Post by Sharrayzen on Jun 3, 2016 2:48:59 GMT
Hello! Welcome back to Guilds of Magic! I'm Sharrayzen (Tray), former admin of GoM (or current one... NOTICE ME ADAM-SENPAI) *cough* Today, I am making this thread in response to the <<Alpha>> that was released yesterday, I believe. I am going to go over things that should appear on the to-do list that is ailing the game in it's pre-released state; that's right, get out your RAID because we are going BUG huntin'.
Let's get right down to it with the immediate issues:
- Health Regeneration: Whether this is a stat variable that is directly affected by a hard coding for a universal "0.01" regeneration rate at creation with the possible chance at a slightly increased modify, this needs to be fixed. The current modifier for it is WAY too low for anyone to properly play the game. It isn't bad if you planned to AFK until your health is back, but as a RPVP game it should be slightly higher and more dynamic.
- Training: GoM has struggled with an effective way to properly train without the generic "Spar-to-win" or "AFK-Med to get Fed", something along those lines, and it does need a change of pace. I have a suggestion how to fix this, and I suggested this to the team last year, so like me reiterate the way GoM should work as far as progression goes. The game flirts with being full PVP and a weird RPVP game that is similiar to DBZ games, this needs to finally branch into something more dynamic. My suggestion: Embrace the Roleplaying side and let the PVP side be the result of it. What do I mean? Think an Eternia styled system almost. If you want to progress in the game: ROLEPLAY, let roleplaying be the guide.
Here is how: First off, change the "Emote" option and put it somewhere on the HUD so that when it is clicked it triggers a pop-up dialog box inwhich you can freely type your actions in it (with this remove the pre-texted: [usr.name (emote here)] output when someone emotes, it just looks cluttered and uninspiring. . . No, it inspires people to simply half-ass their roleplays in simple one-liners, this is discouraging from what the game needs to grow into.
Secondly, utilize the current implement "Perk and Skill points" that are in the game, from what I noticed. If we are going to have those in the future as legitimate things, have them set aside to do two very different things: Skill, will increase core stats (Str, Agi, MD [Magic Damage], Vitality, etc; while, Role-playing Perk Points (RPP) can be admin distributed by checking the logs of the players--every time a player "Emotes", it gets saved into their personal logs for admins to read and award based on them. This discourages basic roleplaying and promotes for people to become more interactive with the game.
Ultimately, this will remove the need to verb "Train" and "Spar" because people can just roleplay it and it would further develop the story of the game and their character simultaneously. With this, you can create something like PL (Physical Level) that is in accordance with their ML (Magic Level), that way someone can either focus entirely on PL rather than ML, so the game is not just filled with magicians activating trap cards left and right--or a hybrid of it (think Erza [Blade magic could be that sort of build).
- Mana Rengeration: I have been told this one has already been brought to the attention of Adam, but still, for documentation purposes I shall reiterate here. "Energy", which is an outdated term and should be reworked to being "Mana", or something even more unique, but I won't get into that. For now, the problem is that it is CONSTANTLY lowering itself unwarranted of any action. It is as if I'm constantly training by standing still, and if even reaches into the negatives; I am not sure how BYOND coding goes, but it seems like it needs an if-else statement in there to prevent it from dropping below zero, and to keep it from dropping while it isn't being consumed by a different variable. This needs to be fixed, of course.
- Friend System: Not going to lie, this was pretty neat and all, but it definitely is an example of one of those systems for a game that has yet to define itself as either PVP or role-playing--and for the argument of RPVP, it has much more issues. This system currently has a bug inwhich is duplicates the message you send to ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS instead of the private party. Instead of having a "Buddy system" which, in a RPVP game, causes meta and fourth-wall breaking with ease, this should be outright REMOVED from the game and turned into something else for the roleplaying sense. If you want to communicate with someone instantaneously within the game, this is what the forums can be used for--how, you wonder? Turn it into a system inwhich someone can come to a section in the forums that mechanically sends "carrier pigeons" to whomever is the recipient. That way, meta can be prevented by observation of peers.
