Fishing Hooks = OP

[Adrian]

So off of the top of your head you can name only three items in the entire game that can grind a player from electronics 3 to 4. That’s not enough.
And you know those items can be learned through disassembly. Now imagine that a new player that relies on his hotplate to purify water won’t make the gamble of disassembling it on the off-chance he might learn to re-assemble it.
So yeah, i agree there needs to be more things to learn-by-disassembling-them from.

However, i still don’t think the arbitrary grind cap is a good direction to take. In part because i’m afraid it will start a precedent for arbitrarily capping other things in Cata because it’s the simplest solution.
A better solution i think would be one where the player is encouraged to find other sources of experience without having the game flatout saying “i’m not giving you experience for this anymore.”

[Sean_Mirrsen]

But it does make sense to not give more experience to the player once the task is too trivial to learn anything. How will you improve your understanding of electronics past the basic soldering of wires if all you ever see is a battery and a lightbulb? So however limiting it might be, it is a better solution than others. It’s far easier to make more items for a player to find and learn on, than change the system to something else again.

[Adrian]

I know quoting myself is arrogant, but:

[quote=“Adrian, post:26, topic:5547”]My solution for the grind would be to make experience gain inversely proportional with the difference between PC skill and the recipe’s required skill.
That way the PC can still craft fishing hooks with 100% success rate, but would gain an decreasingly significant amount of experience from it after overskilling the recipe.

In addition to preventing grinding, the inverse proportionality of experience gain with the PC’s overskill will also encourage the player to make some higher level stuff as opposed to making X items for Y time.

And as far as implementation goes, i doubt this will be any more difficult that adding an equation to the code before the actual experience gain.[/quote]

A quick scribble on my calculator gives Y=1/(1+X) as a pretty decent candidate.
Where: X is the difference in skill between the player and an action’s requirement.
and Y is a resulting skill gain factor.

It would give the player an increasing penalty for grinding things below their capabilities, in effect continuously encouraging them to try something else without enforcing it.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

[quote=“Adrian, post:59, topic:5547”]A quick scribble on my calculator gives Y=1/(1+X) as a pretty decent candidate.
Where: X is the difference in skill between the player and an action’s requirement.
and Y is a resulting skill gain factor.

It would give the player an increasing penalty for grinding things below their capabilities, in effect continuously encouraging them to try something else without enforcing it.[/quote]The thing is that it makes sense to enforce it. This isn’t about skills that can be, realistically, improved by just any kind of practice. A highly skilled engineer, forced to stamp washers out of a sheet of metal for eight hours a day, will lose his finer skills because the primitive requirements of the task he’s performing dull out his senses, and he falls out of practice with the more advanced methods of fabrication. The cap, as-is, actually prevents skill rust, and doesn’t cost you focus when you make routine items, meaning that it’s far more beneficial to the player than it could have - and should have - been made.

[Binky]

It would give the player an increasing penalty for grinding things below their capabilities, in effect continuously encouraging them to try something else without enforcing it.

This is already exactly what it does. If you think the cap is too low, that can be altered. What we’ve basically said is that after two levels above the component, the amount of experience you get drops to nothing, although it does keep skill from rusting. Your proposal of keeping things giving a tiny bit of experience would be even more grindy, because you’d just have to do 10x more grinding to get the same result.

Adding more things to craft in each level, or spacing what we already have out more is a better way to do it in my opinion. This could be combined with items degrading through wear, and needing to be repaired (giving yet more experience). Really, the cap should be such that you don’t even know it’s there unless you are doing exploitative grinding, and I think we can do that without having to resort to getting rid of this.

[Adrian]

Really, the cap should be such that you don’t even know it’s there unless you are doing exploitative grinding …

This ^. This is exactly what i was going for.
Because i expect the player to start thinking about more lucrative ways of getting experience when they notice they have to make 10.000 [Item name here] to get halfway up to the next level in fabrication.
And decreasing the amount of experience gained from crafting when overskilled would be much more natural than having players make X item Ys before they find out they can’t get experience from it anymore.

Another (partial) solution that just popped into my mind could be an item sink. Not being able to reclaim all components when disassembling items could fix at least the flashlight grinding.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

[quote=“Binky, post:61, topic:5547”]Really, the cap should be such that you don’t even know it’s there unless you are doing exploitative grinding …

This ^. This is exactly what i was going for.
Because i expect the player to start thinking about more lucrative ways of getting experience when they notice they have to make 10.000 [Item name here] to get halfway up to the next level in fabrication.
And decreasing the amount of experience gained from crafting when overskilled would be much more natural than having players make X item Ys before they find out they can’t get experience from it anymore.

Another (partial) solution that just popped into my mind could be an item sink. Not being able to reclaim all components when disassembling items could fix at least the flashlight grinding.[/quote]I think you already have a chance to lose some components when disassembling.

