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Keenan

Caffeine Changes

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So what exactly would be wrong with keeping caffeine as is and just add some QOL of life stuff?

Would prevent a huge window of opportunity, which is usually the worst offenders to seperate newer and older players, and with the fatigue limit, faster meditation and stuff it really does benefit newer players. And I've personally enjoyed doing more chill stuff after running out of fatigue, enjoying the game more, despite the total skillgain throughout the day is less than I wouldve gotten if I used up my fatigue without caffeine.

 

Edited by Joemog
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As a casual player, I haven’t got a meditation tick in the last 2 days.  I feel like I should be rewarded for it, if and when that tick comes while I have caffeine bonus active.

Edited by DADLER
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12 hours ago, Joemog said:

So what exactly would be wrong with keeping caffeine as is and just add some QOL of life stuff?

Would prevent a huge window of opportunity, which is usually the worst offenders to seperate newer and older players, and with the fatigue limit, faster meditation and stuff it really does benefit newer players. And I've personally enjoyed doing more chill stuff after running out of fatigue, enjoying the game more, despite the total skillgain throughout the day is less than I wouldve gotten if I used up my fatigue without caffeine.

I feel the same. I really don't understand the reasonings for that debuff... I feel this really should be well thought out how does it help those with limited playtime. By the way limited playtime can mean that you can always take a couple of days of work to just chill and rest. Play some chess, Wurm, watch movies. In this case maybe a guy wants to play for those 2 days but that debuff will kick him in the shin. How does the debuff help him if he wants to burn 10 hours of accrued SB? The debuff on the second day won't actually help him. 

 

Also drinking caffeine still has the major issue of being tied to the water meter. Come on...[13:30:24] You are so bloated you cannot bring yourself to drink any thing else.

 

How does this benefit those with little playtime? People really don't have hours to afk wasting electricity so their meter goes to zero. 

Edited by elentari
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11 hours ago, Joemog said:

So what exactly would be wrong with keeping caffeine as is and just add some QOL of life stuff?

Would prevent a huge window of opportunity, which is usually the worst offenders to seperate newer and older players, and with the fatigue limit, faster meditation and stuff it really does benefit newer players. And I've personally enjoyed doing more chill stuff after running out of fatigue, enjoying the game more, despite the total skillgain throughout the day is less than I wouldve gotten if I used up my fatigue without caffeine.

 

While I also really like the current system with the fatigue usage as a trade-off, I believe the problem this new Intoxication system is trying to address is that people may not have the time to log in daily.

Fatigue caps out at 12 hours, so if you don't log in every single day you will be at the fatigue cap which is counter-productive towards the people the caffeine system is intended for in the first place.

 

The Intoxication system on the other hand gives you the ability to essentially "skip" days:

- You could use 1 hour of caffeine every day

- You could skip every second day and use 2 hours of caffeine on the days you're playing

- You could even skip playing during the week and use up all 5 hours on a weekend (In which case you'd miss out on 1 day of Intoxication removal since it takes 6 days from Sunday to Saturday)

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15 hours ago, Joemog said:

So what exactly would be wrong with keeping caffeine as is and just add some QOL of life stuff?

Would prevent a huge window of opportunity, which is usually the worst offenders to seperate newer and older players, and with the fatigue limit, faster meditation and stuff it really does benefit newer players. And I've personally enjoyed doing more chill stuff after running out of fatigue, enjoying the game more, despite the total skillgain throughout the day is less than I wouldve gotten if I used up my fatigue without caffeine.

 

 

This would be my preference as well. 

 

The argument that intoxication lets you "skip days" holds true for fatigue just as easily. We get 8 hours of fatigue every RL day.. That's 2 hours of coffee usage, which is actually more generous than the one hour of intoxication. And if you use it every other day, you get full benefit.

 

Giving me more options of when and how I can use caffiene seems better than trapping me in a 5 hours maximum benefit per week/1 hour max per day setup. Mostly because I keep finding myself in situations where I want to use up my sleep bonus and then hit a deity rite, then use it up again to be ready for the next deity rite.

 

Frankly, changing the system from the relief of "I can burn up my sleep bonus at double speed if I wait another day" (current system) into "I can't do this again for until next week" (intoxication system) will push me back into much lengthier grinding sessions on the regular. Especially since it will introduce the worry of "If I use it all up today, what if someone casts Rite of My God tomorrow, then Rite of Another God three days later?"

 

In essence, I'm saying forcing coffee to be 5 hours a week maximum is going to make me far more hesitant to use coffee for all the wrong reasons. It won't be "I get less skill gain from this" or "I'll have to wait until tomorrow to do more", it'll instead be "This is a precious resource and I don't want to mess up and waste it."

 

The argument of "Even for people that have a lot of play time, caffiene as it's currently implemented can make for a more relaxing game experience" is absolutely valid and should be considered.

