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Keenan

Caffeine Changes

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This would be a total change but might be what you are looking for. Depends on what you want to consider casual. 

 

Instead of just increasing skill tick size while using sleep bonus. Increase the chance for ticks. Make actions faster too with out affecting skill gains negatively. 

 

Roid out the sleep bonus drain. So it does what it should. Those with limited time can make seeable progress at a cost of being highly inefficient if you have more time. 

 

If you really want to make it casual specific. Add a debuff that ticks down on or offline that makes skilling harder. This might be to harsh but would have the effect of helping those with limited playtime with out just making it the new norm for all.

 

Still, if the chance for gaining skill ticks is big enough. For certain skills even your "hardcore" might use it for certain grinds, even if that meant some other less important skills went up slower while just playing. Prayer before the change comes to mind. I would have taken playing with a skill debuff after a session to have done it in small burst with better results. 

 

Just an idea on how it could be more casual, ie short playtime, friendly while still having niche uses for others.

 

As for ease of use. Longer buff timers and the no water impact alone make it usable. Buying it should be easy enough and the price still has a way to go down before I think it will settle. Just my prediction.

 

 

Edit: thought I should make it clearer what I meant by easier skill ticks. You know that whole odd system we have for ideal skill gains. Just have caffeine + sleep bonus make all actions count as ideal for skill gains. This has the added bonus of making it easier for those who might not understand the system. Or because of time restraints not able to set up a perfect grind setup. With tools at the perfect ql to the action. Or wounds to make actions slower for better gains. Perfect nutrition etc.

Edited by Eleraan

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Assume now is 
normal=x1 exp.
sleep bonus=x2 exp,                                     with sb burning rate x1.
sleep bonus+coffee=x2+x2=x4 exp,          with sb burning rate x2 

 

Suggest to change
sleep bonus+coffee=x2+x2=x4 exp         , with sb burning rate x3(e.g) 
sleep bonus+tea=x2+x0.5(e.g)=x2.5 exp, with sb burning rate x1.25(e.g)

 

Encourage people to skill up beverage. 
Make a drink like tea, tea make people feel refresh so can do things quicker, quicker skill gain with the same amount of total exp compare to normal sleep bonus gain.
However, coffee can boost u up real quick, gain exp very quick but u will lose some sleep bonus in total, which is why sb burning rate x3. 


No fatigue involve, try hard people can buy more sp to feed the bank (i doubt there are people use coffee constantly because its x3 burning rate, but idk the data behind), casual people can choose tea for normal grind but quicker, or choose coffee if have very little time to play but will cut some sleep bonus. 
I dont know if this fit the criteria of easy to use and understand.
 

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3 hours ago, Keenan said:

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.

To be honest don't understand your mixed feelings on how to proceed. 

for point 1, it already does that perfectly,  i'm having a blast since it was introduced.

for point 2, except for missing water cap override, and maybe more manageable timer i don't find it hard to use. but this is comming for perspective of experience player, i understand it might be confusing for new players, but then again everything is confusing more or less for new players it's a nature of the game it takes time to grasp things, not sure this feature should be meant for them at the very start, i see it more for some mid point of the game to give them boost after honeymoon period with game is passed and they think about quitting.

point 3, if you get slightly more skill gain with 5h of regular bonus instead with 2.5h with 100 power coffein that would do it i guess, but even if same you can't abuse it cuz of intoxication.

Also i don't think it needs to be more easier to make as people who grind beverages also deserve spot on market. but that also adds to case that feature isn't meant for total newbs but entry point is midlevel players, which i thinks its fine.

And i must stress out that i very dissapointed with decission to leave out meditation and lockpicking, i agree that skills need rework(also thing that no one mentiones gives more use for lockpicking on pve), but leaveng them out untill fix feeles like bigger evil.

For the end i would like to point what this update was for me as not really casual player but grinder who doesn't have much time. It meant that i can compress my limited grinding time and have time to enjoy wurm in other ways, like exploring and doing some fun stuff that don't give skill, instead of spending all my limited time grinding which is not fun. And proposed changes hits the spot perfectly for me.

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Please consider this other factor that I don't believe has been mentioned regarding the Caffeine issues so far:

 

Casual players won't have Beverages at an extremely high level skill.  That's one of those skills that takes alot of grind to get very high, and I know this from personal experience.

So please don't let QL of the coffee (beyond the simple QL 10 requirement to drink it there is now) be a focus for being able to take advantage of the caffeine advantage/trade-off.

