July 23rd Voice Chat Notes

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Teri
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July 23rd Voice Chat Notes

Post by Teri »

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Last edited by Teri on Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Oh no, looks like I might die as I have lived. In the wrong place at the wrong time
Bean
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Re: Voicechat Saturday July 23rd 2pm MST (Post questions here)

Post by Bean »

What's family life like in nuum? Is such a thing as familial bond even important to them? If so, how's it structured? For example, is someone meant to take the role of head of the household? Do the parents raise the child together, or is it a slave's job to do so? Are there roles the parents take?

On that note, is the institution of marriage really a thing? How's that handled?

I'm curious because nuum as a whole seems like a very individualistic culture, each person looking out for themselves and their place in the society, so I was curious how that effected people's bonds with each other. People in relationships, their children, etc.


(Edit) I realize this might be effected by the rank of the individuals in question. I'd be interested to hear more about how that effects things too.

Also, is there much mingling between the ranks, and how's that seen?
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Teri
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Re: Voicechat Saturday July 23rd 2pm MST (Post questions here)

Post by Teri »

Voicechat has started in discord if any wish to join to listen or ask questions. (Please write them down here or in the voicechat thread for our notetaking purposes.)
Oh no, looks like I might die as I have lived. In the wrong place at the wrong time
tulpa
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Re: Voicechat Saturday July 23rd 2pm MST (Post questions here)

Post by tulpa »

Q: How rare is fjelbrons?
A: It depends on where you are. In the Giganti lands not too rare, takes some special knowledge, and things they are known for and used for sturdy stuff, and for them to show off their strength because I am strong enough to handle the extra weight. special knowledge to make it; sturdy stuff, strong enough to handle it. it's an alloy it's nice, it's extra sturdy it's extra heavy. but it's not some ultra-legendary thing that has supernatural properties.

Q: Are we going to be able to smelt fjelbrons soon?
A: Probably not.

Q: How heavy is fjelbrons going to end up being? Would a character have to be huge to use it?
A: It may be tweaked as we get more feedback on it. It might be on the light side at the moment for what it's supposed to be.

Q: What are the common uses for fjelbrons?
A: Everything you think that they would use it for: extra-sturdy stuff, tools that are going to last longer, a nice strong hafted type weapon (like an axe). It's not as great for bladed weapons, because they don't get its full benefits, though you could use it for that.

Q: What will weight do mechanically?
A: Mechanically it's just more sturdy, perhaps there'll be a small sharpness bonus. He wants to try and figure out how weight could mechanically provide exclusive benefits, e.g. for hafted weapons.

Q: Would you be open to suggestions on how that might work?
A: Sure. He'd try and find some kind of balance-related thing. A character's strength might come into play. Balance management is difficult as we don't want too much micro-management.

C: In regards to the whole plateau of combat, he does feel like it's very easy to stack rerolls. In general, if you get negative balance it's hard to come back against multiple opponents. Stagger is an issue on its own. He does feel like what's there works, but at the same time it definitely needs some refinement.

C: Regarding stagger and reroll creep, he loves the concept of building these up, but it's kind of starting to get a little *too* rerolly. He agrees it's a good idea to tone them back a bit. Please do suggest alternative options for improving rolls.
Suggestions from players: RT change, +DF, +roll, debuffs e.g. negative dodge for the next 60 secs. They don't have to be abilities, it could be attached to the gear that you're using.

C: Knockdowns should have an effect. If you knock someone down they shouldn't be able to immediately stand up.

Q: Currently, some combat effects always seem to target a party leader. Why might that be?
A: He doesn't know. There isn't any code that he's put in there to say "hit the party leader". NPCs choose their target individually.

C: A suggestion was made to include a quicktime command for pull. Rias isn't sure what that solves (if the objection is that it's difficult to parse for screenreaders because of combat spam).

Q: Claws are very ineffectual vs. certain opponents. Is this intended?
A: It's intended that heavier armors are very effective versus rake and slash attacks in particular. They're similar damage types, rake and slash; he's happy to come up with things or take suggestions on how to distinguish one from the other.

Q: Would you be open to rake causing bleeding wounds?
A: Yeah, but there would have to be some more involved bleeding mechanic to make that work.

