Pelirow
Well-Known Member
A couple caveats: This was my first time testing in months, so some of the suggestions or ideas put forth may already have been vetted by SHS. Apologies. Second, my mindset will frequently try to compare the current game state to the original design goals/intents as a point of reference.
Initial impressions: It's still early and still in the "new car smell" phase, but I had a blast this weekend, mainly because grouping was regular and exp was slow and steady. I played way more than I had any business playing this weekend and made it to 11, and that was after managing to get a couple levels last Wednesday as well. Exp pacing and gain seems good so far.
Dying Matters?
Death isn't really punitive (yet), and I know a "scary" world was one of the original goals where dying should suck and be something you avoid. So far this hasn't been an issue with bag recovery. Now that the game has shifted away from the a la carte mastery system, have the devs circled back to whether dying should now cause exp loss to some degree? There's a lot of ways to make this flexible, such as dying once gives you a one hour debuff, and if you die again with that debuff only then do you lose exp. The exp loss can be made modest rather than significant, so it at least stings without getting to EQ/P99 levels of loss. 10% loss on death usually only means 5-10 mobs to grind on to recover, but it's still a drawback. Another option is to make it so that instanced dungeon areas are the only places that have exp penalties, but also give them an exp bonus (the penalty should outstrip the gains from the bonus). Fear can be an effective gameplay element, as it creates exteme excitement when you get that exp and ding without dying, and the frustration of dying a lot and losing exp will make players play more intelligently.
Crafting Intricacy?
The initial pass crafting system looks good, mostly working other than that =0 bug that even I got while only crafting 1-2 items. Didn't notice at first when it happened, I only know I crafted a single small mace bronze head and it showed a stack of 0. I was wondering if it may be caused by something in the crafting code thinking that "this is something that can fail" similar to how crafting ingots will sometimes result in scrap metal instead.
Is the plan still to eventually have crafting be a big part of the game with Vanguard/SWG-like crafting mechanics and steps? This was one of the big initial draws to the game for me, and can really give the game a noticeable identity. Right now crafting is the same old thing as any other mmo, even with the option to vary the materials used.
If Vanguard/SWG crafting system is no more, then I suggest trying to add more flavor to crafting by having crafters be able to provide modest set bonuses to gear. There are various ways this could be done but I won't elaborate on this unless asked. My main point is, crafting has some nice flexibility with different combinations allowed, but still could use a bit more cowbell. IIRC there was mention in the last beta update notes that SHS intends to refactor and reduce the defensive and offensive stat options; I would ask that y'all make sure that's absolutely certain because while it clutters up item descriptions, having those things to tweak how we like gives crafters and end users more freedom of choice, or at least the illusion of choice.
I'm a big fan of the weight system so far, it is absolutely creating forced choices for me as a tank.
Adventuring
Is leashing a permanent thing? I don't recall leashes being a thing, or if they were, being so short. It's pretty easy right now to run past aggro or run out of aggro range, so I suggest more loose leashing or double the leash lengths. Goes back to the fear of dying thing; the world doesn't feel scary right now. The POI discovery method of unfogging a map was a nice touch, if a bit annoying. There were two parts on the western side of NNH that I could not find a POI and unfog; unsure if that wasn't implemented or I just failed. Also, ember ring in Ravenrock camp didn't show up on my map.
Defender/Marshal
The class felt pretty good, my biggest suggestion is to make a non-attack animation for Halt and to give it an icon over its head similar to the stun ZZZ that Archer? spec gets. Halt root was broken so many times because people couldn't tell something was rooted and since it's the tank doing the rooting, dps stuck on the "tank hit I hit" mentality of hitting whatever I hit because Halt has an attack animation. A simple two hands forward animation (or 1 with shield) should be enough.
Pursuit felt the most useless of all my abilities, it was only ever "working as intended" when dealing with archers trying to get the distance on me; more often it was used as a getaway tool to slow down the chasing mob until unleashed. It would be nice if the debuff gave a attack speed slow and buffed me with a haste if we don't move, then convert the cooldown into a combat movement debuff/buff if we move. That would reward positioning and timely use of the pursuit skill. Another option is to make it so that the pursuit buff that gets placed on the Marshall can instead be placed on a defensive target if one is selected. That way I could at least help a dps more quickly get into position if they need to move. Both suggestions could also be something tweaked with reagents!
