Alchemy Potions - Naos Speaks

[Donquix]

I think part of it might be Naos is already disenchanted with the game after learning how everything revolves around P2W now. He seemed very out of the loop when he first came back, but got a reality check during the 925 fallout.

The only real thing I'm basing this on is when people were accusing Simu of some P2W bullshit with enchanting (I can't remember specifically what it was offhand), Naos responded with some shit like "If I find out that XYZ is being done this way in order to make it P2W then I'm out." I wanna say it was something to do with potions and DR but I don't give a shit enough to remember.

Pretty sure Naos hates the entire P2W concept (at least until he gets in on it, probably) and the truck stop casino that the game has become.

It was in regards to the increase in difficulty for a lot of items, especially the difficulty in farming essence before they made the change to get static on kills, with the new system, and equating that as a conspiracy to force people to buy enchant certs / limitbreaker potions from DR.

But it all seems like a bunch of crocodile tears. Because Estild said the same thing and that motherfucker just used a monk spell slot to sell an SK item. So fuck both of them.

I lost all faith in Naos as an effective game developer when he said he tested nu-enchant 1.0 essence generation by running on a script casting spells on a capped wizard set to have unlimited mana and it took 8 hours to cap, so he felt the system was reasonable.

like...what? But I mean, he made alchemy so it shouldn't really be a surprise.

[malmuddy]

As a professional, I would want to distance myself ASAP from the train wreck that is the 925 update of the 2019 Spring Spectacular. I don't pretend to understand the market for game developers, and you would likely not even put something like this on your resume if you were in the business. But I get a good chuckle when thinking about how anyone on the Simu side of the house would answer traditional interview questions if asked about this update, assuming they answer honestly.

Also, just writing out Spring Spectacular gave me a chuckle. This update was neither completed in the spring (2019, at least), nor spectacular. Discuss amongst yourselves.

[audioserf]

I thought it was rushed out the door for Hot Summer Nights, not spring - but that's neither here nor there, as the point is it was absolutely not ready, tested, etc, and they jammed it down the chute anyway to check the box.

[Methais]

I thought it was rushed out the door for Hot Summer Nights, not spring - but that's neither here nor there, as the point is it was absolutely not ready, tested, etc, and they jammed it down the chute anyway to check the box.

And then later on when people are complaining about other stuff still being ignored for decades while they keep working on shit nobody asked for, they'll be like BUT LOOK AT ALL THE DEV WE DID THIS YEAR!!!! *points to enchanting and 483729043270 bug/typo fixes*

[audioserf]

BUT WE CODED COLLECTABLES, DON'T YOU LIKE YOUR FREE IRON WAND

[drumpel]

This new enchant is good for taking items up quick when you have the essence. Otherwise, the system blows - in my opinion - when you compare it to the sheer amount of work you used to be able to do with the old system, compared to the new.

Thankfully they allowed folks to keep with the old system because there was no way in hell I was going to plink away at the nearly 3 dozen perfect weapons I had crafted to slowly take them all up to 4x.

Under the old system, I had them all up to 4x within a month, it was 30 items.

Taking all 30 items from +5 to +20 with essence means 18k essence per item.
30 x 18,000 = 540,000 essence
If you can only hit 16k max a week....then
540,000 / 16,000 = 33.75 weeks worth of essence to take these items to 4x.

On top of those items to 4x (since the release of the "new" enchant system), using the old system I have taken 1 item from 5x to 7x (took about 3 months, in costs of essence = 156,000) and 1 item from 4x to 6x (took about 1.5 months, in cost of essence = 59,000) and one other item from 4x to 5x (cost in essence = 11,000) and I just started a 5x to 6x (should take about 30 days, cost in essence = 48,000).

Total essence for all the 4x work and the major enchants = 274,000 (major enchants, counting the one I just started to 6x) + 540,000 (all 4x projects) = 814,000 essence I would have needed.
814,000 / 16,000 = 50.875 weeks worth of essence. That's almost a full fucking year I would have had to grind out essence to do these.
What a fucking joke if you ask me.

As for the use of alchemy to create potions - I spent 4 months and probably close to 7-8 million in silvers buying up supplies so I could whittle my way through general and potions, only to get through it to have the new enchanting system thrown out and potions that we were using are now almost defunct. Then they won't put out recipes for the new potions because it's not a "priority".

On top of the recipes not being a priority, Estild (or Wyrom, I forget without finding the post) made claim about how essence was being earned faster than they wanted after the change to let kills earn essence and it had to be revisited....my guess is they're going to screw it up and piss everyone off again. But, I guess we wait and see the final outcome - if it ever gets here because it has only been around 6 months since they pushed out this unfinished version of 925.

[Methais]

On top of the recipes not being a priority, Estild (or Wyrom, I forget without finding the post) made claim about how essence was being earned faster than they wanted after the change to let kills earn essence and it had to be revisited....my guess is they're going to screw it up and piss everyone off again. But, I guess we wait and see the final outcome - if it ever gets here because it has only been around 6 months since they pushed out this unfinished version of 925.

They already made that change and it's just based on the kill now and not mana spent.

Before they did this, I could max out my weekly in about 1-2 hours. Before that change, I wanna say 2-3 days, and a day for me is basically 8 hours since I play most of the day from work. I have no idea what it takes now because I usually don't think to check it, but it doesn't seem to be a massive difference. Maybe 3-4 hours if even that.

TLDR: It took way too long at first, then it didn't take long enough, and now it's medium porridge. Not sure if this is a placeholder and they plan to tweak it further or if this is it, but it's been like this for a while now.

At this point I'd much rather dev just stop working on everything. Everything they touch becomes less fun and more tedious after, and they pretty much never work on shit that people ask for, like all these useless spell slots that still exist and whatever else is still broken for the past few decades.

Thanks P2W.

No dev > 99% of the shit dev does

[Donquix]

enchanting a bunch of bullshit to 4x, and needing to actually play your wizard now, are the only downsides of the new design compared to the old system. I'll trade a little more annoyance for enchanting a perfect mithril in exchange for not losing a 7x enchant to a locker for year.

Overall it was a good design, they just fucked up the details with silly things like "oh players don't want to take 127 hours of grinding to max essence? weird" and "no dude, realm flaring items should totally be super for serial hard to enchant."

I think it's in a good spot now, other than some item difficulty ratings (especially fusion). I'm sure Naos will fuck it up with his next iteration supposedly in QC for the last several months.

[Methais]

I think it's in a good spot now, other than some item difficulty ratings (especially fusion). I'm sure Naos will fuck it up with his next iteration supposedly in QC for the last several months.

Actual footage of Simu QC:

[Merzbow]

They already made that change and it's just based on the kill now and not mana spent.

Before they did this, I could max out my weekly in about 1-2 hours. Before that change, I wanna say 2-3 days, and a day for me is basically 8 hours since I play most of the day from work. I have no idea what it takes now because I usually don't think to check it, but it doesn't seem to be a massive difference. Maybe 3-4 hours if even that.

TLDR: It took way too long at first, then it didn't take long enough, and now it's medium porridge. Not sure if this is a placeholder and they plan to tweak it further or if this is it, but it's been like this for a while now.

At this point I'd much rather dev just stop working on everything. Everything they touch becomes less fun and more tedious after, and they pretty much never work on shit that people ask for, like all these useless spell slots that still exist and whatever else is still broken for the past few decades.

Thanks P2W.

No dev > 99% of the shit dev does

I think essence gain is correctly tuned now. I'm not optimized for essence gain but neither am I gimped for it, and I can easily max out a week through casual hunting. Can do it in a day or two through super-serious hunting (pounding out SoS swarms).