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NIGHT

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Blog Comments posted by NIGHT

  1. Rewarding Staff Members

    2 minutes ago, Koga said:

    I'm gonna be very clear here at the beginning. I'm not trying to be an ass, or be rude, or anything like that. But I'm struggling to formulate a way to express this in a way that doesn't achieve that in the eyes of some party in some way shape or form.

    I adminned and wrote events and bosses for roughly three years, and similarly adminned on another site for another one or two years. I understand where staff is coming from, don't mistake that. Its grueling, its draining, and it generates way more stress than it has any right to. I'm a full time student, and whatever free time I had pretty much got taken up by my responsibilities to one site or another. You all have real lives in addition to what's here, and it can stack up.

    But in more than three years, I never asked nor expected rewards for the work I put into those sites. The reason for this is because I felt like I was giving back to the community, not that I was getting something out of it. Eventually when I got too busy, too tired, or just plain too sick of doing the job, I found someone who could do the job as good or better than me and left whatever position I'd held.

    The issues with rewards that go beyond what Bahr has detailed (which, by the way, if that's what you guys are thinking, go crazy. I fully support acknowledging people who work hard) is that it breeds an environment of competition. Being staff isn't about doing a job to help the community or make the site better anymore, it eventually becomes about what rewards you get for doing your job, or maybe even just part of it.

    And that kind of mentality destroys sites.

    That is the last thing I wanna see happen here. I've been on this site for no more than maybe a month and a half, and I've really enjoyed it. For purely selfish reasons I wanna see this site continue on so I can subject you all to my terribly written characters some more. But without a clear idea of what you guys might consider appropriate rewards for being staff, I can't make a vote that I'd be comfortable with backing.

    That being said, I would really like to see Staff take this back to the drawing board and have some unified outline of what you are all thinking of as rewards and then reopen a poll asking if giving those kinds of rewards would be acceptable to the community.

    I really do think that the Staff deserve to be treated well and acknowledged for the kind of time and effort they pour into this place (which is a hell of a lot, so hats off to you guys, I really do appreciate all of you and the quality of what you've managed to create here) and would like to see the community support them more in the future. I'm not about to axe this yet, but for me personally, I need more clarification than what's been given.

    Gonna second this for clarity.

  2. Rewarding Staff Members

    I can't find myself voting appropriately in the poll unless I know what the rewards are, but I do feel like they should be compensated in some way. It's hard to find myself saying yes for in-game rewards, though I know that managing the community takes up hours that can't be fed back into roleplaying for one's own sake. On the other hand, this could cause an imbalance, however to what effect this might be, I'm not capable of saying.

    An external reward, on the other hand? I think I can support that even more. Commissions, a unique theme, a gift or favour, a custom quest? Podcast shout out? A promo? Any of those would be amicable. They're tangible still, but they don't complicate matters in the community economy.

  3. Sword art Poll and Debate

    27 minutes ago, Tristan Delaney said:

    My main inspirations at the time of designing the systems were SAO Hollow Fragment and its PS4/PC remaster Re:Hollow Fragment.

    Now there's a key piece of the puzzle that's been missing; given this knowledge, it's a lot easier to see what might best fit the current system. The larger skills to weaker ones is a unique flow -- if it fits the theme of the game better, I'm all for it.

  4. Sword art Poll and Debate

    Puts on a Game Design hat

    The two proposals so far seem to suggest altering the usage of sword arts so that they feel more varied and used. When I think about it like that, I end up with a few other suggestions as opposed to cooldowns, because it results in extra work for everyone to take them into account. But please feel free to take them with multiple grains of salt; I don't know what the work is like on your side.

    also the whole thing sounds like a shill for ff14??? i'm so sorry, i didn't mean it that way i swear

    1. Chaining Sword Arts via Incentives

    In FF14 we have chained combos, where using one skill provides a damage boost to another, which incentivizes players to build a rotation around those skills. It also means it's possible to switch out your play style flexibly. Say 3 more creatures join the fight as you're beating one up, you could drop the damage increase for a single target to swap to an AoE sword art instead.

    The upside is that players can fight rather flexibly, but also, more statistical-oriented players can follow along an optimal rotation easily. It sounds like it's bound to happen from Proposal B, with players figuring out on how to have an optimal damage to cooldown ratio. The downside is, if the idea of locking a skill down after it's been used is purposeful (ie. hard punishment) then the flexibility would cause an issue. It's also worth noting that you could potentially streamline players to a specific playstyle here with the combos being guided by developers.

    1.1 Stances

    There's also a unique playstyle in FF14 that belongs to the monk, where you can swap between stances and receive a bonus in damage by using skills buffed by current stance you're in. The idea here is still along the lines of chained combos, but you're categorizing your sword arts under themes and allowing greater chain flexibility.

    For example, let's take a dagger user into consideration. With the chain combo mechanic, you could go Round Accel -> Fad Edge -> Tri-Pierce, increasing the multiplier each time you use a successive sword art without deviation. With stances, you could start from Tri-Pierce and chain it up with sword arts that work similarly in flavour, like Infinite or Cross Edge, and keep the three skills on rotation. Or, for another, Sonic Resonance, which uses a reverse-grip, can be grouped up with either Accel Raid or Eternal Cyclone, as they both fall under the same style of fighting.

    1.2 Traits as Mods

    This is just in case you needed to buff older sword arts that don't get to see much use in end-game; advancing or unlocking a higher tier of sword art could be the answer. Similarly, to unlock or improve on combat styles/variations, chaining combos or unlocking stances could be added in as a mod.

    Under chained combos, checking if a skill flows with another simply requires a reference sheet, as opposed to everyone involved having to keep track of when their sword arts starts coming back up. Also, it's possible for a player to be afraid of exerting sword arts more liberally because it could go on cooldown when they'd need it most (although this is a guess, kind of like when someone holds onto items in an RPG and never uses them simply because they're expecting a worse scenario where the items might come in handy).

    1. Increasing specificity of Sword Arts

    Other than damage multipliers and stuns, I imagine multiple effects imposed on certain sword sword arts could also result in strategic gameplay. It might make the game a little more padded and awkward to sift through though, so that's a heads up before I go into it.

    My initial idea was having sword arts dependant on someone's hate values (eg. I ping-pong between the target I have the most hate on, to the least and back again) or that AoE might not be able to hit every monster (eg. only affecting two enemies as I cut through one and swing it against another), but it can also extend to:

    • Sword Arts that depend on exploiting a vulnerability/opening for attack

    • Sword Arts that puts the player in a vulnerable position for a period of time in exchange for a buff

    • Sword Arts having a less-than-ideal chance of occurrence but having a larger payout for it

    While this adds in a lot more flavour for combat options, it also means inflating the number of sword arts, which would take up time for the developers to make and balance, and for the players to sort through and recall which ones might be useful in specific scenarios. It also means considering edge scenarios with multiple sword arts to replace generic scenarios with one current overarching sword art to support them all.

    Without knowing the combat philosophy of the game I wouldn't know what to strongly suggest? But the current system to me (as a lowbie) seems quite alright as it is; if anything my biggest gripe is remembering that basic attacks cost 1 EN, and that's about it. I really hope my notes were at least comprehensive, thanks for reading our walls of texts p_p);;

    - - -


    Notes: I had originally expected to see ideas on how to promote strategic planning for battles? So my brainstorming churned out stuff like 'use the environment to your advantage' or 'each weapon gets a type that may or may not work as well on some enemies than others'...

    I also didn't want to link it in with the energy system as I don't have a lot of experience with it just yet; I'm new, and I'll have more trust in feedback from a player who's more familiar with the system, using their playstyle.

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