Author Topic: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..  (Read 43061 times)

Marcus

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What follows isn't meant to bash the game, it's only feedback:
I'm running my second character, a gunslinger with crafting abilities. This character has 3 willpower and no points invested in bartering. I just hit level 16 and the first four rows in my inventory are full of money. At level ten it was some 2 or 2 rows and a half.
Personally I'd get ridd of the present bartering system, get back to merchants buying everything but for much less money.
Also: money hoarding is possible because it's mostly required for consumables only. It's hard to find a good weapon for sale at a given moment in the plot. It seems to me that the situation is better with armours. Personally I'm not particularly fond of money sinks in RPGs, but they have a purpouse.
Crafting: my present character has 6 points in intelligence (probably 7 at level 20), and save for a bunch of leather armours crafting has proven to be wasted for now. No matter what, I always can loot or buy better stuff than that I can make. I feel this is only partly due to skill requirements: it's also about components quality consistence and availability. I see that vendors in the different towns have "scaled" inventories, I mean Junkyard better than SGS and the Core better than Junkyard and so on.. High end vendors should be more biased towards a fixed high end stock imho. It would make intelligence score and skillpoints investment more interesting.
For now each time I want to craft something and I need, let's say a bolt of cloth of quality 90+, I have to run across all the towns to find a vendor who has the component and possibly that quality level. After finding a dozen of bolts of 40/60 quality the only option is to wait another 90 minutes for the vendors to restock. If I'm lucky it's not "rinse and repeat". I enjoyed Underrail so far, but the constant buy and sell vendor hunt is a killer.
Any opinions?

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #1 on: December 30, 2014, 08:39:06 pm »
Pretty much sums up the problems I find with the game. Crafting keeps you behind the curve, not ahead. You are always finding something better than you can craft, either as a drop or merchants selling it. the only use I see for craft now (since grenades were put at too high levels) is shields. Other than that crafting is nothing but a waste of points in my opinion.

The current merchant system is equally bad. Not because it gives you too much money but ratehr because it doesn't buys everything. I much prefered the old where I had a lot less money but I could at least sell everything. It definitly made me a lot happier. That and no carry limits because doing 2 levels of the GMS already gives me more things than I can carry. I breaks game immersion to stop in the middle just to go sell/drop loot. Leaving loot behind for me is just not an option.

I'll tell you right now however that there is no plan to change this, some people like it as it is, some people dislike it as it is. The developers firmly belive this is the better way and Styg stated it would not change, neither the crafting nor the economy system. We'll have to wait for a full release to see if at least some options are included to change this and if not, wait for mods to bring the game more in line with what we like.

Zephyros

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2014, 02:53:09 am »
The crafting skills are incredibly useful; even as an average intelligence character, you can max them and craft much better items than anything you could find or buy.

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2014, 05:51:47 am »
Only in shields because you can't buy shields. Anything you can craft you'll find better for sale. You only advantage is adding thing like laser sights and whatnot. Most weapons you can only find with one modification where crafting allows you to get 2, but the weapons will still be much weaker than what the shops have to offer you in terms of raw damage.

I crafted leathers and guns very close to my skill limit at an average intelligence value but maxed crafting skills and I can tell you that whatever I crafted even with no extras was vastly inferior to what shops had to offer. To give you a better understanding. If I crafted an assault rifle right before going into the junkyard it would be worse or at best very close to what I had by then. However it would be vastly inferior (and I do not say vastly in any light terms) to anything on sale in junkyard.

This is why I've always said crafting was not worth it and to some degree people agreeded with me. Of course grenades were good to craft some patches back when they asked for lower crafting skills, now it's probably better to just buy them as you need to invest too much and are likely to find better tiers before you can actually craft them.

Now with the shields which can only be crafted, sure there is a reason to invest into a crafting skill. Electronics and really that's the only reason to invest into it right now (and maybe 20 in biology for doctor feat, not actual crafting).

I don't see how you can say that you can craft much better items than you can find on average skills. The crafting skill requirements have never been dropped after all. I know my knowledge of this is a bit old but I know this wasn't changed and I'm pretty sure the merchants weren't nerfed in the quallity of weapons they have because if they were people would be having problems to fight monsters with guns that would be so weak that even crafting could make better.