 

 

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Seems to be an odd very specific type of player you want to target as the only user of it and its a type of player that hardly exists.

 

Not new players as they wouldnt be able to set up coffee or would be using their money on more basic stuff. Not people who can use their sleep bonus normally. Casual players who care about skillgain. I know a few that might fit the description almost, but these people wouldnt worry about getting coffee and optimizing skillgain the little time they're on. Why put so much effort into making it useless for 99% of the playerbase lol.

 

And yeah just putting it in the game reckelessly may have been a mistake, but taking it out and leaving the huge window of opportunity isnt a good solution. People have been able to use hundreds of sleep powders during skiller week for example.

Edited by Joemog
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7 hours ago, Keenan said:

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.

 

@Keenan

 

If this is one of the goals, then there is something you need to be wary of if you choose to remove fatigue from the mechanic as that will certainly make caffeine the meta for everyone. Let me explain (I will assume 0 fat for my example, but adding fat doesn't change my point at all):

 

How sleep bonus is intended to work, from my understanding, is that if you burn 1h of sleep bonus, you get 2h of progress (1h sb gives 1h of "extra/bonus" progress). So if you grind for 5 hours and burn 2 hours of sb during this time, then you get 7 hours of progress. Quite a simple concept to grasp but it's important to understand this to understand the issue, which  is...

 

Caffeine. Using 100 power caffeine currently gives you 4x skill gain. Basically, if you grind for 1h and use 100power caffeine and sleep bonus, you burn 2h of sleep bonus but you get 4h of progress. That's trading 2h of sleep bonus for 3h of "extra/bonus" progress (compared to 2h of extra progress from using it without caffeine). In other words, if your fatigue currently allows you to use caffeine, then using caffeine is actually more efficient use of sleep bonus at the time of writing this.

 

In other words, It's better to grind 1h with sb+100 caffeine and then grind 1h with no sb (for a total of 5h progress) than it is to grind for the exact same 2h using the exact same 2h sb but without caffeine for 4h progress. The only thing currently stopping people from constantly using caffeine is fatigue. 

 

What happens if you remove fatigue from the equation and make only the changes that you presented in this post? Caffeine will become the meta for anyone who cares about skill gain. 100%. No doubt. You should be using caffeine as much as you possibly can if these changes go through.

 

Basically, you really really really either needed the fatigue to make using caffeine a choice or you need to actually nerf numbers on top of the changes proposed. Or think of something else to make using caffeine a choice. I'd love to believe you'll make some great changes, but removing fatigue and adding this weird debuff isn't that great change in my eyes.

 

Unless you're looking to add caffeine and make it meta with a limiter. In which case it'll hit the mark spot on.

Edited by Borstaskor

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Where do you guys read 4x skilgain? it's 2x..
Consumption of caffeine(at rank 2x) only multiplies the burnrate and gains from sb x2(if you use lower multiplier, well you get gains based on that..)

 

You have 1x action base skillgain, 1x time sleep bonus, 2nd time sleep bonus(this time from caffeine at 2x rank and costing you that simultaneous 2x burn rate for your sleep bonus) + whatever permanent or food affinity/faith/path/passive journal/nutrition/enchant.. scales to the base in addition.

 

4x is  was the fatigue cost to save time with this.

 

New way with intoxication does the same that fatigue did.. it's a hard stop for skilling shortcuts..

You are basically limited to 1 hour burst a day.. with 5h limit for sb usage at 2x and recovery takes 1 day for 20% or 1/5th of that... whoever grinds will often use this, if a new player jumps on the grinding wave.. it's easy to use that 5h sb/intoxication to dump 10 hours of sleep bonus on a skill.. that's plenty to get some level 1 skill pretty high. Repeat next week or in 5 days, or.. keep going as you were but without 2x sleep bonus burnrate once intoxication caps.

Fatigue remains as skillgain and world change showstopper, but it's only based on any normal actions, using caffeine or not wont affect it at all.

 

One new problem is.. casuals can now still HATE VIVIDLY grinding skills.. but swallow their hate for it and just spend an hour or 2 by following a guide and arrive at level 50-60 or 70.. to even clap a title for that spent time.. maybe that wont be a 90 for a while or ever.. but this will make actual casuals to be more prepared for everyday tasks less or no fails when doing something that was before taking a lot of time or was completely impossible.. making a knarr, creating cordage, sails, planting a tree is pretty wild below 30 skill, etc - plenty of skills have some "base" that changes a lot with changes, even if we can still fail doing simple things with 99 skill..

