Topic

Also new Teleportation Skills

Like the Unlearn skills they don't look quite finished yet (zero time to learn and no requirements or affiliations). However, looks like new destinations, much reduced cool downs and the uber-cool sounding "Summon" ability...

Posted 19 months ago by RealJimBob Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • why keep your levels low? what's the benefit to that?
    Posted 19 months ago by lucy jane Subscriber! | Permalink
  • yeah, I agree that the idea of trying to advance in the game without levelling is pretty absurdly wonderful... I was quite struck by the idea of it this morning - could be a fun meta-game!
    Posted 19 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Alternate use for the pick? Lobotomy?
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • delicious, don't even ask. This thread turned into a spiral circle of death on the topic of teleportation costs.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ooo like if you could spend energy and mood to bash your own head in with a frying pan to lose xp!

    i'd like that : ]
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @delicious .. basically the higher your level, the greater the amount of energy teleportation costs.

    the devs think that the increased energy tank you get by leveling will somehow compensate for this, but we all know that the actual result will be players avoiding xp at all costs, which is completely awesome.

    imagine carefully jumping in order to avoid xp quoins positioned between ledges. i love it! : ]
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I disagree with striatic on people actually avoiding getting XP. It is still JUST teleportation and I (as stated a dozen times) I would much rather have more energy post jump (and for everything else) than obsesses over how many meals I need to eat to pay for each jump.

    But, yes, I suppose some will avoid it because of that logic. Reminds me of the MAD Magazine boardgame.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • once people realize the big energy savings by staying at low level, it will become the predominant strategy. as the game world expands and multiple teleportation slots become available, teleportation will become more vital .. and of course energy is already vital. 

    would you rather have a larger energy tank which doesn't increase the amount of energy you can expend for the sake of convenience in not having to click "eat" a few times a game day .. or would you rather have the convenience of being at low level and not having to spend swathes of game time gathering energy resources to offset your constantly increasing teleportation costs?

    not spending the extra energy is ultimately far more convenient than the energy tank "cick to eat" issue.

    granted .. lower level players would get less "free energy" at the start of each game day due to smaller tank size, but since teleportation only has a 5 minute cooldown, you can use far more energy teleporting each game day than you get for free from the rooster. with multiple landing spots, teleportation can become a primary movement mode, since teleporting = speed and speed = energy, currants, everything.

    we might even end up with players bragging to each other about how low level they are, which would be awesome.
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I am honestly trying to understand the mindset behind it but I just can't. I "get" it intellectually, I guess, but so completely don't feel it. Cannot wrap my mind around the logic that teleportation cost are everything. I'm trying! Really!

    I will have to see how it feels. Probably won't get a true sense of it until the reset anyway... starting back at 1. It will be interesting.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I already avoid XP quoins.  Energy good.  mmmm energyyyyyy
    Posted 19 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The only advantage of a larger energy tank is that you can go longer without eating before you die. Otherwise, you still have to eat the exact same amount of food to gain back the same amount of energy lost regardless of level. The amount of energy you can gain back is limited by the amount of food you can eat, which is limited by the most precious resource of all: inventory space. This is somewhat based on level in that a very low level player can't afford as many bags as a higher level player, but once you get high enough level that you've accumulated enough currants to fill up all your inventory slots with bigger bags, there is no longer any way (currently) to increase the size of your inventory. A  level 20 likely has gained enough currants to do this, so there is no advantage to being level 50 over level 20 if actions are more expensive but you can't hold any more food to compensate for this.

    Also, the thought of trying not to gain experience sounds highly irritating to me, and I would not have fun doing that.
    Posted 19 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Lord Bacon-o, I wouldn't bother trying to understand it … I gave up a while ago ;)

    Windborn, re "Stoot said that the previous 33% cost had already been lowered to 10% cost" — no, what glum pudding said was right: the range has been lowered to 33% (at Teleportation I) down to 10% (at Teleportation V) from the initial 40%-15%.
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Stoot, can we get an Understand Others Logic skill? It is okay with me if it costs a % of my max mood to use.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • teleportation costs are not everything .. yet.

    right now you only have one teleportation landing spot and then have to walk away from it in order to make teleporting back to it worthwhile.

    with two or three teleportation points, teleportation can become a primary transportation mode instead of a secondary one. you won't need to walk in order to make teleporting worthwhile, which should greatly increase teleportation "tempo".

    you've also got teleportation being a key benefit to subscribers, meaning that developers have every incentive to make it a bigger aspect of the game, if indeed it wouldn't become that merely due to increased game world size.

    every minute you spend walking, loading up street after street after street, is a minute where you aren't doing anything productive in a gameplay sense.

    if i spend 5 to 10 minutes in transit to Ilemenskie, the actual cost of walking - the opportunity cost - is something between 5k and 10k in currants, since that is what i could have been making mining during that period.

