A Concern Re: Removal of Settlement Stockpile in 1.04

[tigersfan]

One thing with the missions is, we want players to be able to (at least usually) have mission types that they actually enjoy playing on the board. I think under the new system, having lots of available missions will be even more important, since it will be the primary source for spells. With so many available spells, you need a lot of missions in order to have a chance at your favorite.

[Bluddy]

One thing with the missions is, we want players to be able to (at least usually) have mission types that they actually enjoy playing on the board. I think under the new system, having lots of available missions will be even more important, since it will be the primary source for spells. With so many available spells, you need a lot of missions in order to have a chance at your favorite.

Yep. And that's pretty much what I was talking about.

[MouldyK]

While I do agree with that entirely, one of the problems I have is that the missions are all clumped together and when I get a wind shelter, I still have to wait a while to get missions there that I want (without a seek resources or the other things needed) as all the missions are already in the clump. And by the time all of them expire or I do some of them, the clump moves to the new wind shelter place.


Actually, it might just be the game thinking I want clumps of things (and an uneven amount of journey to perfection missions also) and it's nothing to do with you guys. But still, I get the worst luck. 


But I do see that the extra missions might be good for the spells since there are loads of them to get.


Am I right to believe that the spells will designated by the environment the mission is on or will it be random?

[BobTheJanitor]

Really minor and stupid gripe - wouldn't "penetrating" be better than "cleaving"?

Cleave usually means to split apart in a slashing manner. And it's ambiguous, because to cleave ALSO means to stick together, meaning it's one of the only auto-antonyms in the English language.

The word-nerd in me appreciates this. And also I agree, cleaving isn't really the best term for going through multiple things at once. Penetrating or just the old piercing is more intuitively understood, I would think.

[TechSY730]

Really minor and stupid gripe - wouldn't "penetrating" be better than "cleaving"?

Cleave usually means to split apart in a slashing manner. And it's ambiguous, because to cleave ALSO means to stick together, meaning it's one of the only auto-antonyms in the English language.

The word-nerd in me appreciates this. And also I agree, cleaving isn't really the best term for going through multiple things at once. Penetrating or just the old piercing is more intuitively understood, I would think.

Agreed, penetrating or piercing are much closer to describing the concept in question.

[zebramatt]

Really minor and stupid gripe - wouldn't "penetrating" be better than "cleaving"?

Cleave usually means to split apart in a slashing manner. And it's ambiguous, because to cleave ALSO means to stick together, meaning it's one of the only auto-antonyms in the English language.

The word-nerd in me appreciates this. And also I agree, cleaving isn't really the best term for going through multiple things at once. Penetrating or just the old piercing is more intuitively understood, I would think.

Agreed, penetrating or piercing are much closer to describing the concept in question.

(Despite my previous (slightly tongue-in-cheek, I must say!) comment) I also agree here! 

[Brise Bonbons]

Firstly: I think cleaving is understood to mean hitting multiple targets in game lingo. It's tricky, of course: Do you use the term that gamers will be probably understand, or the neutral dictionary term? I tend towards the latter, but I think arguments exist for both paths.

Given all the "wait until it's finished to gripe" comments, I feel sort of bad for starting the thread now. My intention was really just to raise awareness early in the process of something I liked about the current system that seemed like it would be (un? intentionally) removed. As I see it, the ideal result of such a dialog is to raise a new possibility (such as happened with trading resources). My goal was never to try to critique the system before all the details were out, but to explore possible pitfalls early on so they didn't jump out of nowhere when the patch went live. That's why I was so happy to be reminded about being able to trade skill gems, a piece of the puzzle I wasn't seeing at the time.

Similarly, while I don't mind making a statement like "repeating missions in hopes of getting the spell I want to pop out as a reward is not a mode of gameplay I tend to enjoy", I don't think we have enough information to say much beyond that.

Anyway, as I've said before, I'm happy to wait and see what Arcen's plans are for the patch. I just wanted to mention early on that I like the ability to be the gatherer for my team, and don't want to entirely lose the option to make my efforts at resource collection help the settlement as a whole.

[Singularity125]

Here's my (not finished, hastily-thought-out) idea for mission seeding: Base it on the player's preferences.

Here's what I mean by this. There should be a two-step process to determine which types of mission seed:

1. Do everything you can to ensure at least one mission of each unlocked type. The game probably already does this step.
2. Seed the remaining missions based on weights. The weight for each mission would be the number of times the player has completed that type of mission (this is already tracked for achievements). If someone has completed 30 Freefall missions, that weight becomes 30.

This means that missions that are completed more often are seeded more often, under the assumption that the player must enjoy that type more. This is fairly painless for single-player. For multiplayer, you'll have to add up the weights of all the players that are currently online. This will probably end up being a wide spread anyway, but it would try to tailor to each preference.

