Best Of
Re: Announcements post #86: Talents preview.
Lack of pve endgame content can be solved by:
1. Introducing endgame areas that are still level 75 but much more hardcore than anything currently ingame. This has a double benefit: it's something achievers can aim to solo (and they probably won't without significant talent investment), while other players can still tackle the same areas but in groups. Grouping up is fun, and stimulates ingame activity. Just make sure to make the rewards better than current endgame areas, otherwise we'll fall into the Tranquility Deepness trap (where no one goes there because it's too dangerous and rewards are the same as in other endgame places).
2. Big capstone talents that you can't buy unless you already invested a lot of points into other talents. Your dragon equivalents that require 50/100/500/whatever talent points before you get them. Personally I'm not a fan of Achaea's dragons and the less said about Lusternia's titans/demigods/one quarter-mortals/hecatonheires/avatars/grand orders/super saiyans, the better. But I'm sure we can find a fittingly sci fi equivalent.
Cubey
5
Re: Quality of Life Wishlist
Hide the ships of inactive players from the STATION list of ships.
[IMPLEMENTED]
Steve
7
Re: Announcements post #86: Talents preview.
I'd like to gently disagree with some points made above.
- RE: evasion being mediocre at best. This doesn't seem quite right to me. In PvP, I would not be happy with this sort of evasion, period. Similarly, I would not like to see crits in PvP. However, in PvE, I think 10% avoidance is really solid for long-term efficiency, especially coupled with the other three long-term efficiency boosters (crit, % damage reduction, % recovery on kill).
- RE: some kind of way to convert experience in captaincy to ground game experience or vice versa. @Ilyos I don't think this sort of mechanic is a good idea. I've heard a number of people request something like ways to convert the other way, from ground experience to captaincy, but it's important to keep experience and captaincy experience separate. I believe these requests for conversion are not about that captaincy experience is hard to come by, because that isn't really the case; the truth is, it's very, very fast to get up to a corvette, and getting a destroyer is also relatively quick. But, that assumes gaining captaincy experience through incursioning, which isn't really the most engaging system (though some of us, including myself, like it for what it is). I'd call that a number of players don't find incursions compelling to be an underlying problem for which they are requesting experience conversion -- to bypass incursions. Another underlying reason is that people want to upgrade to a more suitable economy ship. Personally, I think a light economy ship should be added to bridge the gap between interceptor and freighter.
- Here's the point: this sort of conversion mechanic only serves to obfuscate underlying concerns that should be directly addressed, not simply swept under the rug. If the best way for most people to get up to destroyer or freighter is to ground bash, or if the best way for a captain to get ground experience is by incursions, then something else is wrong and you're not solving any problems with this sort of mechanic.
I'd also like to say a few other things.
- Damage over time crits! Yaaaaay!
- If crits really do bring existing disparities in class power into focus, then that will help the staff balance things out. It's pretty much guaranteed that nanoseers would be bonkers with AoE crits.
- But, it seems to me that, from the outset, only single-target abilities should be able to crit.
- It might not be a bad idea to make the damage resistance talent inapplicable versus players, just to keep things straight; I don't think it's a good idea to add 7.5% DR to all classes for PvP purposes when, if there is too much underlying damage or a damage route is too strong or too weak, that should be changed without having to consider this talent.
Steve
2
Re: Announcements post #86: Talents preview.
First thought - crit shouldn't work for AoE, or at least it should get balanced with that in mind.
Nanoseers would have a >(1/2)^n probability of wiping out a room of n mobs instantly with a vacuumsphere.
Nanoseers would have a >(1/2)^n probability of wiping out a room of n mobs instantly with a vacuumsphere.
Albion
2
Re: Announcements post #86: Talents preview.
Initial impression: this is a great start for this system, and I think it addresses a number of playstyles, interests, and does what it should do. Of course, I don't have access to information about talent point acquisition, and some of the talent numbers are hidden, but that's ok.
Here are my three main thoughts:
- I like the cooldown reduction ones.
- I also like that this system helps people who want to get more mod drops.
- I'd like to know whether crit hits can also apply to bleed ticks and other damage over time abilities. If that's true, then I am sold on all of these talents.
Steve
2
Re: The Ideas Thread
I think Deltrion touched on a workable and fair solution: mobs can only windup if the player is attacking them. I'd adjust it as follows:
Mobs can only windup if they are injured.
This has a few advantages over determining which mobs can wind-up based on whether a player is attacking:
- Easy to track, game-side
- Harder to cheese, potentially, by the player(s)
- Encourages coordination and teamwork
- Easiest to explain, both IC and OOC, and understand
Alternatively, it could be tied to number of players in the room. Numbers of players in room = number of mobs that can be channeling a windup at one time.
I'd like to see variation on the insta-kill windup, such as heavy subsystem damage and the many miseries that attend it.
Steve
1
Re: Man, I love sci-fi.
Generally speaking, I find the sci-fi setting immensely useful for negotiating the strangeness that is having a player play a character through a game. Specifically, and most prominantly, I find the mindsim and the commsphere to be crucial to RP. I tried Achaea after playing Starmourn for a while, and every message that wasn't a mere SAY was jarring -- and, in my experience, nobody even tried to work around it. Perhaps that's an organizational phenomenon. Similarly, mindsim integration level (MIL) is brilliant. Nobody's talking about levels IC, really. Steve gets to talk about whatever his mindsim's got his MIL rated at (and that goes for captaincy and all other manner of things). This also plays out with things like FHELP files; check it out on the mindsim, and voila. No stretch of the imagination there.
Frankly, I just don't see why players enjoy RP in fantasy environments when so many of the game mechanics in a MUD work directly against fantasy world-building. Sure, everybody can have telepathy or something like that, but that's not my cup of tea (and the same goes for most high-fantasy trappings). To give you a sense of how I feel about it, I'm letting that Achaea character time out because the Starmourn setting suits my tastes far, far better. But hey -- that's my opinion, and to be clear, I expect other people don't mind the discrepancy I just pointed out, and certainly manage to have a great time. I also do not mean to be bashing on Achaea. It seems like a solid game, and I enjoyed my time with it, overall.
Related: I'm a big fan of sci-fi things like wetwiring explaining smooth mechanics. I see wetwiring as an example of brilliant lore-meets-game. While I'm comparing SM with Achaea, I'd like to point out how crazy it seems to have somebody sipping fifteen different drinks while using thirty different salves and still finding time to swing a sword.
OK, I'm done. In short: I love the sci-fi setting of Starmourn and think it's perfectly suitable to a roleplaying experience while still being a game.
Steve
4
Re: Recommended Playing Time 10/3 at 6pm EST
Wasn't really around for the events so basing my observations entirely off this thread, however, your analogy seems slightly off to me. No players were permanently killed in the event as far as I'm aware. Using your gaming table example, wouldn't it be more like having established npcs who are important to the players killed off in a shocking fashion by some big bad who is attacking a faction/city in an attempt to make the conflict with said enemy more personal and engaging to the players? The killing of important NPCs seems like an incredibly common story telling technique which allows the story teller to create stakes without actively harming the players' character.
As I said, have very little visibility of exactly what occured, so take my words with a massive heaping of salt, but it feels like the loss experienced by Celestine in this instance was a perfect opportunity to drive RP for the faction and get players invested and involved.
As I said, have very little visibility of exactly what occured, so take my words with a massive heaping of salt, but it feels like the loss experienced by Celestine in this instance was a perfect opportunity to drive RP for the faction and get players invested and involved.
