replied to the questions:
- how long it will take to train them?
- who will train a porter character? People willing to pay for a third account?
Side question:
- what armor fall under the Freeholder armor skill?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Diego
I absolutely agree - focussing on heavy armour has very much diminished the impact of your arguments.
Lets look mathematically at options for a solution
Definition for simplicity:
A = weight needed for basic equipment (armour , weapons, tools of the trade)
B = free capacity that is left
P = penalty
This then gives either
1) A + B = total capacity
or as it is right now
2) (A + B) * P = total capacity
3) Total capacity = Total capacity(base) + Total capacity(bonus)
A is a constant value. Better equipment isn't getting heavier
If - at it is now - feats and bags etc. increase total capacity then the following happens:
A(heavy) - A(light) > increase leads to the effect that a heavy armour user with enough XP spend in feats or items has a higher carrying capacity as a lightly armoured character.
This always is an option for someone who spends A LOT of effort - but it shouldn't be an option that is easily achievable.
Algorithm 1 will lead to this situation - so while you see this as a better solution it actually (in my view) is worse.
This leaves the option to change equation 3 into
4) Total capacity = Total capacity(base) + Total capacity(bonus) * penalty
This isn't that much different to 2). Actually changing A and or total capacity(basic) you achieve exactly the same.
So I hope I can convince you that actually the current solution of equation 2) is the best way to reach game balance. So this part doesn't need changing and trying to change it will result in a more unbalanced game.
Having said this - I agree that there are issues.
B is too small for heavy armour as you are double hit. This means B went from around 7 (assuming 3 for weapons) to 0 without any feats / items. But there is likely a different / better fix as you suggest.
There also is the issue how to carry large loads long distance. Again I don't think it should be done via personal carrying capacity but rather have something like a cart that can only go along roads. There is a road network - but you would need fighters then to chase away monsters and bandits.
@Diego
So I agree with the issues you bring up - just disagree with the best ways to solve them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Medium and heavy armor should either have a set (high) weight or a % reduction of your carrying capacity, not both. I am in favor of increasing their weight and removing the % reduction.
In the TT game, medium and heavy armor have a high set weight and a reduction in movement speed. Perhaps GW should go with a straight movement penalty to medium and heavy armors rather than the % reduction to carry cap.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps GW should go with a straight movement penalty to medium and heavy armors rather than the % reduction to carry cap.
Unfortunately, it was immediately obvious, during Adventure Time With Bonny [RIP], that this was another area where the MMO and tabletop games require a divergence. Groups weren't able to keep up with one another when travelling, resulting in the player-population being smeared across the landscape; when battles happened, the monsters were dead before the heavily-armoured arrived.
Tabletop groups can just hand-wave this away. MMO groups, often consisting of random folk, find it much more difficult to have the discipline to wait until everyone's in place, often because the lightly-armoured aren't depending on the heavies to keep them alive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Seems there are already quit a few setbacks to heavy armor.
- Severe Spell-casting penalties.
- Larger Weight.
- Costlier to make (I believe it takes more resources).
- No spell resistances(or much less).
- Reduction of carrying capacity.
I am certainly glad that impairment of movement is not up there too.
Advantages: Better AC, more HP. Better endurance?
I think I am going for Medium or Light. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Probably my focusing on the heavy armor is damaging my position...
I think that's the case. I had written up several comments, then realized it was all still about Heavy Armor, so I removed them.
I also think that, if we want to make an impact on the devs' thinking, we should focus on activities that are happening right now, rather than what we think might happen in the future.
I agree that it's extremely painful right now to have to spend 30 minutes running across the map to get a relatively small amount of heavy resources and then spend another 30 minutes running them back home.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Probably my focusing on the heavy armor is damaging my position...I think that's the case. I had written up several comments, then realized it was all still about Heavy Armor, so I removed them.
I also think that, if we want to make an impact on the devs' thinking, we should focus on activities that are happening right now, rather than what we think might happen in the future.
I agree that it's extremely painful right now to have to spend 30 minutes running across the map to get a relatively small amount of heavy resources and then spend another 30 minutes running them back home.