This could kill some markets, but in the end.. it's time that this game sinks well, and in the end some will keep buying services and materials instead of spending the time, no matter if some pickup a tool or 50 to grind a few skills to 50 or 70 for perks or titles(titles are part of journal tasks..)

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The intoxication is the news system to act like the fatigue before, to stop meta grind specific for using caffeine method grind. At 100% intoxication, caffeine will stop being effective. Why are we still talking about only fatigue stop people from constantly using caffeine.

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1 hour ago, Coach said:

The intoxication is the news system to act like the fatigue before, to stop meta grind specific for using caffeine method grind. At 100% intoxication, caffeine will stop being effective. Why are we still talking about only fatigue stop people from constantly using caffeine.

Because it doesn't actually stop them. Now you just use caffeine to get all your sleep bonus front loaded then grind away normally.  There would be zero reason not to caffeine when ever you sleep bonus as the end results would always be better.

 

If I have 2 hours sb and 5 hours to play. Why would I choose to do 2 hours boosted and 3 not when I could do 1 hour caffeine and 4 hours not. Getting more skill in the same time.

 

My only penalty is not getting to use caffeine for a bit. But still coming out better using it when I can with no real downside.

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37 minutes ago, Eleraan said:

Because it doesn't actually stop them. Now you just use caffeine to get all your sleep bonus front loaded then grind away normally.  There would be zero reason not to caffeine when ever you sleep bonus as the end results would always be better.

 

If I have 2 hours sb and 5 hours to play. Why would I choose to do 2 hours boosted and 3 not when I could do 1 hour caffeine and 4 hours not. Getting more skill in the same time.

 

My only penalty is not getting to use caffeine for a bit. But still coming out better using it when I can with no real downside.

But whats inheretly wrong with that? You invest into caffeine and for reward you get to have 3 hours extra to enjoy other aspects of the game.

If we start arguing with arguments its not available to casual player with little time(not true it is, he just needs to pay silvers for it if he doesn't want to invest time), needs skill to be worth something, well guess what, thats core concept of Wurm, nobody is complaining that you can wreck vein with 99 skill and 99 pickaxe way faster that with 20 skill and 20ql pickaxe when building a tunnel for example, and caffeine fits into that story. I don't understand why it does have to have downside, why does it have to be choice to use it or not to use it instead of upgrade with no downsides in which you invest. the later fits concept of Wurm much better

 

For me choices sucks, i play this game over other games to avoid choices.

Edited by kochinac

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1 minute ago, kochinac said:

But whats inheretly wrong with that? You invest into caffeine and for reward you get to have 3 hours extra to enjoy other aspects of the game.

If we start arguing with arguments its not available to casual player with little time(not true it is, he just needs to pay silvers for it if he doesn't want to invest time), needs skill to be worth something, well guess what, thats core concept of Wurm, nobody is complaining that you can wreck vein with 99 skill and 99 pickaxe way faster that with 20 skill and 20ql pickaxe when building a tunnel for example, and caffeine fits into that story. I don't understand why it does have to have downside, why does it have to be choice to use it or not to use it instead of upgrade with no downsides in which you invest. the later fits concept of Wurm much better

What is wrong with it? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. I sell coffee. Making it the meta benefits me. But we were asked how to make it casual focused and not the meta. I tried to find ways that work for that with out making it total trash.

 

Giving it a down side can help offset all those bonuses. We forget to include the reduced resource cost we get by compressing some skill grinds. Channeling. Getting more skill for your favor/gems is a good point. 

 

I'd take less skill gains after a channeling grind to get more out of my limited resources. 

 

Again, making coffee the new downside free meta would be fine with me

 

But doesn't sound like that will be the case so trying to find middleground ideas. Just my nooby 2 cents tho so don't put much into it. 

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Well my 2 cents are it is what it is and its good and it does not seem prone to be overly abused because of intoxication. It's a nice bonus that you invest for and shouldn't be that much of a choice. Forcing it to have downsides would be like making 99ql pickaxe to mine faster and better but also receives dmg faster to make it choice beetween using it  compared to 20ql one.

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I think the argument is that it benefits everyone equally rather than benefiting the casuals.

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Here's my very non-technical thought on the caffeine effect.