The "Disadvantage" aspect of the level 10 ability whose name escapes me was often dropped on animals after 1-2 seconds and rarely lasted the whole debuff duration on humans. I assume this is something that will happen less and less as the levels go up. Otherwise the secondary effect didn't seem very useful. I ended up treating it as extra dps and nothing more, which feels more like a Jugg thing to do.
Reagents
Reagents are cool, and I hope they continue to get expanded. I think there will be eternal tension over "needed" vs "useful" but I currently feel SHS should be operating on the mindset that players will highly desire and want reagents to the point they treat reagents as a "need." I hope more abilities, if not all abilities, get reagent use. I think one way to use reagents for more abilities without saturating the world with hundreds of reagent drops is to make the loot drops a "base" reagent and then have a faction-based alchemist that can convert base reagents into useful ones. As way of example: let's say instead of "smug/exile tar flask" drop it'll just be "smug/exile flask" that drops for Marshal specs. Recall above for Pursuit I suggested maybe a reagent that makes pursuit provide a haste debuff on mobs and a haste on self instead of combat movement. Take the base flask to the faction alchemist and with enough faction rep and some coin, the alchemist can make either Tar flasks for Halt that already exists, or make a Dulling Flask reagent that applies to Pursuit. Now you can likewise expand this to other Marshall abilities that lean towards CC tools, and likewise make bear piss have variations that apply to the aggro/damage tools, and a third reagent for defensive skills. 1 drop that could be converted into multiple different uses will drastically clean up loot pools while allowing for a wide range of uses, including even having the ability to make reagents even more nuanced the higher your faction is (such as bear piss that can do more damage but less threat instead of the current bear piss numbers). The end result is this type of system would: again provide player freedom choice because with the limited reagent drops, they need to choose which useful reagent they want, gives meaningful timesink for players since they'd have to get faction rep and also travel to their alchemist (each class should have different alchemists at different locations), and a money sink by having a fee for the alchemist.
I think there's enormous potential with reagents to give class identity; and I'd be happy to help spitball reagent options if there's a Reagents suggestion thread created. This could be a very nice option for player identity and choice.
I also agree with other comments I've seen that the reagents bar needs a lot more customization, my recommendations, in addition to an "on/off" toggle: make it so that each reagent slot can have conditions set to that spot based on number of reagent, mob color, and mob difficulty. So you can set "do not use if less than ##," or "do not use if mob is [color] or less," or "do not use if mob is 2^ or less," etc. On the opposite side: "only use if: mob is orange and 3^." I think if SHS can have those sort of conditions tied to the reagent slots, that'll make for very happy players.
Other thoughts/comments
Are the dps calculations for weapons still ongoing? I noticed my sword always had a higher dps average number in the tooltip over a maul levels 1-10. Would stand to reason that the big 2h weapon should have more dps, especially since it swings at 8/9 seconds compared to 4/5s for swords. I noticed that when using sword or maul level 1-10, the numbers didn't seem different so sword felt significantly better. At 10 with 38% lvl 19 tin maul, I finally felt a noticeable difference in the damage output against a sword. At the same time, the avg. dps number on my maul vs my sword still said the sword was better dps.
I noticed some strange auto attack cooldown timer clipping when swapping mid-combat between maul and sword/board; it looks like if I swap from a higher to a lower cooldown weapon the cooldown doesn't reset. So if I have a maul counting down from auto attack 9s, use an ability, and I swap over to sword/board the sword board seems to count the seconds used by the maul towards it's own cooldown (so it'd be at cooldown of 1 or 2 seconds if the maul was down to 6 or 7 seconds). It had similar issues the other way around; I will test this further next weekend.
Aggro management was an afterthought levels 1-8. After 8 I noticed I finally needed to fight for aggro a bit but it still was very easy compared to pre-alpha testing that I last engaged in. Not sure if aggro becomes a bigger and bigger issue as levels go up.
