Saturday, May 26, 2012

Steps to reduce "grindyness"

I did a quick play through last night and I noticed that raising stats and skills can really take awhile. While it shouldn't be ultra quick, I also don't think it should take forever either if you are really far from the cap (example, raising your charisma / etiquette can take a sometimes more then 10 - 15 times each working at the restaurant / odd job if you have the skill at one).  What I'm thinking of doing is adding additional code to the attribute and skill increase portions to give you an increased chance of getting an additional point(s) depending on how far you are from the cap.

This will likely not exceed 2 additional points as I don't want people to just blitz higher level areas (even though there's just one higher level area at the moment :P) but it it should make getting some point increases right off the start a bit easier. Any thoughts?

28 comments:

  1. I like this idea!

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  2. I don't mind "grindyness" so to me it doesn't matter sir. If you were to do it this way I would say that if the cap is 25(which I think it is) then I would only allow the initial boost to work up until 10 points, then I would stop it.

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  3. Would be nice , to make the skill raising faster .. I spend all the day running to increse my stamina about 2 points

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  4. I don't mind the grindyness too much - without much advanced stuff/high level areas (I don't even know what qualifies as high level), there's not a ton to go for and most of the random encounters are fun/enjoyable.

    That said, intelligence (can only raise once a week via exams) and stamina (super important to be able to play longer and can spend all day running and not go up) are the biggest problems if you're looking to fix things. As far as the other attributes:
    - Appearance doesn't seem to matter? Only way I've seen to bump it is temp sun tanning and make-up.
    - Agility and strength seem to go up naturally through park activities (which can be grindy, so... eh?). Strength has the benefit of bull potions, though (would be kinda nice if all the stats had bump potions that were available either for purchase or through alchemy).
    - Lust is alright? I haven't noticed any problems with it

    As far as skills, the only one I've had a problem with are the combat ones - you have to get your ass handed to you repeatedly to get better. This leads to my playthroughs being a lot of side jobs until I have enough money to be fully kitted out and/or increased stats, then grind through lizards, then grind through thugs, then start exploring up north and hope for bandits. So yeah... the combat is super grindy, I guess. Maybe a dojo to get skills started going sooner or a wider variety of enemies would help there.

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    1. I agree that combat is super grindy. I'm going to add an event in the North Pornicle gate to receive combat training from a guard for a fee of 500EP per training course. This will cap out at 20 but will always guarantee an increase of at least 1 point. You'll have the ability to train in the following areas:

      -Melee Combat
      -Ranged Combat
      -Defense

      I'm also going to have there be a small chance that you can learn a special for combat in each of the categories above since player special attacks will be enabled next version.

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    2. Hmm, why an event rather than a sub-area, like the shops in the market district? An event means that people will have to explore/gossip again and again to find the event, making it a grindy fix to a grindy problem. Then within that sub area, you could have some events like a fighting other students (to show off different special attacks and their effects so players aren't all wtf? when they get hit by a condition) and, ofc, a chance to seduce the teachers (a male, a female and a herm option for different folks). That's totally a set of scenes I'd donate toward.

      Also, any way to set hotleys for combat? One of the reason CoC's combat grindyness is a lot easier is because you don't have to move the mouse around. I know enter already does 'continue' but a number hotkey system for common actions (1 for attack, 2 for defense, 3 for ranged attack, 4 for aim, 5 to open magic window, 6 to open specials menu and 0 to flee).

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    3. That's a good set of ideas :) Particularly the hotkeys.

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  5. There is actually another way to get stamina now, via the fountain on the highway. Though its wise to save your game before hunting for it as its effects can be rather random, and it can change your character in other interesting ways. :3

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    1. Yeaaah, but the randomness of other effects and the fact that you have to brave orc raiders to get there means its not really a viable option for many players. The whole "save-try-frustrated that I got a body part I didn't want-reload" process isn't really any less grindy than the alternatives.

      That is, if you're reloading and not going with the "get to highway-become some monstrous sex mutant with 8 cocks, 12 vaginas and 16 breasts with high stamina (nothing against people who are looking to play that way, it's just not my style)-go back to town-grind jobs to get cash-spend cash at hospital to remove additional parts" plan. Seems like a stretch to just get high stamina. If you're going to do that, you might as well just edit your save game.

      In addition, don't you have to have a certain amount of survival to set camp on the highway? Otherwise you rest at less AP, then may get stuck in a loop of not ever being able to leave the highway (had this happen in an older version, don't know if it's still possible).

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  6. Here is what I'm planning on doing:

    If you are more then 5 off the current cap for the area for anything that triggers a skill up, you will have a 20% chance for each point you are away from the the 5 point mark. So if you're 10 points off, you automatically gain a bonus point. If you're 15 points off, you'll automatically gain 2.

