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Other => FOnline:2238 Forum => Archives => General Game Discussion => Topic started by: Hertz on February 19, 2010, 05:46:59 am
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I started playing Fonline roughly around the beginning of September, and Fonline was the bomb. These timers have just made it so slow and (real life) time consuming. I mean ya we don't want people becoming super rich gods and all that. But that's already happening. I hear of people watching youtube while waiting for craft supplies because of gathering timers (and then there's the crafting timers). It takes too long to get weapons,ammo,armor and it can go so fast (RIDICULOUSLY FAST). Also this game isn't the greatest animation ( take the world map travel for example) you sit there looking at a screen for a good while just staring at a dot slicking across the map slower than S@$#. Which is another annoying thing that only presses more on the timer crap. I'm only posting this now because the game was bomb than all of a sudden these timers just made stop playing the last few days. Have there been any thoughts of other kinds of changes for these subjects?as I'm sure they've been mentioned before.
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I'll give you some advice: Let it go and find another game. And you are correct in that what you are alluding to has already been mentioned before. Which is why I'm giving you the advice.
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Read this thread if you didn't check it out when it was posted
Gave it a try, again (http://Gave it a try, again)
I really liked alot of what was said in this thread but it seemed like his ideas were shot down without ever getting a chance to fail ingame.I laugh now whenever i see someone say how it's still beta.What better time to give something like this a try?
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I was about to write a really long-winded reply but yeah. Read through Bubba's excellent thread (http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=1564.0). Read and weep.
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yea i just saw the post. its sooo time consuming its rediculous. I'd give a warm welcome to all new comers to the waitlands. But i doubt they even stay long enough to get to the point of being annoyed of wasting time with timers.
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well, you can always be on the forum, writing posts and stuff like that when you're traveling, and come onto the game when the screen flashes.
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It's not really about the timers. PvP is like that too. I find myself having FOnline open and just doing something else while alt tabbing and performing one or two clicks every 10 or 15 minutes. Right now it's not really a game you "play", it's more of a browser game where you do a few actions per day and you're done.
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I have to say you are right.
I tried for months to adapt myself to this game but now I'am really fed up about all that. This is only a "no-life game" now and this is not anymore a MMO roleplaying game, this is just a MMO game...
I'm not telling that developers don't do anything because they are doing a lot of works and brang a lot of features to the game. But I think that they don't have the same point of view than players because playing casually to this game is not the same that players that have played for months.
So, dear developers, you are doing a great job on the game part but I think we should now seriously discuss about MMO part :)
PS : And I think the game could be more pleasant if players would stop insulting each others (or if they would stop hacking accounts and other things...)
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Devs. Try play this game and enjoy some fun.
Right now it is only "push, wait 5 hour" and again. I dont know where i have FUN from this game ?
I go gather some resources and after this i can be on internet for next 6 minutes or 5 hour.
Really, this is not fun.
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Devs. Try play this game and enjoy some fun.
Im levelling my BB Gun sniper build, its fun :D
As for crafting speed, its still not slow and there is still masses of stuff on the server. The irony of people standing in their $100k+ bases in BoS CA, armed with an Avenger, surrounded by countless CA, Metal Armours, Ammo, Guns and then complaining about *having* to stand there during a timeout always seems funny to me.
Content takes a long time to produce. Now apply the fact that all of us work in our spare time and for nothing and it takes even longer. Having endless threads about how we suck does not insprie us to sink yet more of our spare time into working, funnily enough.
If you change your mindset from accumulating endless amounts of wealth to actually finding enjoyable things to do with other players I'm sure you will enjoy it more. Meanwhile, I'm going to make more rat head's explode until my char is advanced enough to join TC and shoot miniguns out of people's hands :)
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ha, sweet diversion tactic solar, and i never knew that the devs actually played the game as it is meant to be played
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I have my own character too, but I am not very active in the moment, due to not enough time.
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ha, sweet diversion tactic solar, and i never knew that the devs actually played the game as it is meant to be played
My other Char is a level 21 PvP that has a fortune in the bank, has lost its tent (and tonnes of BoS Armour, Pancors, Psycho) due to moving house and having no internet and a level 3 profession! It would happily compare to any of the "serious" PvPers chars, aside from being a member of VC, not a player gang.
The BB Sniper (BBS! Thats what it stood for!) is somewhat ... slower ... to level however :)
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As for crafting speed, its still not slow and there is still masses of stuff on the server. The irony of people standing in their $100k+ bases in BoS CA, armed with an Avenger, surrounded by countless CA, Metal Armours, Ammo, Guns and then complaining about *having* to stand there during a timeout always seems funny to me.
We stay in our bases because crafting is too slow and we don't want to loose hours of work...
Content takes a long time to produce. Now apply the fact that all of us work in our spare time and for nothing and it takes even longer. Having endless threads about how we suck does not insprie us to sink yet more of our spare time into working, funnily enough.
This is not a thread about how you suck (at less for my post). We know that you are working hard on this game but we are beta testers and we don't want you to work on the wrong way because it would be a lost of time for you and for us. That's why we want to discuss about how is the game at the moment and what we should do to improve it.
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Crafting is not slow at all. Crafting the highest tier of items is slow, because the highest tier of items is expensive.
You can craft $3900 an hour at level 3, add ontop of that TC, slaves runs, other quests very profitable encounters and weigh it against the very small amount of drain there is and you can see why people have so much stuff.
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We stay in our bases because crafting is too slow and we don't want to loose hours of work...
