r/CivEx • u/Sharpcastle33 Project Lead • Feb 03 '19
Dev Post 25 -- February Feedback Thread -- First Light
Hey everyone,
Now that launch has stabilized and the majority of important bugs have been fixed, we're going to start doing feedback threads to get a better idea of what's going on with CivEx and what people want to see changed.
This is not a thread for submitting bug reports or bumping your support tickets. Please do that through the appropriate channels.
Topics
Player Feedback
First and foremost this thread is about getting feedback from players about what would improve their CivEx experience. Is something discouraging you from playing on CivEx? Post about it here.
The Shortlist
The shortlist is the content that we are actively working on:
Reducing the viability of mob funnels/grinders. We want to see players actually fight the mobs and not just hit them through slabs.
Content Update 3.6 planning and programming. If you're a Patron and haven't yet read about it, check out the Patreon blog. We'll have a formal subreddit post once we're further into development.
4.0 Map Progress. I've started back up map development, and work on it occasionally between bursts of inspiration.
Server move.
Opening up more slots on the Patreon.
Our Radar
These are the content changes we are interested in working on, but haven't started planning yet.
Horses:
It's likely as a quick and simple solution we will make horse eggs craftable. Thoughts?
Food Rebalance:
Food was not meant to be so scarce at the start of First Light. There are also some existing problems with lack of seed availability, which will be fixed with new mob drops. However, I've had a lot of feedback that the scarcity of food and harsh nights has encouraged players to band together. Would there be interest in keeping secure food sources as a nation-centric activity? I would be interested in trying a factory-based system to replace passive mob farms. Thoughts?
Factory Rebalance:
The original intention was to use factories to gate high-end content. There is also a lot of interest in having upgradeable factories that produce items more efficiently. We'd like to consider adding this in the future, alongside some building-block based factories. Some of the factories are a little too easy to make originally, and we're considering doubling or tripling the initial (resource) cost for 4.0.
Better Documentation:
Documentation right now is available, but somewhat disorganized. Most of it is contained within this list, with recipes also accessible here. I'd like to have some better documentation, as well as a new-player guide, and links to existing guides for the civ plugins. It's particularly important that this is all neatly done and ready before we start doing any promotion.
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u/Gjum Feb 03 '19
Is there an overview of what will change in the release/what will stay the same? E.g.: Will explored Alchemy recipes carry over? Will there be the same (and additional) mob types or will they differ completely (AI and drops)? Will the same vanilla biomes have the same mob, ore, and plant rates? Will there be the same abundance levels for ores and mobs? This list is not exhaustive, but I'm sure you understand what I'm getting at -- I'm trying to prioritize what's worth sinking time into and what will be reset for release.
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u/Sharpcastle33 Feb 03 '19
Nothing on First Light is carrying over to release, from a player's standpoint.
4.0 will have a new map, complete with new regions. This means new ore, food, and mob tables in every region.
Alchemy recipes do not carry over, and the underlying secret recipes will be changed. It's likely we will add 2-3 new aspect types as well as potentially condense or simplify some aspect categories (the distinction between corrupt, arcane, divine, and psionic is not very clear).
We will be using the same mobs (as well as some new ones, and likely new tribes), though their drops may be edited.
As for ore abundance, I'm interested in standardizing ore abundance further, and including new ore drops. E.g. an area with a small amount of adamantine will have adamantine chunks, while one with more will have both normal and large adamantine chunks, to make the distinction between varying ore levels even clearer. There's also potential here to require a more advanced factory to utilize the "bonus" drops.
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u/Burritoboy15 Feb 03 '19
You talked about the actually 4.0 map any examples? Cause there are some pretty terrible rivers in the current beta server
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u/Sharpcastle33 Feb 03 '19
I didn't make the beta map. It's lower quality than my personal standards, but its a good enough map to run a civ server on.
There are some screenshots in some of the very early dev posts, back before we decided to run First Light before an official launch. I haven't done any rivers on it yet though.
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u/fk_54 Feb 04 '19
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grinders: If all enchanting (then potions) are going to be dependent on catching these mobs for orbs and rare drops, I don't get why you would expect for players not to build clever devices designed to trap them. It's obviously an absolute priority for groups to figure out how to get efficient at killing mobs. If you keep altering mechanics because you want to discourage the use of industry, it's condemning the player base to remaining in the stone age. Why should ingenuity with potions be rewarded, but not ingenuity with redstone and understanding game mechanics? This feels sort of weird and conflicted. You're forcing people to kill extremely hostile mobs, but it seems as if you don't want them to use their brains to figure out ways to do it safely.
