I've never played a game this bad

[bvchaosinc]

But more than that, anything you need to find a room of type Y by going from inside space to inside space to pickup.  You should be able to hunt down and kill monster type X some N times to get.  A good example is clay, I popped into in out of 3 or so houses and farmed up 10 or so clay took me maybe 5 minuets.  I should be able to get 10 clay by fighting and killing mud elementales (or what ever) in the jungle for 5 minuets as well.     

[Terraziel]

The existing spells could possibly use a bit more differentiation, but IMHO I'd personally prefer the game first make accessing the entire existing variety of spells less grindy before adding more spells.

The question is what amount of resource requirement constitutes grind? and what amount of trying to upgrade ALL the spells makes the grind your fault.

But more than that, anything you need to find a room of type Y by going from inside space to inside space to pickup.  You should be able to hunt down and kill monster type X some N times to get.  A good example is clay, I popped into in out of 3 or so houses and farmed up 10 or so clay took me maybe 5 minuets.  I should be able to get 10 clay by fighting and killing mud elementales (or what ever) in the jungle for 5 minutes as well.     

Alternative access to Basic resources isn't really the issue, so I wouldn't have any issues with enemies dropping them, it's when we get to the other contents of stashes that problems crop up, if people could get upgrade stones or enchant containers from killing enemies then they would spend HOURS doing it and then come here and pony about it.

[zespri]

Same exact thing with the tier system. Suddenly all the monsters I've been fighting got tougher. Not only tougher, but with each tier they get stronger faster than your best spells can keep up.
Think back to an old game, say, dragon warrior for NES. You're near the starter town fighting slimes. You gain a few levels, use the gold you obtained to get better gear. You feel pretty good about yourself, ready to take on bigger challenges. But wait, as soon as you step out of town, the same slimes you've been killing left and right are suddenly kicking your butt! You can use pretty words to dress up the game mechanic in this game, but fundamentally it makes as much sense as my example, and just as satisfying.

Was not it kind of the same with Oblivion? The monsters there would level up with you, to keep the game from becoming trivial. Everybody may feel different, but I think that this part of Oblivion experience did work.

[bvchaosinc]

Alternative access to Basic resources isn't really the issue, so I wouldn't have any issues with enemies dropping them, it's when we get to the other contents of stashes that problems crop up, if people could get upgrade stones or enchant containers from killing enemies then they would spend HOURS doing it and then come here and pony about it.

I farmed enchant containers and upgrade stones from buildings for hours and found it no more fun (and it has certainly not proved to be any less pony worthy) then the normal method of killing monsters for upgrades.  So why not have both.   

[BobTheJanitor]

Was not it kind of the same with Oblivion? The monsters there would level up with you, to keep the game from becoming trivial. Everybody may feel different, but I think that this part of Oblivion experience did work.

Bad example of a good concept. I'd say something like Fallout 3 would be a better example of this concept done right. The problem with Oblivion was that the monsters leveled as your skills went up regardless of what skills you leveled. So if you spend a lot of time skilling up, say, jumping (by being someone who compulsively jumps everywhere they go in games, like me) but you haven't actually leveled up combat skills, then you're fighting high HP high damage monsters and have no defense except your amazing ability to jump two stories in a single bounce. If only goomba stomping was a valid attack...

[chemical_art]

Same exact thing with the tier system. Suddenly all the monsters I've been fighting got tougher. Not only tougher, but with each tier they get stronger faster than your best spells can keep up.
Think back to an old game, say, dragon warrior for NES. You're near the starter town fighting slimes. You gain a few levels, use the gold you obtained to get better gear. You feel pretty good about yourself, ready to take on bigger challenges. But wait, as soon as you step out of town, the same slimes you've been killing left and right are suddenly kicking your butt! You can use pretty words to dress up the game mechanic in this game, but fundamentally it makes as much sense as my example, and just as satisfying.

Was not it kind of the same with Oblivion? The monsters there would level up with you, to keep the game from becoming trivial. Everybody may feel different, but I think that this part of Oblivion experience did work.

Yes and no.

Yes, this occurred, but several things happened:

1. Your look was different. You looked different, your weapons were different. Your spells looked different. You looked stronger in addition to being stronger.
2. The enemies were different. Little wolves became wolf packs. Peasant bandits became mercenaries and marauders. The enemies looked stronger in addition to being stronger.
3. They dropped greater loot or gave more experience (even within Oblvion's system of skills usage = exp)
4. They dropped this system in Skyrim, because players didn't like it.

[chemical_art]

Alternative access to Basic resources isn't really the issue, so I wouldn't have any issues with enemies dropping them, it's when we get to the other contents of stashes that problems crop up, if people could get upgrade stones or enchant containers from killing enemies then they would spend HOURS doing it and then come here and pony about it.

But, using your language, players spend hours scouring rooms and pony about it.

How is one inherently better then the other?

They are not. So allow both to be done, and allow players to do one or the other or (as the game wants to encourage natural play) do both.

[BobTheJanitor]

For what it's worth, I think that allowing variety wouldn't hurt here. If enemies were one way to get goodies but exploration was a more efficient way to do the same, and the drop rate between rooms and enemies was balanced out to be about the same as it is right now with just exploring buildings, I wouldn't mind that. Of course I've always been in the camp that feels like killing enemies should be incentivized more and not just something you do when they're in the way.