    For new areas and new characters, failures will yield 4 points per success instead of 2. This bonus will slowly start to alternate b/w 3 and 4 points, then 3, and then finally 2 (on failures, for successes, it will be one less).

    Here is an example on how it would work for a skill that you start w/ 1 in in Pornicle (with an average difficulty of 40):

    Roll 1: Failure (+4pts) 5 skill points
    Roll 2: Failure (+4pts) 9 skill points
    Roll 3: Success (+3pts) 12 skill points
    Roll 4: Failure (+4 pts) 16 skill points
    Roll 5: Success (+1 pt) 17 skill points
    Roll 6: Success (+1 pt) 18 skill points
    Roll 7 Failure (+2 pts) 20 skill points

    ----

    If we took the same set above and used the current system on roll 7 you would only be at 12 skill points. I didn't do enough number crunching, but it seems this new method will roughly double the skill/attribute increase rates. Thanks for the feedback so far guys :)

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  7. I don't know why but when I buy armor it doesn't show up in my equipment.

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    1. I have similar problems. I have a shield equipped from an older save but my list says I have no shield items.

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    2. I can't drop doubles of equipment like pants and boots. If you have 0 fp you can't use ranged attack even though now it's not supposed to use fp.

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    3. I'm curious about this, in 0.43a I've been able to successfully buy new sets of equipment @ the shops with no problems. Are you using 0.43a, and if so are you using quick saves/loads frequently? If so, then perhaps the next build will fix your issues (I made some changes as to how the equipment files are loaded). If not, I'll try to figure out what's causing these issues.

      Ranged attacks should definitely not cost any FP in 0.43a, I actually disabled the line of code that is responsible for that. If you are using 0.43a and still are seeing this occur, I'll scour the code and see if I can find a way to reproduce this bug.

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    4. I have had this problem as well, but only on windows xp. On windows 7 it gives me the item, but I can buy multiples even when it says the item will not appear in the shop listing.

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    5. The range attack costs nothing to use when you have FP. However I had used up all my FP on the action that made the enemy appear I was then anable to use the range attack. I think the enemy was the blackwater thugs but I am not sure.

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  8. Sometimes the result box closes to quickly. Is there a way to bring it back after it auto closes or a way to make it always open?

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    1. I'll see if I can add an option in the next build to set your own timer for how long the box stays open :)

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  9. Any chance you can add a debug for the sex toys? I bought them all at one point, only have the large one in my key items, and can't buy the other two.

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  10. Game crashed when I chose cum during sex.

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    1. I haven't seen this bug, was there an error message displayed? If so, can you copy and paste it? That will help me narrow it down :)

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    2. There was but I did not save it. I just restarted and did esentially the same thing I did last time and got;

      "Value of '-6' is not valid for 'Value'. 'Value' should be between 'minimum' and 'maximum'."

      My choices are continue or quit. If I continue I get stuck in a loop of clicking continue then quit in game and then the error pops up again.

      The problem is that my FP was allowed to go under 0.

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    3. Thanks actually, that shouldn't happen anymore but I guess it still can. It's an easy fix, thanks for letting me know.

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  11. I don't know if it's a bug or if I'm just... missing something. But my melee damage on everything that I could fight is ALWAYS zero. Lizards, drunk guys outside mamyra's, everything. Zero.

    ********Combat Statistics********
    Attack: 34
    Ranged Attack: 16
    Defense: 24
    Damage Reduction (from armor): 9
    Melee Damage: 1 - -1
    Ranged Damage: 3 - 7

    I do not understand. My melee and ranged damage are always those values regardless of what I have equipped.

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    1. That's odd, I'll look into it. Try unequipping the weapon, moving, then equipping a weapon and moving to see if it fixes it. Your damage is definitely messed up though, it's actually saying you do 1 to -1 damage which is baffling to me. Your attack is 34 which means you've definitely got at least some strength as well as some melee combat skill.

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    2. If you could e-mail a save and the accompanying .peqdb file that goes with your character I'll take a more involved look at this issue. I'm perplexed by it.

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  12. See, now I'm confused. It reset itself back to normal, lemme check to see if I can recreate.

    ...Well.

    This is what it is with the save file that I have with an issue that's pretty much the same thing.

    Attack: 10
    Ranged Attack: 6
    Defense: 20
    Damage Reduction (from armor): 8
    Melee Damage: 4.5 - 13
    Ranged Damage: 1 - -1

    Mind you, the ranged damage doesn't change whether I'm equipped with rocks or with a bow, and the melee damage stays that way whether I'm equipped with an axe or fists.

    Hm. It seems to reset if I change equipment, and then sleep or move. Anyway! Email sent, subject "Bugged Damage".

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