 

"Coffee is for casuals" can translate into coffee helping some of us with more play time relax and play more casually. 

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Add a purist title for all the players that don't want to abuse shitter mechanics. Lost, if they ever drink caffeine.

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On 12/11/2021 at 8:41 PM, Keenan said:

In the interim, we wished to solve the issue of meditation bypassing intoxication in the simplest manner, though this point raised makes me think we can do better

If the issue is with toggling sleep bonus in the last moment of meditation timer, then just disable SB toggles during actions. Problem solved, and I'd call it fair - want bonus, pay for the full action.

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2 hours ago, Shmeric said:

If the issue is with toggling sleep bonus in the last moment of meditation timer, then just disable SB toggles during actions. Problem solved, and I'd call it fair - want bonus, pay for the full action.

Two minutes for maybe a yes, maybe a no skillgain action?

This makes it the most effective way to waste sleep bonus.

From one problem to the other.

It's rng gamble with meditating, and most of the time it's a no gain roll

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42 minutes ago, Finnn said:

Two minutes for maybe a yes, maybe a no skillgain action?

This makes it the most effective way to waste sleep bonus.

From one problem to the other.

It's rng gamble with meditating, and most of the time it's a no gain roll

I lose more sleep bonus wondering which key my tool is on. 

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On 12/11/2021 at 11:03 PM, Keenan said:

 

I'll clarify the debuff here.

 

Let's say I grind at 100 caffeine for 5 hours on a Wednesday. The next day, I'll be able to grind again for an hour. Or if I skip a day, that'll be 2 hours on Friday. The debuff ticks down from 100%, and once below 100% it becomes available to use again

Different levels of caffeine cause the debuff to scale accordingly. So 50 power will result in 10 hours of grinding before losing the benefits.

 

I hope that clears things up.

 

Also, please keep the discussion on-topic and avoid personal attacks. Disagreements are a good thing as they often lead to better ideas, but only if done in a civil fashion.

when i read the first post i was worried that this changes would just make this become something else that makes a bigger gap between casual players and players like me but with this expalantion now i see how it makes more sense.

the only problem that i still see is the diferent levels of power allowing people to stretch the bonus for longer. when people said we want a mix of depth of use and simplicity maybe we didnt mean all in the same features. maybe this one should be simpler, make it all or nothing instead of power levels.

but then il probably either never use this or be forced to use it as much as posible to not feel like im wasting time by not using it, depending on how it ends up.

 

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*waves merrily*

Just wanted to say that I am a casual player, stress easily and cannot really grind. I simply try to craft things to gain my skills that way, imp up tools, boats, ovens and forges and things where I feel it is usable for me. There are times when I do try to grind, and I can then take about 5-8 hours to do so (mainly cooking, but did it once for fine carpentry too). Since the whole talk about caffeine has been rather confusing, and a bit intimidating to me, I will simply ask this, to comprehend better (I cannot make high ql stuff - I'd be happy if the coffee/tea/cacao is 15 ql ^^ ): 
If I use sleep bonus and add caffeine to this, what is the actual difference for me with the current system and the suggested changes one? I can grind one day, but definitely not two. Next day, I might still use SB if I am making some furniture for decorations, or statues or something, just to still help my skill gain a bit from ordinary stuff (provided I have some SB to use, of course). If I have understood this correctly, I will still, in the new system, get skill gain bonus from the SB, just not from the coffee as well? I haven't ever hit the fatigue (though I know people who have, and I am impressed ^^ ), in case that changes anything from how it was to how it might be with the changes. 

(Regarding meditating: I meditate maybe 1-2 times on a play-day (in the best of cases) and in spite of only being in my 20s, I didn't have a tick for a rather long time. This was before I took a much needed break (I burn out easily). I have no idea how often people get ticks, but I'm not loved by rng :P. I don't actually think caffeine would have any impact on my meditating, due to RNG and I, so no point in adding any such examples :) (in case someone was going to.))

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11 hours ago, Aleck said:

The argument that intoxication lets you "skip days" holds true for fatigue just as easily. We get 8 hours of fatigue every RL day.. That's 2 hours of coffee usage, which is actually more generous than the one hour of intoxication. And if you use it every other day, you get full benefit.

 

Another point to consider is that not all actions use fatigue so this is actually false. With for example cooking or fighting you can use caffeine almost endlessly under the current system where as in the new purposed system it would limit the ability of people to use caffeine at all.

 

Again though if this intoxication debuff is built like the affinity food timers then it wont matter, those are broken as hell anyway and one cross into a neighboring server will drop the timer after a relog and boom 5 more hours of coffee.

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We already get a massive fatigue debuff from using coffee, why add another debuff? It started out as a very promising system but not it just seems to become something contradictory to the folks it was made for. 