I haven't made alts yet, but I have contrasting concerns about how with 3 toons people can be quasi-omni crafters, and at the same time have concerns that shared bank space is too small. It both penalizes players who play multiple toons even without being crafters, and disincentivizes collecting unique gear which can be a hallmark of slow grindy games like this. It'll suck to collect some cool named and then... junk it. Not sure what the solution is since if bank space is opened up, crafters will have even more advantage, yet everyone else suffers for different reasons. Special bank vaults for named items or non-crafting items based on faction might be a solution
The big enchilada from this weekend
Now for my BIG suggestion based on a weekend of playtesting: I think there may be a way for Undone to have his cake and eat it too with regards to assigning players abilities and a la carte abilities: why not make the abilities in a given range available at each of the current levels, but let the players choose which skill they get? So for levels 6-18, you have 5 ability choice moments: 6, 8, 10, 14, 18. Keep the same abilities that exist in that range, but let the players choose which one they want at each ability choice moment. That way it's still the abilities you set up and nothing changes with the abilities themselves, but players can choose during the timeframe of that ability pool. Once at 18, everyone playing a given class will be the "same" again, but they at least got to choose within that ability pool. It's somewhat an illusion of choice, but at least players truly do get to choose and pick preferred abilities within that pool to use sooner rather than later. You could do the same for 20-40, assuming there will actually be more than just 1 ability available... and I sure as hell hope there would be at least 10-15 more abilities per class for the 20-50 range!
As another possible option in addition to the above proposal, SHS could perhaps have special "divergent" ability unlocks that would allow specs to choose one ability from the other 2 specs, with some limits. So if there aren't that many abilities planned for levels 20-50, perhaps an option for broadening the player tool kits is to allow a choice at level 30 where a player can choose one of the 6-18 abilities for the other 2 specs, excluding the "best" ability of that spec in that range, and the chosen "divergent" ability will cap its numbers at "X levels behind my class level." So say I'm Marshall and I hit 30, I get to choose a "divergent" ability. My choice would be from a pool of 8 options: the 4 Jugg skills from 6-18 and the 4 Knight skills from 6-18 excluding best Jugg dps skill and best Knight defensive skill, for 8 options but can only choose one, and it should always be "X levels behind" my Marshall skills. So if I choose the Jugg taunt skill, at level 50 it should have the effect as if it was level 40. This could be a nice way to allow very minor crossover, limited to 1 choice, and really promote player identity. Can perhaps do this again at 50, choosing from the level 10-49 skills, again excluding the "iconic" skills integral to the specs. This would be something pretty cool if tied behind a major questliine.
Initial impressions: It's still early and still in the "new car smell" phase, but I had a blast this weekend, mainly because grouping was regular and exp was slow and steady. I played way more than I had any business playing this weekend and made it to 11, and that was after managing to get a couple levels last Wednesday as well. Exp pacing and gain seems good so far.
Dying Matters?
Death isn't really punitive (yet), and I know a "scary" world was one of the original goals where dying should suck and be something you avoid. So far this hasn't been an issue with bag recovery. Now that the game has shifted away from the a la carte mastery system, have the devs circled back to whether dying should now cause exp loss to some degree? There's a lot of ways to make this flexible, such as dying once gives you a one hour debuff, and if you die again with that debuff only then do you lose exp. The exp loss can be made modest rather than significant, so it at least stings without getting to EQ/P99 levels of loss. 10% loss on death usually only means 5-10 mobs to grind on to recover, but it's still a drawback. Another option is to make it so that instanced dungeon areas are the only places that have exp penalties, but also give them an exp bonus (the penalty should outstrip the gains from the bonus). Fear can be an effective gameplay element, as it creates exteme excitement when you get that exp and ding without dying, and the frustration of dying a lot and losing exp will make players play more intelligently.
Crafting Intricacy?
The initial pass crafting system looks good, mostly working other than that =0 bug that even I got while only crafting 1-2 items. Didn't notice at first when it happened, I only know I crafted a single small mace bronze head and it showed a stack of 0. I was wondering if it may be caused by something in the crafting code thinking that "this is something that can fail" similar to how crafting ingots will sometimes result in scrap metal instead.
Is the plan still to eventually have crafting be a big part of the game with Vanguard/SWG-like crafting mechanics and steps? This was one of the big initial draws to the game for me, and can really give the game a noticeable identity. Right now crafting is the same old thing as any other mmo, even with the option to vary the materials used.