Zephyros

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2014, 09:28:43 am »
I have been playing a sledgehammer-focused character with maxed crafting and average intelligence. By level 20, I could craft shock tungsten sledgehammers that were noticeably better than anything I found in loot or in shops. I have found that it is quite easy to find high quality components but stores rarely sell the equivalent weapon. I think the game size has improved this, as I remember all the concomitant worries of looking for a specific item.

To be fair, I never bothered with crafting much before I hit 20 and maxed out my skill and item quality thresholds, though. I could see it being a little sub-optimum without really high INT.


Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2014, 03:28:22 pm »
Well, if crafting is only useful for end game content and early to mid game isn't really that useful becuae you can find better stuff then i will still look at it and say it's not worth it. I don't want to be investing into skills for a quarter of the game, maybe less?

This not to mention that crafting has a problem. While the idea is good it ends up being a problem in the same token. Crafting has synergies. I tend to look at crafting and think. I want tailoring for armor, but I'll laso need mechanics because some parts will need it, then I'll need electronics because shields and well, weapons can use it too. That's already 3 skills and if I want to make bombs add one extra skill... It is too much to ask when any character I make will need at least 2 weapon related skills hacking and lockpicking, probably stealth unless going for heavy armor. possible dodging and evasion, possible 3 psi abillities.

So huge problems, too much investment needed right from level 1 to only be really useful at end game for a small part of the content.

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2015, 03:38:49 pm »
1 - I belive everyone was saying before that shields were only craftable and never showed for sale or as loot drops. Everyone was actually saying that this fact was a very good reason to pick crafting alone. I was merely going along with it but if it's not true, even more of a reason not to craft.

2 - Well if you can't buy mk5 grenades I guess they just haven't been implemented for sale yet or they might never be. But it takes 112 I think just to get to them. So an average intelligence character gets that when, level 20? Right........................

3 -

A - You shouldn't be crafting appropriate level gear. Again that is ridiciculous. What you find as soon as you arive in junkyard for example is gear that is higher level than you, this is why it's not worth it to craft. You should be able to craft even better gear at this point. Again, crafting should always keep you ahead of the curve, never behind at any point during the game. I'll keep saying this till he end of times.

B - Are you really going to tell me that you don't have the required money to buy all the expendable craftables throughout the game?.. Sure you might not be able to buy the very best, example being the MK5 grenade but you do buy most things.

C - Not it doesn't and you know it doesn't. I've already told you that transforming thousands of charrons into repair kits which you still wouldn't be able to sell all but those you would only turn to a few hundred is not a solution, it's as good a solution as leaving stuff behind for all purposes and effects... Loot is never junk, loot is money!

D - I saw your post and yeah, if you're lucky and get some appropriate low level stuff that you can craft then sure, you can make something hard a little bit easier. But just as syphoner skin is something new, can't you just buy stuff from the stores made out of it? Even if you can't all you're saying is. Sure, use crafting to get through a single quest easier. Still not worth the investment.

4 - I will not say I know exactly how much skills I need in crafting, but I know that 100 is not something light, it's something at very least level 17. Not like you max one skill in 5 levels and then max the next in another 5 levels so you can tier it up slowly. The investment is rather heavy because you almost always need multiple crafting types... Chemistry is a bad example there, for mk5 grenades they need a very high skill, borderline insane if you are to ask me. Besides you do say you don't need more than 100 for most things. I don't know, the higher quallity the stuff is, the more skill it asks, if you put attachements, each one is going to increase the total skill by 10%. While I haven't been there because crafting has mostly been a waste of time, I can see things escalating easily above 100 unless components that require more than 80 points do not exist.

5 - My earlier problem with the crafting was never the lack of materials, it was the absurdly high requirements of it! That problem is still not addressed and Styg pretty much said he is not going to change it. It is his game however so it's his right to say how things are made. I feel however that when the game is released that nearly no one will go crafting route as it is.

Last and never least. While you could be right that at some point players look more into equipment than levels for power (quite frankly I always look into both for power at any point) there is a limit to how much stuff you can do. Many builds completly make crafting unviable. I crafting is supposed to ever become a requirement to late game then a lot is lost because of it which means, poor balance. Crafting should keep you ahead of the curve because characters who craft can't do a lot of other stuff thus they power their way with better equipment. Characters without crafting are more powerful in other areas so they don't need the extra power from equipment, simple balance... I think that despite combat mechanics being clear it won't change much. The vast majority will not like the crafting system and not use it. Just as many people will not like the carry weight which is unbearably low even for a 10 str character. They will also not like the economic system. Whether some of these things will have an option to be turned off or made better I do not know, but if not I'm sure people will start modding the game to solve these problems. Right now that do is my only hope. That the game gets released and someone mods it to deal with the carry weights, merchants and crafting.

