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Tiamat
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:10 am      Reply with quote

The problem here isn't necessarily based in sparring and getting your character "up to snuff". The problem here is that there's no scaling of difficulty, an issue I'm sure the admins are aware of already from other threads. The outcry for sparring weapons is just a symptom of the bigger problem, if sparring were made to cap out at familiar. I can understand people wanting to twink because it's the equivalent of being sent out as a level 10 newbie in an MMORPG to take down level 40 mobs. Newbies shouldn't be going outside to fight lagatos, which are pretty much the pinnacle of difficulty in the wilderness (that is if they didn't tweak stats at all from ARPI BETA). It's a design flaw on part of how difficulty scales, rather than the absence or implementation of sparring weapons.

Change how the wilderness works, and it shouldn't matter if sparring weapons were nerfed to familiar or otherwise.

EDIT: I should add I'm an advocate of nerfing sparring, because there ARE people out there that want to twink just because they can. But if the argument is that people are forced to twink just to be able to withstand the Moon wilderness, that's just an issue of scaling. Newbies shouldn't be starting out with the Moon wilderness, because it's the hardest zone in the game.


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kog
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:49 am      Reply with quote

Another solution would be to make small zones with timers on them for newbies- a 12 hour reset on a fight, and starting the fight takes up your craft timer. Basically, transitioning from newbie to good fighter is a touch absurd - you have to be on it in group fights to get to hits in, and you get wrecked if you try to tank high risk of death without retaining.

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Tiamat
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:02 pm      Reply with quote

Well, you don't really need the timers if you have the right combat balancing for mobs. Newbies vs. newbie mobs, moderately skilled fighters vs moderately skilled enemies, and so on and so forth. An example of doing this well was early ALPHA for ARPI. But if you weren't here for that, essentially, as the game went on, the mobs got progressively harder. The first mobs ever encountered were small zombies we called "class ones" and little bugs, and as player skill level increased, so did the mobs. We eventually got up to very difficult mobs called "wingies", which were gigantic centipedes with wings that could throw people around telekinetically via progs.

Obviously application is a bit different here, as the setting is different. But you'd need to do something similar. AFAIK, there's the metro which was designed as a mid-level wilderness. But, I have no idea how that idea is panning out as I don't play. I can only comment on the general design concept.


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Seer
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:11 pm      Reply with quote

The game exists outside of safe zones. The real pulp of it, the mysteries: you often have to be there to see it and interact, and generally it helps to be the first. At least that's my experience. All the crafts essentially point to either maintenance sinkholes, aesthetic items, and items which assist in making characters who go out looking for this stuff safer.

Playing some measure of combatant in ARPI/PRPI IS necessary (again, in my experience) to really get involved and interact with plot. I think that will continue unless there is a shift in where exactly storytellers tell story. If it always exists outside of the gates or in the sewers, peeps are going to need better than newbie skills and armor because being able to hit and take hits from a mob is going to secure your inclusion on story with your peers and metaplot.

What does this mean for off-peakers and players with busy lives/jobs/family? They are limited in their ability to grind (and therefore participate). So the pressure is on to find alternate ways than spamming 'kill X' on a twenty person scav. They don't have the ability to learn against lagatos and other combat situations. There needs to be some diversity in the approach to learning up skills needed to really participate.


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Tiamat
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:29 pm      Reply with quote

Quote:
So the pressure is on to find alternate ways than spamming 'kill X' on a twenty person scav. They don't have the ability to learn against lagatos and other combat situations. There needs to be some diversity in the approach to learning up skills needed to really participate.


Right. You have to get creative with how players can build up skills. Especially without fighting in a massive group where you're likely not to even get hits in anyway by virtue of the person limit fighting against a mob. A good solution is to include zones, in general for any game, that introduce different kinds of encounters. If players can lead 4-6-men groups or less in moderately difficult areas, this alleviates the need to feel like catching up to the hardcore players. I think sparring is at its best, a necessary evil, and it's not even that fun. I'm not saying it can't be, especially if you're playing with a good RPer, but it doesn't beat actually adventuring.

This isn't directly related to scaling of difficulty, but a way to make it feel like less of a grind for all players is to make the encounters more fun too. The core combat mechanics aren't actually that fun by itself. You can make otherwise easy encounters moderately difficult for the casual players with some creative dynamics. For example, low hitpoint mobs that summon other mobs if you don't kill it fast enough, mobs that fatigue you periodically like a DoT, mobs that immobilize players (boxer spider cocoons? wee), etc. It gives more incentive for players to go out there and have fun besides sparring (which I find really boring).


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Seer
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:38 pm      Reply with quote

I might be contradicting a ton of players here, but the routine spamscavhunts are not exceedingly much more fun.

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Tiamat
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:45 pm      Reply with quote

Yeah, ARPI BETA's strong-suit was never its wilderness. It needed a lot of work, and when I helped developed BETA, we didn't give it the time it deserved. It was a patchwork effort, and the first few days of BETA didn't even have the wilderness plugged in. Hopefully this time around, funner wilderness systems will be put in place that encourages more than the mindless scav hunts. That's up to the discretion and manpower of the current administration.

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Seer
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:12 pm      Reply with quote

Small parties are the absolute funnest, but it's terribly hard to make it work unless you've got adequate hide/sneak and enough defenses to cover yourself if someone trips up. Again, these all point to the need to spam up skills, which leads me to the addictive nature of the game for me: desperately playing the game to up skills so I can be moderately/survivably prepared when I get that off chance of a sweet, sweet hit adventure where there is RP, risk and discovery.

It's like chasing the dragon.


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Rome
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:14 pm      Reply with quote

This game would be really much more fun without sparring and without scavenging, I think.

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Seer
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Post Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:20 pm      Reply with quote

Which sort of leads me to the question: how the hell would staff rectify that even if it were something they wanted to? (Not presuming they do or don't, here.)

What systems would promote smaller, more meaningful runs? I like scav as a reason to get people out and about, but when the profit is better for a large group, what is preventing it from always being a large group? If there are moderate areas introduced for smaller/more moderately skilled parties, why would they not always become giant groups?

I don't even know if this is a terrible idea or not yet, but I just thought that perhaps there could be a physical limiter - twenty people could very likely not all fit in the same party in confined spaces like the tunnels. Maybe larger groups make enough sound to wake the dragon - say, larger, more dangerous mobs in certain areas. Dune sandworms, anyone?

Again, not sure if these are even good ideas.


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Featured artwork used on Parallel RPI given permission for use by original artists macrebisz and merl1ncz.