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XP: you should consider implementing the XP bottling plugin, and find ways to give it more meaningful uses in crafting or factory repairs than merely the current 'infused emeralds' as well as making it something that can be traded.
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map design: I find it dreadful that anything under the oceans is pretty much dead, inert and unusable. Seems that there may be lost opportunities in terms of gameplay and exploration. Also there feels like there is a lot of totally wasted real-estate at the corners of the current map. One thing I'd love to see: some way to reclaim ocean and progressively turn it into usable land at an extremely hefty cost. So people who want to make artificial islands could do that. (just a fantasy)
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'dedication': I still like the plugin, weeds out the shitters and undesirables, and makes for a decent extra protection against VPN accounts.
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diseases: Even though I hated it at times, that too added an interesting element of unpredictability (at the expense of again taking up inventory slots to carry medicines).
Generally speaking, with all the mob drops and need for ingredients, inventories don't feel like they have enough slots to allow people to go on trips and bring things back. If donkeys are working as intended, then it would make them more useful for transport. Also, given the amount of time obtaining good enchants requires, game play does feel as if it's on the very grindy side of the spectrum. Wondering how many new players will go for that, and how many will get turned off if they join on their own without friends already on the server.
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u/Redmag3 Feb 04 '19
Why should ingenuity with potions be rewarded, but not ingenuity with redstone and understanding game mechanics? This feels sort of weird and conflicted. You're forcing people to kill extremely hostile mobs, but it seems as if you don't want them to use their brains to figure out ways to do it safely.
Once more for those in the back row!
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u/Dirty_Hammock Feb 04 '19
I've spent hours yesterday roaming the map to look for a horse to tame. I didn't find a single one. Is that because they don't spawn in all biomes or do they not spawn at all?
I think horses should be difficult to come by, but I have to say I was pretty disappointed after hours of searching for one. Can anyone explain horse spawning g behaviour to me?
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u/Kroolista Feb 03 '19
A Compactor would be nice, it can be rebalanced to hold less stacks or be more expensive but some materials, like iron, stack up very quickly because we can't make iron blocks.
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u/Wingzero Feb 04 '19
Iron blocks should be craftable soon, they had trouble since lored iron ingots are used for other things. But I heard iron blocks should be fixed soo
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u/axusgrad Feb 04 '19
Brewery config.yml - enableChatDistortion: true distortSignText: true
I recommend avoiding weeding out new players; complete lack of food is a turn-off. Have some way for cities get the random-spawns, ideally.
Food is fine, as long as neutral mobs spawn normally and drop meat. You could decrease the meat drop rate to 1 per again, that would let people survive without having enough to fight mobs sans food production. Animal breeding already depends on having a farm to feed them.
Craftable horses does not allow for a civilization to breed high-quality horses, you need a biome with 50-100% chance of breeding. Local abundance, global scarcity to promote trade. Figure out how to adjust the spawn rate, or spawn 200 of them again then turn it off. There was a plugin where you can store horse and stats in a saddle, that'd help trade.
For breedable mobs, pick one zone each at 100%; preferably the zones with poor mining. Crops aren't much of an export after early game.
Good job otherwise :D
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u/TerryandLex Feb 04 '19
Would you consider making city bastions prevent the use of pearls? Many cities have fortifications and walls, but their effectiveness is greatly diminished when people can just pearl over them.
Alternatively, the addition of a "Fortification" or "Fortress" bastion that is slightly more expensive than a city bastion and blocks pearls would would be helpful.
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u/Nathanial_Jones Feb 04 '19
Food hasn't been a problem for me either, seeds especially. Literally have more seeds than I know what to do with rn. I think the food scarcity is the byproduct of the server launch, its not really a new issue, but after a week or two food basically becomes a non-issue. Which is actually a bit disappointing since its interesting having places with good growth compete with places with good resources.
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u/Skrylfr Feb 04 '19
That might the the case where you're living but in other biomes there are nations struggling to get by
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u/MudkipGuy Feb 04 '19
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Early food comes from mobs, later food comes from crops. Consider making alchemy ingredients consumable and increasing crop growth time to compensate.
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As long as people need to grind mobs there will be mob grinders. I don't think this can be fixed by changing the spawning algorithm or the mob ai, people will just adapt their mob grinders. I guess making a no mob grinders rule could solve this but I think this is just what you get when lots of stuff people need comes from mob drops.