Q: What's family life like in Nuum? Is such a thing as familial bond even important to them? If so, how's it structured? For example, is someone meant to take the role of head of the household? Do the parents raise the child together, or is it a slave's job to do so? Are there roles the parents take?
A: They have marriage. High-up nobles have servants who do the majority of the work and child-raising and lower classes are doing it themselves without servants. Family is no less important than in other cultures. There are going to be distinct differences between the higher and lower social classes. The lower classes aren't going to care how it looks unless they are trying to stand out and get beyond their class.

Q: Do family names have impact?
A: It depends on the names they have made for themselves.

C: Regarding homes and housing he imagines a lot of Nuum share living areas. Not all in one room, but there are buildings that connect Individual family groups, and leaders/heads they look to within the building. Multiple families in a single building. Bonds are both blood-related and unrelated. Some of that is based on architecture, but it is based on the conditions they live in and they don't have a lot of room to spread into it. They don't hate the conditions. They make it work. When issues or things need to be taken care of in a family, if someone in the family can't handle it, they can ask for help from their fellow community in the building. The higher in status individuals are, the more ambitious they are, the more they try to seem standoffish and be independent. There's a more distinct individualism the higher you are. The lower classes are not really going to care. If they have ambitions to rise in society they might want to find opportunities to stand out perhaps, but it's not thing where all Nuum are assholes. He doesn't think they're necessarily concerned with the houses/heritage more or less than other cultures. The conditions they live in do have some effect: they don't have a wide area to spread into. A lot of it is arid unworkable land, so they have to pack closer together in their population centres. For the most part they enjoy it, or they don't hate it. (If Bean has more followups please BBS). The higher they get the more they want to be their own; the more ambitious someone is the more they might try and avoid co-habitation.

Q: Do all of the occult things look different depending where you are in the world?
A: They're going to be uniform in appearance everywhere. Different areas are going to have discovered different glyphs, but the whole power of the glyphs is that they have to be in that particular form. The ones that are taught at the library exist all over the world.

Q: How rare is fjelbrons intended to be, compared with riversteel?
A: He figures about the same-ish, but it's not written in stone. He hasn't released a tonne of fjelbrons because it's not entirely finished yet and doesn't have as much going for it.

Q: How many rare materials are planned?
A: Celestium and sunsteel are the ones most people are aware of. He doesn't really like people wanting celestium just because it's the super-rare thing. He wants to get more out there so it's not just celestium as the top-tier thing.

Q: You mentioned having ideas for fantasy cloths and textiles. Any progress there?
A: He forgot about it for a while. It wasn't anything amazing, just something that would be neat. The special materials always seem to be metals; he needs to get cloth and wood out there, too.

Q: What do shadgard dwellings look like?
A: Rough. They're timber structures, mainly made out of wood, maybe clay. They're not trying to make things look nice around there. Sure, at least some of them take pride in their buildings but they're not particularly fancy. There are *some* homes built into the walls of the canyon but not many.

C: Avery wisely keeps his address unlisted.

Q: Will there be alternative investment opportunities other than farms about town?
A: Frickin' farms man. He doesn't want the town to change style/tone, it's been built to give off a certain feel and atmosphere. Riln sinks for players that would try to change the feel aren't great, so there's that limitation to bear in mind.

Q: What about garrisons?
A: They'd be both a riln sink and something people can apply their skills to. There might be also opportunities (very specific, not freeform), places to build a sawmill --- a facility out somewhere that would make it easier to process trees. He would want it so that everyone has a thing they can contribute to, so that when something gets destroyed they might actually care and react; something players can get personally invested in. It doesn't have have to always be Mistral vs. Shadgard, there could be NPC factions involved.

C: He probably wants to keep the Shadgard church pretty humble. He wants donations to be about *donations*, ideally, not about the mechanical perks for it. It would be an interesting experiment to turn off the benefit to see how many people would still donate.

Q: With the latest addition of the infirmary in Stormholdt, two out of three of the assistants will not tell you their names. As a Physicker, so few colleagues are willing to give you their name. Would that be something to attach to the lore?
A: Hey, they're busy. There are also just some times where he doesn't want to get into a whole thing with a doctor, just wants to get patched up and back out there.

