Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[OskaRus]

-- Good Observation! - Then how would they fix that problem?

by making some pvp free location. Steal attempt => instakilled by guard, activating dynamite or having one active => instakilled by guard, taking weapon to active hand => instakilled by guard, Lockpick attempt => instakilled by guard (to allow cars and caravans to auction), all mercs => instakilled by guard, and more auction npcs in single auction location.

[Lordus]

avv: i disagree. I think that devs should create "scenario" ("script"), full it with obstacles and force players to adopt to that situations. Apopt by raising special skills, preparing and acquiring needed requirement.

 I like idea that was implemented in single player Fallout mod, Fallout Of Nevada (http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58394).

 There are locations of abandoned cities, full of deserted buildings, but doors are locked. So you need lockpick to enter, or to open chest inside. Some of the locations are full of radioactivity, so you need rad x and rad away = investition. I suggest to use little rework geiger computer.. he should show another info. The amount of rad. per. sec. (not the maximum dose you get), so you would see if current place is worthy.

 Avv, I think that you look on chars customization in bad way. Of course, they would have to invest some points into neccesary skills, bud they dont need to raise it over 150 or over 100.. This number depends on devs.

 You know, at this moment, you are still forced to raise some neccesary skills to survive against beasts and players (any firearm skill is needed, or combo of sneak and throwing, ..). Your hypothetical char with tagged speech, gambling and traps is useless now. Why? Because there are not any obstacles you have to overcome with those skills.

 IF this game would be very balanced, i believe that every possible char would have its own way how to survive and live in fonline wasteland. But this is an ilusion, because well known facts (less time of devs, hard to realize, bad form betatesting from players,..). So i would rather see entertaining way, the way i need to adopt to the wasteland condition (well, so surprising that i have to adopt to post nuclear world?) if any new kind of gameplay is granted.

 Newbies or other players would still have their own ways.. tier 0 (it could be very wide scale of stuff), trading, .... .

 Scypior: I see the fear of alting in devs eyes. Alts were not your original idea. But after two years, there was a lot of time that you could realize that there is nothing to do with and you should change your view of this phenomen. Instead of negative, look at it as an chalenge and positive thing. Again, constructing, developing, testing and using new types of chars are for faction players one of the main reasons why to play fonline.

 One example: I like to play SG Sniper. Here is evolution of developement in current era only:
 1) post wipe basic sniper without drugs, 10 PE, cca 167 HP, 10 LC, weapon handling, max sniper perks
 2) then faction get acces to drugs, so sniper char with buffout, nuka and cig. (more perception because of sharpshooter perk thats replace weapon handling,..). = Best classical sniper char with maximized snipers skill (luck and pe, snipers perks). 12 PE, 1677 HP, 10 LC.
 3) When large alliances fought between themselfs, it was obvious that new type of sniper char is needed. Because of huge amount of players in each team durign the fight, sniper char dont need as much to protect himself, rather than focus on damage. So builds with 11 PE, 149(or 14x) HP, 6, 7 luck and "almost dualshot" ability were very popular in those huge battles.
 4) After many players left fonline, there were small battles (in New Reno,..) rather than huge ones. So player who wants to enjoy this fights, needs to create char with higher HP to stay as long as possible. So snipers with 220 or 240 HP, with lower luck and PE was designed.

 This is simple review of developement of SG sniper build in last era. It would not be possible without alting (creating and using more than one alt per person). It was chalenging, it was reaction on situation. And i unfortunately have to tell you, that i dont think that many devs even know about this. This is reason, why i personaly "little dislike" surf in his game position, because he should be connection between playeres and devs and he should report about this to devs. Devs reactions are: "alts are bad, we need something to do agaisnt them, but we dont know what." But i (faction player) want to see "alts give additional gameplay, we need to support alting in some way".

 Sorry for little OT post, but its core is related with gathering

[Bartosz]

Personally, I do not have nothing against such alts as you've described - you just have various builds, for various occasions, sure it's got little to do with RP, but for that we would need entirely different server rules.
The only thing that would effectively reduce your characters number in such context, would be scrapping point-distribution skill system entirely in favor of item bonuses (isn't it what Diablo3 will be doing?).

The problem with alts is bigger - and it is connected to gathering - when they are just used to bypass some game mechanic (cooldown). Players feel cheated when they have to wait for artificial cooldown, so they are cheating back:)

[Andr3aZ]

i just had the idea of cooldowns for gathering bound to the ip, that would fix alting, but ecourage proxy usage :-/

[Lordus]

 There are two basic principles fighting each others.