More importantly, I think that what you propose lacks the necessary effectiveness. At skill level 10, the person is supposed to be a world-class specialist in the skill, as per the design doc. However, having an exponentially decreasing skill gain will mean that, even being the absolutely most experienced person in the world in that given skill, the character will still gain experience doing the most basic tasks. With the exact system as you propose, a world-class engineer will still learn from bending nails into hooks, albeit “only” 10% as much as he would have learned otherwise.

The player absolutely must be directed to expand his knowledge, because leaving the grind window open, even for a tenth of an inch like your approach would allow, will still mean that someone will be able to grind it. Since there are easier ways to increase your skill in bypassing of the game’s survival principles, I am fairly sure that pulling the plug on the grind as entirely as possible is, in this case, a good thing.

As Binky said, and as I earlier said, the game must simply have more for the player to do. Ideally every recipe would also include its own “cap” to which it could increase a skill when practiced, instead of just using the difficulty as a base, but that’s a separate matter. For right now, the best course of action that I see is starting to pad out the game’s content so that the player never sees the need to grind, and has something to turn to for practice if/when he encounters the training cap.

[Adrian]

No, you’re absolutely right. Sorry, i should have been more clear about that.
That equation was just something i scribbled into my calculator as a rough sketch about what i’m trying to convey.

I completely agree that the player shouldn’t get any experience when his skill way higher than is required of the recipe.
A more ideal equation would have y=1@x=0 and and at y=0 around x=5 or something. Like y=1-(x^2/25). (or more generally, y=1-(x^2/b^2) where b is the overskill at which y will be 0.)

What i was arguing about was how sudden the player is refused experience for an action. 199 fishing hooks would be fine, but 200 is too much.

[Binky]

[quote=“Adrian, post:64, topic:5547”]No, you’re absolutely right. Sorry, i should have been more clear about that.
That equation was just something i scribbled into my calculator as a rough sketch about what i’m trying to convey.

I completely agree that the player shouldn’t get any experience when his skill way higher than is required of the recipe.
A more ideal equation would have y=1@x=0 and and at y=0 around x=5 or something. Like y=1-(x^2/25). (or more generally, y=1-(x^2/b^2) where b is the overskill at which y will be 0.)

What i was arguing about was how sudden the player is refused experience for an action. 199 fishing hooks would be fine, but 200 is too much.[/quote]

Agreed, but the cut off point has to come somewhere. A more gradual system of gaining less and less experience would be nice, but it’d be annoying/difficult to communicate that to the player, and at some point you’d still need that cut off point anyway.

I think it’s all in the balance - the point is the player should never, ever, want to craft 200 fishhooks (or other examples, I know that was just to make the point), as there are other things that they need to build to survive.

[kevin.granade]

several points:

1. it’s a survival game, you’re supposed to have trouble finding things tou need from time to time.
   a progressive cap is BAD, it actively encourages grinding right up to whatever the actual cap is, and reintroduces the “doing trivial tasks to learn advanced things” problem to boot

[Adrian]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:66, topic:5547”]several points:

1. it’s a survival game, you’re supposed to have trouble finding things tou need from time to time.[/quote]
   Up to a certain point, yes. But being unable to progress to the next skill level because nothing will give you experience anymore is bad design.
   Adding more learning-by-dismantling-able things to Cata will fix that for at least the electronics and fabrication skills.

a progressive cap is BAD, it actively encourages grinding right up to whatever the actual cap is, and reintroduces the “doing trivial tasks to learn advanced things” problem to boot

The cap doesn’t progress, it can stay where it is right now.
What i’m suggesting is a run-up to the cap in which the PC earns progressively less experience the closer they get to it. It’ll serve to alleviate some of the frustration of suddenly not getting experience any more, give players a heads-up about it and encourage them to spend time progressing in other things.

[Binky]

What i’m suggesting is a run-up to the cap in which the PC earns progressively less experience the closer they get to it. It’ll serve to alleviate some of the frustration of suddenly not getting experience any more, give players a heads-up about it and encourage them to spend time progressing in other things.

I agree that a bit more feedback would help considerably. I’m on the fence about more gradient based experience - it seems that might be difficult to convey without solid numbers, which cata tries to avoid in messages.

[Dominae]

Feels like another “playstyle” argument at its core.

If people rush into Cata with “I’m going to make a full suit of survivor gear ASAP” and then commence grinding like a madman, it can feel hard to then listen to their complaints about ‘being forced to grind’. The game design was always more of a fluid “explore and find things, survive however you can, craft & make what you can/when you can” and trying to grind through the explore phase right to ‘end game’ will goof things up.

Maybe it is just the curse of having too much game knowledge … you know those overpowered end-game recipes are there and you’ll want that stuff “sooner or later” so you might as well force yourself to do un-fun grinding to get it “sooner” rather than later. I mean, I totally get it, I’m that kind of person at heart too. I have to force myself NOT to grind in many games, and just make myself ‘play’ more naturally. If I die without ever getting those items, oh well, I had an unlucky gaming experience (but at least I had fun) as opposed to “I must have this list of end game items BEFORE I can enjoy myself…”

No amount of tinkering with recipe lists, or the actual math behind skill-gain is going to stop someone rushing to get end-game gear ASAP from doing so and then saying they had a miserable time doing it.

