Latest "disappointments" [;)] led me to

… these three suggestions:

  • More xp for builders.
    Building with 2xp per placed blocks is just disappointing in terms of progression. All builders and decorators know how time-consuming it is to build more sophisticated structures. I am simply surprised there is no xp bonus for placing higher tier blocks (decorative and refined stones vs. rock; timber vs. trunk; steps, gleam and gleam lanterns/gem torches vs. basic torches; refined/machined silver & gold etc.). A few possible ways of achieving better xp for builders:

a) Just like in mining: better materials could give 4, 8, 16 and more xp upon placing. Possibly connected with placing in beaconed area to avoid some random wilderness block placing aimed at gaining easy xp.

b) Building xp could be connected with beacon prestige and whenever placing blocks increase prestige by such and such amount, an experience bonus would be rewarded.

c) Additional xp could be granted for using ability to place blocks farther - bonus applied when placing 3 and more blocks away from a player.

  • Floating message icons.

All messages about completed feats or leveling can easily be missed when interacting with players and objects - it happened a lot of times that I didn’t manage to read all info. It can also be difficult when you are in the middle of a fight etc. Multiple messages (like a feat completed and level reached at the same time) can make it hard to follow all content of messages.

So, I was thinking the messages like that could appear as floating icons on the edge of the screen - waiting to be clicked and read and eventually closed. Think: messenger conversation tabs on your mobile.

That could also help with reporting leveling bugs (message displaying but no rewards received etc.), as we could take a screenshot of a floating message to prove there was an event that didn’t work.

  • Grass seeds gathering.

It’s a shocker for me it doesn’t give any xp. Not even a 1xp? I mean, c’mon lads. :grin: I constantly decorate my builds with placing soils instead of ice or dirt and planting all kind of funky grass from different planets. It takes time and is part of building exercises.
At the same time look at picking flowers. It takes 1 hit with a totem, so super fast and easy and also no cost in tool durability (unless you are mad enough to do it with your gem hammer - don’t complain to me then :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:). And it gives you whopping 16 xp!

EDIT: one more:

Bring the drop button back! It was so easy to right-click on your items in inventory and press “drop”. It always worked. Dragging items out from inventory is not working too good. Not for me anyway. :pensive:

14 Likes

Also a event log would be nice, so you can go back and see what have happened.

Yes please.
Can have both system.

7 Likes

The return of the drop item option would be a welcome one.

As for building, I’ve been levelling with it perfectly fine. I’m level 20 and I’ve mostly just been building. That said, there is a heck of a lot of chiselling on my latest build, so I’ve gone through a few of those traits already.

I also spent an hour or so killing enemies on Munteen, but I think that only accounted for a few levels?

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Well, I leveled up too while building.
However, time you spend on it versus xp gained is nowhere close to time vs. xp gain in mining and hunting. I can go around my settlement in Therka killing 1st tier wildstock, spitters and oortbirds and that would make me gain xp way faster.
If I go to Munteen for a half an hour hunt the xp I bring back is enormous* plus I get oort stones to my portals, so double gain.

*I can kill some 50 creaters in that half an hour without sweat and get 6k xp in a process. I would need to place 3000 blocks to get that. :0

4 Likes

Unfortunately, I think the Munteen madness is a bug. I hope they revisit the idea, but it’s apparently not intended?

I agree though - building versus most other things at least seems slower. That said, even builders have to occasionally get their hands dirty and do a bit of mining or gathering - and nobody escapes combat.

If you’re a dedicated builder - and only a builder - I imagine you’re right; things would be incredibly slow, but is it even possible to only build?

The only reason I’m challenging an increase of block placement, is because I don’t want it to become viable for new players to just spam down blocks for levels.

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Thats why I suggested connecting the higher xp with gaining beacon prestige. If such bonus kicks in every few hundred or a thousand of prestige gained then it needs some dedication and planning (most likely).
Anyway, if these bonuses are still smaller than what you get from mining coal and ores, its not going to be that much of a motivation to just randomly place some rock around.

And some mindless running around or placing blocks is unavoidable anyway. As soon as you realize they are feats there with some extra xp rewarded, you either place extra 50 blocks for no other reason just to get that feat. Or you run extra 200 blocks on top what you needed to run to get somewhere.

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I personally think the perfect system would be one you’d barely even notice. You’d just be rewarded for doing the things you’d normally do anyway.

It’s a tricky balancing act though, for sure - and no doubt something that’ll be tweaked numerous times before launch (with the help of feedback like yours)

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Feats could be hidden so you only get reward message for reaching milestones in your endeavors.

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This is exactly what @luke-turbulenz is trying to achieve with the Feats, Dailies, and Weeklies. They should reward want you want to do and not dictate what you do.

