Game Development: Breath of Air

[maze]

Been- - -

This is RPG, not FPS or hack and slash. Skills determine who will win fight and this is how RPG game should look.

Using cards vs using a system does not make a game stop being rpg-

anyhow~ a lot of veterans have gone back and forth with cards vs action combat- I never seen J&L comment on it.
if HnH had action combat such as like Albion- we'd have a very different change of pace-
Mob would need a rework- I do see that as a problem
and player vs player would be more likely to happen with a simplified system-

Hell I would be up for HnH everythingsystem x Albion fighting system. that would make one epic game.

[CTheRain]

Been following for a few years but I've never understood why Jorb and Loftar haven't made combat more action based. I like how Archery is aiming wise. Why not do the same with melee? Weapon ranges for melee weapons. Strong attacks, weak attacks and real time blocking. (/w lag) Instead of coming up with a weird Yu-Gi-Oh rip off with a splash of WoW. IDK I've just seen combat as the biggest struggle and I'd like it to end so we can actually have more content that doesn't run out in a fucking month of gameplay. (Then you quality and stat grind until your bored)

This is RPG, not FPS or hack and slash. Skills determine who will win fight and this is how RPG game should look.

That's like saying Skyrim is a hack n slash and not a RPG. Action based combat can tie in attributes through damage and special perks. For example STR gives melee more damage. DEX can give more ATK SPD. Some shitty examples. It would be skillful because you would have to block, master your weapons range, maneuver around your opponent and use the terrain to your advantage. Plus the barrier of entry for combat would help bring in extra players which this game desperately needs as well as additional content.

[Audiosmurf]

Been following for a few years but I've never understood why Jorb and Loftar haven't made combat more action based. I like how Archery is aiming wise. Why not do the same with melee? Weapon ranges for melee weapons. Strong attacks, weak attacks and real time blocking. (/w lag) Instead of coming up with a weird Yu-Gi-Oh rip off with a splash of WoW. IDK I've just seen combat as the biggest struggle and I'd like it to end so we can actually have more content that doesn't run out in a fucking month of gameplay. (Then you quality and stat grind until your bored)

This is RPG, not FPS or hack and slash. Skills determine who will win fight and this is how RPG game should look.

That's like saying Skyrim is a hack n slash and not a RPG. Action based combat can tie in attributes through damage and special perks. For example STR gives melee more damage. DEX can give more ATK SPD. Some shitty examples. It would be skillful because you would have to block, master your weapons range, maneuver around your opponent and use the terrain to your advantage. Plus the barrier of entry for combat would help bring in extra players which this game desperately needs as well as additional content.

Your posts tell me that you didn't play Salem and you didn't experience how awful its combat was.

[CTheRain]

Your posts tell me that you didn't play Salem and you didn't experience how awful its combat was.

I didn't. I heard from here it was shit and very P2W. I'm not asking for any repeats... I mean if they're experimenting with everything why not try exactly everything?

[Myrgard]

Just harvested salt from a local node, got ONE crystal and will respawn in 6 days instead of 3 in 3 days.... 18 days to get 3 crystals, 6 times as much time.

With the reduced efficiency of a single crystal this means an effective nerf of a salt node by a factor of about 15 TIMES!!!

Ok so salt might have been overpowered but this is ridiculous.

[Kaios]

Honestly I'm a bit confused with how those even end up getting determined, appears to me that there's no logic behind it it's totally random.

As an example, I've seen pit clays that hold up to 15 pieces and some that hold up to 20 pieces with varying regeneration times ranging from 10-20 days. However, lets say you check and see how long is left until something regenerates and then you go back that day to pick it but instead of getting the full amount, you only get one. This is because the timer for regeneration has not actually ended, it's still building up pieces for some reason instead of fully regenerating after the full amount of time it indicates when you inspect it. Guess what happens when you pick that one piece before it fully regenerates though? Timer resets.

Resources are dumb.

[Myrgard]

if I understand correctly there is a global reset for every resource, that means for example 100 salt crystals will be added to the world every week.

Jorb or Loftar (I don't remember who) said at one point that if there where two nodes of a resource in the entire game world and you would control both you'd get the same amount of that resource no matter whether you were harvesting from just one node or from both.

The idea itself is strange to me but thats another topic.

Since now we have more nodes of everything that means the efficiency of a single node has dropped considerably.


Even if we were to agree that the global reset is the best option (I don't) the values should still be recalculated. Clay is the best example, since it's only good for blue brick paving at this point the value should be increased by something like a 100 for there to be a point to even bother with gathering it.