Save-scumming a library to get the books you need? That kind of flies in the face of the whole design of things, doesn’t it? At that point if you’re so thinking “I deserve this book” that you need to save-scum a building until you get it you may as well just give yourself the items you want to make via debug console, or at least the skills required to make those items.

Its an apocalypse and you’re digging through the remains of civilization trying to eek out an existence until you inevitably get eaten by something, it isn’t ordering books/supplies off Amazon.

[FunsizeNinja123]

In all my days of Cata-ing, I ca proudly say that I have never grinded.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:70, topic:5547”]In all my days of Cata-ing, I ca proudly say that I have never grinded.[/quote]Obviously we need to implement skateboards.

[FunsizeNinja123]

Well I’m sure Ninja would suck at skateboarding.

[Jakers]

Um… it’s been a while since I last checked this post (I only checked it when it had like, 2 comments.) And now there’s freaking almost a thousand views!!! Seriously… I didn’t expect this to go anywhere at all…

Anyways, I’ve read the comments and I’m very impressed with the ideas being put forward! Personally I don’t grind often because it kinda spoils it for me. I know the basic motto is ‘if you don’t like grinding don’t do it’, but it’s the fact that people CAN do it. A master blacksmith didn’t get to where he was today by sharpening sticks and bending and unbending nails.

So, yeah, thanks for listening to my whining! And sorry to players who tried to fight off a jabberwock with a fishing hook… the title was meant to grab attention…

A moment of silence for the fishing hook ninjas, please…

Anyway thanks all! Have a great day! ^^ /) (\

[Binky]

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I think a lot of it comes down to making the player explore more for their gear/crafting material.
Currently, in the first town you can get pretty much everything to become incredibly advanced, and there’s little ‘epic loot’ to be found - a survival suit can be made from parts in one town with no problems at all.

I’d just suggest that we take away some of the ‘or component x’ from a few recipes and make anything that’s not ‘basic’ stuff require more difficult to acquire parts, which require more hunting, a lot more killing and more general adventuring.

The retort that ‘some people don’t like scrounging for parts’ or ‘it’s tedious if you can’t find x’ doesn’t hold up, because the ENTIRE GAME is centered around that premise. Yeah, it was annoying when you could never find a wood axe or when you couldn’t make a hammer, but for anything more advanced than that I feel we need to encourage some serious looting.

[Adrian]

[quote=“Binky, post:74, topic:5547”]I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I think a lot of it comes down to making the player explore more for their gear/crafting material.
Currently, in the first town you can get pretty much everything to become incredibly advanced, and there’s little ‘epic loot’ to be found - a survival suit can be made from parts in one town with no problems at all.

I’d just suggest that we take away some of the ‘or component x’ from a few recipes and make anything that’s not ‘basic’ stuff require more difficult to acquire parts, which require more hunting, a lot more killing and more general adventuring.

The retort that ‘some people don’t like scrounging for parts’ or ‘it’s tedious if you can’t find x’ doesn’t hold up, because the ENTIRE GAME is centered around that premise. Yeah, it was annoying when you could never find a wood axe or when you couldn’t make a hammer, but for anything more advanced than that I feel we need to encourage some serious looting.[/quote]
I remember Kevin mentioning the phrase “simulated looting” somewhere. This would solve a lot of issues what with adventuring and progression and stuff.

By having invisible gnomes slowly remove items that are outside the reality bubble as time goes on, Cata can become more much more survival oriented.
The game would start off giving the player enough tools to build some skill and secure his next meals, and slowly ramp up the difficulty by removing/spawning less pre-Cataclysm items.
It would also encourage a more adventurous and nomadic lifestyle as resources are used up in a single area.

[/mytwocents]

[Binky]

[quote=“Adrian, post:75, topic:5547”]I remember Kevin mentioning the phrase “simulated looting” somewhere. This would solve a lot of issues what with adventuring and progression and stuff.

By having invisible gnomes slowly remove items that are outside the reality bubble as time goes on, Cata can become more much more survival oriented.
The game would start off giving the player enough tools to build some skill and secure his next meals, and slowly ramp up the difficulty by removing/spawning less pre-Cataclysm items.
It would also encourage a more adventurous and nomadic lifestyle as resources are used up in a single area.[/quote]

I completely agree with this, although I know a lot of people aren’t keen on the invisible gnomes idea. I get the reason why, as it’d encourage some players to rush and hoard everything in your reality bubble as soon as possible at the risk of it going later. However, waiting for real NPCs to be able to actively loot is a LONG way off, and other than them looting in your reality bubble (which would seem a bit forced I think) they’d still have the same effect.

Regardless, I feel a better curve needs to be put in - I’ve mentioned more things becoming rusted/broken/damaged over time before and I think that might be a good way to deal with it.