I happen to agree.
Some needed resources are only found on the other side of the freaking map or half-way across the map.
It is a major pain to travel to the spot, harvest, then run back.
And encumbrace limits the amount you can take back with you, when you want to know you'll need more of that resource.
Look at Copper, Only so far found near ThornKeep and it's surrounding mountains and northward.
Yet it's used in A LOT of beginner/intermediate recipes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Heavy armor discussion
Medium and heavy armor should either have a set (high) weight or a % reduction of your carrying capacity, not both. I am in favor of increasing their weight and removing the % reduction.In the TT game, medium and heavy armor have a high set weight and a reduction in movement speed. Perhaps GW should go with a straight movement penalty to medium and heavy armors rather than the % reduction to carry cap.
I would greatly prefer that solution, maybe because I am already used to to it, but Ryan think it is a bad idea.
I have been searching for this quote from the day i started this thread, but it isn't in the Paizo forum, it is in the GW forum:
This is a topic we've debated several times in the office. I am honestly not sure where Lee and his team are going at the moment so I cannot say that my issues are actually reflected in the plan. :) But I can share my issues.
First, and foremost, in a game where you have to run across the map with long travel times even small differences in speed will translate into broken parties. No matter how much discipline people try to exert, we all know that other than a few hardcore groups, the laggards will be left behind. It's happened in every MMO I've ever played where there were speed differences and none of those games involved minutes of travel time which will amplify those effects even more in ours.
Second, if we make the penalties for wearing certain kinds of armor very meaningful in terms of how people play the game, then what will likely happen is that a lot of people will run around "naked" and only armor up for fights. Yes, this may be advantageous to ambush predators but for everyone else its a terrible immersion breaker and since people will do the armor-off thing it means we'll have a game mechanic that people don't actually use. A classic case of "wouldn't it be cool if X" means "nobody does X".
Third, a fairly large number of players are going to spend the time to optimize around heavy armor. If we then turn around and design systems that mean wearing that armor makes those characters "less fun to play" then we've triple-whammied ourselves: we put players into a situation where they spent XP poorly; we designed a game system where "cool X" means "no X"; and a whole crafting tree gets bonsai'd.
My input to the designers has been to make it just as cool to wear the heaviest, most powerful armor possible as it is to wear light and medium armor. Make the trade-offs about choices that don't detract from the "fun". And think about unit cohesion when making a system.
I think, but am not 100% sure, that the current plan is that heavy armor has a substantial weight which means that when you wear heavy armor you will have less encumbrance to allocate to loot and backup gear. It may also have some minor speed penalties under certain circumstances but not in ways that would tend to make traveling groups decohere.
It is here.
To me it seem that the current system will do exactly what Ryan fear.
The heavy armor user kill 2 goblins, get a bit of salvage and start to lag behind. Now he has the choice to drop what he has got or to be separated from the group.
Thod argument that making the heavy armor only weight a lot will make the difference between heavy and light armor meaningless for skilled characters with a high carrying capacity is a good one.
If the armor is limited to a weight that can be managed by unskilled characters (and it should be limited to that) the net gain in available weight allowance for characters as they skill up would be the same for heavy armor uses and Light armor users.
His argument it the first one that make me doubt my opinion.
The problem is that the impact on heavy armor user of even a little number of items beyond the minimum currently seem excessive to me.
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See what happen when you get distracted ;-)
I started writing this post when Urman post was less than 5 minutes old, but I got distracted and then there are several replies to it and some of what I wrote is outdated.
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I will return later for some discussions about encumbrance for all users.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the record, I'm a lot less worried about the effects of Encumbrance once Trade is vibrant, which I think will happen as soon as Wagons are in-game. Having to frequently return to a Settlement that's three or four hexes away from where you're harvesting is not a big deal, as long as you can load up all your resources and make the big trip back where you need to be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Try saying that when Copper and Ordered essense is more than 12 hexes away from your settlement.
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
There are very few hexes on the map that are more than four hexes away from a Settlement. Frequently returning those to fill offload the Resources you've gathered doesn't seem too problematic.