Edited by elentari

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8 hours ago, GilwenAistrinas said:

*waves merrily*

*waveback*

 

 

8 hours ago, GilwenAistrinas said:

If I have understood this correctly, I will still, in the new system, get skill gain bonus from the SB, just not from the coffee as well? I haven't ever hit the fatigue (though I know people who have, and I am impressed ^^ ), in case that changes anything from how it was to how it might be with the changes. 

 

Yes you will, so you do now. To make that clear, caffeine burnt SB faster, and in most cases, you lost SB with caffeine per skill gained compared to not using caffeine. The buff saves time but burns SB. That remains the same also with the changes proposed,

 

As to meditating, caffeine made a difference indeed, but only if you get ticks. Double zero still remains zero ;) .

 

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On 12/10/2021 at 7:00 PM, Keenan said:

Fatigue usage will no longer be part of the caffeine system

 

@elentari

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On 12/11/2021 at 12:41 PM, Keenan said:

 

I'm reviewing all the replies and want to wait to make a larger one, but this struck a chord as you're right.

 

I will say that meditation is one of those things I'd love to rework. It's not something we can rework in the near future though, at least not in the timeframe that I wish to push some changes to caffeine. Our time is also split on making these changes, as well as the design and implementation of the Exploration update. Basically, if I were to give a time estimate, I can't see time being dedicated to meditation until Q2 for design and Q3 for implementation. That may seem far off, but I fully intend to bring the changes to the community for feedback. That increases the time it takes to bring those changes about, but also increases the chance that the changes will be what folks want and not what a small team of developers thinks is best for everyone.

 

In the interim, we wished to solve the issue of meditation bypassing intoxication in the simplest manner, though this point raised makes me think we can do better. I do not want to change how sleep bonus interacts with meditation, but perhaps we can change how intoxication works with meditation as that's the crux of why we proposed to remove it in the first place. Lockpicking was also brought up internally as a skill that has a similar interaction with sleep bonus (and thus intoxication), so we'd also look to change that as well. The downside to making these exceptions is trying to communicate the functionality to players. One take-away from my Depth vs Ease of use thread was that people want a marriage of both. Making one-off exceptions to how things work creates confusion. It's easier to say it simply doesn't affect it rather than "it does xyz differently than every other skill".

 

All that said, we'll continue to review the feedback here, and I will work to get some numbers and examples.

 

I understand there are some skills that get the benefit of caffeine and sb with out the balancing side effects. I just would ask that before you go out of your way to balance against them you wait until you can address the core issues with those skills. Will it really be game breaking to leave caffeine working on meditation until you can work on it?  

 

I get one or two meditation attempts per day. Maybe an actual skill tick 2 or 3 times a week. I enjoy the bonus when I get it. Do I care someone is getting more boosted ticks? Nope, just glad to see any progress. 

 

Kinda wish the intoxication built up on skill gains while caffinated instead of just while used. That would fix meditation, cooking, etc not suffering it. Call it brain overheating from too much knowledge too fast. 

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2 hours ago, Eleraan said:

 

I understand there are some skills that get the benefit of caffeine and sb with out the balancing side effects. I just would ask that before you go out of your way to balance against them you wait until you can address the core issues with those skills. Will it really be game breaking to leave caffeine working on meditation until you can work on it?  

 

I get one or two meditation attempts per day. Maybe an actual skill tick 2 or 3 times a week. I enjoy the bonus when I get it. Do I care someone is getting more boosted ticks? Nope, just glad to see any progress. 

 

Kinda wish the intoxication built up on skill gains while caffinated instead of just while used. That would fix meditation, cooking, etc not suffering it. Call it brain overheating from too much knowledge too fast. 

Imagine that you're mining, you do not just get mining skill you get ticks for mining, pickaxe, misc items skill, body, body stamina, body strength, soul, soul strength, mind, mind logic, do you still want to be taxed for all that?

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Depends on how how many skill ticks they give us. Instead of 5 hours 100k ticks of caffeine boosted skill. That's more than 5 per second. Most skills would never beat that while outliers like cooking wouldn't be able to just exploit the ease of pan filling. 

 

I'd take that set up as one with limited active play time over just 5 hours and some skills, ones I'd want effected, exempted. Comes down to how they did it. But tbh a max skill tick boosted amount is more fair and balanced over all skills than flat time.  Then no need to limit any skills.

 

Just my thoughts and I'm a nobody so take it with a grain of salt, there is always plenty of it around. >.<

 

Edit: The more I think about it. I wish sleep bonus worked like this. Instead of an hour of double skill, 20k ticks of double skill.

 

Casuals just toggle it on with out worry and play as normal. Or save it for some intense skill grind. It would be so nice to be a le to use it for grinding weapon skills or other ones it's a huge waste to toggle on because chances of skill ticks have long breaks between. 