Q: Is kobaltarn going the same way as fjelbrons, will we see further developments with it?
A: He'll have to decide on that.

Q: Are bleeding wounds supposed to reopen at certain damage thresholds?
A: He doesn't remember what the threshold is. They should, but he's not surprised if they don't. He doesn't think he got around to implementing it.

Q: Do the special materials have a canon appearance?
A: Most are not mentioned or fleshed out yet. Kobaltarn is blue.


Q: What exactly are the plans going forward with the game?
A: Right now he's working on trying to finish up Mistral Lake and that new area and the new faction. This is so that we'll have two exclusive, not necessarily hostile, factions that people can be in and add that new dynamic to the game. If it ends up being super sucky and the game suffers for it, it's not something that's going to be unchangeable. That said, he's hoping it will add an interesting dynamic, people occasionally working against eachother for some things.

Q: I'm guessing if you go to the other area, boom your head goes off?
A: if you haven't done anything to make them specifically hostile to you then you can walk up to the gate but the guards just won't let you through.

Q: Is it going to be fancier and more formal than Shadgard?
A: It'll be the nicer place, relatively speaking. This is still the lost lands, still a place where its hard to find certain resources. It's not going to be like the fancy cities that you see in fantasy movies and TV shows, with polished marble etc. --- it's not that fancy, but it's the nicer place of the two. In Shadgard they're trying to be real about the fact that they're a bunch of survivalists in a post-apocalyptic world. They're not particularly concerned with things that aren't worth worrying about in that particular situation. Mistral is more concerned with making things look nice. There are higher social classes, people who dress fancy, etc. People in Shadgard would probably mock those people for that. So Mistral's the place to go if that's what you want, or to be upset with that kind of thing. It will be interesting to see people decide: is this meritless auithoritarian place somewhere that needs to be purged, or something that is considered worth it because it's a nicer place, despite the authoritarian stuff, because they have their version of order and peace.

C: It's not necessarily always going to be a huge massive deep storyline. Sometimes scary stuff in the Lost Lands is just kind of scary stuff in the Lost Lands.

Q: will there ever be the ability to move a character to perma-death later on (after having started as Undying)?
A: something that's come up a couple of times. Idunno. I always worry that that would happen and they would be like that's gonna be really cool and then it actually happens --- and then they're like, i don't know that i like that.

Q: Is gunpowder supposed to be a rare resource? Will there be a regular place to buy it?
A: He forgot about this and should probably add a shop where you can buy it. [note: this is now implemented in the Lost Ranger Hunter's Lounge]

C: There was talk about a mode where your character has a limited number of undying deaths: you might have 1 you might have 10 (randomized).

C: The death thread on the BBS threatened to derail him. He really wanted to work on death but he has to finish the Mistral stuff!

Q: What are the chances of being a resistance member as a PC in the Mistveil Dominion?
A: It could be cool, interesting thing as something you would work your way into. At the same time, he wouldn't want someone to recruit like, 10 people and constantly screw up what's technically their own faction. It would be cool to have characters that work their way into it. There could be a scenario where you're part of the resistance now, so you have access to this resistance area now, ah, cool. One thing: if you're doing this, it would have to be like, you're part of the resistance but you're not going around telling everyone. If you do that and you're known, it would be goodbye. You're going to have to be fairly subtle about this. He would hope that they aren't just going out into the square saying "Sheeple! Take off your shackles and attack Mistral guards!" There's going to have to be some subtlety and restraint to resistance stuff; the factions are going to notice if you're killing people who are acting in their interests.

C: He doesn't really want people joining Mistral just because they have e.g. iron in their home town and Shadgard don't. He would want people making decisions based on aesthetics; there will be niceties but not requirements for any one skill, role or craft.

C: Helping your faction as a player would be more a Faction task than a Guild task.

C: Re: Guild tasks, one of the things (pipedream territory) he really wants to do is allow warriors of a certain rank and reputation to be mini-warleaders. They would lead groups of NPCs out and fight.
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Lexx416
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Re: Voicechat Saturday July 23rd 2pm MST (Post questions here)

Post by Lexx416 »

Thank you for taking the time to get that posted, Tulpa! I can't make every VC/Meeting, so I really do appreciate someone going to the effort of making sure it's recorded for posterity :)
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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