    people think they are saving money or energy by walking instead of teleporting, when in fact they are losing money and energy by walking instead of teleporting.

    depending on how you think about the game, you might figure this out sooner rather than later, but over the long term nearly everyone gets it because it directly impacts what they are able to do in the game. also because walking is tedious and teleporting is not.

    of course the developers could balance this by dropping teleportation costs .. but that is precisely the opposite of what they are doing with the teleportation costs right now. they could also increase energy tank size in order to maximise rooster energy for higher level players to encourage leveling, but lots of that energy will just go into teleportation anyway.

    mechanically it comes down to the fact that the rooster energy only comes once every 4 hours and may not amount to very much [unless the payer accomplishes a full energy drain timed just before the new game day] .. compare that to teleportation, which can be used up to every 5 minutes, requires no timing, immediately reduces psychological tedium and when you look at the opportunity costs each teleport may be worth as much as 5k to 10k in currants, depending on what you are trying to do.

    i guess the devs could get around it by creating areas of density where players can do a ton of stuff without teleporting .. but then they start to screw up their revenue model, which relies heavily on the sale of teleportation tokens.
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoot, this is not a crazy concept and extremely understandable to those of us who have to manage inventory and energy in order to complete in game objectives.

    bacon-o gets it intellectually. shepardmoon fully groks the implications. katlazam gets it.

    p.s. also lord bacon-o, teleportation doesn't have to end up being 'everything', if you read shepardmoon's reply she describes the relative uselessness of the enlarged energy tank. so even if teleportation costs end up merely significant and not vital, there is still every incentive to avoid gathering xp. it's just that shepardmoon thinks this is a bad thing, while i think it is a good thing. boy this is a long "p.s."
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "if i spend 5 to 10 minutes in transit to Ilemenskie, the actual cost of walking - the opportunity cost - is something between 5k and 10k in currants, since that is what i could have been making mining during that period."

    Which, at level 50 and T5, would get you the funds to cover the energy cost of between 23 and 45 teleports. And since the max number you can do in a game day is limited, that would cover you for a few days of game play.

    And if, according your style/way or playing, the 5 to 10 minutes or collecting the resources is not worth it for several days of teleporting, then … you wouldn't teleport. Like I said before:

    "Having to make that choice would be a good thing: If the game has no meaningful decisions, it won't be fun for anyone. It may seem like making things easier increases the fun (and it does when things are *much* too hard) but it is not a good general principle since it tends towards the game consisting of a single button labeled "win". Push it, game over."
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @stri - I spent most of yesterday trying to explain the exact same point until my contributions were clearly no longer wanted. Better luck to you.

    Personally, I'll now be using no-no extensively (solves the xp and the energy issues), only using Giant Emblems for energy (since I never used them for mood before) and yes - generally spending my time trying to play while not gathering xp. I won't be giving out massive stacks of food, forget selling food or other stuff at a reasonable (read cheap) rate...I've gotta recover 1100 energy per teleport until I can spend a week or so learning teleport. That's a lot of food for me to buy/gather/make and sharing it with someone with a smaller gas tank seems to be an inefficient use of my resources. I have more resources, guess I need to use them wisely rather than sharing.
     
    After the reset, the intent is to sit outside the world learning skills until I'm bored to tears of not playing, and join in only when the skill learning dictates it... until I have enough of the skill table complete that I can come in, play, enjoy playing, and not suffer a load of penalties. Level does not equal skill and after Level 3 there are no 'age' requirements in the skill table. Course I also want a way to reset my character so that I can continue playing after a character hits the excessively monotonous higher levels and becomes un-fun to play. Seems odd the 'strategy' is how to actually play a game without playing it, but there it is.
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • To clarify, I get the argument intellectually. Just fully disagree with it in regards to how it will actually play.

    Again, going to have to see it in action. Every fiber in my body says it will add strategy and thinking to the process. (As I have stated, I never worry about energy these days and am very glad to see that back into the equation.)
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I've gotta recover 1100 energy per teleport"

    2200 * 0.33 = 726
    2200 * 0.1 = 220
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes stoot... 50% of 2,200 is 1,100... and Teleport 2 to give that fancy 33% is at least 16 hours (3 glitch days) before I can crack into the 33%, not to mention the 1.03^46th on Teleport 3.

    (p.s. betcha blew past the  'until I can spend a week or so learning teleport' part : ) and 726 (@33%) is still a whopping amount of energy, not too different from the 1100. Means 6 less awesome stews in the world instead of 8 because I'ma gonna be eating em.)
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmmm....  y'all scrutinize this stuff WAY more closely than I do (and that's an excellent thing in beta, for sure) but for me Teleporting is just another form of transport.  I'm not certain how much I will use it... I kinda like riding that subway and am looking forward to other forms of transport...  and I rather like roaming around the world.  Maybe I'll have a clearer idea of the issue after I get a chance to try it but, for now, I'm just looking forward to the new skill and playing with it.