 

Make the system simply look at how much recent playtime a player is putting in. If you've been playing a lot lately, then caffeine can't provide you much benefit. The use of game lore can be the explanation (though lore is never included in wurm development and maybe it would be good for it to be included sometimes). The lore reasoning behind it: to play a lot (with little time in wurm bed) and then consume caffeine can be a huge cardio strain and would lead to death. So, conversely, when you don't play much (are often in your wurm bed getting good rest), you can handle the upper effect of caffeine safely when up, active, and playing. Heck, maybe even make death a real possibility for those who play a ton and then also try to push caffeine benefits.

 

The game already tracks how much time you've spent in a bed (I'm assuming that's how it awards the proper amount of sleep bonus a player has when they log in). Maybe attach caffeine usability to that same timer?

 

As to the trade-off of losing sleep bonus for using caffeine, does there even have to be a trade-off? If so, maybe you could just give the user caffeine jitters that make action failure more common.

 

I'm not very techy, so in all fairness, I can't say how easy or hard this system is to implement. But I do understand the intentions of it, as they've been explained very well by staff.

Edited by MordosKull

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caffeines in a weird spot, there's not a lot of overlap between people who buy lots of sleep powder to sustain it, people who only play for <2h a day, people who have high beverages/buy it off trade, and people who care about grinding efficiently. even with the proposed changes, if you played weekends only, you'd still need to buy sleep powder to use all your available caffeine.

 

personally, i feel like how sb regenerates normally does it well (if you ignore buying sp/missions). my suggestion that i feel would benefit casuals more while still being usable would be have a sort of "free" caffeine that regenerates while you sleep, so like, if you slept in a bed for 24 hours, you'd have 1 hour of sleep bonus, and one hour of "free" caffeine, you'd get all the benefits from caffeine while using this free hour but you'd just use your regular sleep bonus consumption rate, when this free caffeine runs out it boosts up to the 2x usage rate that caffeine is now. this would let casual players use their sleep bonus with caffeine for a big skill gain boost without forcing them to buy sleep powder, and people who play for hours wouldn't get as much, but they have more time online to compensate for that. as one of the fatigue haters i really didn't care that much about caffeine using it (and thinking of downsides without it is a bit rough), but it's nice to hear that you're looking at possibly changing it.

 

i really have no clue how you're intending to balance a double skillgain mechanic without making it a meta to use, even if you only get a few hours a week you're still going to want to use it on the most efficient things possible, like people aren't going to ever vessel gems without having it due to it costing a few silver per hour to sustain casts, same as basically anything using lots of materials or limited by other factors (cooking/butchering/channeling/husbandry mainly)

 

another point of view is similar to the whole sb on pvp portal thing that happened on nfi last year, people were using the portals to skill on opposite servers while regenerating sb on the original servers, but this often led to things like deeds on opposite sides, people being in alliances with people they wouldn't have ever talked to due to pvp/pve separation and such. caffeine currently i know of at least a few people who will smash out their grind then go do other things like build, hunt, just hang out and chat, do other things in the game, whereas without it they'd just sit and grind all day because they wouldn't get anywhere skillwise if they didn't, inadvertently leading people to do things not related to grinding that they otherwise wouldn't do.

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

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

  • This change is due to the ability to quickly toggle sleep bonus at the end of a timed action, which evades the intoxication mechanic.

 

 

Why don't make on skill check: if sleep bonus have been active during whole timer, get the coffeine affected skill gain or if it's triggered durring the timer, then get a normal gain?

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On 12/11/2021 at 5:00 AM, Keenan said:

Hello,

This is the list of upcoming changes to caffeine and related items. We will review replies to this thread and may adjust functionality further.

One thing to keep in mind about caffeine is that it is designed to provide a boost for casual players. We understand that it takes quite a bit of effort to make these drinks, but this is by design and creates a market for caffeinated beverages. 

 

Caffeine Changes:

  • Fatigue usage will no longer be part of the caffeine system.
    • To balance the removal of fatigue, the following mechanic will be introduced:
    • Through using caffeine, over the course of about 5 hours (depending on caffeine level), you will build up intoxication.
    • At 100% intoxication, caffeine will stop being effective.
    • Caffeine intoxication will decay linearly over the course of about 5 days.
    • Once caffeine intoxication decays below 100%, caffeine will once again be effective.
    • Intoxication will only build up while sleep bonus is active.
    • This mechanic will be represented by an effect and status icon.
  • Caffeine’s bonus will no longer affect meditation and lockpicking.
    • This change is due to the ability to quickly toggle sleep bonus at the end of a timed action, which evades the intoxication mechanic.
  • Decrease the amount of liquid needing to be drunk to get an effect from caffeine.
    • Increase the amount of caffeine provided by each type of drink.
    • Increase the caffeine hold timer provided by each type of drink.
      • The “hold timer” is the duration of the caffeine buff before the power begins to decay.
  • (Already live) Disallow sipping small amounts of caffeine to refresh timers.
  • (Already live) Ensure that smaller sips do not overwrite the caffeine hold timer.