 1) prevent of enourmous amount of stuff (weapons, ammo, armors, drugs, ...).

 It has two variants: 1a) quality prevention and 1b) quantity prevention.

 ad 1a) means that as devs. you dont want enviroment, where everybody uses only best stuff
 ad 1b) means that as devs. you want to create post apocalyptic enviroment with atmosphere of shortage, also this replace the players afraid of perma death of their char and force player to behave at least carefully (not suicide at all).

 2) players should get enough stuff in reasonable time to play their favourite roleplay (pvp, pve, ...).

 So you created cooldowns (for gathering, for crafting, for NPC traders stuff respawn, ..). Also you created and balanced weapons (armors, drugs,...) strenght and adequate demand of resources that tries to match the weapons strenght hierarchy.

 Better and more stuff, better and more resources = more cooldowns = more time.

 But there are players, a lot of them, that see entertainment and gameplay only during actions, that requires only best stuff, otherwise they dont have any chance to succeed.

 But also, there are players, a lot of them, that see entertaiment and gameplay in slowly developing of their char, using more and more advanced weapons during the time, until they reach some invisible goal and then they left, or join PvP factions, or ... .

 So there exist different groups of players with different demands. Cooldowns is for one group almost useless obstacle that has to be overcomed (alting, proxy, but also in game mechanism.. PK for stuff, tent thiefs, ..). For other group, elimination of cooldowns means elimination of their way how to play Fonline.

 So in past, you devs tried to calibrate the level using cooldowns that would  be ok for all. I think that this aproach is impossible.

 So i suggested the "obstacle system".

 ad 1a) In PvE, there would not exist such thing as a best stuff. There could be a types of critters, that needs a specific weapons (i.e. knockback shotguns for wanamingos, flamethrowers for spore plants, emp nades for robots, ..), armors (i.e. fire resistant armor against firegeckons) or stuff (flares, lockpics, geigers, ropes, toolkits).
          In PvP, there exist kind of balance of weapons, that will i hope continue. (I hope at least 2 or 3 usable weapons in PvP per each weapons skill). Also i suggested low equip locations for PvP (=> not such thing as a best stuff..).

 So in general, there should not exist one best stuff item.

 ad 1b) Quantity should be reduced in that way, that high tier stuff needs investment of low tier ones (as i wrote in previous posts).

 Cooldowns are not needed. They are replaced by obstacles: a) critters (kill, eliminate, disarm, run thru) b) time to get acquire lower tier stuff you need to invest to get higher tier. c) char. developement to survive those obstacles.

 Alts in current way are not needed. Chars for mining (scav.) needs to level up to adequate level and because of no cooldowns, only one char is enough (until you develop best type of char for overcome the obstacles, but then you dont need your first alt anyway).

 Solo players would have their mountain, they could climb up. PvP players dont need to climb up whole mountain. If they need tier max stuff (i.e. sniper and kevlar armor in mariposa military base stores), they need only emp nades, el. lockpick and science skill to disable some defences. They can trade emp nades with other players for other stuff, from npcs, they dont needs directly start from tier 0 dungeons to fet tier 1 stuff, than tier 2, tier 3 until tier max. They dont need the climb the rock, they can bivouac just under the peak(trading with other players, NPCs,..). Do you undestand me?

[Bartosz]

Do you undestand me?

Of course, though it's not that easy to 'implement' (yeah, this word do not fit here even). It's not a single idea, rather a 'trend', that also others were noticing and suggesting (obstacles instead of timeouts). So it should naturally progress into (more or less) this direction. Not gonna happen instantly though.

[avv]

There's nothing wrong with pvp alts because sometimes you need for example sneak but your gang's sneaker is afk. But gathering alts are just group of unnecessary and pointless alts that don't have to exist in first place.
I see skills, perks and stats as tradeoffs - you put points in an ability which means you are weaker at some other area. It's clearly visible and balanced in combat: you take either lifegiver or bonus rate of fire. You can't bring your alt in the middle of combat when there's a situation that lifegiver would have been a better choice.

But if you put some sort of requirements for gathering in form of SPECIAL, there is no trade off. You just make a char and it's perfectly suitable for its job.