[Martyn van Buren]

Yeah, I am very much in the anti-slaughter camp, but I think it might be good to have a system that made farming mobs a possible but sub-optimal way of collecting goodies.

Or alternatively, what would people think of creating more kinds of stash locations which are less out of the way but involve more combat?  Supposing you had little stashes seeded into the map in surface caves guarded by a microboss and a few mobs, would that feel like a decent way of linking combat to rewards?

[bvchaosinc]

Yeah, I am very much in the anti-slaughter camp, but I think it might be good to have a system that made farming mobs a possible but sub-optimal way of collecting goodies.

Or alternatively, what would people think of creating more kinds of stash locations which are less out of the way but involve more combat?  Supposing you had little stashes seeded into the map in surface caves guarded by a microboss and a few mobs, would that feel like a decent way of linking combat to rewards?

Why does combat need to be sub-optimal?  Why would I look for stashes guarded by mobs when I could look for stashes not guarded by mobs if it they are going to give me less stuff?  Why would I be any more inclined to fight these guard mobs than any other mob?  Why can't fighting be in and of its self rewarding, as long as exploring also remains in and of its self rewarding?     

[Terraziel]

Lets be clear here, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, I'm just saying it is going to be complicated to get right.

Rather we are sort of discussing this like combat and exploration are somehow mutually exclusive, as someone who enjoys combat but sees no reason why it should be encouraged what this risks doing is cutting down the amount of both exploration and combat I do by 50% for no benefit to me, except time.

[LintMan]

The existing spells could possibly use a bit more differentiation, but IMHO I'd personally prefer the game first make accessing the entire existing variety of spells less grindy before adding more spells.

The question is what amount of resource requirement constitutes grind? and what amount of trying to upgrade ALL the spells makes the grind your fault.

Well, grind is generally in the eye of the beholder, but it already felt like grind for me when I was trying to upgrade my first two or three main spells to level 5, going through chunk after chunk after chunk of ocean and ocean shallows hoping to find even a single piece of coral.  Or the same thing, deforesting entire regions in the hope of getting a plum or two.  Or going through cave after cave after cave looking for and not finding a single boiler.   My tolerance for it up until I gave up trying to get all/most of them leveled to 5 speaks more to my preferred playstyle and apparent OCD than to the lack of earlier grind.

But really the first part of my point here was that the game currently makes it hard to get spells leveled up to force players to be selective about what they pick to use. Do you disagree with that?

The second part of my point is that adding more spells - especially "tree" type ones that require getting one or more previous spells - won't be that effective in offering player variety because the existing amount of effort to level up spells already discourages variety and experimentation.

[bvchaosinc]

Lets be clear here, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, I'm just saying it is going to be complicated to get right.

Rather we are sort of discussing this like combat and exploration are somehow mutually exclusive, as someone who enjoys combat but sees no reason why it should be encouraged what this risks doing is cutting down the amount of both exploration and combat I do by 50% for no benefit to me, except time.

Is that not better last time spent grind out enchants/upgrades/mats more time running missions?

[Terraziel]

But really the first part of my point here was that the game currently makes it hard to get spells leveled up to force players to be selective about what they pick to use. Do you disagree with that?

No, I full agree with the assessment, I just feel that that is a fair thing to do.

The second part of my point is that adding more spells - especially "tree" type ones that require getting one or more previous spells - won't be that effective in offering player variety because the existing amount of effort to level up spells already discourages variety and experimentation.

This discussion is going on in another thread as well so I shall quote myself from there...

I had a suggestion a while back for removing the "tech tree" --- as in, I don't see any good reason why you should need tier II lightning ball to make tier III.  I feel like if crafting was only a tier-long commitment rather than a continent-long one, you'd be willing to experiment with new spells a lot more.

See I change my main combat spells every continent and consider that to be encouraged variation. If the game gives you a risk free opportunity to change your spells and you don't take it then that is your fault.

[Bluddy]

Here's the thing. If it were the case that getting gems involved the possibility of needing to defeat bosses on the way, I would say there's no way that monsters should spawn gems, because you'd be skipping a part of the experience. But because, upon encountering a boss blocking the way to a resource, you can just go to another chunk where that won't be the case, it doesn't really make a difference. Similar thing with stashes. If the traps around all stashes were implemented, I'd say there's no way a regular monster should spawn the stuff you can find there. But because this doesn't exist, and perhaps even if it did exist you could just do the same thing you can do with bosses in caves, it doesn't really matter. This is where the game suffers from 'too much stuff'. If each tile had 1-2 chunks, most buildings were tiny with a few exceptions, and you only had 1-2 caverns initially, and maybe 3 stashes, you'd treat everything differently. The importance of these strategic resources would skyrocket, and the game would suddenly be very tense as you strive to make best use of what you have. You'd immediately need to start thinking about pushing back the storm. But that's not the case, so everything has low importance, and this turns gem and stash runs into 'grind', and this is unfortunate.

Truthfully though, I'm ok with the game being incentive-neutral with regard to fighting monsters. Good combat mechanics make for better incentive than reward for me, and I enjoy fighting the monsters (though oddly enough, with the keyboard -- not with the mouse).