    If this was going to be the ONLY way to get from point A to B, then maybe I'd be more concerned.
    Posted 19 months ago by Pirate Apples Subscriber! | Permalink
  • And you know, the risks to strategy implementation are rarely low. You don't lose items or currants or whatever. Real-world time, maybe. But since everyone's strategizing about how to do their own thing, you're not going to "lose" to another player...

    Unless you have your own personal definition of winning.

    I like no-no powder because I don't care so much about the XP anyway, and it gives me free slots to carry more stuff around.
    Posted 19 months ago by ingrid Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Trav — where did you get 50% from? It starts at 33%.
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoot - before the descriptions were killed... the Tele1 skill was 50%, Tele2 = 33%, Tele4 = 25% Tele5 = 10%. Like most people, I only have Tele1 and so must work with that.
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • So, now even with just the skills and not the tokens, there is a max # of teleports per day?

    Yet another thing that isn't clearly understood with the teleports, not that my earlier questions were answered (or even acknowledged that there really *are* unknowns for some of us about how the entire teleport system works).

    I agree with Trav - this is going to have a side effect of changing game play for some to one of hoarding, not sharing, and using auctions to sell at exorbitant prices.  The buyer bears the costs of those auction fees anyway, since sellers just jacked up their prices to compensate.  At a project, if 10 of us decide to teleport out and back to gather barnacles, we all will now need to make sure that everyone has enough energy in their bags to cover the costs of the transit out and back.  Well, no, what will really happen is that people will become more bystanders at auctions, waiting for someone else to deal with the 500 barnacles needed and jumping in to work or just selling all the energy in their bag to the street spirit at the project that they might have spent on the teleport out/back in order to buy the barnacles at an inflated price on the auctions.

    But whatever - encouraging more selfish gameplay is better than a 'win' button, right?!

    Back to Stri's point, you know, I bet that a lot of us play an extraordinary amount of time because the game is not frequently open.  If the game were open 24/7, my playing habits would change... meaning, I may only be on an hour a day instead of 5 or 8.  In that hour, I can now choose to eat the clock by trekking across the world to avoid the teleport energy costs, which is a tedium that will bore me after a while.  Or I could pay the teleport energy costs and try to keep my XP and leveling down so that I have more teleports available.  Or I could just buy those tokens! <---- I thought this was the sleazy thing you folks were trying to avoid with any payment stuff.

    If I sound annoyed, it's because it seems that the things I've enjoyed about playing are slowly being eroded and then questions about it met with indifference or derision or something.

    btw - Where did 50% come from? That's what it was yesterday before something changed, wasn't it?  In fact, now I'm still not sure what the actual costs are, since they've all been removed from the skill tree.  Which further exemplifies my earlier point about teleportation mechanics still being unclear.
    Posted 19 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hopefully when we start this test, T1 will only cost 33% of maximum energy, given what stoot has said here.

    The other option is to simply not teleport until we've learned T5, at which point it will still cost 10% of maximum energy, but at least we'll be able to set multiple TP points.

    If we were able to use currants instead of or in addition to energy in order to TP, we might balance things out a bit.  For example, I'm at 1250 energy, so it'll cost me 416 or 417 energy to teleport today.  If I had the option to pay instead, I could buy the trip for 416 currants, or pay 216 currants and use 200 energy, or any other combination of the two.  This would allow us to spend money on teleportation rather than on food, thus saving inventory space.
    Posted 19 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Bacon-o, quick: act like a rock!
    Posted 19 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • katlzam, I'm staying out of this from now on. If anyone needs me, I'll be over in the Crazy Rumor thread. It makes more sense to me.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoot, but in this case teleporting is the more fun options and supports a greater variety of gameplay because you save time while still accomplishing whatever other objectives you want.

    i could use the saved time to make 5k or 10k but that's only the most obvious example .. i could also use it to chat with glitch friends and hatch plans or invent glitch games or draw glitch portraits or do something else other than play glitch, which is already what i do with most of my time on glitch .. it's just that due to a little planning i might be able to help out more on projects and afford a better house. if you think that's about pushing a "win" button and doesn't involve choices, i dunno what to say.

    there's a wealth of things i can do with the time. the alternative is walking through levels i've seen before and watching progress bars load. btw, not easy to chat when walking around or paying attention to subway stops so you don't miss one.

    and yes, the 5 to 10 minutes is surely worth the teleporting! but with reduced costs i wouldn't even have to spend the 10 minutes .. or i'd end up with an extra 5k to 10k each game week .. or instead of zooming off to uralia to mine it would free up a teleportation slot to point elsewhere and i'd have 2 additional precious game-day limited teleports to use each game week. over time this all adds up and can be largely avoided by keeping XP low so .. why not?

    i get what you're saying, that the costs seem negligible .. but it is like may grandfather taught us .. 'watch those repeating costs, they add up' .. and they do.

    anyway, i'll reiterate that i like the teleportation tax, as it will lead to more interesting strategy like purposely keeping xp low!
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • How about this? Try it, and see how it works.