It's called "cowardice", my young padawan :>
When crafting times were shorter, whole Wasteland was full of miniguns, rockets, armors and other stuff, that was almost worthless, no matter what it was. Now a good gun has some value, not only in caps, and that is how IMO it should look like. I mean it's Wasteland, not some Counter-Strike-Happy-Arena-Of-Gunz-And-Ammoz-Everywhere-OMG-Lulz, every bullet has certain price and should be considered if target is worth shooting.
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I agree with you Wichura about amount of stuff. But crafting shouldn"t be *1 click, wait 6 minutes, 1 click, wait 6 minutes, 3 clicks, wait 6 hours*. If you want that you can play to Ogame or other kind of game.
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So what should it be?
I'm not saying that I love to sit and watch timer goes down. I might be crazy, but I'm not an idiot :> But I can't see any other way to make crafting reasonable, as cooldowns, unless we don't want "combat-armor-flood" on Wastes.
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The problem is that if you allow easy crafting, you allow big amount of stuff=> nobody will care about losing stuff=> no care about nothing=> no game.
Moreover, nobody care about dying in bluesuit already=> AND this is a problem (people even travel by dying which is nonsense!)
That is not the case on TLA where you don't care about stuff BUT you do care about dying (because of THE HELL) and this is a good point.
On TLA you care about your LIFE not your STUFF.
2238 has crafting constraint, TLA has THE HELL constraint
Yet, perhaps another form of constraint could be found in crafting on 2238...
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So, no game before wipe? As I remember, there were no gathering/crafting cooldowns. Is stuff everything? As I stated some time ago, maybe when people stop caring about losing their shit, they will start some other activity... and I don't mean "whoaaaa PvP 24/7 everyone whoaaaa", also it's so funny that I'm telling it to a member of Orphans gang.
Solar, you often say that in few days/weeks you were able to craft a shitload of stuff and get lots of monies, while being totally safe and all.. Now please let us know: how many times were you using this stuff against other player, actually? Because I've got a feeling that you were not playing this game... you were only crafting to see how long it takes. Am I wrong? Did you fight anything other than rats scorps and dogs? Did you take any risk?
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Is this it? Yes it is.
The devs have got a system they like, and they seem to be geared towards tweaking than overhauling.
If it were up to me, crafting wouldn't be that big a gameplay element. You could build basic armour, guns and ammo in your backyard and that would be it. The basic stuff would be everywhere, cheap to buy and easy to craft. Anything mid to high end would be obtainable by quest and, god forbid, looting 'dungeons'.
What I've learned from FOnline is that making anything worthwhile craftable will lead to it being farmed to death. Even if it requires a rare location or exciting parts. People will find the most efficient way and then just churn it out.
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It's not really about the timers. PvP is like that too. I find myself having FOnline open and just doing something else while alt tabbing and performing one or two clicks every 10 or 15 minutes. Right now it's not really a game you "play", it's more of a browser game where you do a few actions per day and you're done.
Not to mention how much this system helps bots...
The other day i was gathering some resources, entered NCR to get to the workbench, and a "player" was trying to gather junk from the barrel non-stop. Finished what i wanted, left town, and every now and then returned to craft more stuff, and every time i enetered town, the same "player" was standing in that very same spot fiddling with his hands on the barrel non-stop. For hours. I mean ffs, you just need to position the mouse on the barrel, switch to use mode, and start a macro that simulates clicking.
Why not borrow ideas from other games that work perfectly fine? Gather from a node, then the node is depleted. The player needs to find another node. Isnt that serving the same purpose as CD-s? Slowing down the economy? In a more fun and realistic way?
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Solar, you often say that in few days/weeks you were able to craft a shitload of stuff and get lots of monies, while being totally safe and all.. Now please let us know: how many times were you using this stuff against other player, actually? Because I've got a feeling that you were not playing this game... you were only crafting to see how long it takes. Am I wrong? Did you fight anything other than rats scorps and dogs? Did you take any risk?
I was "gathering" for X% of the time, which was a high percentage because I was testing out specifically to see how much I could churn out, and for Y% of the time I was fighting (I actually mostly killed a tonne of Brahmin and Geckos, which I did both whilst I was gathering and whilst purely fighting, but that's not the point :) ) it did, infact, included the odd bit of PvP when I was bored and wanted to shoot someone in the face, but of course not to the same extent as the gangs.
Generally my time was spent - Gather fruit whilst killing cows and lizards -> return to the vault to craft a batch of Mentats -> Gather enough stuff for the next batch whilst killing cows and lizards -> Free time to do whatever -> Craft the next batch -> Repeat.
Of course I'd much rather have been doing some of the things that are to come, but one thing I wasn't doing was staring at a cooldown timer.
If I were using my time to mainly fight players instead, I dare say I would have lost a lot of stuff, would have gained some back and I would have burnt through yet more ammo, drugs, what have you. I would also have not cared about building up a big store of crap that I would never use, so a much smaller percentage of my time would have been craft orientated.
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The player needs to find another node. Isnt that serving the same purpose as CD-s? Slowing down the economy? In a more fun and realistic way?
That would be fine, to stop botting, but pointless to control the economy for normal players when you can just go and instantly find another it makes it pointless.
Unless you then somehow control the "respawning" of these nodes, which of course must be per player as otherwise they will just be camped. At which point you just have a personal timeout in exactly the same way.
As for crafting, it was never meant to be a "big" gameplay element, its just one of the easiest to do game play elements to get working.
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As for crafting, it was never meant to be a "big" gameplay element, its just one of the easiest to do game play elements to get working.