If skills are to be needed in gathering, then they best have combat use aswell. Aside from choice of weapon, doc and FA come right afterwards as tagged skills. So if lockpick, repair and science were needed to gather stuff they best have some direct and visible use in pvp equal to doctor.
But personally I see the current gathering requirements just fine. Any char can collect everything. Only thing that's missing are replacing the cooldowns with correct challenges.

I do not know Lordus why you support alt-based gathering. Wouldn't it be much better if you could just keep logged on your main character named Lordus and travel the world and go to places where you needed to go and do stuff you need to do without the need of relogs. When you need to do something specific you just change equipment, not char.

[ShemsuHor]

Whoever mentioned that crafting and digging materials isn't fallout style was right. Come to think of it- if the people of the post apocalyptic world could make high quality metal parts just by tinkering with a workbench they would rise the world from the ashes in few years. So I have to admit that the whole idea of mining and crafting is..well...not fallout canon-ish. I think that the best solution would be to have a lot of specific areas on the world map which would contain some wrecked cars, ruined buildings and stuff like that so the players could use their repair skill for mechanical and science for electronic stuff. If it would be backed by a dependency:the higher skill the better stuff, and by THE STUFF i mean not complete weapons but maybe parts that would work as weapon components. It would result in a situation like:
guy A with a high enough lvl to make and use tier 2 weapons and a guy B at lvl 1 enters a location. A can pwn B but he wont benefit from it in terms of equipement(only lulz) so he could just go about his buissnes and leave, while B can hide until A goes away and scavage for his first pistol and die and the first radscorpion encounter 2 minutes later.
The entire idea would be just fine if there would be a price difference of tiers. For exaple: tier 1 stuff would be rather cheap and available at almost all merchants. Tier 2 would cost twice as much as tier 1 and only a few merchants would be able to buy and sell it. And tier 3 would be available only to certain faction members and maybe those who are best friends forever with the gun runners and still would cost the shit out of players. And last but not least tier 0 stuff would be  sought only by some vendors like general stores and merchants like the bartender in NCR the general store migdet in Hub and so on and on. And only they would by those tons of radios and other stuff that every merchant has now. Another feat maybe; those tier 0 merchants would only trade those radios for parts. Istead of giving X caps for a radio they would offer an almost complete set for a 10mm pistol, for something better they would be willing to give a larger clip for the desert eagle...What do you guys and gals think?

[OskaRus]

NPC driven economy is always destined to fail although restricting few traders to junk only and leaving the rest radio free is fine idea.

[avv]

I think that the best solution would be to have a lot of specific areas on the world map which would contain some wrecked cars, ruined buildings and stuff like that so the players could use their repair skill for mechanical and science for electronic stuff. If it would be backed by a dependency:the higher skill the better stuff,

The fixed locations would be the best alternative but skill-dependent gear wouldn't. Players would make science/repair 300 alts and roam those places with them. We had once cooldowns depending on skill and it lead nothing else but high skill alts dedicated to do nothing but that. More relogs, fastrelogs and proxies.

The system is best when you can center it around one character, keep yourself busy with that char without the desire to jump on other character or play multiple ones at the same time.

[ShemsuHor]

The fixed locations would be the best alternative but skill-dependent gear wouldn't. Players would make science/repair 300 alts and roam those places with them. We had once cooldowns depending on skill and it lead nothing else but high skill alts dedicated to do nothing but that. More relogs, fastrelogs and proxies.

The system is best when you can center it around one character, keep yourself busy with that char without the desire to jump on other character or play multiple ones at the same time.

I'm a loner. Well mostly. I enjoy having my char walking the wasteland to kill things, people and critters, but I also enjoy that I dont need to relog to craft gather and use the weapons. I dont like alts at all. My char is prepared to go to gecko mine and gather some ores (or kill somebody who has them already) I would very much like to see more if not all the characters in fonline like this. The fixed locations with skill dependant items to gather could prove challenging for specialized crafting alt if it'll encounter a player like me. My char would pwn the hell out of the alt with ease. My idea from the previous post is just a vision of fonline i would be most satisfied to play. Alts would have problems with even the low lvl players, those low lvl would not be afraid of loosing their stuff so much if its easier to get and those locations would bound to become pretty nasty small pvp arenas

[Lordus]

Avv:

 I divide gathering requirements into:

 1) combat requirements .. it is not only one special, skill, perks, stuff ability, it consist of many of them. In most cases you dont need to fulfil many or all requiremets , but at least one.