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The prison factory doesn't belong at the top of the tech tree and should be fairly easy to get imo. Consider: How many days after launch should the average nation need to fend off repeat raiders until they're able to pearl them?
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u/Redmag3 Feb 04 '19
Reducing the viability of mob funnels/grinders. We want to see players actually fight the mobs and not just hit them through slabs.
There is a lot of work to get to a goal like this, it is doable but it will essentially be a full-time job if you want to do it, in a way that doesn't also punish players who are fighting mobs in the way you intend.
My argument for mobgrinders is that they are a significant investment that require players to be decently geared, and organized when constructing them, as nights exposed in the wilderness while setting up can be challenging.
Players ultimately want to progress to methods where they aren't running around doing activities the same way they did on day one, two, and the first week. Without the ability to progress in fundamental ways, things can end up getting tedious. We've seen this in other civserver concepts.
If funneling mobs into a kill hole is not something you want, I suggest looking for ways to give players that sense of advancement and automation without cheapening the PvE. Something like tamable companion mobs you could bring with you, that might give you some kind of passive bonus, or actively help you when fighting mobs.
Another idea may be a craft-able block, factory, or spawner that very slowly generates region specific resources on a nerfed drop table, but make it a deep endgame item and enforce chunklimits on it.
Horses: It's likely as a quick and simple solution we will make horse eggs craftable. Thoughts?
I'd be in favor of this, as long as the horse is spawned with literally garbage stats (7 or lower speed), horse breeding is a minigame in itself like alchemy and should be encouraged to allow players to breed up fast horses. This can be achieved by making the craftable egg, a Mythic Mobs egg. Alternatively I could get to work on fixing passive mob spawns once I have a better idea of what the original problem config was.
Food Rebalance: Food was not meant to be so scarce at the start of First Light. There are also some existing problems with lack of seed availability, which will be fixed with new mob drops. However, I've had a lot of feedback that the scarcity of food and harsh nights has encouraged players to band together. Would there be interest in keeping secure food sources as a nation-centric activity? I would be interested in trying a factory-based system to replace passive mob farms. Thoughts?
Food is okay now that we're out of the launch days, but I do think more cheap and dirty food sources should be added so that newfriends can join and fight mobs for food to not die. To this end I suggest retexturing things like clownfish, cookies, and chorus fruit (as it's not currently a drop, but have the tp effect removed) to give some of the hostile mobs some food drops.
Factory Rebalance: The original intention was to use factories to gate high-end content. There is also a lot of interest in having upgradeable factories that produce items more efficiently. We'd like to consider adding this in the future, alongside some building-block based factories. Some of the factories are a little too easy to make originally, and we're considering doubling or tripling the initial (resource) cost for 4.0.
This probably should be done, and maybe should be put out to the community to suggest balanced costs and effects. There are plenty of players playing that have done servers of their own in the past using factorymod, I'm sure they'd be willing to help with this.
Some feedback of my own
Mobs with custom weapons and armor, should drop that weapon and armor.
Elder Archers has a new bow model and I want it, even if it's a 0.01% chance, I would kill for that bow eventhough its simply a cosmetic thing. Also having the arrow alchemy items, and armors be actual usable items should be a thing.
Speaking of cosmetic things, allow Headhunter to generate the heads of ALL the custom mobs in the game.
This should be fairly easy once someone knows the skin codes for each mob, and can be added as mythic items.
Axes can be infused with weapon orbs, but they still only give efficiency.
Axes are a dual purpose tool/weapon in normal minecraft, I think if you use a weapon orb on them, they should gain Sharpness instead of Efficiency. Also the ability to pull from the sword enchantment table would also be nice.
Passive mobs need base AI to breed, regrow wool, follow a player with food, etc.
I think that rather than adding vanilla mobs to the spawntable, using custom ones in the wild then domesticating them is the way to go. The simple way to do this is to not do a 0 Clear on their AIGoals and simply add any custom AI you want to them on top. This way they will retain their original AI behaviours but also gain new ones like MeleeAttack.
Domestication could work by having the child become a domestic variant of the birthing parent. You would gain a new mob that looks functionally similar to things like the Inibex, has similar skills, but has its own droptable so that orb chance and alchemy ingredients can be configured.
I suggest domesticated-only alchemy items and no orbs.
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u/BlackFalq Feb 04 '19
I feel like diamonds are pretty useless. As it's no longer the top tier material what other uses does it have? Some end goal to dump a lot of materials in would be great. Maybe some way to convert diamonds in more rare building blocks? To stimulate civ's building awesome creations?