It's boring to kill more and more mobs... As for me, now crafting is very very very "big" element, 'cause it's only way i get XP now, craft ammo till ~59 minute CD of crafting and then craft most XP giving gun, then get resources for all that ammo and gun again, and then log off, till CD again 59 minutes, or, if need to go somewhere/do something/sleep, till 0 minutes and then again craft ammo+ammo+ammo+gun.
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I'd say increasing the number of item sinks might help with the issue of flooding finished products.
Right now we got
- Critical misses
- Deterioration and subsequent dumping of item
- Disassembly / Upgrading
- Dying in a random encounter
- Selling to Merchants
As the main item inputs are pretty damn big (Crafters and Encounters), a multi-pronged approach should be taken so that item influx is at a steadily growing rate, to match player populations. Aside from selling to merchants and dying with equipment (which is itself usually avoided), most of the sinks are too small to make any significant impact. From what I can currently see Devs restrict crafting heavily but the role Encounters play should also be given attention. Tweaking the amount of loot in Random Encounters would also affect the speed of items being introduced.
One way to beef up disassembly would be to make it so that only certain transitory items (products like gunpowder, alloy, metal parts) are obtained from disassembly. For example, I might need a '10mm Gun Barrel' to produce a 10mm SMG. This can only be acquired from... you guessed it, 10mm Pistols. This system is already in place (i.e. requiring a gun to make another gun), but having it be a chance-based result from disassembly will further reduce the number of extra 10mms in the game.
Come to think of it, a chance-based EVERYTHING would be preferable to cool downs.
Want to gather?
Chance to find the resource area. Based on Outdoorsman already.
Chance to fail to mine. Based on STR and / or Melee.
Critical Luck Fail! You hit the stones and unearth a family of angry molerats!
Critical Luck Win! You discover a discarded Material / random amount of caps hidden in the ore!
Variable amount of resource gathered: 1-6 Ore / Minerals, 1-10 Fruits, 2-5 Fibres, etc.
One-off gathering so only gathered once before node disappears.
TIE random encounters to the world map triangle so if people don't move they will end up in the same place (the area without a node)
Allow entering an 'empty' map to actually be a Random Encounter, based on Luck and Outdoorsman. So much for mining naked!
Want to distill stuff?
Chance of explosion in your face from poor handling of dangerous materials.
Chance of unintentionally making the BEST BOOZE EVAR... +2 CHA when drunk, addictive!
Require variable wood: 1-5, and variable fruit: 5-10
Create random amount of random alcohol based on number of fruits, amount of wood, and heck, Luck.
Want to craft?
Chance to fail creation. Based on Profession Level, Science / Repair Average and Luck.
Chance to create a poor item that starts deteriorated.
Chance to create an epic version of the same item. If perkless, given random weapon perk!
Want to disassemble?
Chance for disassemble-exclusive items. Based on Science and Luck.
Ultrafail! You totally destroy the item, salvaging nothing.
There. Removing cooldowns then including all these chance-based situations will lead to a HARDER yet more ACTIVE and EXCITING crafting cycle, one which requires more player interaction and supervision.
P.S. To head off any idea that this will lead to a slew of 'powerlevelling' alts to 21, I'd say if your faction (yes, you would need one to pull this off) can amass the huge amounts of material required at the abovementioned difficulty and scarcity, you bloody well deserve it.
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That would be fine, to stop botting, but pointless to control the economy for normal players when you can just go and instantly find another it makes it pointless.
Unless you then somehow control the "respawning" of these nodes, which of course must be per player as otherwise they will just be camped. At which point you just have a personal timeout in exactly the same way.
As for crafting, it was never meant to be a "big" gameplay element, its just one of the easiest to do game play elements to get working.
Yes, one of the problems is that ore/minerals are waaaay too common... I dont know if the engine lets you, but can you control the encounter areas? For example every square on the worldmap would have 1 specific layout, not allways changing when you enter it like it does now. This way you could setup a few nodes around the world that would control the economy perfectly because it limits total resources. Ofc this also raises other problems like gangs camping the node. Note that they cannot benefit from this because for them, the node is depleted, so they cant gather resources from it, just to bug others. Actually when i think about it, no change there since i get PK-ed anyway while farming the same node over and over again :D
Or even better! Remove resources from REs alltogether, and setup small custom areas like the ares military base, that contain nodes, and name them mines, woods, junkpiles, mutated..corn...like..plant...fields, etc. A player needs to travel from mine to mine to gather resources.
Again, this would be quite fatal to the averega miner, but think about the gang wars. Gangs fighting for control of mines.... If you think about it, it makes sense, the great war started because of low resources anyway.. I dont think any country would invade others and start a nuclear war that exterminates 90% of humanity if they could just go into the wilderness 1 "square away" and find ore, minerals, wood, fruit, etc to make miniguns, ammo, even fuel...
A grand example is the ghost farm... A whole field of fruit and you cant gather them?? Why??
Summary of my pov: Limit the resources the world has to offer, Not the players. Needless to say this also limits crafting in general, as no resources means no end product for the crowd either. Even better: Low amounts of goods on the market(game badly needs an AH.) means higher prices, high amount of goods, low prices. You, the devs would have TOTAL controll over the ENTIRE economy, by limiting the resources. No alts would solve the gangs problems. No Bots could automate the gathering.
I seriously cant think of a counter argument, other then implementing all this is hard, but i think its possible.
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Alliances would fight over these all the time.
The average gatherer / crafter would be shot on sight.
Prices would be pretty interesting to watch as alliances exerted their influence on the market. It MAY tank.
Small factions would have to be friendly to the controlling alliance.
Perhaps some might charge caps to allow others to mine.
Either way, putting all of a particular resource into the hands of a certain few would be... unconventional.