- Mortal NPCs: Well, there isn't much to cover on this one besides the fact they are not respawns, or extra lives, on this mobs... Still, suppose that all these ideas get implement with the <<Revamp>> that I had pitched a year ago... NPCs can play a different purpose, not so much to be there to grind, but there for the lower levels (PL and ML)--like very low-- to get used to how things work, in a sense. The NPCs to someone that played for more than a day with just PVP'ing NPCs would be nothing more than an annoyance, but let's say someone wants to have a user-created event that was submitted on the forum and you can have an temporary admin position appropriately titled "Event Admin" which are just players that will roleplay the tone of a quest/mission/monster against the party that applied for the event in the first place. This can inspire more universal progression for players to do more than just mindlessly grind and roleplay for points so they can powerhouse everyone. Just a suggestion.
- Death Proc: Today I observed a death in the game. The guilty party were only aiming to KO their target, but one stray punch led to a sad Giant roaming the never-ending sand maze. Granted... this would have never hated with the Battle system that I suggested in which players engage in "Roleplay Battles" with an automated system that will do the Countdown timer, tell what Round they are in out of however many rounds they prompted to initiate, and who the victor is once one of the two players has "KO'd". A death proc is needed nonetheless to avoid players from accidentally spamming Attack one too many times.
- Store Merchant + Inventory: For starters, the "Get Clothes" in the Options is just a bit too tacky, a Store merchant needs to be implemented. I know this begs the question of how currency would be obtained--and it definitely won't be throw the grinding on mobs--but there can be specialized Quest or Global questions that happen for people to embark on---actually, I heard there are "secret dungeons" in the game, make use of them. You could set it so that there is a global timer on these dungeons (lower level ones) that can be used to farm currency and other potential rare loot (can be cosmetic or things that can permanently increase a stat by 1 point or something). This would create a player market for players so they can trade these items and "perms" for currency and that solves that problem. While! higher dungeons can be a specialized thing by admins in a roleplaying since to challenge all players that agree to participate with a huge payout in someway currency, RPP (Roleplaying Perk Points)[these could be then taken to the forum to apply for something new, a new type of magic/weapon/trait/etc], you name it. INVENTORY problem is a simple one that it doesn't allow you to drop items stored there nor delete them, that is just clutter--perhaps there should be an inventory storage limit that can be increased slightly with something(?).
- Time System: This one is simple as well, it is just waaaaaaay too long and boring. Things would take forever to happen, it doesn't inspire people to do anything because they have literally soo much time at their disposals. So, if you want to do a time system make it so that one year = like three days or something thing to that duration, not longer than it however. Also make it so that there are age nerfs, so that when you hit an elderly age you did get weakened not grow infinitely stronger for no apparent reason other than "Swagg-yolo-swagg-swagg".
- Interactive Turf Assuming my proposal is once again omitted for being implement to further improve the game, Immediately, these changes need to be made: the current random modifiers on characters are weird and low, make sit ridiculously hard to train in a fun and engaging way. Mediate seems to do nothing. Sparring with the low health regeneration seems to be counter-intuitive since mana is also low as can be; the current combat system is just two one-dimensional like DU's mechanics. Make turf interactive at least, as in if the health is going to be that low, make it so when you <<Rest>> in a <<Bed>> it is a lot faster to regenerate.
- Overlay Bugged for Some: Although this is not a common problem, it has happened two out of twelve, one/sixth of the time, apparently someone people aren't able to see overlays, so maybe add in a verb to "Remove overlays", as well as verbs such as "Add Hair", or something--maybe a Barber merchant, that seems like an easy fix to me.
You made it to the end of my little list of to-dos! This is mainly because the server went down while I was less than halfway throw this posting, so I had to go off of what I remembered from the few hours of gameplay I experienced. I encouraged you all to post new findings of things that are ailing the game in <<ALPHA>> testing. Let's make GoM great!