The big problem with this idea, of course, is that it doesn't cater as well to people who simply complete missions for their rewards, not for their enjoyment. I imagine it will end up with relatively even weights in the end, but it might need some playtesting.

[tigersfan]

Keep in mind, there will still be crafting. So, if you really can't find a spell you really want in missions, you will be able to craft it.

[Bluddy]

Keep in mind, there will still be crafting. So, if you really can't find a spell you really want in missions, you will be able to craft it.

My personal experience is that I get sick of a mission type after doing it 4-5 times. I don't get sick of looking for crafting ingredients though. The new system does kind of allow the missions to be seen as an optional part of the gameplay or to be completely ignored, which makes me fairly happy. I'd be even happier if there was a way to toggle off map missions completely. Then I'd have the odd secret mission for guardian scrolls, and crafting for the spell system, which would be perfect.

[TechSY730]

Keep in mind, there will still be crafting. So, if you really can't find a spell you really want in missions, you will be able to craft it.

My personal experience is that I get sick of a mission type after doing it 4-5 times. I don't get sick of looking for crafting ingredients though. The new system does kind of allow the missions to be seen as an optional part of the gameplay or to be completely ignored, which makes me fairly happy. I'd be even happier if there was a way to toggle off map missions completely. Then I'd have the odd secret mission for guardian scrolls, and crafting for the spell system, which would be perfect.

Maybe a texture pack that swaps world map mission icons with blank, completely transparent squares? You would still get the misison description popup when on the region and the mission areas would still seed entrances to their chunks in the region, but at least you would have a clean map screen.

[yllamana]

I think it'd be way cooler if the mission elements were in the explorable world. Maybe you'd have an area where allies were fighting against enemies. Maybe an area with a large drop filled with mines, but a floaty field that helps you descend slowly. Maybe you enter a boss room and it has an umbra vortex! Or maybe an area is having a meteor shower. Even multiple ones of these at a time! It would make the explorable world much more interesting.

As an alternative/supplement, organisation to the monsters. Right now it feels to me like they're scattered around the chunks randomly. Wouldn't more organisation be neat? Maybe there's a cave with bats in it, or some mechanical enemies defending a home.

Er anyway. The other thing I wanted to say is I don't think you should feel bad. It's better to chip in with how you feel about something before it hurts the game for you than after. It's cheaper for a developer to change a design before they've implemented it, after all. Obviously there are some caveats there but there's nothing wrong with expressing your view on it.

[keith.lamothe]

One issue with the "move missions into the world" concept is that a lot of players need a lot of direction.  We even had reviewers who would go through the tutorial, get to the world map, and still not realize there were missions out there for them to do, assume the game had no direction, and shelve it.

Needless to say, we didn't try to reach that far down to hold hands (we're not even sure how we could get through in a case like that), but there's also a legitimate reason to have some pretty prominent "you could go here next" pointers.

That said, I agree it shouldn't be flooding the screen with missions; for a long time we had it start with 2 missions per continent and work up to 7.  That may have been too few, but our usual practice of doing big changes like a binary-search instead of incremental ones does sometimes lead to situations like this

[Mánagarmr]

Where are you guys getting this news on the next version? It sounds really great. I was never a fan of the way everything in multiplayer is automatically shared.

OH GOD! There's now a Tobias on the forums!

[TechSY730]

One issue with the "move missions into the world" concept is that a lot of players need a lot of direction.  We even had reviewers who would go through the tutorial, get to the world map, and still not realize there were missions out there for them to do, assume the game had no direction, and shelve it.

Needless to say, we didn't try to reach that far down to hold hands (we're not even sure how we could get through in a case like that), but there's also a legitimate reason to have some pretty prominent "you could go here next" pointers.

That said, I agree it shouldn't be flooding the screen with missions; for a long time we had it start with 2 missions per continent and work up to 7.  That may have been too few, but our usual practice of doing big changes like a binary-search instead of incremental ones does sometimes lead to situations like this

I understand the value of the whole "binary search" approach to balance. I think people are slightly miffed that the one of the "overcorrection" phases managed to get into a stable build. Aka, you didn't finish your "experimentation to find balance binary search" by the time that most people would expect experimental balance adjustments to be mostly resolved, a build denoted as stable.

Now, I sort of know why this happened, people didn't really mention the overabundance of missions until after the stable release came out, but still, it is slightly annoying for the non-beta testers to be hit with a side effect of a process that is supposed to be confined to beta level release cycle testing (in this case, deliberate overrcorrection).
Well, at least you overrcorrected in the side of too many missions. It's slightly annoying, but at least what you need is almost certainly there. What would of been far worse is letting into the stable release an overcorrection on the side of too few missions.