The winner of these wars would become pretty much the player version of either the Brotherhood of Steel, or the Enclave.
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There. Removing cooldowns then including all these chance-based situations will lead to a HARDER yet more ACTIVE and EXCITING crafting cycle, one which requires more player interaction and supervision.
P.S. To head off any idea that this will lead to a slew of 'powerlevelling' alts to 21, I'd say if your faction (yes, you would need one to pull this off) can amass the huge amounts of material required at the abovementioned difficulty and scarcity, you bloody well deserve it.
We can rig chances to mirror timeouts, we can make people gatherer 10 times more and only have a 10% success rate. Make it depend on skills so new characters are at an even worse disadvantage, or any number of things to mirror the function of the simple timeout.
Basically its taking the free time afforded by a timeout and filling it with mindless extra work. People could already be out there running about doing whatever they liked, but they choose to sit and stare at a timeout.
Would make players have to talk to two NPC's on opposite ends of the WM for a more "active" crafting too, then we could remove timeouts altogether.
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Alliances would fight over these all the time.
The average gatherer / crafter would be shot on sight.
Prices would be pretty interesting to watch as alliances exerted their influence on the market. It MAY tank.
Small factions would have to be friendly to the controlling alliance.
Perhaps some might charge caps to allow others to mine.
Either way, putting all of a particular resource into the hands of a certain few would be... unconventional.
The winner of these wars would become pretty much the player version of either the Brotherhood of Steel, or the Enclave.
Yes, but no faction could afford to guard it 24/7. There should be many mines, in which are only a few resources. The factions cant control every one of them. Anyhow this was A suggestion -which can also be tweaked so that 1 or 2 faction cant dominate the world-, 1 from the many possible solutions, but tweaking cds without a major overhaul just wont fix the issues of alts/bots.
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We can rig chances to mirror timeouts, we can make people gatherer 10 times more and only have a 10% success rate. Make it depend on skills so new characters are at an even worse disadvantage, or any number of things to mirror the function of the simple timeout.
Hey, you're in control of the numbers. I didn't put any hard and fast rules about how arbitrary those numbers can be so why make it sound so terribad? I'm saying: make it more active and involving. I'm not saying: screw the newbie.
Basically its taking the free time afforded by a timeout and filling it with mindless extra work. People could already be out there running about doing whatever they liked, but they choose to sit and stare at a timeout.
The problem with timeouts stems from the fact that it impedes players who want to DO something, WHEN they want to do it. I'm fairly sure a ton of grief is over this fact.
Without cooldowns, a player can decide to harvest fibres, then fine tune his mining so he can make some armor. He then makes this armor and notices he has enough left over materials to make a pistol. If at any point he fails in doing any of those steps he can spend more time doing it in the hopes it turns out better, or he can stop it and do something else immediately.
With cooldowns, he has to spend extra time waiting for his gathering timeout from fibres to expire so he can over-mine and get ore he didn't intend to get. After making the armour he then spends more time waiting before he can make that pistol. During the 5 minute gathering timeouts you might say he could go for a random encounter or a nearby quest to fill the gap, but it underlines the problem: the player does NOT want to go for a random encounter, or do a quest. He wants to gather his materials and feel all crafter-like by making shit. He does not want to do a circuit of mine - random encounter - mine - quest - create armour - mine - random encounter - create pistol. And yet this is precisely what cooldowns are encouraging people to do, in order to be 'efficient'. That, or alting.
Having no cooldowns, essentially, allows the player to do what he wants, when he wants. The details involved in ensuring that the economy doesn't tank is in the difficulty of getting actual product out of the cycle, regardless of alts or available materials.
Would make players have to talk to two NPC's on opposite ends of the WM for a more "active" crafting too, then we could remove timeouts altogether.
Alternatively, instead of productive conversation, we could disregard 'feedback' from our 'testers' and instead use sarcasm to enforce our own views of the game.
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As for crafting, it was never meant to be a "big" gameplay element, its just one of the easiest to do game play elements to get working.
Between how often issues like this are brought up and the frequency of dev statements along the lines of "there's too much high-end stuff in the game", I'd have to say it's broken.
BRING ON THE DIFFICULT STUFF! OH YEAH!
And if it's not a big element, how come it's one of the largest sources of XP?
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Alternatively, instead of productive conversation, we could disregard 'feedback' from our 'testers' and instead use sarcasm to enforce our own views of the game.
Ooh! That one.
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Alternatively, instead of productive conversation, we could disregard 'feedback' from our 'testers' and instead use sarcasm to enforce our own views of the game.
An absurd example which demonstrates why what you're suggesting would be just a dressed up version of what we have now. Economy needs to be controlled, to do this there needs to be restrictions and all these restrictions will eventually have to amount to the same speed as each other.
As I'd already said this in the thread that has been linked to I thought a stronger example would be in order.
You can leave people's time free, or you can fill it up with pointless tasks - crafting will be at the same rate regardless. I'm sure some people have realized you can actually play the game whilst timeouts are going, so I'm not too keen on inserting dressing to actively waste peoples time for these people.
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I am not sure you are very in control of the economy. You are just slowing it down, to delay the bad effects.
But in the end it's the time that the players have at their disposal that control the economy.
But I don't have any magical solution either... Even putting a limit to the number of items (X armors, Yguns...) that one can craft per day, could be easily turned by using an alt...
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Well, hopefully making the advanced stuff available only from certain fixed maps (to make it more interesting), speeding up the timeouts because of the increased risk (to ... erm, speed it up) and introducing other things to take some of the scrutiny from crafting (so those that don't want to do it don't have to) will help it out. Also, the improved trader system could help out with this somewhat.
