Was It Wise To Make Lairshaping So Complicated?

[Death-knell]

Actually, it is on the border between those and T5. Mithril is very close. So it depends on which side of Aughundell you go to.

OK, spent 3 hours. Started from the mithril caverns, circled them checked all the way towards harro, swung around to wolfs paw worked my way east and west till the meteor crater. Checked in the crater around it....nothing. Got to the end of the mines where the nickel golems area, crisscrosed thru there found granite/gold/nickel/terra cota. Searched from harro then feladan all around harton valley last stand mithrils anvil. Even found a crimson crystal node with platinum and cobalt . But not one single amber node.

Are you sure we're talking live?

[dorrin]

huh? when did anyone ever say amber was near aughundell?
amon said tazoon. you've got things confused, methinks.

[Deth]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Amon Gwareth wrote: Actually, it is on the border between those and T5. Mithril is very close. So it depends on which side of Aughundell you go to.

Speaking of grin and overcomplication, could you explain to us Amon, why dragon get penalized when building silo in their lair while building the same Tier silo on a plot goes without penality?

At first look I agreed with you. Then I looked at filling a level with T1 Silos and it is not going to happen, at least not with a lair I was looking at getting, wider lairs may find it easyer then taller narrow lairs. Due to needing tunnels to get to the silos it is every hard to fill alevel with just tier 1 silos with out a ot of dead space. I have not completely worked it out yet butspace use vs storage I think will work out in the long run. I will need to sit down andtry some diffrent designs to figure out for sure.

Also if they kept all the silos the same foot print I could build way more storage then any surface plot. Due to the fact we get a lot more area they have to make us pay some how.

[Death-knell]

huh? when did anyone ever say amber was near aughundell?
amon said tazoon. you've got things confused, methinks.

Ummm...Dorrin. I included the quote where Amon said it was on the border of the mithril fields and Auggie. And I have checked out the deserts west of Tazoon very thoroughly, even thoough there is a part I haven't got to yet.

[Shargrym]

I have searched the Granite Hills, Heather and much of the oak forest north of Heather, as well as much of the desert west of Tazoon, but have not seen any amber azulyte. I did find a few new resource locations for other stuff that I did not have before. However, if the amber azulyte is anywhere around where I searched, I must have missed it.

Shargrym Stormscale
Keir Chet K'Eilerten
Order Shard

[Death-knell]

ok, to make it a little clearer. The boundary I spent over 3 hours searching in was.....North I stopped at the snowline, west I wandered well past the bitter pickle, around harton valley down to feladan. South boundary was the road that is just south of old oaks. Eastern was harro up to the southern edge of the marble fields.

I crisscrossed north to south and east to west. I stayed on the ground never flying, I did NOT have ANY speed buffs and had no speed techs on my wings. I would also stop periodically and make sure everything had popped. I would even move a few feet and look where I was standing to insure I wasn't standing on the node.

If this field is in the area I searched I'd say there is a pretty big bug in there. I could see all other nodes, from the white grape vines in feladan to granite nodes in auggie and south. I could see mithril nodes and every other resource. Just no amber crystals

[Goriax]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Dragoniade wrote: [img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Amon Gwareth wrote: Actually, it is on the border between those and T5. Mithril is very close. So it depends on which side of Aughundell you go to.

Speaking of grin and overcomplication, could you explain to us Amon, why dragon get penalized when building silo in their lair while building the same Tier silo on a plot goes without penality?


At first look I agreed with you. Then I looked at filling a level with T1 Silos and it is not going to happen, at least not with a lair I was looking at getting, wider lairs may find it easyer then taller narrow lairs. Due to needing tunnels to get to the silos it is every hard to fill alevel with just tier 1 silos with out a ot of dead space. I have not completely worked it out yet butspace use vs storage I think will work out in the long run. I will need to sit down andtry some diffrent designs to figure out for sure.

Also if they kept all the silos the same foot print I could build way more storage then any surface plot. Due to the fact we get a lot more area they have to make us pay some how.

About the access I agree and have said so before. When you're building a bunch of stuff in a lair you can't ignore access and the space it takes. The one true advantage of higher tier storage is that higher tier storage area still only requires a single access point. In fact the only advantage I see for higher tier storage is access. Unless you're building it primarily for the experience and don't care about how useful it is.