Eliasfrost

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2015, 03:08:02 am »
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Loot is never junk, loot is money!

That brings up a pretty interesting point actually. Generally "loot" is refering to stuff you pick up to sell, basically it's a never ending but slow source of currency. But is that all it is and can be? it really gets down to what you expect from loot in games and you're no stranger to sharing your view on it Elhazzared and it's that loot is either to sell or to use, to a greater or lesser extent and often if not always without compromise. Leaving it behind is not an option for you because loot is never a waste from your perspective and that's fine. The thing is, this clashes with how loot is portrayed in Underrail: not always useful and if it is, you often have to compromise if you want to acquire said piece of loot, either by dropping one or more things or going back and sell your existing loot. Loot is not a source of income in Underrail more than it is a possible resource for crafting or exchange of equipment. This is strongly reinforced through having carry weight and the way traders work, you're not supposed to pick everything up, you're supposed to make the decision on the spot whether the thing that dropped is worth investing in, because that's how things work here. You're scavenging for the most useful, you're not hoarding.

More to the point, Underrail (in it's current stage) doesn't exactly shy away from the way its itemization works either. The first time you get back from the caves (with the power stations) you can't sell all the stuff you carry. This signifies that not only do you have to be picky about what kind of stuff you get, but it also reflects how merchants operate in Underrail, why would they purchase things that they won't have any use for or will be able to forward to other traders (based on what kinds of goods they trade with)? after all, merchants in Underrail don't have unlimited amounts of currency either. You are all in this boat together, following the same basic core principle: scavenge, don't hoard. And this is talking from a strictly thematic perspective. In the game's previous iterations, this was not present, but that can easily be attributed to the fact that it was in early alpha stages and the idea wasn't fully developed at the time, but what do I know really, I'm just guessing? :P

Even in Diablo 3, most of the loot drop was intentionally worthless simply just so that the monsters would explode with loot, you were not supposed to the pick it up. And that game was an ARPG, a genre built entirely around loot. In Divinity, a lot of the loot is decoration, only there to enhance the world building, the same goes for the Elder Scrolls. In the Souls series, loot items literally told you the lore of the game through its description. This goes to show that loot is not strictly one thing or the other. It can be used for a lot of different things depending on context, and the ways loot have been treated in games throughout the years effectively demonstrates that. And just as all things it comes down to preference whether you like it or not. I for one thinks the loot system and implications it has is very interesting, not only from a designer perspective but from a gameplay one as well, it encourages me to follow the rules of the world and that immerses me. For you, not so much.

Maybe this was all just a bunch of mumbo jumbo for you guys but I'm not really that much into the technicalities and numbers, just wanted to share my view on this whole loot thing. :)

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2015, 03:48:49 am »
No mater how much you want to try and shy away from common practice, loot is at the end of the day exactly that. Either something you use or money. You want it as a part of a gun, it has a use. It's an armor better than yours? It has a use. When it doesn't has a use then it has a monetary value so that if useful stuff doesn't drops, you buy it.

Everything in underrail is useful! can you tell me of something that you pickup that has no use? Even if you can I'm sure it's something incredibly rare. Everything has a use. Society has collapsed, the few survivors life in the metro and bunker dug and fortified inside the earth. Resources are scarse, do you think people who scavnge for stuff wouldn't horde and sell everything? If they found a place with stuff they'd pick it clean! Eveything has a value!

Obviously people can't carry a train on their back nor do the merchants really have unlimited amounts of money. But this is where gammy sense has to overcome real sense and if needed you can justify it very very easily. You can have some sort of backapack that can magicly (or tecnologicaly) store whatever you put inside and with no weight associated to it. Merchants will never buy you anything at all, each town has a storage which buy anything and everything, they have quite literally tons of money. Merchants only buy things from storage to sell so the storage just has lots of money because merchants need to aquire stuff from them. Easy to justify things if you really want but above all, it stands to reason that gammy sense has to prevail over real sense in some parts to make things work.