That and more drains!
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Everything can be "solved" by using alts. Maybe some limit of chars per person? But how to control dynamic IP addresses for example? What about players with shared net, with the same external IP behind router?
It's not just "remove cooldowns now!" case, it's more complicated I'm afraid.
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Personally i liked crafting a lot more pre wipe when there was no cooldown. You used what you had available and went out and did shit without worrying about losing your crap.
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You can leave people's time free, or you can fill it up with pointless tasks - crafting will be at the same rate regardless. I'm sure some people have realized you can actually play the game whilst timeouts are going, so I'm not too keen on inserting dressing to actively waste peoples time for these people.
Those tasks are only pointless, if you make them so.
In the end, risk is fun. PvP has a lot of risk. (Well, for some people there is risk.) It is fun because of risk.
Right now, gathering and crafting is safe and boring. Also... it is very time consuming. As it stands right now, crafting really only exists to give the starting player enough gear to be worth looting and to keep the elite stocked. An alternative system that involves players searching for resources with chances of finding nothing, small amounts, or the motherlode, coupled with the usual chances for death and loss would actually make resource gathering interesting. A player with high skills in the right places could have prospector like abilities to find and lead people to good spots or even good skills to get harder to access materials. The search and hunt for resources wouldn't be pointless tasks or boring. I've played games like this... Star Control 2 had resource gathering like this: Will this planet have anything value? Can I safely traverse the surface long enough to get anything? Will I find large deposits? Or will I find a crap load of exotic resources? It was quite fun. You geared your ship for collection, you plotted your routes, kept track of systems you drained, and had to know when to "fold 'em" at times when you were low on fuel. All the while you had to be careful when entering enemy space to avoid getting jumped by patrols.
At this point, I just wish the developers would just take a stand, be direct, and say, "NO. We don't want to do this. Why? Because WE like it the way it is. Don't like it? Then, FUCK OFF!" That's directness I could respect. My only interests in the game is of the sociological variety when it comes to watching the forums. I never thought a forum could analogue certain aspects of US corporatism politics.
Anyway... To stop the alt issues, just use the Windows API to pull the GUID (Global Unique ID) off the machine. Most modern machines have one embedded in the BIOS that the OS can access. If you see the same IP and the same GUID, you got an alter. Also, the client could do a few calls to check for any other instances of the FOnline client and prevent it from running.
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Anyway... To stop the alt issues, just use the Windows API to pull the GUID (Global Unique ID) off the machine. Most modern machines have one embedded in the BIOS that the OS can access. If you see the same IP and the same GUID, you got an alter. Also, the client could do a few calls to check for any other instances of the FOnline client and prevent it from running.
FOnline already uses WinAPI.
FindWindow – to find another FOnline windows.
GetVolumeInformation(lpVolumeSerialNumber) and GetAdaptersInfo(pAdapterInfo->Address) to identify machine by hardware.
And that does not stop the alt issues at all.
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Right now, gathering and crafting is safe and boring. Also... it is very time consuming. As it stands right now, crafting really only exists to give the starting player enough gear to be worth looting and to keep the elite stocked. An alternative system that involves players searching for resources with chances of finding nothing, small amounts, or the motherlode, coupled with the usual chances for death and loss would actually make resource gathering interesting. A player with high skills in the right places could have prospector like abilities to find and lead people to good spots or even good skills to get harder to access materials. The search and hunt for resources wouldn't be pointless tasks or boring.
Well, as mentioned earlier, advanced stuff will move to fixed maps that aren't safe. Also the increased travel will "force" people to fill some of this free time with WM travel.
As for what you're suggesting, it would just be another disguise for a timeout. So to continue repeating myself) It would need to be configured to give the same overall speed, so instead of 1 click -> resources -> free time, you have 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> continue on. It can be 5X or X+X+X+X+X, it can be 100% chance 10% of the time or 10% chance 100% of the time.
Then to reward high skills, this (like so much else) is ruined by alts. People would just develop alts to give themselves the max reward, so max reward would have to be set to what it is and the rest of the people would then have to have the whole thing to make room for the improvement.
At this point, I just wish the developers would just take a stand, be direct, and say, "NO. We don't want to do this. Why? Because WE like it the way it is. Don't like it? Then, FUCK OFF!" That's directness I could respect. My only interests in the game is of the sociological variety when it comes to watching the forums. I never thought a forum could analogue certain aspects of US corporatism politics.
Well, Timeouts will be remaining, but I'd prefer to talk through why rather than just tell everyone to fuck off :P. I'm sure the system can be improved to be more enjoyable and alternatives can be introduced, but there will always be an underlying timeout to control the excess and stop equipment becoming completely trivial.
FOnline already uses WinAPI.
FindWindow – to find another FOnline windows.
GetVolumeInformation(lpVolumeSerialNumber) and GetAdaptersInfo(pAdapterInfo->Address) to identify machine by hardware.
And that does not stop the alt issues at all.
Yes, alts ruin a lot of features and the only really effective way of stopping it is to charge for accounts, something thats just not an option for us, so we have to compromise things to accommodate this :(
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As for what you're suggesting, it would just be another disguise for a timeout. So to continue repeating myself) It would need to be configured to give the same overall speed, so instead of 1 click -> resources -> free time, you have 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> 1 click -> continue on. It can be 5X or X+X+X+X+X, it can be 100% chance 10% of the time or 10% chance 100% of the time.