[Kaios]

Yeah exactly your interpretation of the information they gave us sounds accurate, with the current system we essentially have two timers the first timer being how long it takes before the resource actually starts regenerating and the second timer being how long it takes for those resources to regenerate and as you said this time has been significantly increased (or so it would appear) due to the addition of more resources.

[Negoveio]

Statcap was one of the main reasons why i personally started to play this game again.
Just for one simple reason: I hated it that soemone who was playing this game much longer than me, could just fuck everything up.
So this will continue, because there's a part of this community who's mentally not developed enough to understand the meaning of "fair play", who got whiped as kid and now the only way they can compensate is to ruin game experience of others because they can't harm anybody in real life. Get professional help.

Yep this game is not developing in the direction to support casual players, and it probably wont.

In other games, where you are actually limited in combat, there is a competitive PVP in the end.
This game has no competitive PVP system at all.
And this is a major flaw of this game. (Just my opinion, doesn't mean it suits everyone)

When i try to show someone this game and explain it to them their at first like: "Wow this is awesome".
And then i have to tell them: "But at any point, someone could just kill you because of totally no reason and you loose 70% of progress."
Their reaction is always the same... "So you basicly tell me, once i have something nice, someone can just kill me for the sake of doing it and i have to start all over again?"
Yep that's exactly what i was telling them... So they don't even TRY to play it. End of story. 0 out of 20 people i try to convince for this game actually even tried it.

And about that pali thing.
If a group of 3 people (or maybe only 1 with a fighing bot) all overskilled to death just got the idea of fuck your little home up.. They will do it and you have absolutly no chance to avoid that.
Which is for a casual player the reason to quit forever because he then just wasted his time.

And the thing about World wipe..
Why the fuck do so many people want a world wipe?
Just grab a new account and start all over again.. No need to ruin the game for people who arrived later.
Word wipe would change nothing except that the old fuckheads are coming back, making strong villages to fuck each other up again until they get bored and leave again.
You know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting shit to change.

One of the most well-thought posts i've seen in this forum in 4 years. This is exactly how i feel about the game's design from the start.

[InvaderDoom]

When i try to show someone this game and explain it to them their at first like: "Wow this is awesome".
And then i have to tell them: "But at any point, someone could just kill you because of totally no reason and you loose 70% of progress."
Their reaction is always the same... "So you basicly tell me, once i have something nice, someone can just kill me for the sake of doing it and i have to start all over again?"
Yep that's exactly what i was telling them... So they don't even TRY to play it. End of story. 0 out of 20 people i try to convince for this game actually even tried it.

And about that pali thing.
If a group of 3 people (or maybe only 1 with a fighing bot) all overskilled to death just got the idea of fuck your little home up.. They will do it and you have absolutly no chance to avoid that.
Which is for a casual player the reason to quit forever because he then just wasted his time.

Couple things I figured I'd add my 2 cents into.

1. I'm fairly certain Jorb or Loftar ever, and mean ever intended their games to be for casuals. They've never really outright said it, or from my several years making YouTube videos for Salem, ever made it seem that way. Hell when someone figures out a way to make life even slightly easier, they change it and make it harder...looking at you Jorb

2. The game has, is, and always was about the risk of losing everything. There are many, many, many ways of preventing this. Build such a rediculous amount of walls, one would have to be crazy to devote that much time, instead of writing an extremely long(albeit well thought out, so kudos to you there) post. You could have been reinforcing your base. Or another good one is playing with a village, play with other people, trade with people, build alliances. That's the way to stay safe. Or traverse a ton of the map to find that wonderfully perfect little out of the way spot, and the list goes on.

Perma Death has its own little niche in the gaming community. The true feeling of risk vs. reward. You really have to think out everything you do, for one wrong decision can send you into a spiral of rage. This is the only, and I mean ONLY game(also Salem in its early days), where I've felt a true feeling of accomplishment when I do something. A true feeling of "home" that is your base, went out on a very long expedition and I was actually very relieved and relaxed to finally make it back to my base. I don't really believe SeaTribe has ever really intended Hafen to appeal to the masses, they just want their little niche, and they're happy with it.

The mechanics of this game help to weed the people out that I'm sure most everyone here doesn't want to see, like the complainers, whiners, and general "it's too hard" population. When I was first explained this game, I didn't say "Well that's stupid I'm not playing it if you can lose everything". I was intrigued, and amazed by how well thought out it is.

Tl:Dr - Hafen isn't meant for the care bear community and never will be, you don't like it, don't play it. Jorb and Loftar are never going to make the game care bear, and that's not their idea for their creative world.