Xarfei wrote:I have enjoyed playing the Wok RPG very much and, although I have given Chris a lot of feedback already, I decided to play for a while and write down everything that I observed and that I found noteworthy (bugs etc.):
1) Monsters & Creatures:
Special skills (draining / spells) have apparently been taken into consideration when deciding on the level of a creature. However, I still think that a few of the creatures that I came across should have a much higher level:
Black Mist (level 23): the only creature I came across recently that I could not beat (even if resting in between). I got my ass kicked and lost about 4 HP and 2 stats points. I am level 51 and I have easily beaten creatures of much higher level.
Other examples: Phantasmal Mist (level 12), Shadow wolve (level 11), Pseudo dragon (level 3) should have a higher level.
Actually, only stoning and PATT/PDEF has been taken into account so far. I was hoping for some player feedback on how much the various spells and abilities hurt before doing the others.
2) Draining & Stats:
a) I have two items that give me a draining resistance of 90 (grey elven robe + amulet of life). Do the effects add up (i.e. resistance of 99), or can you have a max resistance of 90?
No, if you have several resistances, the maximum value is taken not a total. The best you can get is 95% (from spells). Also note that the monster has to hit you before it can drain/stone/paralyze/etc so a high PDEF helps ward against these attacks too.
b) Nevertheless, even with those two items equipped, I am currently losing stats points faster than I can gain them through tomes and potions. There are two simple reasons for this. First of all, further out there are quite a few monsters with strong draining abilities and secondly, further out I hardly come across any stats raising potions and tomes. The only place here I have ever found a tome / potion recently was around 10 squares away from the city.
Are we meant to go tome / potion hunting at this distance? Or maybe the draining ability of the monsters should be lowered.
My original thought was that low level players would sell tomes and potions for the cash, allowing a supply to other adventurers through the shop. However, I've only picked up one potion (dexterity) in this way so far so I guess people are using the items instead. I have no problem with people farming the closer squares for good items (you are more likely to get a stat raising stuff closer to the city) but, once you can equip your kick-ass items, the bonus from raising stats is actually pretty low...
3) Items
a) Bug: Sometimes when I open a chest and I find some items, they do not immediately appear in my inventory but I need to refresh first.
Hmm if it's not happening all the time, this will be hard to trace. I assume you're still getting the notification of what you found? If so, taking any action should bring the item into your collection.
b) Maybe it is because I am adventuring far away from the city, but
recently I am getting overloaded with stuff. I usually come home with tons and tons of (useless) items.
You tend to get more items further from the city as there are more chests to open and they have more contents on average. Also you will be going longer before returning to the city. I'm still toying with the idea of a STR based maximum items carried, in which case you'd have to drop stuff you didn't want. Until then though you can always sell items for cash and (unless it is cursed) what is useless to you may be helpful to a lower level character...
c) This is not a bug but a probability issue: I have find several identical items in a chest. e.g. I once found 3 steel daggers and another time 3 steel maces.
This will be a result of the restricted item lists I gave each monster. There are 10 possibilities for items in the chests, sometimes a specific item but usually a class. However I also restrict the level of the item so it is comparable to the difficulty of the square, which may make for quite a small list. I can increase the bounds of what the min and max item levels are, but this will probably just result in more "useless" items instead of the duplicates. Alternatively I can run a check to stop duplicates, but that would mean less loot to sell.
d) Swords appear to be underrepresented (vs axes / maces / daggers etc.). Is this intentional? Edit: I have recently found quite a few swords
It is intentional for different weapons to be stronger/more common at different levels. Otherwise people would always train e.g. sword. If you are planning to get only a little combat experience and do mostly magic then a hammer is better, is you want to do lots of fighting then a dagger or sword is, etc. The balances probably aren't great, but short answer: yes.
e) Money I get from items is still at least one order of magnitue greater than they money I get directly from killing monsters.
You're right, this time I think I'll up the gold from chests though - Makes people feel richer that way!
4) Other:
a) Enter City botton: this botton is missing if you have just left the city. You have to move away and come back if you want to re-enter the city.
Can you check if that's still happening. I thought I'd fixed it. (Doesn't happen here anyway.)
b) Swimming: whenever you enter a water square, it used to say "you can swim for XX more turns", now it says nothing. Is my swimming ability to high?
Same again.
b) Healing is now allowed in battle. However if I require healing, than the healing I can usually do is less than the damage the monster does while I heal => a bit pointless (My Healing is at level ~15)
Yup, a bit pointless, and I'm happy with that
(Of course an item could still be useful, but I'd much rather players had to run away to heal...)
5) Questions:
a) How does the damage modifier work? Is it linear?
Only partially implemented, but it's basically a multiplier for damage dealt. (Only for weapons though)
b) Could you explain somwhere how skill levels and stats affect the game? Maybe we are supposed to figure this out on our own, but that would be very tidious.
Stats are involved in many calculations, STR and DEX affect PATT, END and DEX affect PDEF, DEX affects movement costs. INT, WIS and CHA affect spell costs, CHA affects whether monsters will attack, INT and WIS affect your ability to ID items. The formula are varied and keep changing, however the effect from a stat is considerably lower than the effect from a skill. Skills, as you would expect, only help with actions directly tied to the skill in question.
6) Suggestions & Ideas
a) It would be nice if you could colour in all the damage done by a player in green and all the damage done by monsters in red. Especially when you have multiple swings (and the monster has extra abilities) can it take a while to figure out who did how much damage.
Good plan.
b) How about Quests, even if they are simple? It could start off with having to bring an item from location A to B.
Have you looked in the town hall recently?
I'm also thinking that players should be able to pose their own quests. Could be fun...
c) Similarly, how about non-player characters (NPCs)? Healer or trades that you find in the wilderness. They could give you quests.
Nice plan, but I'll have to put that as a long term option for now.
Chris.