If Vanguard/SWG crafting system is no more, then I suggest trying to add more flavor to crafting by having crafters be able to provide modest set bonuses to gear. There are various ways this could be done but I won't elaborate on this unless asked. My main point is, crafting has some nice flexibility with different combinations allowed, but still could use a bit more cowbell. IIRC there was mention in the last beta update notes that SHS intends to refactor and reduce the defensive and offensive stat options; I would ask that y'all make sure that's absolutely certain because while it clutters up item descriptions, having those things to tweak how we like gives crafters and end users more freedom of choice, or at least the illusion of choice.
I'm a big fan of the weight system so far, it is absolutely creating forced choices for me as a tank.
Adventuring
Is leashing a permanent thing? I don't recall leashes being a thing, or if they were, being so short. It's pretty easy right now to run past aggro or run out of aggro range, so I suggest more loose leashing or double the leash lengths. Goes back to the fear of dying thing; the world doesn't feel scary right now. The POI discovery method of unfogging a map was a nice touch, if a bit annoying. There were two parts on the western side of NNH that I could not find a POI and unfog; unsure if that wasn't implemented or I just failed. Also, ember ring in Ravenrock camp didn't show up on my map.
Defender/Marshal
The class felt pretty good, my biggest suggestion is to make a non-attack animation for Halt and to give it an icon over its head similar to the stun ZZZ that Archer? spec gets. Halt root was broken so many times because people couldn't tell something was rooted and since it's the tank doing the rooting, dps stuck on the "tank hit I hit" mentality of hitting whatever I hit because Halt has an attack animation. A simple two hands forward animation (or 1 with shield) should be enough.
Pursuit felt the most useless of all my abilities, it was only ever "working as intended" when dealing with archers trying to get the distance on me; more often it was used as a getaway tool to slow down the chasing mob until unleashed. It would be nice if the debuff gave a attack speed slow and buffed me with a haste if we don't move, then convert the cooldown into a combat movement debuff/buff if we move. That would reward positioning and timely use of the pursuit skill. Another option is to make it so that the pursuit buff that gets placed on the Marshall can instead be placed on a defensive target if one is selected. That way I could at least help a dps more quickly get into position if they need to move. Both suggestions could also be something tweaked with reagents!
The "Disadvantage" aspect of the level 10 ability whose name escapes me was often dropped on animals after 1-2 seconds and rarely lasted the whole debuff duration on humans. I assume this is something that will happen less and less as the levels go up. Otherwise the secondary effect didn't seem very useful. I ended up treating it as extra dps and nothing more, which feels more like a Jugg thing to do.
Reagents
Reagents are cool, and I hope they continue to get expanded. I think there will be eternal tension over "needed" vs "useful" but I currently feel SHS should be operating on the mindset that players will highly desire and want reagents to the point they treat reagents as a "need." I hope more abilities, if not all abilities, get reagent use. I think one way to use reagents for more abilities without saturating the world with hundreds of reagent drops is to make the loot drops a "base" reagent and then have a faction-based alchemist that can convert base reagents into useful ones. As way of example: let's say instead of "smug/exile tar flask" drop it'll just be "smug/exile flask" that drops for Marshal specs. Recall above for Pursuit I suggested maybe a reagent that makes pursuit provide a haste debuff on mobs and a haste on self instead of combat movement. Take the base flask to the faction alchemist and with enough faction rep and some coin, the alchemist can make either Tar flasks for Halt that already exists, or make a Dulling Flask reagent that applies to Pursuit. Now you can likewise expand this to other Marshall abilities that lean towards CC tools, and likewise make bear piss have variations that apply to the aggro/damage tools, and a third reagent for defensive skills. 1 drop that could be converted into multiple different uses will drastically clean up loot pools while allowing for a wide range of uses, including even having the ability to make reagents even more nuanced the higher your faction is (such as bear piss that can do more damage but less threat instead of the current bear piss numbers). The end result is this type of system would: again provide player freedom choice because with the limited reagent drops, they need to choose which useful reagent they want, gives meaningful timesink for players since they'd have to get faction rep and also travel to their alchemist (each class should have different alchemists at different locations), and a money sink by having a fee for the alchemist.
I think there's enormous potential with reagents to give class identity; and I'd be happy to help spitball reagent options if there's a Reagents suggestion thread created. This could be a very nice option for player identity and choice.
