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Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:01 pm
by Denzera
rijackson741 wrote:
Go to the bridge with the first Irdegh. Attack the Irdegh and knock it's HP down until you can kill it with one hit, but don't kill it. Back off the bridge, and save the game. Then reload, kill, reload kill, etc., until you have the gland.
This is precisely what I ended up doing myself, because killing each Irdegh was taking me a big chunk of life what with the stackable poison effects, so I'd have to wait around to regen or burn through some potions - and even if you're packing 200 of them, that's not a pleasant process.

For me, this game is at its most fun when it dangles some goal out there for you to go chase, with a boss or the like. Rolling through the Charwood Mines, especially to its final levels, was a blast. I saved at the start of the last screen and then tried to see if I could plow through that screen, and the boss, without dying. Took me like 10 tries, it was awesome. Point is, the carrot was there, it wasn't moving, and if I could make it there I could have it.

Meanwhile, shocking, negative effects that players might not have anticipated - like you said about getting back out of the Brimhaven cave with a curse you may or may not have expected - absolutely suck. Having to take on two Vareghs at once, two separate times, in order to fight your way out of there, when your damage output is crippled, leaves open the possibility that you just can't make it. I mean, they heal 10 HP every time they hit you, whether they do damage or not. It's pretty unfair in trying to get out of the dungeon you've just (allegedly) beaten.

One of the best things about RPGs is giving players the choice of whether, and when, to challenge themselves. I did a quick panty raid of the Green Maze and Zortak Leader when I was, I think, L28, in order to get Serpent's Hauberk. The challenge stayed constant: if I was up to it, I got the reward; if not, I could come back later. The issue with the Irdeghs, or the Kazaul curse in the first place, is that it's not within the player's control. In game-designer language, this is called "Agency", the idea that the player feels they have the ability to affect the world they're playing in. You play the game, the game doesn't play you. Deprive a player of the feeling of agency, and they get frustrated, burn out and go do something else rather quickly.

Sometimes, the game's plot itself requires depriving the player of agency. Halfway through Final Fantasy 3, the world is destroyed by the big bad guy, everything you've worked for is ruined, and you wake up in a post-apocalyptic hellscape (alone) and have to put the pieces back together. Sometimes characters are killed and there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes certain bosses are invulnerable, as a way for the game to say "you shouldn't be here yet" or "this time, your team loses". None of that is true with these situations, they're just designed that way and the only outcome is for them to be supremely frustrating.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 9:34 pm
by rijackson741
I understand what you are saying, but (I think) this is the only place in the game where you are deprived of agency in such a way. Changing it would be a huge amount of work (at least two quests would have to be completely rewritten), so that's certainly not going to happen any time soon, and probably never :)

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 3:37 am
by Duvalon
I guess I'm more of a cautious player. I don't recall exactly what level I was but it must have been late twenties early thirties. I went in the cave and had a hard time. I left, leveled up a bit more, farmed a couple hundred meats, bought a ton of potions, and went back in with enough healing power to withstand almost anything. The winged beasts (forget the name) in that cave don't have a very high attack chance if I recall, so I boosted my BC a bit and significantly reduced the number of hits I took.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:05 pm
by carceris-magister
I don't think grinding makes for great gameplay—an ideally-designed game should allow you to acquire enough experience just by following the different quests and exploring—but we're nowhere near having enough tiles, and the devs may not want to go there.

So as long as we have to grind, I appreciate that there's a bit of story structure attached to it. A good example is ...
...the endless trips back and forth between Prim and the Blackwater settlement, which are really just grinding with a bit of story icing.
Right now, I have a L23 character who's stuck grinding, because ...
... he's finished BWM, etc, but isn't strong enough for the river, Dark Protector, mines, maze, etc.
It's times like this when the game becomes dull.

C

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:14 pm
by rijackson741
carceris-magister wrote: Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:05 pm
... he's finished BWM, etc, but isn't strong enough for the river, Dark Protector, mines, maze, etc.
It's times like this when the game becomes dull.
The next release will help with that somewhat, because there's some more intermediate level stuff that's easy to access.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:32 pm
by Zukero
I agree that grinding should almost never be mandatory.
I think every build type should have to grind at some point, that point being different for every build type. For example, critical builds should have to grind before the crit-immune areas.
But this must be limited, not months of grinding.
We need gap-filling content. We already added some (not enough IMHO) for the levels 10ish, and Stoutford is more for the 20ish. If you have other gaps in mind, we'll be happy to know.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:28 am
by carceris-magister
Thanks, both. It would also be good to smooth out the transitions. For example, you can start BWM around level 15, but even by level 20, getting up and down requires a lot of hit-and-run, hide-and-regenerate, and/or a truckload of bonemeal potions. How could we set things up so that other quests and adventures could get the user to a high enough level to get through BWM without all those dodges? For example, by level 12–15, I find most builds can get through Flagstone with only a small number of bonemeal potions—that's a much-better situation.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 2:10 pm
by rijackson741
We just need more intermediate level quests. Some will be in the next release, but I agree with Zukero that we still don't have enough. Brimhaven is likely to be in the release after next, which will add more. At the same time though, we also need to add content for the higher level players that have already made it to the end of the existing game.

So much work to do, so little time to do it :(

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2020 12:51 am
by Valdemar
Good that I had 12 AP when I killed the lich, so I had 9 AP, which is enough for one hit and one flee. My level was 34 at that point. and when I have lifted the curse it was 41.

I have had such a high level because I have attempted the green maze too early (about 25ish) and lifted several levels before I met enemies which were way to tough even with potions (some kind of blue ghosts in the cave after Khakin beast-infested bridges). So I went all the way back through the maze and now much character is quite a bit overpowered for quests I did put away.

Though I agree, that drop chance of 5% is way too low, perhaps it should be more like 20%? I also think, that Irdegh should not drop regular poison glands. Because when I have had a poison gland from irdegh, I thought that it was what I needed and was surprised why it has stacked with poison glands from other animals.

Re: Stop random drops now!

Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:16 pm
by Tomcat
Low percent chance is what it is. But I get what you're saying about irdeghs dropping two different kinds of poison glands.