 

Same for long action timer skills. Or ones like meditation where you might just get nothing for the spent sleep bonus. 

 

No more being worried about pausing a short time and forgetting to toggle so. Sure it auto offs but still is lost. 

 

Meh, I'm probably rambling now. Probably ignore me. 

Edited by Eleraan
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Thank you, Ekcin!!

Hmm... If that's the case, then I think Caffeine is not for me ^^ Again, thank you for your explanation and help! 😁❤️

 

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Meditation really needs to do away with the RNG, it already has enough slowing it down, and it's probably, for me, the most frustrating part of this game. I mean, hell, you can get a sermon group going to speed Faith up a ton, so why not bring in meditation circles?

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7 minutes ago, Fearil said:

Meditation really needs to do away with the RNG, it already has enough slowing it down, and it's probably, for me, the most frustrating part of this game. I mean, hell, you can get a sermon group going to speed Faith up a ton, so why not bring in meditation circles?

100% this. I hate going a few days without getting a skill tick. Meditating 6 or 7 times and nothing. It just feels like such a wasted effort. I spent the money for a rare rug, I use sleep bonus the full meditation (since I had no clue I can just tab it on at the end). I move around so I am not meditating on the same tile and I make sure it's not a special tile. And bam no tick. 

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On 12/14/2021 at 8:03 AM, brattygirl said:

100% this. I hate going a few days without getting a skill tick. Meditating 6 or 7 times and nothing. It just feels like such a wasted effort. I spent the money for a rare rug, I use sleep bonus the full meditation (since I had no clue I can just tab it on at the end). I move around so I am not meditating on the same tile and I make sure it's not a special tile. And bam no tick. 


Love this idea, treating it similar to faith.  If you have others that are the same meditation path as you, then you can perform a sermon of sorts.  Maybe make the “meditation sermon” a guaranteed tick so there’s less RNG/difficulty when meditating.

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On 12/11/2021 at 1:00 AM, Keenan said:

Caffeine’s bonus will no longer affect meditation and lockpicking.

 

Would it be an option to instead have it so that sleep bonus must be switched on before any action is started in order for it to have the effect? That would keep things more consistent and we could still use the benefits for those skills, just as long as sleep bonus is running the whole time instead of turning it on just at the last second.

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I'd prefer the fatigue downside over the intoxication downside.

 

I'm not a casual player and caffeine isn't meant to be for me, but with the intoxication debuff, you can bet that I'll be getting a lot more benefit from caffeine than the average casual.

 

That seems a bit backwards to me.

 

My vote:

Revert it to the fatigue version and possibly reduce the fatigue downside from 4x to 3x at 100 power.

 

Those changes would make it so the mechanic would be targeted towards semi-casuals too. Possibly even make some semi-hardcores use it to burn fatigue and then take an irl break without feeling like they are too inefficient, even if it's still an efficiency cost (being able to use it for 2h40min per day to burn 8h fatigue instead of 2h per day.

Edited by Borstaskor
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I want to be clear: fatigue will not be a part of this feature. I feel that the fatigue system needs improvements and should not be tied to this system or any other system until a proper investigation has been done to decide on what changes are to be made if any.

 

That said, this thread has left me with some very mixed feelings about how to proceed. It's hard to even sum up the feedback. Some people love the changes, others hate them. I feel some entirely miss the point of the feature, and some feel we've missed our own point. The thread has also veered off onto the meditation tangent more than once, which is another issue entirely and something that is deserving of its own focus. For the time being, I believe we will be sticking with not including meditation and lockpicking with caffeine, and revisit this decision once the skill and grind have been revised. Caffeine is just not the fix for this problem, and it should never have been presented as such.

 

So with that said, let me ask this: What do you suggest we can do with this feature to ensure that it meets the following criteria:

  • Helps casual players with grinding skills.
  • Is easy to use and understand.
  • Strikes a balance so it is a more conscious choice to use and less of a new meta to skill grinding.

To start things off, I had my own thought on the matter. I feel caffeine should be balanced to be more of a choice between a quick grind or an efficient grind. Caffeine should make sleep bonus usage less efficient (fats issue notwithstanding as we're looking into that), yet allow you to achieve quicker results. However, choosing to not use caffeine would result in more efficient use of sleep bonus. So the amount of sleep bonus used would have to increase whereas the skill gain itself would stay the same or even decrease slightly relative to the existing bonus given by caffeine. In this way, I might choose to burn through sleep bonus as a casual player in order to gain more skill in a shorter period of time as I sleep in a bed when I'm not online and I'm only online a few days a week. In contrast, someone with more time to play may want to be more efficient with their sleep bonus as they would be gaining less of it over time due to their play style.

 

I'll ask a favor now: Share your own thoughts on the matter. These thoughts are not etched in stone but are meant to spark conversation so that we can finally come to an agreement and implement the changes needed to make this feature better.

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