Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

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strong yeet
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by strong yeet » Wed Jul 31, 2019 10:15 am

[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Wed Jul 31 04:26:44] Piety: -25.0 (75.0%)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Wed Jul 31 04:26:44] Mephistopheles augments your skill and grants you success.
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Wed Jul 31 05:59:49] Piety: -25.0 (74.9%)
[CHAT WINDOW TEXT] [Wed Jul 31 05:59:49] Mephistopheles augments your skill and grants you success.
These are from the same server, Surface. Is this period of cooldown (about an hour and a half) intended behaviour?

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DangerDolphin
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by DangerDolphin » Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:30 am

Just wanted to say this is a great thread, as a new player the enchanting system was so, so confusing and understanding the difference between soft and hard 5%s took a while, same with deities that let you godsave on it, and how different dweomercraft tiers worked.

The mechanics for enchanting should be transparent and documented on the wiki or explained via in game messages showing the rolls, in the same way every other mechanic is shown.

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Cortex
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Cortex » Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:04 pm

Thus is the problem with "hidden mechanics", you never know when they're working accordingly because the people above don't want you to know, so if a bug occurs you got nothing to go on for. Goes with enchanting goes with horses, goes with rogue grenades, etc.
:)

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Subutai » Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:32 pm

I think instead of saying, "Players will exploit it" a better question to ask might be "Why will players exploit it?" What advantage is gained by exploiting it? Is it an exploitation to get unnecessarily good results? Is it exploitation to overcome flaws in the system? Is it exploitation for another reason? Rather than opaque chances on hidden rolls to make late-game enchanting into a money pit that people might exploit to avoid losing money, maybe there are other ways to handle the system entirely, rather than basing it on 5% rolls and a handful of hidden mechanics.

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Sea Shanties » Thu Aug 01, 2019 6:46 pm

Cortex wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 3:04 pm
Thus is the problem with "hidden mechanics", you never know when they're working accordingly because the people above don't want you to know, so if a bug occurs you got nothing to go on for. Goes with enchanting goes with horses, goes with rogue grenades, etc.
This is a rickety homemade game and the devs are volunteers from the community who come and go over the years. I think like any open source project it's better for more people to know how it works-- any player now could be one of the devs or maintainers next year.

Likewise playtesting means testing new mechanics under pretty ideal circumstances then putting the change live and fixing issues after players use it, but when players don't know how something works they can only report in vague generalities. This leads to a lot of "I feel like something is wrong" but no ability to say exactly why. Players irritated by a hidden system that seems broken irritate devs who don't want to spend their weekend troubleshooting a problem they aren't sure is even a problem and next thing you know there's needless rifts.

This also leads to wonderful things not being used to their potential or just not at all because the line between "difficult to figure out" and "broken" is not defined. And it's a homemade game, so things do break (or are still in progress, or are unfixable bugs leftover from 2003 or..) Look at the Derro puzzle-- awesome new area but people legit don't know if it's even worth trying to solve. Or with something like rogue grenades, if you try one and it doesn't do what you thought it was supposed to you just never use it. I try not to report bugs unless I am sure they are bugs myself (usually meaning I knew how it worked before and something clearly changed, or it's a brand new announced update and isn't working at all) and if something doesn't seem to work I move on. Wouldn't it be better if players could actually give feedback that was useful with these things?

I think it has to be accepted that people will game the system no matter what and that should be taken into account as a necessarily fact of life. Mechanics should be transparent, there's still plenty of room for secrecy in this game but that should be between players or with DM-maintained events so there's oversight (especially in the case of very difficult puzzles.) Just one opinion of course and hope it's taken in the spirit it was written, I am not criticizing devs who do amazing work but I do thing the curtain should be lowered.

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Sockss
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Sockss » Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm

The entire concept of secrecy being a selling point of the static game world, or mechanics, is flawed and dangerous.

You breed elitism. Players that know these things collect and hoard information, meta it about and gain an advantage over people that don't. It alienates people. It's an unfair playing field.