As soon as Wagons are implemented, transporting those stockpiled Resources from the nearby Settlement back to your Home Settlement will be much less problematic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The heavy armor user kill 2 goblins, get a bit of salvage and start to lag behind. Now he has the choice to drop what he has got or to be separated from the group.
At least there the heavy armour wearer gets a choice. In the other (more true to tabletop) option, there is no choice. While in armour, they will always be slower than those who are not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Renters usually do pay their rent, otherwise they will find themselves in hostile territory, many jumps away from safety.Your "just like" comment makes no sense in comparison. No one mines from a pod.
Why, then, do you think that people would gather naked?
In EVE, the 0.0 miners that hire guards are called "renters", and the guards patrol an area much larger than the area of operation of the miners. Because of that, the miners face little risk and can fit towards the high-risk/reward side of possible ship types (flying ships that e.g. cost 4x as much, mine twice as fast, and provide minimal defensive ability).
I see one reason to believe that the PFO dynamic will not at some point enter something like that- the absence of many chokepoints that potential enemies must traverse.
Of course, there are regions of the map that have such chokepoints.
That is not how "renting" in 0.0 works at all, or certainly not in 99% of the cases.
"renting" 0.0 space is usually buying access to a system, surrounded by several systems of highly patrolled sysyems that are NBSI.
You are not hiring guards to protect your mining op, you are mining / ratting with what you provide yourself and you are fairly safe from outsiders. Meanwhile you pay rent, usually several hundred million Isk a week to have that access. Your only real risks are:
1. The Renter has some change in their deal with you, for whatever reason.
2. Some cyno fleet of pirates hot drop on you and then try to escape out before the noose can be drawn closed.
I have seen both happen, and have done the second on three occasions with one of the pirate corps I was active in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The heavy armor user kill 2 goblins, get a bit of salvage and start to lag behind. Now he has the choice to drop what he has got or to be separated from the group.At least there the heavy armour wearer gets a choice. In the other (more true to tabletop) option, there is no choice. While in armour, they will always be slower than those who are not.
But it really matter only during combat, not for overland movement, and tabletop games have mounts and vehicles.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the record, I'm a lot less worried about the effects of Encumbrance once Trade is vibrant, which I think will happen as soon as Wagons are in-game. Having to frequently return to a Settlement that's three or four hexes away from where you're harvesting is not a big deal, as long as you can load up all your resources and make the big trip back where you need to be.
When wagon enter the game.You have a possible date?
Encumbrance discussion
What we have today?
40 base encumbrance + 40 overloaded, some extra with the skills.
It will stay that way until containers enter the game
A good percentage of the crafting materials have a limited weight, but metals, wood and pelts are heavy and are used in large quantities.
In the right terrain 100 units of one of those materials can be gathered in a small time frame, but, unless you want to craft the items in the nearest settlement, moving them to your settlement, if you aren't the guy living in the nearby settlement, will be slow.
You want to be a jeweler? Until you start to use higher level metals you will live in Thornkeep, Auroral or Golghota. You need copper and that is the area where you will find it.
You want to be a iron smelter? The highlands in the North East have 60% of all the coal. So Ossian Crossing, Blackfeather Keep or Forgeholm.
And, as the iron production is there the same is true for the armorer and weapon smiths.
You want to make wizard wand or staffs? The North.
You want to make bows? The South.
It all go well if we are relatively pacifists and the market work.
But currently the market don't work well (clicking items for half an hour to see if someone is selling something similar to the item I need isn't a working market) and there is no incentive for trading.
What I can do with the cp I have?
No one is interested in them and sadly i can't melt them for the copper content.
Turning gathered materials into finished items make them more transportable, but then who will buy them in the current economy?
In the current economy the incentives are:
- live in a settlement near the resources you want, long distance transportation take more time than gathering;
- train only the skills that can be supported by your environment, there is little reason to train as an archer if you can't get a +X bow;
- give the resources you don't want because you haven't trained the appropriate crafting skills to some manager of your settlement, so that he can give them to the guy with the right skill;
- take what others have gathered from the same manager to make your stuff;
- give the stuff you have produced to the manager for the guild member that can use it;
- take from the manager what you need and that other have produced.