If they were going to help us out by making all lair storage the same size, I suspect that size would not be 1x1x1. As you point out, it would give dragons way too much storage capability given the size of lair plots.One size fits allmight make it hard to keep high tier lair storage in line while still allowing low tier lairs enough storage to be useful.

Here's one thing you can try if upgradability is really important to you: Allocate space forhigh tier storage but then initially only build a tier 1 storage. Just to be sure, in the initial lair plan use that higher tier storage but just before you build replace it with tier 1 storage in the plan. Then you CAN just drop the higher tier storage in place when you're ready. Of course that means you'll be wasting a lot of space early on, but it DOES allow you to upgrade.

The basic planning principle (plan for high tier but build low tier initially) can be applied to a lot of things in a lair although storage is particularly clean since all storage has one access point regardless of tier.

[Pharcellus]

If they were going to help us out by making all lair storage the same size, I suspect that size would not be 1x1x1. As you point out, it would give dragons way too much storage capability given the size of lair plots.One size fits allmight make it hard to keep high tier lair storage in line while still allowing low tier lairs enough storage to be useful.

Not at all. A 60x60 biped plot can hold upwards of 200 silos, fully packed. The biggest lairs, outside of the guild master plots, can only hold upwards of 150 T1 silos, probably more like about 50-75, because you HAVE to make space for corridors to get to them, as they are not connector chambers, only dead-ends.

[Deth]

Not at all. A 60x60 biped plot can hold upwards of 200 silos, fully packed. The biggest lairs, outside of the guild master plots, can only hold upwards of 150 T1 silos, probably more like about 50-75, because you HAVE to make space for corridors to get to them, as they are not connector chambers, only dead-ends.

Could a biped reach all of those silos? Is there a way besides clicking on them to reach them? Would they be able to reach the middle ones to be in range/click them? I have never had a biped plot so know not all the in's and outs of owning one and accessing one.

[PJ]

Dragonaide:

The whole "you can't pack as many dragon silos into a lair as you can biped silos into a plot" is silly. Silos in lairs are not equivalent to silos on plots, they are analogous. Like Chambers are to houses, and Halls are to Guild Houses. They aren't meant to be exactly the same. If you docompare lairs to plots, you have to consider the whole picture not one small aspect where lairs come out worse then plots.

Firstly your largest nonguild lairs are ~500s, and you can only get about a 35x35 plot for that much money. Now in that space you can probably pack more t6 silos, i don't have any accurate figures on the footprints of biped silos. But what i do know is that that 500 silver plot cannot hold a t6 guildhall, or a t5 guildhall, much less both. My 10+g plot can't hold both, yet you can fit both a t6 hall and a t5 hall easily in a 500s lair. But who cares, plots != lairs. A t6 guildhall takes up ~50% of the area of my 93x9x 10g plot, but a t6 hall fits easily in a 3x3x3 cube (18% of the volume) of a 500s lair. But you don't see me complaining about it.

Plots are superior in some areas, Lairs are superior in others. Get over it. You're lucky in that your dragoncan choose to own a plot if you don't like lairs, while my biped cannot choose to own a lair.

[Pharcellus]

Could a biped reach all of those silos? Is there a way besides clicking on them to reach them? Would they be able to reach the middle ones to be in range/click them? I have never had a biped plot so know not all the in's and outs of owning one and accessing one.

First of all, there are two parts of that complaint. The first is "in theory", the second is "in practice". In THEORY, you can place around 200 Tier SIX silos on a 60x60 plot (which is equivalent in space considerations of the 120x120x144 Lairs). They would be packed very tightly, and it would be difficult to access them all from the ground at the plot, but there are ways to do it. First, you can buy a plot next to a hill or knoll that allows you to climb up and select silos by clicking on their roofs. The second option would be to use the plot stone to select them. Silo access ranges are in excess of 50m, so there is no issue with being able to transfer items to/from a silo in a densely-packed plot, just opening it to begin with.