Also it's wrong to compare this to ARPGs (or hack and slash games as I call it). In ARPGs you are put in a situation that it's neither profitable nor timely to get every piece of loot. White loot won't even pay for a scroll and the time lost in going to town every 10 seconds would make playing the game pointless... Even then there are ARPGs that do that right. Look at Sacred 2 and you have a perfect example. You have a huge inventory and you can instantly sell from the inventory at a smaller margin but the value of white items are not high so the loss is insignificant, meanwhile you keep getting every piece of loot and selling and not stop playing thus not breaking game immersion. Do they bother explaining how you can do that? No, why would they? It's a thing meant to keep you playing and have fun, it only has to make gammy sense, not real sense... But going back to proper RPGs which use a turn based system you are supposed to pick up everything. Take fallout 2 as an example. Did you leave any loot behind? I know I didn't. I know I sold everything I got my hands on! If there was too much loot  I'd store everything I couldn't carry in a closet near the exit and make trips back and forth. this is where the game could have used a little bit of a hand. No carry limits would make those parts less boring and keep you constantly engaged on the fun. Similarly there was no unlimited amount of money on merchants but in any given place they could always buy all I had and if not I'd just start getting stimpacks as money replacements since you use a lot of them anyway. There was no limit or this type only of items that they bought from you and again, if they had unlimited money, it would only have made it better because again, it would have less of boring trading time and more time engaged in playing the actual game.

I understand that Styg has different views for his game and I do respect that he wants to do some things differently. But in these areas  I feel it's an exercice in futility. People don't like these things. People don't like to have their time wasted or feel like they are being cheated out of their money. He could have dealt with it the same way he dealt with the oddity system. Make it an option, not an obligation... At any rate it's very likely people will mod these exact things I'm talking about. It might take a long time or it might come up quickly. But it's sure to be expected to happen either way because most people won't like it as it is. The same will go for the crafting, I'm sure someone will mod it to make crafting useful from the very start but that's a whole new can of worms.

What I mean is. If it's already well known that mechanics which make people feel cheated of their stuff or make people feel like it's wasting their time is pretty much widely disliked. Why go so hard on making sure the game has it? Why give the moders the credit for making a game good instead of the developers taking the credit for having made a good game? Again, so long as there is options and you can chose whether or you want those mechanics or not, then there is no problem.

Of course you can say those can be added last and you'd be right, but then how much testing is the game going to have with those options? Sure the early access is mostly a way to gain revenue to help funding the game but still, if you can use feedback to improve the game then it should be used in all aspects of the game.

Eliasfrost

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2015, 01:22:35 pm »
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No mater how much you want to try and shy away from common practice, loot is at the end of the day exactly that. Either something you use or money. You want it as a part of a gun, it has a use. It's an armor better than yours? It has a use. When it doesn't has a use then it has a monetary value so that if useful stuff doesn't drops, you buy it.

That's your perspective yes and it may be common practice in some games but far from all. I listed numerous examples of how loot is used differently, to different ends.

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Everything in underrail is useful! can you tell me of something that you pickup that has no use? Even if you can I'm sure it's something incredibly rare. Everything has a use. Society has collapsed, the few survivors life in the metro and bunker dug and fortified inside the earth. Resources are scarse, do you think people who scavnge for stuff wouldn't horde and sell everything? If they found a place with stuff they'd pick it clean! Eveything has a value!

But does it have value to you? This is where the itemization becomes interesting to me. The carry weight is not in the game for the fun of it. It's to encourage you to think long about what kind of stuff you want to fill your inventory with. If you use and craft crossbows and grenades, you will pick up crossbow parts and chemicals above anything else, because it's the skill that keeps you alive. If you find a random piece of loot that doesn't have actual value to your character, what item will you compromise to pick it up? Should you pick it up or hold on to your more valuable items instead?

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Obviously people can't carry a train on their back nor do the merchants really have unlimited amounts of money. But this is where gammy sense has to overcome real sense and if needed you can justify it very very easily. You can have some sort of backapack that can magicly (or tecnologicaly) store whatever you put inside and with no weight associated to it. Merchants will never buy you anything at all, each town has a storage which buy anything and everything, they have quite literally tons of money. Merchants only buy things from storage to sell so the storage just has lots of money because merchants need to aquire stuff from them. Easy to justify things if you really want but above all, it stands to reason that gammy sense has to prevail over real sense in some parts to make things work.

It's not like the itemization and trading doesn't work. It does, it's just not tailored to your style of play.