 2) non combat requirements: .. like previous, there could be two requirements (skills, stuff, ...) or more i need or at least one of them.

 I.e: Lordus go to mine to "gather weapon stuff". There are wanamingos, vulnerable to knockback weapons. I have shotgun with this perk (or i can have melee, maybe unarmed with adequate perk,...), or i have friend with those perks.
 I pass thru the place with wanamingos and i need to open doors, that protects me so i can "gather".

 As a solo player, i could tag it needed skill, add skill points there even it was not tagged (just set adequate level 75, 100, 125), i could do quest that raises need skill, i could use item that raises needed skill (lockpick). As a semi-solo player, i could ask friend or someone at NCR. As a PvP player, i could create "gathering powerbuild" that would be more efficient in geting over that obstacles (locked doors, wanamingos, ..), so if i want to PvP, i would need to spend less time to do it.

 I usualy give to my crafters and traders 10 INT, so i can level up this types of char very fast. This also gives me a chance to spend rest skill points to other than main skills i need at the moment, or i think that i would need. And i think this is the way how it should work. If the limits to overcome an obstacle would be set to non-nonsense level (75, 100, 125 skill points), your char, thru your natural (non speeded) leveling would get acces to higher and higher tier stuff. (Roleplay element). If you dont want to wait, you can use friends help (multiplayer element), or you can create specific "gathering build".
 
 For powerbuilders, there could be a special requirement (i.e.) 200 in skill points, 250 .. That would grant you double? outcome, but of course, the time needed to raise your skill by lvling up would be quite longer, but after you would reach this, your suplying of your pvp powerbuild would be more easier.

 (I.e.: to get to underground lvl of some gathering location, where you can get more (better) res. (stuff), you need 200 repair (or 150 repair and 150 science) to repair an elevator..).
 
 But again, i dont want to place nonsense obstacles. It shloud be implemented in "path is the destination" philosophy. Instead of 200, 300 skill requirements, i would like to see 100 skil requirement, but many skills needed.

 ShemsuHor:

 I agree that "weapon parts" like trigger, barrel, container sound better than metal part. I think in past eras, there was something like this. I like the idea, that if i need to craft or assemble some weapon, i could use different weapon, disasemple it and vice versa. I this possibility would be in game, i would have another way how to overcome an "gathering" obstacles.

[avv]

Even with 120 to lockpick you'd need an alt. For example snipers need about 230 sg and sneakers are so minmaxed they can't do anything except that. I'd absolutely love to play as solo sneaker but sneaks can't do anything but sneak and shoot.

Best alternative would be that certain items, drugs and equipment would boost your skill to certain level so that you can use it to gather. Or the skills simply have to have a combat purpose or merged with other skills.

or at least one of them.

If it really is at least one, then it better be like that. If the skills increase the benefit, we see alts again. In addition if you for example need either lockpick alt or supermega lockpickset mkIII, don't you think players will just make the bluesuit lockpicker rather than risk expensive item?

But overall there's not much need for skill dependent gathering. It's not matter of balance and the whole system isn't going to break if skill-based isn't included. What the whole thread is about is to get interesting, fluent and fun gathering system.

[ShemsuHor]

Scrap gathering. STOP. Scrap timeouts. STOP. Scrap crafting ores into materials. STOP. Get scaveging. STOP. Give limits to traders. STOP. Have fun. STOP.
The whole thread was made to ask players for ideas on how to go with gathering and timeouts. Right now we arent giving much feedback

[Luther Blissett]

[...]Best alternative would be that certain items, drugs and equipment would boost your skill to certain level so that you can use it to gather. Or the skills simply have to have a combat purpose or merged with other skills.

Another alternative is to change the spread of skill points. You know how an unarmed fighter doesn't really need more than about 145% unarmed to get 95% hit on everything - therefore leaving many spare points to put on other things?

Well, if the cap was brought down similarly on the other skills i.e. 200% or 150% is maximum, there'd be a lot more spare points to spread around and therefore the potential for more balanced characters - or in other words, most characters are able to do most things to a very basic level, or to specialise in several instead of just one.

Would need quite a lot of further changes, i.e. how effective certain numbers were - so 100% lockpick would need to be able to do unlock almost anything, 100% sneak would need to be pretty sneaky, 100% small guns would need to be pretty accurate etc.