It would only be a disguise if you make it simply so. The main thing is to work on an overall average. You would need to add in a random factor that averages out to a determined rate over time. So you could check a few resource nodes and find nothing, or get lucky in finding an untouched node with a lot of piled up resources. You act like resource hunting is a pointless waste... ignoring the idea of having to travel around to find the resource, possibly clearing out some critter on the route there... and maybe when you get there, and hoping you don't get jumped. And the argument of granted resources in exchange for a timeout is better because the timeout allows (forces) the player to do something else has a flaw: This assumes the player actually wants to do something else or is capable of doing something else. A player stuck waiting to craft basic equipment before venturing out is STUCK waiting. This becomes even more painful with ease the such crafted equipment can be lost. So with a chance death, you are sometimes forced to just give up the game for an hour.
The analogies at the end of the statement don't really relate to the situation at hand. You have trade X time for Y resources. Both X and Y are fixed. I want to trade X time for Y resources with both X and Y being unfixed random numbers that average out similar to the first example. They are only equal to each other overall in the game over time... and even then only approach equality over a period of time.
From what I've gathered... the argument for timeouts seems to be made from the perspective of the upper tier elite and other high level players in factions with the focus on PVP. This explains a lot of the points of contention. Timeouts work perfectly if resource gathering isn't your main focus and you just pick up stuff after running around killing stuff when it happens to be in the area. Timeouts on First Aid make sense when you have faction supplied stimpacks and equipment to negate the need for First Aid. Timeouts on skills after death make sense when you are stopping the opposing faction from getting re-equipped and ready for battle. Timeouts work when you are a higher level and don't really worry about the basics anymore...
They don't work well... when you are trying to start out... at all. I would be very interested in seeing the disparity and ratio of rich and poor players. Also, the fact there is very little "middle class" players is not a good sign. Like in any economic system, wealth disparity and the non-existence of certain wealth classes is never a good sign.
Quite frankly it seems that the system is designed to make starting players little more than easy prey... in fact... far easier than most critters (humanoid and non-humanoid). The lower 90% is merely financial fodder for the upper 10%. Hey, nothing like US corporatism abstractly played out in a game.
Then to reward high skills, this (like so much else) is ruined by alts. People would just develop alts to give themselves the max reward, so max reward would have to be set to what it is and the rest of the people would then have to have the whole thing to make room for the improvement.
The neurotic stance everyone has about alts is quite amusing. You act as if they ruin a game entirely. Alts are seen as a good thing to have in a majority of MMO games and it doesn't break or bother them. A serious EVE Online player will pay for multiple accounts to maintain required construction and market alts in conjunction with PVP alts. Doesn't bother the EVE online economy and crafting system at all. People will always go for a max reward in any game... When people discuss character builds... they are min/maxing. It's a pretty common practice in any game. If you are going to put so much time and effort into something, you want to get the most from it. I've designed pen and paper characters in games to be absolute monsters, looked up builds for characters for Ragnarok Online to avoid wasting days of effort because of a misplaced stat point, and read up about the mathematical equations behind the equipment bonuses in about every Blizzard game out there. Min/maxing happens.
You seem to be trying to enforce the idea of not optimizing characters in a game in which the mechanics presently encourage it greatly. It is confusing.
Well, Timeouts will be remaining, but I'd prefer to talk through why rather than just tell everyone to fuck off :P. I'm sure the system can be improved to be more enjoyable and alternatives can be introduced, but there will always be an underlying timeout to control the excess and stop equipment becoming completely trivial.
Equipment isn't trivial... it's actually pretty damn scarce and hard to obtain at the lower rung of the hierarchy. And in a system where equipment determines everything, being bluesuit and destitute pretty ruins the game for most. Even getting enough materials to craft a basic gun is an hour long process... if you don't get killed. Sure you could buy a weapons and goods, but getting caps is a long and annoying process. Not that much fun. When a game is driven by equipment like this one is, not having access to basics is a damn death sentence.
Yes, alts ruin a lot of features and the only really effective way of stopping it is to charge for accounts, something thats just not an option for us, so we have to compromise things to accommodate this :(
If you've played EVE Online, charging doesn't stop alts at all. Anyone serious about any game has no problems with spending extra money to get an edge. Charging reduces the number, but doesn't stop them and won't stop the ones you need to focus on. If anything, a verified e-mail address will reduce the number of alts. It'll only stop the semi-casual players, but those are the same group you'd stop by charging.
Honestly, alts are going to exist no matter what. But, alts don't ruin a game... Bad design and mechanics ruin a game, but alts don't. That's like saying a bunch of friends working together at a LAN party will ruin a game. Or a player in a DnD game playing more than one character will ruin the game. Saying that another player working closely together with another player in game will ruin it doesn't make sense, especially in a game that encourages it. I've played too many games and alts have actually tended to be more of a benefit at times overal. In EVE Online I had a market trader alt that never left Jita and worked that crazy market, while my PvPer ran around like a drunken dumbass in Lower Syndicate corridor ganking punks in Reblier. Any rare items that my PvPer found would be dropped off at the border of high sec space and put on a transport contract to my trader alt. In exchange, I'd get good prices on equipment that would be trucked back to my PVPer. I'd swap to the trader for a while when there was nothing going on PVP wise and vice versa. Other players in Jita benefit from the goods I found and sent up there. Also, people I was running with benefit by the goods I resold at better prices down the PVP space. Also, the occasional money transfer from the trader to the PVPer when there was a bad round of losing ships helped.
I think the paranoia and neurotic focuses are misplaced. Seems like the developers are addressing symptoms rather than sources. Ah hell, oh well.
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The analogies at the end of the statement don't really relate to the situation at hand. You have trade X time for Y resources. Both X and Y are fixed. I want to trade X time for Y resources with both X and Y being unfixed random numbers that average out similar to the first example.