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Speaking of dailies, any way for us to make them “available” to add to our objectives list? I’ve got 5 slots and only 3 objectives at any given time D:

(Also those dailies are a massive spike of exp… to help boost me toward the next level… just saying.)

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I consider feats to be nice little surprises to what you would normally do in game.

Certainly while objectives are kinda bugged right now, people will focus on feats.

I consider building to be a pretty laid back activity, why? You don’t need many skills to do it effectively, the skills needed would be chisel mastery, dexterity and maybe some other attribute, which two of the three mentioned share usefulness with many other paths. Also the benefits you get from building, are more reliant on the footfall, capital status and intrinsic value attached to them, not to forget the fact that builders might be rewarded for their actions via trades or the upcoming blue prints. Building just seems like a core activity, same as fighting. So I think considering those, it’s pretty balanced out.

Also it might feel slower to level up via building, since feats and objectives relating to it are not working correctly

2 Likes

The problem is you would end up encouraging players to build with the same blocks because they give you more xp. Actions should only be earning a very, very small amount of xp and not as a way to level up quickly. The feats will be giving you big payloads for preforming actions and achieving a milestone in the game.

Objectives are intended to give you big payloads early on then fizzle out when you have learnt most of the features in the game.

Contracts is where you’ll get bigger payloads, these will be randomly generated quests at varying difficulties and tasks to complete. If you are looking for a way to maximise your XP gaining, then a combination of actions, feats, objectives and contacts is the way to go.

9 Likes

The return of the drop button would be welcome however I’ve had no problems with the drag-and-drop system as long as I drag it to the middle of the screen… However the missing item count on mousing over smarts stacks has been rather annoying.

Crafting experience does seem a little bit overpowered. I was level 20+ in the first night of playing… but new players would not have massive stores of resources to dump into crafting so this may not be so overpowered after all.

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Funny enough I was just ready to add that to the list of suggestions. It was such a useful feature.

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Yes, miss this to.

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So my thoughts on [quote=“luke-turbulenz, post:12, topic:8132”]
The problem is you would end up encouraging players to build with the same blocks because they give you more xp.
[/quote]

are that this is already an issue, but with prestige rather than xp. Assuming that at some point mayors will have actual advantages in game, and that they will be chosen by prestige (i understand both are subject to change.), the prestige system already rewards you for doing exactly that.

My example would be Prozee’s (love the guy) massive gleam tower in Therka. It does not function as a shop or a home, only as an enormous prestige build, which made him immediate mayor of the town with no competition.

So i guess I just don’t see the issue of using specific blocks for personal achievement and xp if they are aleady being used for social and external achievement and advantages

What I might suggest

I feel as though certain blocks SHOULD be encouraged to build with over others, something that the prestige system already supports. Just as some blocks don’t give any experience for destroying, perhaps blocks that take a large amount of time and effort to craft would give more xp when placed, thus encouraging all the professions to work with the highest quality materials they can find. Mining already heavily rewards you for seeking out the highest quality blocks, as doest crafting. Only building is left out due to a fear of exploitation

TO DISCOURAGE EXPLOITATION:
Have a block that grants more experience have a massively larger health bar than other placed blocks. This would be annoying to deal with if you misplace, but if a block takes 15 seconds to break with a good hammer, it would be nearly impossible to earn experience faster than if you were just mining ores or hunting creatures.

eg. timber = 1000 health
Refined Gold = 50,000 health

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The Prestige algorithm is supposed to take this into account. You need to use a variety of block types, a variety of block values, a variety of block colours, a variety of block shapes and more. Notice I said variety, I didn’t say many. We’re attempting to balance the algorithm to reward interesting and good builds. This is only the first iteration. If there are builds that you think don’t merit a high score they’ll be interesting for us to evaluate and iterate against.

4 Likes

So i thought this was how the system was going to work, but right now the Variation bonus actually counts backwards

e.g. the more variety of blocks i use, the lower the “variety bonus” within the debug menu goes. Perhaps this is a bug? When my build starts off made of all one block the variety bonus is at 100%

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indeed - I had high value of variation in a build made mostly of sedimentary rocks; when I added a few plots and started putting other types of blocks there it went down;

yesterday I moved from 4400 prestige to 5600 prestige by placing 20 gleam blocks in a ceiling(2 colors) - in a beacon that had 8 plots and was made mostly of metamorphic stone and metamorphic rock (2 different colors though); it made me think that if I build even a small tower made from gleam I would have gained way more than trying to build nicely with stone, timber, glass and just a few gleam lanterns for lighting effect; and trying to merge my builds with nature doesn’t count for much while going for size seems to be the answer in prestige race.