#New Player Experience Suggestion - Simplifying Item Information Verbs

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

junior crest
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Hey y'all,

I originally posted this in #game-chatter, and it was suggested that I make a forum post as a forum post would be easier to find/reference. Nonetheless it may be worth looking at #game-chatter message, as the subsequent conversation is perhaps informative.

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A friend of mine who is a GS newcomer has struggled to understand how to learn more about items. I taught him ASSESS, ANALYZE, INSPECT, and RECALL (EDIT: I missed WEIGH, LOOK, EXAMINE and DESCRIBE - perhaps others?). He found this to be pretty confusing. I am wondering if there is a way to make item information verbs more discoverable and consolidated. I hesitate to offer a solution, because it's usually better to focus on a problem statement, but nonetheless here are a few ideas:

  1. Could one of these verbs - perhaps ANALYZE - gain the output of all the other verbs? The drawback here is that this would be a lot of output in some cases. If this were to be done, perhaps the other verbs could nudge the user towards ANALYZE, e.g. at the end of INSPECT you might see For more information, try ANALYZE. Note that there is an issue to be resolved here where ASSESS has RT and the others do not.

  2. Could each verb point to each other verb, explaining what the other verb does? e.g. if I ASSESS something then it tells me that I could also ANALYZE/INSPECT/RECALL, and it tells me in general terms what each of the other verbs might offer.

  3. I wonder what should be done, if anything, about the strength/durability/integrity breakage output. It's useless, right? And presently planned to be useless forever? Maybe it should be removed or marked as "for roleplay only"? Yes I know that Naijin said there is one case where it matters with cmans or something (maybe that case shouldn't exist?)

Frankly I get tripped up on the difference between these verbs myself. For instance, if I want to identify material type, it's not uncommon for me to ASSESS and ANALYZE before INSPECTing 🙂 Some things just don't mentally stick, for whatever reason.

Bonus points - is there anything that can be done to communicate to the new player whether a newfound item is worth keeping vs selling? My friend kept asking me about items, and I kept saying... "I dunno... I'd probably just pawn it".

sage dew
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I've actually never even heard of ASSESS. Granted, I'm not one of the classes listed in its wiki page, but still.
As a relatively new player myself, I am frequently fumbling with verbs to understand items, and in particular, in understanding what is and isn't valuable.

It's kind of a shame to find something that sounds really cool in the treasure system, has a cool description, and then you ask someone if it's worth anything and they're like "...no, it's pawnshop stuff".

I think this problem is particularly prevalent around spells. I've only really played a square. I don't understand what spells are good and valuable (on scrolls and in embeds, for instance) and which are just yawn, toss 'em. I guess that just comes down to experience, but I have found it frustrating at times.

primal spire
frank hawk
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This is a really solid suggestion, I think, Azanoth.

lofty siren
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there's also APPRAISE, which when outside the pawnshop/gemshop and with ?25 ranks of trading you can see the value of an item. But this doesn't tell you if it's worth more to a player or a straight up gemshop/pawn visit.

ASSESS has RT because Warrior ASSESS give the crit/damage padding/weighting. Which also has a chance to fail if you don't have the ranks for it. I also dislike this mechanic. I'm completely fine with not getting the detail on a failure, but to have it say there's no padding/weighting on an item because of a lack of skill is not kind to a player.

I think Analyze is a little bloated with information to be added to. But I do like a 1 liner added somewhere saying the item might be special. Examine I think is the same as Look, and Describe is a completely new one to me.

I'm in complete agreement with items being tough to judge. I have at least 10 friends(many who are capped) who consistently ask me what they should do with an item selling to PC, Merchant, or pawn. It's not easy for anyone including myself, and especially jarring for newer folks.

One of the things I like about gemstone is that there's a large learning curve so not knowing everything about your drops is a good thing, but I would like something that says...this item should be checked.

Alot of games have the 'common', rare, epic, something awesome classification but this is a double edged sword and removes mystery from the game. Maybe a simple (common item, check this item classification). I use the appraise value of an item and experience for this but it could be simplified for newer folks.