A perfect communist society, give based on your skills,take based on your needs, share everything. No incentive to trade outside your group, at most your manager will barter for the stuff your settlement can't produce.
Good luck to the poor manager trying to get that in balance and convince people that they aren't shortchanged or or that there isn't someone taking advantage of the system.
Returning to gathering and encumbrance: there is a small window of overburdening where you can still move at a decent pace. After that point your speed fall rapidly.
So what will happen: gather 60 point of encumbrance (for a naked character) and the return home, as going above that would move than double the time needed to return home.
How much fun: gather for 1 hour then make a 1 hour trip returning to the nearest settlement.
Then spend another 10 minutes to reach an area far away from the settlement that it hasn't been stripped bare and start gathering.
After an hour turn back again.
It depend on your skills and what you are building, but an hour of gathering plus an hour of travel will maybe give you enough stuff to work for a day if you are using heavy materials like iron and coal.
I have envisioned us gathering material in an area and dropping them in some kind of base camp and then moving them as a single convoy with some kind of vehicle or mount, instead we will be a endless file of ants, each one moving a single crumb.
The skills and the Freeholder instructors
AFAIK The freeholder instructor is available only in the crafting towns, in the location where in other towns there is the wizard Academy. or at least that is how it was.
now not all the Crafting towns have it. Specifically Keeper Pass don't have it currently and it was missing it yesterday and this afternoon. But I have found it this morning in Blackfeather Keep. So what is happening here? To stay in theme with the Communist system some crafter settlement is more equal than others? A bug?
Even after that has been fixed, how will the new players know that these needed skills are available only in some player settlement or that they exist at all?
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Goblin Squad Member
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For the record, I'm a lot less worried about the effects of Encumbrance once Trade is vibrant, which I think will happen as soon as Wagons are in-game. Having to frequently return to a Settlement that's three or four hexes away from where you're harvesting is not a big deal, as long as you can load up all your resources and make the big trip back where you need to be.When wagon enter the game.You have a possible date?
Again, for the record, I am worried about the impact Encumbrance is having right now. Not even being able to move to the Crafting Facility with the Salvage items I needed to make Hide and Steel Banded (and nothing else at all) was a major eye-opener.
As I said above, I haven't done a lot of Gathering so far. I'm not trying to argue against you, or downplay the seriousness right now. I remain confident that it won't be a real problem once all the related systems that have already been designed are in place. But, like Ranged combat, the system is kind of broken right now.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Moving materials to crafting buildings and/or the Auction House within a Settlement is the job of the not-yet-built-but-coming-asap code that will let you just select them to/from the Local Vault. You shouldn't have to manually carry that stuff around a Settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Moving materials to crafting buildings and/or the Auction House within a Settlement is the job of the not-yet-built-but-coming-asap code that will let you just select them to/from the Local Vault. You shouldn't have to manually carry that stuff around a Settlement.
Thank Goodness,
I was lugging about 120 units of metal/coal to the smelter a few times yesterday, and it was a royal pain. I had to break the stacks up so I could transport it to the smelter, without not being able to move.|
CEO, Goblinworks
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Why do you wear heavy armor?
It is to maximize your defense. That implies you intend to spend substantial time in combat.
If you are fighting monsters, most of the loot you should get is close to weightless. Starter gear is the notable exception. And it is an exception.
So the character who sees themselves in the role of treating monsters as resource nodes should be fine wearing heavy armor and recovering valuable loot like recipes and spells. You can solo that system if you want. You probably will have to be discarding heavy, low value loot regularly though so you won't be approaching max efficiency.
If you are fighting PCs you expect to get a lot of heavy loot.
That character is stuck in the middle of a meaningful decision. If they use heavy armor the amount of spoils they can recover is substantially reduced. If they wear lighter armor the damage they can absorb will be substantially reduced. If they try to armor up or down depending on where they are in the cycle, they risk becoming someone else's content.
The solution to that problem is "work with another player". In other words, "banditry" is not a good fit for solo play.