Things that are unknowable to the player base, are knowable by people with access to the code - contribution shouldn't give an advantage, but it does.

Anything in an MMO designed around secrecy, doesn't work, because people talk - that's why there's nothing that uses that as a core game feature since the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
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Xerah
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Xerah » Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:22 pm

Not a bug, it's always been that way.
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:06 pm

Sockss wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm
The entire concept of secrecy being a selling point of the static game world, or mechanics, is flawed and dangerous.

You breed elitism. Players that know these things collect and hoard information, meta it about and gain an advantage over people that don't. It alienates people. It's an unfair playing field.

Things that are unknowable to the player base, are knowable by people with access to the code - contribution shouldn't give an advantage, but it does.

Anything in an MMO designed around secrecy, doesn't work, because people talk - that's why there's nothing that uses that as a core game feature since the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
This post is ridiculous, and wrong on so many levels. I took two seconds to think about it, and its obvious the system is the way it is because if you knew when you had the highest chance of success you would just do it then, making the system irrelevant. If you don't like how it was done, the best part about NwN is you can go make your own server and do things however you want to. But instead you chose to make it sound like there is some grand conspiracy involving the people who put work into this server (for free) wanting to have some advantage over you.

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Subutai » Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:16 pm

Can we have a thread where we don't tell people to go to another server, please? I feel like half the threads on these forums end up devolving into people telling others to go find another server.

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Sockss
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Sockss » Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:40 pm

Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:06 pm
Sockss wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm
The entire concept of secrecy being a selling point of the static game world, or mechanics, is flawed and dangerous.

You breed elitism. Players that know these things collect and hoard information, meta it about and gain an advantage over people that don't. It alienates people. It's an unfair playing field.

Things that are unknowable to the player base, are knowable by people with access to the code - contribution shouldn't give an advantage, but it does.

Anything in an MMO designed around secrecy, doesn't work, because people talk - that's why there's nothing that uses that as a core game feature since the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
This post is ridiculous, and wrong on so many levels. I took two seconds to think about it, and its obvious the system is the way it is because if you knew when you had the highest chance of success you would just do it then, making the system irrelevant. If you don't like how it was done, the best part about NwN is you can go make your own server and do things however you want to. But instead you chose to make it sound like there is some grand conspiracy involving the people who put work into this server (for free) wanting to have some advantage over you.
Okay so.

People already do it when they have the highest chance of success. People wait for God saves. Waiting a week to enchant a non 5% full set of gear (or if you've got time shorter because of resets) is pretty standard.

This doesn't make the system irrelevant, it is designed as a gold sink. (Some of) The BIS gear you assign an (average) cost based on % chance of failure. So BIS gear has an average static cost.

For example. If you enchant something with +1 con, at a 50% chance and it costs you 500gp, the average cost of that item is 1000gp. That is reduced if you enchant with you god save up (Which, again, people wait for)

Hidden mechanics haven't been a part of a (popular) game release for a long time.

Reporting a bug (or perceived bug) is not me, or anyone else, attacking the developers. I am grateful for the work and time they put in as I'm sure everyone else is.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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Seven Sons of Sin
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Fri Aug 02, 2019 1:33 am

Babylon System is the Vampire wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:06 pm
Sockss wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm
The entire concept of secrecy being a selling point of the static game world, or mechanics, is flawed and dangerous.

You breed elitism. Players that know these things collect and hoard information, meta it about and gain an advantage over people that don't. It alienates people. It's an unfair playing field.

Things that are unknowable to the player base, are knowable by people with access to the code - contribution shouldn't give an advantage, but it does.

Anything in an MMO designed around secrecy, doesn't work, because people talk - that's why there's nothing that uses that as a core game feature since the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
This post is ridiculous, and wrong on so many levels. I took two seconds to think about it, and its obvious the system is the way it is because if you knew when you had the highest chance of success you would just do it then, making the system irrelevant.
Is this problematic?

There's already a lot to know. You're basically learning three systems to play Arelith - 3.0 D&D, NWN, and then Arelith.
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Fri Aug 02, 2019 7:20 am

Sockss wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm
The entire concept of secrecy being a selling point of the static game world, or mechanics, is flawed and dangerous.