 

Caffeinated Beverage Changes:

  • Caffeinated drinks will now bypass the water bar like alcohol does.
    • As a result of this change, they will no longer provide temporary affinities. (This is currently in discussion.)
  • Optional ingredients can be added to teas and coffees, such as milk, cream, spice, and sugar.

 

Miscellaneous Changes:

  • Increased volume of teapot and coffee pot.
  • Old tea recipes can now be made in a teapot.
  • Fixed the difficulty of pottery planters for tea, coffee, and cacao.
  • Renamed legacy camellia to camellia flowers.
  • Renamed legacy camellia tea recipe to camellia flower tea to avoid confusion.
  • Added a roasted state to cocoa beans.

 


 

 

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I very much welcome the announced/proposed changes. In fact, the intoxication mechanism seems to be a sound way to steer the caffeine buff away from a new hardcore meta towards a real advantage for casual players who are accumulating much SB with limited time to burn it. The parameters of the intox should be monitored after introduction, further feedback  given, and possibly adjustments proposed and implemented. Generally a good move.

 

As to concerns because of needed beverages grind, this skill grind has been made almost ridiculously easy. Reaching skill 50 can be a matter of no time, and that means 15 minutes of caffeine buff duration already. Of course skills like gardening, maybe milling, have to be somewhat developped as well, possibly coffee products bought from other players. Not different from other skills.

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Personally, I would be just as happy under the proposed changes or the current system but with full water bar sipping enabled. So I'll simply make the following point:

 

If the changes go ahead, the new system shouldn't be called 'intoxication'. Despite appearances, this word is actually a synonym for 'drunk'; it refers to substance-induced altered mental states rather than any toxic build-up. So using it here makes for messy, potentially confusing terminology, especially as the caffeine system interacts with the alcohol system. A good alternative might be to call it 'caffeine tolerance', which seems both more accurate and less harsh-sounding.

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Sleep bonus gained overnight is roughly 30min.. with sleep+/-work or school.. doing 1 mission can get you 20-45-60minutes roughly depending on base and shared extra sb from the mission.

New players don't know what missions are, why or how to do them, not to mention some are farmed and impossible to solo or require excessive amount to do even for what some call 'veterans'.

 

If the goal is to get new players into the game as .. faster skilled to 50 or 70.. they just need something like epic skilling, I AM NOT FAMILLIAR WITH THE GRIND THERE, but if the goal is to make them step up into the game sooner, skilling up to some base level should be boosted, how... maybe new players need 'quests' or personal missions to get a buff to multiply their gains. If this is actually implemented, I promise that most 'new players' will be alts grinding to join brick factories and such bulk work, rather than generic new human beings with unique accounts. To make the game inviting and fun for new players there are several other aspects that need polishing, graphics are decent, some social buff to friend list management needs work, some simpler non annoying/intrusive way to present game mechanics without long big screens of text and explanations.. 1-2 sentences, with a "more" section to read in detail about mechanics and in-depth how something works or tips to optimize actions/skillgains/branching or w/e whenever there's a lot to be said to teach somebody something... That's only tutorial and social so far, what does a new player do next, normally in mmos there are quests, missions could use personal goals for daily/weekly goals with a side team or current per-server missions to start doing things together, whole time investment and reward should be revisited, un/doable and un/reasonable for rewards is a thing with the missions we have. 

 

Skill only matters to those that it matters, that is only 1 aspect of the game - increasing numbers to compete with other players or for personal gratification. What other aspects or goals should be, what other playstyles does the game offer, should other mechanics be revisited or polished to make the experience for other - better. What stops people from inviting friends or sharing the game to others to see and try. We still need a web shop with all possible items/skins, by now we have a good amount of old-skins that are for some reason just piling as dead content but they can instantly turn into fresh monetary income. Separate ingame generated silver and webshop bought silver into two different things so you can make clear difference who supports the game, I think there should be a small something more.. to these buying premium with webshop real money, rather than premium time with silver from the token. They support the game, give them something more than yellow potion and currency that is hard to use on alts when they run out of premiums, marks are cool but weird to use with the menu system, there must be easier way to show pictures and details for items that one purchases and it should be possible to use off-prem imo.