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Also it's wrong to compare this to ARPGs (or hack and slash games as I call it). In ARPGs you are put in a situation that it's neither profitable nor timely to get every piece of loot. White loot won't even pay for a scroll and the time lost in going to town every 10 seconds would make playing the game pointless... Even then there are ARPGs that do that right. Look at Sacred 2 and you have a perfect example. You have a huge inventory and you can instantly sell from the inventory at a smaller margin but the value of white items are not high so the loss is insignificant, meanwhile you keep getting every piece of loot and selling and not stop playing thus not breaking game immersion. Do they bother explaining how you can do that? No, why would they? It's a thing meant to keep you playing and have fun, it only has to make gammy sense, not real sense... But going back to proper RPGs which use a turn based system you are supposed to pick up everything. Take fallout 2 as an example. Did you leave any loot behind? I know I didn't. I know I sold everything I got my hands on! If there was too much loot  I'd store everything I couldn't carry in a closet near the exit and make trips back and forth. this is where the game could have used a little bit of a hand. No carry limits would make those parts less boring and keep you constantly engaged on the fun. Similarly there was no unlimited amount of money on merchants but in any given place they could always buy all I had and if not I'd just start getting stimpacks as money replacements since you use a lot of them anyway. There was no limit or this type only of items that they bought from you and again, if they had unlimited money, it would only have made it better because again, it would have less of boring trading time and more time engaged in playing the actual game.

I wasn't comparing the games per se but their respective view on what loot is and its value. Loot in Underrail is clearly not meant to picked up at all times, if you want to do that, you need to make sacrifices, just like you mentioned you did in Fallout 2. Like most of the loot in The Elder Scrolls is just decoration and world building and how items give you lore in Dark souls, they have different reasons to exist and Underrail excercise its itemization to encourage scavenging and if you embrace that, it's a damn fine itemization system. If you don't, or if you can't for some reason, then it's probably not the very best system, but that goes for everything.

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I understand that Styg has different views for his game and I do respect that he wants to do some things differently. But in these areas  I feel it's an exercice in futility. People don't like these things. People don't like to have their time wasted or feel like they are being cheated out of their money. He could have dealt with it the same way he dealt with the oddity system. Make it an option, not an obligation... At any rate it's very likely people will mod these exact things I'm talking about. It might take a long time or it might come up quickly. But it's sure to be expected to happen either way because most people won't like it as it is. The same will go for the crafting, I'm sure someone will mod it to make crafting useful from the very start but that's a whole new can of worms.

I agree that making it an option would be cool but I think I've answered this very exact thing a few months back. Can't seem to find it right now though.

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What I mean is. If it's already well known that mechanics which make people feel cheated of their stuff or make people feel like it's wasting their time is pretty much widely disliked. Why go so hard on making sure the game has it? Why give the moders the credit for making a game good instead of the developers taking the credit for having made a good game? Again, so long as there is options and you can chose whether or you want those mechanics or not, then there is no problem.

I haven't actually seen a lot of dislike for the itemization. I can count on my fingers the amount of times someone have complained about it, most people actually like how the itemization works otherwise it would be a hot topic frequently but it really isn't. And I'm pretty sure Stygian won't expect their audience to "fix" their game for them, and even if they do it's to satisfy a relatively small portion of their audience, given the low amounts of complaints on the area.

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Of course you can say those can be added last and you'd be right, but then how much testing is the game going to have with those options? Sure the early access is mostly a way to gain revenue to help funding the game but still, if you can use feedback to improve the game then it should be used in all aspects of the game.

You have given your feedback, time and time again. And people have listened, and replied. Styg have listened, and replied. Though not in your favour because he have other plans but he have indeed listened. I've given my rather less favourable opinion on the leveling system but I don't expect him to change it if he have better plans, I've given my feedback and that's enough. It's fine to throw your opinion out there, if it sticks, cool! if it doesn't then I don't see the point in nagging.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2015, 01:24:22 pm by Eliasfrost »

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2015, 01:57:09 pm »
I feel you are severely underestimating what people like and dislike in games. Underrail has a small community behind it right now because it is an indie game and because it is in early access. Once the game gets fully released and a much larger mass of people buy it. How do you think they will see this bearing in mind most people don't like having carry limits, they just want to keep moving on and that they can't sell even a third of what they find. Add the time waste to travel between all known cities to try and sell everything plus possible money wasted doing so.