You breed elitism. Players that know these things collect and hoard information, meta it about and gain an advantage over people that don't. It alienates people. It's an unfair playing field.

Things that are unknowable to the player base, are knowable by people with access to the code - contribution shouldn't give an advantage, but it does.

Anything in an MMO designed around secrecy, doesn't work, because people talk - that's why there's nothing that uses that as a core game feature since the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
No one is suggesting hoarding the known information. EVERYTHING mechanical that is disclosed about how the enchanting system works is detailed and documented and linked on these forums - and I support the idea of including that information in the in-game journal; so this sentiment of any elitism is flawed. You can't say people are elitist because others don't put in the effort to read.

All contributors have an advantage, because they know the ins and outs of the server better than we do on a coding and design level and a proper grasp of what reaction they should get from each action. Saying they shouldn't have advantages from knowledge is saying they shouldn't play at all (I disagree), and saying that because they know they should have to share is flawed, especially when they've clearly been instructed not to.

This isn't an MMO - and the secrecy is working fine on a player level as it's intended to, or there wouldn't be such an ardent discussion about revealing more of the system.

Everyone who has used the basin in any kind of character-involved craft-based RP has known the surprise joy of a godsave, and the frustration of failing over and over (sometimes even on a 95% chance of success). Gold sinks are frustrating by nature, but this sense of mystery absolutely contributes to the value IC that is placed on thoroughly enchanted items, as well as the atmosphere.

In terms of information distribution, while not exact, ~1.5 hours is pretty close to the passage of 12 in-game hours. It's been that way for a long time (I've not been here long enough to say always, but I've been around awhile).

Edit: I'm not trying to say you're attacking the developers- I am implying that you should have more faith in their repeated assertions that the code is working. Debating the merits of whether or not it's likeable or good to have concealed information is fine (I'm obviously in the other camp), but I don't believe it's giving a lot of credit to say "but it could still be broken, we have no way to confirm it because we don't know, despite you repeatedly confirming that you've looked at it and it's functioning as it should." Rather, I would say that such a statement is a faulty reasoning not used in malice but to attempt to be persuasive that the unrevealed information should be shared- which is really what this thread has become about, not about any supposed bugs.

Developers can make mistakes, but as many times as this has come up and as many times as I'm sure they've looked over the code by this point, I find it unlikely, because unlike me, they actually know what to look for.
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Nobs » Fri Aug 02, 2019 7:52 am

The way i used to do it was enchant my gear up to the point where i would need a god save and then change server and enchant the god save there.
Wait a day and you are good to go again.

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Sockss » Fri Aug 02, 2019 8:13 am

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Fri Aug 02, 2019 7:20 am
No one is suggesting hoarding the known information. EVERYTHING mechanical that is disclosed about how the enchanting system works is detailed and documented and linked on these forums - and I support the idea of including that information in the in-game journal; so this sentiment of any elitism is flawed. You can't say people are elitist because others don't put in the effort to read.

All contributors have an advantage, because they know the ins and outs of the server better than we do on a coding and design level and a proper grasp of what reaction they should get from each action. Saying they shouldn't have advantages from knowledge is saying they shouldn't play at all (I disagree), and saying that because they know they should have to share is flawed, especially when they've clearly been instructed not to.

This isn't an MMO - and the secrecy is working fine on a player level as it's intended to, or there wouldn't be such an ardent discussion about revealing more of the system.

Everyone who has used the basin in any kind of character-involved craft-based RP has known the surprise joy of a godsave, and the frustration of failing over and over (sometimes even on a 95% chance of success). Gold sinks are frustrating by nature, but this sense of mystery absolutely contributes to the value IC that is placed on thoroughly enchanted items, as well as the atmosphere.

In terms of information distribution, while not exact, ~1.5 hours is pretty close to the passage of 12 in-game hours. It's been that way for a long time (I've not been here long enough to say always, but I've been around awhile).