I also agree with other comments I've seen that the reagents bar needs a lot more customization, my recommendations, in addition to an "on/off" toggle: make it so that each reagent slot can have conditions set to that spot based on number of reagent, mob color, and mob difficulty. So you can set "do not use if less than ##," or "do not use if mob is [color] or less," or "do not use if mob is 2^ or less," etc. On the opposite side: "only use if: mob is orange and 3^." I think if SHS can have those sort of conditions tied to the reagent slots, that'll make for very happy players.
Other thoughts/comments
Are the dps calculations for weapons still ongoing? I noticed my sword always had a higher dps average number in the tooltip over a maul levels 1-10. Would stand to reason that the big 2h weapon should have more dps, especially since it swings at 8/9 seconds compared to 4/5s for swords. I noticed that when using sword or maul level 1-10, the numbers didn't seem different so sword felt significantly better. At 10 with 38% lvl 19 tin maul, I finally felt a noticeable difference in the damage output against a sword. At the same time, the avg. dps number on my maul vs my sword still said the sword was better dps.
I noticed some strange auto attack cooldown timer clipping when swapping mid-combat between maul and sword/board; it looks like if I swap from a higher to a lower cooldown weapon the cooldown doesn't reset. So if I have a maul counting down from auto attack 9s, use an ability, and I swap over to sword/board the sword board seems to count the seconds used by the maul towards it's own cooldown (so it'd be at cooldown of 1 or 2 seconds if the maul was down to 6 or 7 seconds). It had similar issues the other way around; I will test this further next weekend.
Aggro management was an afterthought levels 1-8. After 8 I noticed I finally needed to fight for aggro a bit but it still was very easy compared to pre-alpha testing that I last engaged in. Not sure if aggro becomes a bigger and bigger issue as levels go up.
I haven't made alts yet, but I have contrasting concerns about how with 3 toons people can be quasi-omni crafters, and at the same time have concerns that shared bank space is too small. It both penalizes players who play multiple toons even without being crafters, and disincentivizes collecting unique gear which can be a hallmark of slow grindy games like this. It'll suck to collect some cool named and then... junk it. Not sure what the solution is since if bank space is opened up, crafters will have even more advantage, yet everyone else suffers for different reasons. Special bank vaults for named items or non-crafting items based on faction might be a solution
The big enchilada from this weekend
Now for my BIG suggestion based on a weekend of playtesting: I think there may be a way for Undone to have his cake and eat it too with regards to assigning players abilities and a la carte abilities: why not make the abilities in a given range available at each of the current levels, but let the players choose which skill they get? So for levels 6-18, you have 5 ability choice moments: 6, 8, 10, 14, 18. Keep the same abilities that exist in that range, but let the players choose which one they want at each ability choice moment. That way it's still the abilities you set up and nothing changes with the abilities themselves, but players can choose during the timeframe of that ability pool. Once at 18, everyone playing a given class will be the "same" again, but they at least got to choose within that ability pool. It's somewhat an illusion of choice, but at least players truly do get to choose and pick preferred abilities within that pool to use sooner rather than later. You could do the same for 20-40, assuming there will actually be more than just 1 ability available... and I sure as hell hope there would be at least 10-15 more abilities per class for the 20-50 range!
As another possible option in addition to the above proposal, SHS could perhaps have special "divergent" ability unlocks that would allow specs to choose one ability from the other 2 specs, with some limits. So if there aren't that many abilities planned for levels 20-50, perhaps an option for broadening the player tool kits is to allow a choice at level 30 where a player can choose one of the 6-18 abilities for the other 2 specs, excluding the "best" ability of that spec in that range, and the chosen "divergent" ability will cap its numbers at "X levels behind my class level." So say I'm Marshall and I hit 30, I get to choose a "divergent" ability. My choice would be from a pool of 8 options: the 4 Jugg skills from 6-18 and the 4 Knight skills from 6-18 excluding best Jugg dps skill and best Knight defensive skill, for 8 options but can only choose one, and it should always be "X levels behind" my Marshall skills. So if I choose the Jugg taunt skill, at level 50 it should have the effect as if it was level 40. This could be a nice way to allow very minor crossover, limited to 1 choice, and really promote player identity. Can perhaps do this again at 50, choosing from the level 10-49 skills, again excluding the "iconic" skills integral to the specs. This would be something pretty cool if tied behind a major questliine.
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