    If the crippling punishment takes all the fun out of the game and creates a selfish culture of hoarding then … we'll change it.
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Perfect
    Posted 19 months ago by Pirate Apples Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I seem to remember in gne, that pushing the win game button was actually really fun, and would love to get the chance to do so in glitch! ;)
    Posted 19 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoot, that's lovely.
    Posted 19 months ago by ingrid Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i totally zoned out about halfway though this discussion - mostly because it is far too grounded in the game as it is *now*.

    @Trav, I think your concerns are valid, but if you really draw out your core issues (cost of food replensiment, hitting food daily limits, etc) when we start talking level 100, 150, 200 - well without intodruction of new food types or food efficiency skills depleting that much energy by ANY means becomes unsustainable and possibly unplayable. But how would you deplete that energy inside a single day? you'd probably have to be teleporting 8 times a day because you're mining too efficiently and filling your pack?

    again, this assumes that there isn't other new ways to spend your energy, which i think would be sad.

    the phrase from programming "premature optimization is the root of all evil" comes to mind, but i think here we're talking more about premature balance.
    Posted 19 months ago by Another Chris Subscriber! | Permalink
  • for those against the teleportation tax, there will probably be two main ways around it.

    the first is my suggestion of purposefully keeping xp low. don't do quests, don't collect xp quoins and above all else don't donate to shrines and instead use patience and good skill management instead of rushing skills via favor. the bonus there is that you won't need to grind nearly as much! i think it is the best strategy because it is a negative strategy that doesn't require constant active effort to accomplish.

    the second is to use your larger energy tank to your advantage as often as possible. drain it out at the end of each game day by doing something productive, then reap the maximum amount of rooster energy. you will use this increased rooster energy to offset your increased teleportation costs. i don't like this method because you really need to keep a close eye on the clock and possibly interrupt activities to do your daily drain, but we will all end up doing it to some extent as we inevitably level up.

    the good news is that neither option requires additional energy grind - mostly patience in the first case and careful timing in the second case. they can also be combined.
    Posted 19 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Grinders are gonna be affected by the change quite a bit.  Players like me will make a small strategy adjustment and that'll be about it.
    Posted 19 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoooooot - please, please don't let our questions/thoughts get you down or lead you to think you're creating a bad game. You're creating a Vat of Awesome, and we're trying to do what we've done all along... provide you with honest feedback (good and bad). TS has been doing an amazing job trying to strike/maintain a balance in a shifting, developing, and growing world. Lots of focus has been given to improving the game balance at lower levels, but I get concerned about neglecting us old farts or shift the imbalance (and fixes) onto a different player group...  it's only putting off a problem until tomorrow (and you'd like the post-launch 'tomorrow' sooner rather than later right?). The intent always was/has been to test it out... my very first response was....
    I noticed that last night too, and left a comment, then stoot said we didn't see anything.... so I've decided to wait and see how it works. At those rates, each teleport is going to cost me 1,100 energy to start, and I'll only ever get that down to 330 energy..... so I'm hoping there's some super-secret sanity check, or that the descriptions aren't quite perfect yet. Posted 23 hr ago by Travinara 

    ...if you needed yes-men you woulda hired testers. As it is, I think you (and TS) know your biggest cheerleaders are also your biggest critics. Even so - we all could use a hug sometimes, especially after a barrage of questions originating in frustration. (HUG?)
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Another Chris - You'd be amazed at how much food/drink I make in a day and give away to other people or sell for cheap. 1,600 grain is a lot to process (each chicken yields 50), which then gets turned into flour and buns for the rest of the world to buy for about 1/2 recommended price. I myself don't use drinks, since mood is not a problem... I spend the majority of my time petting and nibbling/harvesting the world. I don't mine often, except when I need materials for EHSP... so it's not about mining. Milking butterflies takes energy, and making butter and cheese takes a whole lot more. In the past I focused my efforts on getting those pesky, annoying, energy soaking basics into the market at a cost new players could handle.
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Larger stack sizes for prepared foods would also help tremendously.  The current stack size for most of them seems to be ten.
    Posted 19 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ooooo glum! What if your capacity actually expanded as your capacity expanded?
    Posted 19 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That's far too sensible.
    Posted 19 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I noticed that "they have not yet been implemented in the game" has been removed from the teleportation tokens description in the account history.
    Posted 19 months ago by 00 Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Good catch, Cherry.....wonder if that means what we think it means????
    Posted 19 months ago by GreyGoose Subscriber! | Permalink
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