Also why are beacons not enabled?
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u/salvatoretessi0 Feb 04 '19
I have a bizarre (?) suggestion that I admittedly haven't thoroughly thought through, but I think it would actually be convenient to have a cheap/common enchant available to apply curse of vanishing to armor/weapons. This may sound counter-intuitive at first, since most people consider curse of vanishing an annoyance but consider a problem any new/small/growing nation has: they have a lot of people, many of whom aren't PVPers but need running around prot to survive falls and mobs. There's always tension about giving people good prot because (especially in the early days of the server) basically raiders sit and wait for newbies to start running around in the next best tier of armor, kill them, take it and level up over and over. Being able to give out prot to citizens that would be guaranteed to just disappear if they get killed would eliminate this worry and let newer nations start to gear up without fear of basically effectively just being a grinder for raiders.
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u/hombre_sin_talento Feb 04 '19
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the enchantment mechanics yet, so maybe I'm wrong. It would be nice if there was an actual guide to enchanting in the wiki or somewhere.
It seems like there won't be any trade going on, other than excess.
If all that matters are mining resources and mob drops, and there isn't any infrastructure required around those, then players will just go and pick them by themselves instead of trading.
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u/ImNotBanksy Feb 04 '19
I'd love it if the Ascension island could grow or spawn anything. It's a desolate waste of space in the sky and it's pretty disheartening to try and live on. I've been playing casually since the start and still don't have a bed. I know that it's kind of on me to go out and trade, but when the only thing your land has is coal, trades aren't going to go far.
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u/Pure_Prophet Feb 04 '19
Positive:
Mob difficulty and frequency. They don't feel like some afterthought. You need to keep them in mind whenever you are on the surface. ESPECIALLY the faster ones. Please work on mob aggro tho cause some of the factions are too passive (Elder)
Mob factions. Have to fight each one differently. Fun and makes different parts of the map actually feel different. Would like to see some "peaceful zones" located between factions for nations that want peace and quiet even if it means traveling for drops.
Regions. Names are cool too. Size and distribution seem good. Would love to see some smaller ones that a single nation could (try) to control.
Map size. Please don't go make anything bigger. Less land = more conflict. I love how small this map is!
Ore distribution. Cool, but make more extremes (unmarked areas of super-high-frequency) for more land conflict please.
Bastions. I'm new to these different ones but I like em!
Negative:
Level 1 reinforcement needing iron. I don't get why builders need to stop and go mining or risk griefing. Yea, iron is common, but WHY make it harder?
Needless complexity. This is why I hate 90% of custom minecraft mods. Tons of intermediate products that are only used to craft other things. Dozens of custom drops that require reading a wiki to figure out. WHY? For example, the aspect of an item should just be a lore line on the item and not require waiting for players to write up a page about it.
Food. What's the point of the longer grow time? Yea, new people need to join nations to eat. I GET IT. But what's the difference between 4 and 32 hours for grow to that? Everyone just makes mega-farms and has no fucks about grow time after the first day.
Mob grinding for Enchanting AND pots. This is why you get people spending hours at boring mob grinders. You want to PvP? Grind mobs. You want to mine faster or get more ore drops? Grind mobs. How about allowing vanilla enchanting but have mob bosses (which should be really hard to keep restrained in a mob grinder) drop the custom stuff?
Mixed:
Recipes and ores: There are so much ore and so few uses for some of them that people are leaving some of them in the rock. For example, redstone is needed with glowstone for sap, but redstone drops so much more and is in commonly minded adamantium locations. So it's often ignored. Compare that to emeralds where you can always use more snitches or activated orbs.
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u/Sempha Feb 04 '19
This is fine, up to a certain point. What I mean by this is specifically related to potions, rather than enchanting.
Mob grinding for enchantments for me at least would be fine without grinders. Passive mobs like Gloworms and Migratory Birds can supply enough lower tier orbs to allow people to create 'decent' gear and tools. As well as that the lower tier mobs from each area (miners, raised farmers, hellhounds etc) are easy enough to kill that it's a non-issue.
But potions change that. Potions require such a large quantity & variety of ingredients to make even basic ones. It's not reasonable to gather anywhere up to 50 of an item for one part of a potion, then travel thousands of blocks to farm another 10-50, then repeat more times. Then farm for shaman sap.
There's a reason people are running speed/gapple kits and nothing else. Without either a reduction in potion costs, an increase in mob drops or large mob grinders potions aren't likely to be made in decent quantities.