So ... they are unfixed numbers that average out to the same. Or in equation terms, unfixed numbers A and B which average out to X and Y - so that A = X and B = Y, then they are the same and it is just a disguise on the same system.
You act like resource hunting is a pointless waste... ignoring the idea of having to travel around to find the resource, possibly clearing out some critter on the route there... and maybe when you get there, and hoping you don't get jumped.
No, I act like these things are independent of timeouts. Several times in this thread I've indicated that we will move to fixed maps for advanced materials for this very reason, whilst preserving the timeouts as well.
A serious EVE Online player will pay for multiple accounts to maintain required construction and market alts in conjunction with PVP alts.
The difference is that you can make hundreds of alts, whereas (presumably) no one is going to bother paying to run hundreds of slave accounts. If I were making money by forcing this practice I wouldn't care either.
Equipment isn't trivial... it's actually pretty damn scarce and hard to obtain at the lower rung of the hierarchy. And in a system where equipment determines everything, being bluesuit and destitute pretty ruins the game for most. Even getting enough materials to craft a basic gun is an hour long process...
10mm pistol - 0.06 hours
100 10mm JHP Ammo - 0.333 hours
Leather Jacket - 0.0833 hours
Total = 0.4766 hours.
Its then possible to gather enough for twice this amount in half an hour and craft it without starting the crafting timeout at all. Without a profession.
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A serious EVE Online player will pay for multiple accounts to maintain required construction and market alts in conjunction with PVP alts. Doesn't bother the EVE online economy and crafting system at all.
As soon as you have to pay for playing FOnline, we will not care too.
Oh wait, you will never have pay for playing FOnline.
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yea i just saw the post. its sooo time consuming its rediculous. I'd give a warm welcome to all new comers to the waitlands. But i doubt they even stay long enough to get to the point of being annoyed of wasting time with timers.
Did u ever just ask your self that ur the one thats shit??? First of all wating is not all about the game there is way more ways to make money.
Plus if u get freinds, or even when u get to the point where people work for you, then the game isnt boring, only the game masters are not doing any work recently nothing new added same old shit, so after lvl 21 u just pvp all day and do the same thing over and over, till then its very fun, but sad becuase u can power level to 21 in 2 days.
So i am taking it slow enjoying my fav game as much as i can, even tho i know it will not get any better i still hope so .
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10mm pistol - 0.06 hours
100 10mm JHP Ammo - 0.333 hours
Leather Jacket - 0.0833 hours
Total = 0.4766 hours.
Its then possible to gather enough for twice this amount in half an hour and craft it without starting the crafting timeout at all. Without a profession.
Leather Jacket needs:
Gecko Skin
Brahmin Skin
Threads
To get any of that you need a Knife... and the ability to kill both a Brahmin and Gecko to get the skins. Sure, you can buy the materials... if you can find them at a shop or from someone else. You could gather enough junk from barrels and shovel enough shit to get enough money to buy the materials and then make the item. This will take quite some time on average. Also, due to prices, you actually will suffer a loss of value from construction of the item in question. You actually lose worth by crafting.
10mm Pistol needs:
Wood
Junk
Wood you need at least Primitive tool to harvest. So you have to wander around to find Flint and make a tool.
100x 10mm JHP needs:
Metal parts
Junk
Gun Powder
Metal parts needs ore, which means you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Gun Powder needs minerals, so again you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Both crafting metal parts and gunpowder has crafting timeouts attached to it. Also, there's time in finding the materials to begin with and loss from death. Of course, you could always buy materials, but that's some time spent in front a junk barrel or shoveling shit hoping to either find a shop stocking them or a player selling them in an area you won't get shamelessly killed at. Speaking of pointless activities...
This can total up well over an hour or two, even with the best player taking every optimized step and not wasting a single moment.
Anyway, it's a lot of time spent trying to get the basics which you somewhat need to get the basics... to have it easily taken away... then forced to start over again.
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Leather Jacket needs:
Gecko Skin
Brahmin Skin
Threads
To get any of that you need a Knife... and the ability to kill both a Brahmin and Gecko to get the skins. Sure, you can buy the materials... if you can find them at a shop or from someone else. You could gather enough junk from barrels and shovel enough shit to get enough money to buy the materials and then make the item. This will take quite some time on average. Also, due to prices, you actually will suffer a loss of value from construction of the item in question. You actually lose worth by crafting.
10mm Pistol needs:
Wood
Junk
Wood you need at least Primitive tool to harvest. So you have to wander around to find Flint and make a tool.
100x 10mm JHP needs:
Metal parts
Junk
Gun Powder
Metal parts needs ore, which means you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Gun Powder needs minerals, so again you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Both crafting metal parts and gunpowder has crafting timeouts attached to it. Also, there's time in finding the materials to begin with and loss from death. Of course, you could always buy materials, but that's some time spent in front a junk barrel or shoveling shit hoping to either find a shop stocking them or a player selling them in an area you won't get shamelessly killed at. Speaking of pointless activities...
This can total up well over an hour or two, even with the best player taking every optimized step and not wasting a single moment.
Anyway, it's a lot of time spent trying to get the basics which you somewhat need to get the basics... to have it easily taken away... then forced to start over again.
If u guys are still stuck on crafting 9mms but know by hearth how much seconds and milli seconds u need do to this and that, then your not for this game, your either very dumb, or not able to "get out of the box" try different approaches. the main thing i reliized is most important is to make freinds, i used to be alone now have over 40 friends playing with me crafting for me, buying and selling for me. The problem is i dont want the game to get boring and by the looks of it, it will sooner or later. CD is needed maybe not so much but it is needed.