What you see here in the foruns is going to be a very small minority once the game is fully released, this not to mention that even when this current majority becomes the minority, that won't even be the full scale of the problem, We all know the vast majority of people that don't like a game won't complain in the foruns, that's too much work to register an account in a forum just to say why they didn't liked the game. It's a lot easier to just uninstal and try to forget they ever spent money on the game.

Don't forget one thing, this isn't a rogue-like where resoruce management is important. Something like sword of the stars: the pit where you do are limited by inventory space and there is no vendors or anything. You are supposed to chose what to keep and what to leave. This is an RPG where an economy is part of it.

As someone once said about what makes a great RPG. Remove all busy work from it! Have no such things as fetch quests. Have no carry limits. Have no limits to the amount of things you can sell.

Make your game stand by the solidity of it's good mechanics, don't add mechanics that waste people's time.

I think I couldn't really put it better myself.

Some people do not mind time wasting mechanics or mechanics that cheat them out of their stuff. That is ok but those people are a minority.

You do are right that I keep saying the same thing over and over again, but this is something that needs to either be changed or at least have an option implemented as soon as possible. The reason is that when the game is released it's working well with a proper trade system.

Eliasfrost

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2015, 02:49:01 pm »
You keep saying that but there's no way of knowing for sure whether that's the case or not. The majority of RPG do have carry limits and if it was such a huge problem that you make it out to be then it wouldn't be part of the modern formula. Even Skyrim has carry limit and that game is widely praised as one of the best RPGs ever made, give or take. I have a hard time believing the carry weight is going to be the downfall of Underrail because that have never happened before with any other game. If the current audience is anything to go by (because it's the only thing we can surely examine right now) the worst case scenario is that some people will stop playing it  entirely (which is already the case) but most people will play it despite the carry weight.

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As someone once said about what makes a great RPG. Remove all busy work from it! Have no such things as fetch quests. Have no carry limits. Have no limits to the amount of things you can sell.

That someone is..?

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Make your game stand by the solidity of it's good mechanics, don't add mechanics that waste people's time.

The same could just as easily be said about anything if you're not ready to play by the rules of the game. If you try to game the system you will get punished for it.

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Some people do not mind time wasting mechanics or mechanics that cheat them out of their stuff. That is ok but those people are a minority.

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Is there a statistic on this?

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You do are right that I keep saying the same thing over and over again, but this is something that needs to either be changed or at least have an option implemented as soon as possible. The reason is that when the game is released it's working well with a proper trade system.

"Proper" is a strong word. Some people like it, some people don't. Only time will tell if the current system is going to be well received or not. Fiddle with mechanics and system because a few people said they don't like it isn't a great idea by any stretch in any field, and this comes from a developer myself.

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #12 on: January 02, 2015, 04:52:58 pm »
Well most RPGs don't have such carry weight limits so absurd that even doing something on the level of GMS is going to very easily put you over. It takes a lot more advanced content to put you over weight... If carry weights were so bad as in underrail (and i do belive the problem is less of the values but some items which are overly heavy like sledgehammers), they'd probably go from a small annoyance to enough annoyance to quit the game entirely.

The wost case scenario is the vast majority of people who buy the game will drop it early on. Granted with mods later on some will pick it up again but again, that will be the credit of the modders to make the game good which is something that could be completly avoided... Don't take me wrong, I greatly respect the mod scene, they make many games great but really, I don't think it's a developer's dream to have their game recognised as good because of a mod someone else made.

As for who said it. I am not 100% sure at the moment, it was a youtube well known person, probably TB but I cannot be sure of that right now. Might have been force or someone else I used to watch regularly.

Don't tell me about the rules of the game. if the rules are bad then it's the game/developer's fault, not the player. If you make a game which consists of people clicking in the screen to make the screen change colour and someone says its bad, you cannot come out and say. Hey, you're just not ready to play by the rules. There are good mechanics and there are bad mechanics. Mechanics that waste people time are just plain bad. Just because a few like it, it doesn't makes it good. Similarly if a game makes you feel cheated out of your hard earnings then the game is doing it wrong. The game should always make you feel like you are acomplishing something, that every scrap you collect is a step closer to your goals. Even if the game is ripping you off, so long as you don't feel it, then it's done right. The moment you feel you are being cheated the game ceases to be fun.