Secondly, in PRACTICE, you will want to put a minimum amount of space between silos so you can at least see them to open them without having to resort to a nuisance workaround, liek above. They can be grouped different ways, using up only a modest amount of plot area in the spacing to enable easy access. Lairs, on the other hand, can NOT be packed densely with storage chambers, because you HAVE to put in the access corridors to them, since they have only ONE entrance/exit, and cannot function as access corridors themselves. So, at maximum placement efficiency, a 5x5x6 lvu lair can only hold around 12-13 Tier ONE silos per level. Optimally, at six levels, you can place around 75 of them. If you want to put in Tier SIX silos, you'll be lucky to get 8 in the standard-sized lair, and that will be just about ALL you can put in it.

Continued in next response...

[dorrin]

[img]/Web/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]dorrin wrote:huh? when did anyone ever say amber was near aughundell?
amon said tazoon. you've got things confused, methinks.



Ummm...Dorrin. I included the quote where Amon said it was on the border of the mithril fields and Auggie. And I have checked out the deserts west of Tazoon very thoroughly, even thoough there is a part I haven't got to yet.

amon DIDN'T say that. laughingotter did. and he was referring to the fact that you were looking for t3 crystals around aughundell, suggesting that it would be a fruitless search, but as has been pointed out, that's not necessarily the case.

[dorrin]

Lastly, WHY are there any crystals on New Trismus at all? Lairshaping is a prestige school.

because regardless of your preferences new trismus is above all a tier 1 island, thus, there are t1 crystals there. just because it isn't intuitive to you doesn't make it wrong.

Anything that would be an introduction to Dragon Lairshaper should be put somewhere in Lesser Aradoth, just like Gerix is there to introduce Dragon ability quests.

don't get me started on how useless gerix is... just having the new trismus trainers point you in the direction of chiconis and dralk would have been perfectly sufficient. forcing people to go to kion just to introduce them to the trophy hunter is unnecessary. again.. just have the trainer explain the trophy hunters. a little more text in the NPCs that already exist wouldn't be that hard and would go a long way.

I understand it is neat to show off a Lair to the newbies, but doesn't a Lair and its associated resources belong on Skalkaar rather than New Trismus?

now THAT makes sense... _that_ i could agree with.

Tier 1 gems are found in other locations than New Trismus. In fact, you're only hurting newbies by working them there.

yeah.. right. give us something that convenient to work with then tell us we shouldn't use it. that defies human nature.. we'll almost always take the simplest route available. why can't resource spawns simply be increased to make up for it? (and while we're at it, fixed, so that the gems and crystals are actually _in_ the mine again). there are so many occasions where turqoise runs out... and there are about 6 to maybe 8 wisps by that channeler.. that's tough to even support a lot of newbies if there happen to be a lot around.
and you think it's just lairshapers that use trismus for high level work? i can assure you plenty of bipeds use trismus beyond level 20 as well... i don't see why that's so wrong.

[Pharcellus]

The whole "you can't pack as many dragon silos into a lair as you can biped silos into a plot" is silly.

To you. I consider it a very serious design flaw in lairs. One that should have been considered long ago by devs who actually PLAYED their own game. One that is pretty much kills my desire and enthusiasm to own one.

Silos in lairs are not equivalent to silos on plots, they are analogous.

Let's see..

T1 Silo - 1 stack, 20,000 bulk
T2 Silo - 1 stack, 32,000 bulk
T3 Silo - 1 stack, 44,000 bulk
T4 Silo - 1 stack, 56,000 bulk
T5 Silo - 1 stack, 68,000 bulk
T6 Silo - 1 stack, 80,000 bulk

T1 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 20,000 bulk
T2 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 32,000 bulk
T3 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 44,000 bulk
T4 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 56,000 bulk
T5 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 68,000 bulk
T6 Storage Chamber - 1 stack, 80,000 bulk

Look pretty equivalent to me... [*-)] Except in FOOTPRINT. That's not enough to make them merely "analagous" in my book.

Like Chambers are to houses, and Halls are to Guild Houses. They aren't meant to be exactly the same.

Except they ARE EXACTLY the same, functionally. The only things that are different are the "footprint" and representation.