Gms have to put new stuff in games, not slaving or thiefing not quests, maybe weapons towns (if possible). not work 5 weeks on a event that lags like ass and ends with no 1 happy
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OK, knife (*10) + 2 Primitive Tools (for the wood and the ore to make a sledge) + Axe + Sledge = + 0.067 + 0.02 + 0.0233 + 0.0233 = + 0.133 Hours + 0.4677 + 0.4677 = 1.0687. I guess that second Leather Jacket must wait.
Of course, you can do this without the leather jacket at all, most critters don't really require a LJ to kill and level on, but I included it just to complete the load-out.
If they do some of the simple quests to boost their XP further then its an even easier start, it allows you to gain a quick level to pump the crafting essentials if you don't want to tag sci or get 10 int, but all this is possible without actually hitting a crafting timeout and gives enough XP to make the first level or half the second (in about 30 mins).
Then if you wander aimlessly into an unguarded town and lose this stuff twice over and still don't learn your lesson ... its your fault.
Now I don't claim its an easy start, but I will have to claim that crafting is only a small part of the problem, since its actually a reasonably easy start to being a crafter.
Both crafting metal parts and gunpowder has crafting timeouts attached to it.
This shouldn't be the case. Can anyone confirm this is so?
Gms have to put new stuff in games, not slaving or thiefing not quests, maybe weapons towns (if possible). not work 5 weeks on a event that lags like ass and ends with no 1 happy
GMs aren't Devs, so no one wasted any time on that who is working on anything else. GMs are there to help players that need help and do events (if they feel like it). No Dev was involved in its planning.
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metal parts don't have carfting timeout last time i crafted
as for gunpowder dosen't ether i think :-\
thought i belive they both add a count down to the crafting timer in the pip boy but you can still craft
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thought i belive they both add a count down to the crafting timer in the pip boy but you can still craft
No. I doing it everyday, you can make metal parts and gunpowder even if you have 180 minutes CD on crafting. And, of couse, metal parts and gunpowder don't add any seconds and minutes to your CD. That's easy to explain, because it's totally proportied by XP. Than more XP gives you crafted item, than more seconds added to your CD. Metal parts and gunpowder gives 0 XP and 0 seconds to crafting CD. 420 XP = 27 (may be 28) minutes. So, 420/27=15.5, 420/28=15, looks like it's 28 minutes. So 15 XP per item = 1 minutes CD. 1 XP = 4 seconds.
So:
Time added to your cooldown = XP*4,
where XP=how much XP gives you crafted item.
If item gives you 0 XP, you can craft it anytime and in any number.
If item gives you at least 1 XP, you can craft it, only if your crafting CD < 60 minutes.
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Metal parts needs ore, which means you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Gun Powder needs minerals, so again you need a primitive tool and to find flint. Both crafting metal parts and gunpowder has crafting timeouts attached to it. Also, there's time in finding the materials to begin with and loss from death. Of course, you could always buy materials, but that's some time spent in front a junk barrel or shoveling shit hoping to either find a shop stocking them or a player selling them in an area you won't get shamelessly killed at. Speaking of pointless activities...
This is kinda true. Gathering is pretty much running from location from location and trying to cope up with cooldowns. Things that are still problematic are finding a good spot to gather, and coping with the short gathering cooldowns. Finding a good spot can be very boring. Sometimes even obvious spot doesn't provide you the mats 100%. There's not any surprise or interactive element there, you just find or don't find the spot. It could be fixed by having fixed locations for mats. I liked it somewhat when the world was filled with caravan cars on material locations. You always got what you needed and there was a slight excitement of meeting someone there. The only flaw was that it didnt make any sense that there's dozens of caravan cars just lying around.
As for gathering times, the times are probably ok but the way players are forced to deal with them is unfair. You have to be seated for hours to perform simple tasks every 5 min or so. Crafting cooldowns are much better. You make weapon or many weapons and you got one hour of free time to do whatever you want.
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It could be fixed by having fixed locations for mats
Thats the hope, at least. I too liked the empty caravan maps that we had. Imagine those, but you gather materials for level 2+3 items, with the occasional NPC spawned there and then scattered throughout the wastes. With crafting speed for those levels taken from $3600/$3900 an hour to the region of $4000/$5000 or $5000/$6000 or so (and a corresponding increase in the price of those professions)
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OK, knife (*10) + 2 Primitive Tools (for the wood and the ore to make a sledge) + Axe + Sledge = + 0.067 + 0.02 + 0.0233 + 0.0233 = + 0.133 Hours + 0.4677 + 0.4677 = 1.0687. I guess that second Leather Jacket must wait.
Of course, you can do this without the leather jacket at all, most critters don't really require a LJ to kill and level on, but I included it just to complete the load-out.
If they do some of the simple quests to boost their XP further then its an even easier start, it allows you to gain a quick level to pump the crafting essentials if you don't want to tag sci or get 10 int, but all this is possible without actually hitting a crafting timeout and gives enough XP to make the first level or half the second (in about 30 mins).
Then if you wander aimlessly into an unguarded town and lose this stuff twice over and still don't learn your lesson ... its your fault.
Now I don't claim its an easy start, but I will have to claim that crafting is only a small part of the problem, since its actually a reasonably easy start to being a crafter.
This shouldn't be the case. Can anyone confirm this is so?
GMs aren't Devs, so no one wasted any time on that who is working on anything else. GMs are there to help players that need help and do events (if they feel like it). No Dev was involved in its planning.
I am sorry as my english is not so good, i have ment devs, not gms.