How did I arrive at these numbers. Do i really need to have numbers to understand that people don't like playing games that aren't fun for them? And that games that have bad mechanics suck out the fun of the game? I'm trying not to be sarcastic here but come on...

Proper may be a strong word but if you want to analize the facts we can. Fact is that a large amount of the current playerbase (which is still very small at the moment) doesn't minds mechanics that waste their time and cheat them of their hard earn stuff. However let's compare it to pre carry weights and old economic system.

Old problems of the carry weight limits... Heard no complains whatsoever... currently there are already some complains and again, i'm sure that the current majority will be a minority in the future with the game being release but we'll leave that out of the picture as those are not yet facts.

Old problems of the economic system... There is too much money available! that's the only thing that was ever said... Or to be more specific, there is too little in the begining and too much from midgame... What did the new economic system do? You get even more money! So this problem aggravated itself and now you also have some complains of the buying limits being bad by some people. Again i do belive that the majority who likes it now will be a minority after release but not a fact yet.

Thus we can at very least conclude one thing. Comparing player feedback between back then and now, it only got worse. This is a fact!

Eliasfrost

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #13 on: January 02, 2015, 10:40:01 pm »
I'm not entirely sure where this supposed large subset of player that dislike the system are. I've gone through this forum, the steam forum and Desura reviews and I can't see a significant number of them. On Desura I couldn't find any, on here it's just you and a few other people, on the Steam forums I haven't seen any and on the Steam reviews there's a couple of people. I honestly don't know where you're finding them because I don't.

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How did I arrive at these numbers. Do i really need to have numbers to understand that people don't like playing games that aren't fun for them? And that games that have bad mechanics suck out the fun of the game? I'm trying not to be sarcastic here but come on...

Well, I assumed you had a good basis for what you're saying that's why I asked. See above


I think we've just gotten into a "I'm right you're wrong" argument so I'm going to blow this off now. We've strayed away from discussing my original point enough that I don't really see a point in continuing, as it's getting pretty heated.

Elhazzared

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Re: Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2015, 06:06:14 am »
Because it's pointless to look for such things right now. there are few people that have the game, even fewer who played at several points in the development and then again, even fewer who bother to write a review or come to any foruns saying anything... I did present some fact pointing that before the game had less complaints with the old system than with the new one. Even if you really want to blow it off by saying it's only a few people, it went from no complainins, everyone loved it to some people don't like the new mechanics. So in the eyes of the public it's a less liked system. I'm sure you would at least agree with me here.

As for how can I be sure that people don't like it. Let's take an example out of a different genre just to debate the main issue here. Look at MMORPGs and tell me. How many people like fetch quest? I fact I belive that the last final fantasy MMO receibed two black marks on not having a proper tutorial and the very first hour of the game being nothing but fetch quest which everyone hated.

Now why does everyone dislikes fetch quests in MMORPGs? Because they waste their time. People want to runaround exploring the land, killing monsters and that sorta stuff. Not being told, waste 2 minutes walking over there, click on that and then waste 2 minutes walking back here.

Now this is not a MMORPG so you don't expect much in terms of that nature but doesn't carry limits do the same? Hit carry limit, stop quest in the middle, go sell or store it somehwere safe where monsters don't respawn and it won't disapear. Return to continue with the quest. I've only went as far as GMS compound but if you can't even do 2 floors of it without being overloaded (ok so maybe a high str character can but he'll probably be close to the limit), then just imagine depot A, then try to imagine other type of places with even more and more loot. We get to a point where I even start thinking. Can I even complete that place with all the trips I'll have to make back and forth? Because respawns set in and I have to start from the begining and becomes a never ending cicle (maybe I'm exagerating but it drives the point across). It's a huge waste of time and it's a major loss in game immersion.

Now if this wasn't bad then there is the trade system which gives me two options. One is to waste several hours to try and sell everything because merchant's don't just buy everything or just throw away all of my hard earnings so I don't waste even more time... You could say if I pick only some stuff and never bring more than I can carry then it solves the problem of wasting time but it's still a huge loss of money. As a player I feel cheated out of my earnings. To compare it to a ARPG, it's the same as killing diablo and just doesn't dros anything or maybe drops only a couple white items. It is on the same level... If I worked to kill those guys, If I explored that place, then it's to make money out of everything I find in there, I'm not doing it for charity. charity I may practice when during the dialogue with a character I decide that's what I want to do, but that is as far as it goes.