Edit: I'm not trying to say you're attacking the developers- I am implying that you should have more faith in their repeated assertions that the code is working. Debating the merits of whether or not it's likeable or good to have concealed information is fine (I'm obviously in the other camp), but I don't believe it's giving a lot of credit to say "but it could still be broken, we have no way to confirm it because we don't know, despite you repeatedly confirming that you've looked at it and it's functioning as it should." Rather, I would say that such a statement is a faulty reasoning not used in malice but to attempt to be persuasive that the unrevealed information should be shared- which is really what this thread has become about, not about any supposed bugs.

Developers can make mistakes, but as many times as this has come up and as many times as I'm sure they've looked over the code by this point, I find it unlikely, because unlike me, they actually know what to look for.
I'm saying hidden mechanics breed elitism, because the thing about hidden mechanics is that they're not hidden to everyone. What is known about enchanting to the majority of people is not what is known to fewer people.

Access to these hidden mechanics, through whatever means, is an advantage. That includes contributors, whoever they tell and whoever they tell, etc.

That breeds elitism.

Arelith is an mmo, though I suppose that depends on how you define the first m. Regardless, it is a multiplayer experience and hidden mechanics have had no place in them for a long while.

Anyway this thread isn't about that.

I'm not asking for the mysteries of enchanting. I'm asking for it to be tested properly, or some feedback which tells you "hey timer seems to be messed up".

Not to debate a style of game mechanics which have been near universally tossed into the sun for being annoying and ultimately futile.
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Shadowy Reality » Fri Aug 02, 2019 8:55 am

What elitism?

We don't know exact timers, maybe some people do, but it is irrelevant. Just wait a couple of days, or a couple of days with a reset in between before trying to enchant the hard stuff and pay attention to the Godsave.

I had an enchanter a couple months ago, I enchanted stuff every 2 days, I saw Godsaves fairly often in those 2 day cycles. Just wait more time, you are not losing gold by waiting to enchant, it will just take longer to enchant everything which is not the end of the world.

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Sockss » Fri Aug 02, 2019 9:01 am

Being able to create things more quickly more reliably is an advantage.

But again, this isn't a discussion about that.
Thankfully this team is no longer being used.

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the grim yeeter
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by the grim yeeter » Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:24 pm

Xerah wrote:
Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:28 am
...

[*]You cannot god save if it has already happened in the given time period (let's just accept that 1 per day is the right number)

...
Xerah wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:22 pm
Sockss wrote:
Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:01 pm
...

Regardless, I am very certain that 1.5 hours between saves is not intended behaviour. So something is wrong somewhere and I hope our lovely devs find and fix it.
Not a bug, it's always been that way.
hmmmmmmm

24 x 6 = 144 minutes
1.5 hours = 90 minutes

big hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Xerah » Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:26 pm

Well, good job with the obnoxious response.
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Silvard » Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:54 pm

Please understand that we contributors can't and won't confirm the specifics of this particular system. We can, and have, and continuously do confirm that it's indeed working as intended. We do review, discuss and test the code whenever issues are brought up to us within the realm of what's possible with the time we can dedicate to contributing. Everyone is encouraged to make reports on what they suspect might not be working as intended, and we understand that imperfect knowledge of a system makes it a lot harder for players to identify such cases. However, if we respond to a report with "it's working as intended" it's not because we are unwilling to review the code in question, it's because we already have and the empirical evidence presented isn't enough to prove otherwise.

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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Red Ropes » Fri Aug 02, 2019 11:11 pm

regardless of whatever this topic is in total the only sound thing that i think that could be abstracted and probably get some people to calm down

is if we could have a enchant save cooldown time visible? why would that be so bad? There isn't a system to game. It lets people know and feel more secure.

seems like a cool feature so people can know when and if making their gear might be a bad / good idea
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Re: Enchanting Godsaves (Feedback)

Post by Tarkus the dog » Sat Aug 03, 2019 1:24 pm

After randomly getting a god save that I didn't expect to get, I'd also indeed appreciate a CD timer.

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