 

...

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On 12/17/2021 at 4:33 AM, Keenan said:

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.

 add this 2 changes to what you proposed already:

1 - remove the levels of power so people cant manipulate it, either you use caffeine or you don't.

2 - remove the limits on the timer, make it work more like the food affinity timers do, the more you drink you longer it gets with no limits,make "more powerful" drinks and higher ql  give longer timers per unit instead.

3 - make sure the toxicity doesn't disappear when you cross a server border like food affinities do.

 

the saddest thing about the whole caffeine implementation for me is that it seems like it never crossed your minds that the first thing everybody would  try to use it for would be meditation.

 

Edited by Tpikol
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An idea that came up on today’s factional fight stream:

 

Intoxication decays much faster when off line compared to when online. This will benefit those who cannot play as often compared to those who can play all day.

 

Can also possibly make it so the longer you have been logged out, the faster it decays where you only start seeing increases after being logged off for more than 24h or so.

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13 hours ago, McGarnicle said:

An idea that came up on today’s factional fight stream:

 

Intoxication decays much faster when off line compared to when online. This will benefit those who cannot play as often compared to those who can play all day.

 

Can also possibly make it so the longer you have been logged out, the faster it decays where you only start seeing increases after being logged off for more than 24h or so.

not really, just benefits these playing alts and switching between characters.. burnout on one account, and do the same on next one.. repeat, finally get way ahead of other even better and using this to cut some bigger distance, alt meta yay-A #woo

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For me the real question to you @Keenanis this, why are you trying to design a mechanic that is solely focused on casual players? I say this will all due respect but that's just bad design. If you only wanted a mechanic that's focused on casual players remove ways to gain sleep bonus other than actually using a bed and you're done but that being said I think this mechanic has some great potential, but it has some problems beyond the way the caffeine buff currently works.

 

To those that claim Fatigue is the answer, you're wrong. Some actions don't use fatigue such as cooking and fighting. I went from 50 to 95 beverages in the matter of 5 days and could have done so much faster had I had the resources to continue my grind. Oblivionreaver hit 100 in one of his shield skills because of it, I know at least two other brewers who hit or are extremely close to 100 beverages because of there being no hard limit on caffeine and I'm sure if you looked around there are way more stories of extreme skillgains. Caffeine needs a hard limit.

 

For me the choice is this:

Do I have limited resources available for my grind?

Do I have plenty of resources, but is the skill insanely annoying to grind (like channeling or weaponsmithing)

 

that's it, that's all I care about when choosing to use coffee or not... not if it'll stop me from using it later or if it's 'meta'.

 

I also personally am Looking at the cooking and brewing side of things. I feel very much slighted by how coffee was added. I know ya'll are adding more ingredients to the different caffeine recipes but making coffee currently doesn't feel fun or feel skilled. Tea leaves especially urk me because it could have been a damn good reason to add a drying rack, or drying table. Beverages in general just needs an overhaul to match the quality of cooking, it was the stepchild of cooking that got the short end of the stick.

 

Why does caffeine remove drunkness, and why doesn't drunkness work for increasing difficulty?

 

Caffeines debuff should be 'the Jitters' which builds up as caffeine is used (maybe this debuff could have a timer based on how long you use coffee for once your coffee burn expires). The jitters causes you to fail actions, damage items as you imp them or break things if it's power is high enough.

The buff should be affected by the following: how skilled the brewer was, how many ingredients were used, and how those ingredients were prepared. A base level coffee would still give the buff/debuff but why not have the bad side effects be somewhat mitigated by having a really good coffee. Still gives new players a way in, but also gives those of us who are skilled an edge for the amount of effort put into grinding up the skill.

 

Caffeine should give us a limited stamina regen effect, you're supposed to be bounding with energy when you're high on caffeine, and in the debuff have it slow stamina regen for as long as caffeine was used (for the crash)

 

Some things that need to be fixed before you even attempt to fix caffeine:

Buff's and Debuffs breaking on crossing to a new server. - This has to be fixed first, it's been broken for such a long time and your intoxication or whatever you choose to limit caffeine isn't going to do much if we can dispel it by crossing the server.

 

Some things that really should be fixed:

Beverages needs an overhaul, it could be so much better than what it is.

Drying rack/table please! Tea shouldn't be changing just sitting in any old container, it makes no sense what so ever!!!

Edited by Blacklotus
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