If you docompare lairs to plots, you have to consider the whole picture not one small aspect where lairs come out worse then plots.

I do, your wanton trivialization of one of the more important aspects of plot/lair ownership notwithstanding.

Firstly your largest nonguild lairs are ~500s, and you can only get about a 35x35 plot for that much money.

I think that using price as a basis for comparison is meaningless, for several reasons. 1) People are going to be paying more than the base price of their plot in the auctions. 2) The devs are likely cutting Dragons some slack on the price as a small amend for delaying their release for TWO YEARS. 3) The price could be simply an initial price, and may be adjusted upwards in the future, just as they did with biped plots.


Regardless, I don't care about prices. A plot is a one-time purchase; once you have the money, you're done, and you have to work with what you purchased. Instead, I care about functionality for available space. As for what a 150 lvu lair is equivalent to, I simply extrapolate from min to max size, as compared to available biped plots. The largest biped plots in the game are ~100x100, and the smallest are ~25x25. The largest Lair is 320 lvu, the smallest is 90. Regardless of the comparative numbers of plots at those sizes (which is another gripe of mine), the average-sized lair available is 140-150 lvu. For argument's sake, I chose to use the max sized Lair that the vast majority of Dragons can get, which is 150 lvu. The comparable average-sized biped plot would be around 60x60 ( (100+25)/2 ).

Now in that space you can probably pack more t6 silos, i don't have any accurate figures on the footprints of biped silos.

They are approximately 3.6m in diameter, say 4 for argument's sake. A 35x35 plot can hold between 75-100 of them. A 150 lvu Lair plot can hold EIGHT T6 Storage chambers.

My 10+g plot can't hold both, yet you can fit both a t6 hall and a t5 hall easily in a 500s lair.

That is true, but for my needs, it doesn't help. I need a LOT of bulk storage for crafting, and halls/lairs/etc don't hold a lot of BULK. They hold a lot of STACKS. Given that they are always having hissy fits about stack limits, I wouldn't be surprised to see them put a limit of ONE of each category of multi-stack structure per Lair, regardless of Tier.

But who cares, plots != lairs. A t6 guildhall takes up ~50% of the area of my 93x9x 10g plot, but a t6 hall fits easily in a 3x3x3 cube (18% of the volume) of a 500s lair. But you don't see me complaining about it.

I do. Plots and Lairs should be functionally equivalent. Reward for Effort, remember? Why should we have to put in so much more work and be harshly limited in what we can do? You don't have to complain, even if it isn't fair. I choose to, because Lairs were very important to me, and this design issue (amongst a plethora of others) has pretty much killed my enthusiasm for Lairs, and the game itself.

Plots are superior in some areas, Lairs are superior in others. Get over it.

Should be functionally equivalent. Period.

You're lucky in that your dragoncan choose to own a plot if you don't like lairs, while my biped cannot choose to own a lair.

When asked several times previously, Bowman et al have said that, once Lairs are out, they will be looking into making biped plots purchasable only by bipeds, leaving only grandfathered Dragon-owned plots in that state.

[PJ]

Sprite - *PJ* Will dragons still be able to own biped plots, after the release of lairs?
Sprite - *LexDivinia* If lairs can not be owned by a biped, will biped plots no longer be available to dragons?
Smeglor - The non-lair plots are not "biped" plots; they are merely surface plots. None of the existing surface plots have any racial restrictions, nor will they. There may be new racially-restricted surface communities in the future, however.
DavidBowman - I'll add there WILL be.

http://hz.stratics.com/content/commu.../hoc092905.php

Are all races/classes/items/etc flawed in design because they aren't equivalent in function, merely analogous?

Half the people I talk to want dragons and things dragon associtated to be different in uniquefrom biped and biped associated things. The Other half seem to want them to be exact biped carbon copies.

The aren't going to please everybody. And they appear to be taking the former route with dragons.

I could comment forever on things they might change with lairs, prices, plots, structures, etc. But I'll stick to commenting on how things are.

And while you may exhibit both sides of things, the post was specifically addressed to dragonaide who delights in exhibiting only the side where it appears to him that dragons are getting shorted, not those where they come out ahead.

[Goriax]

The fact that a dragon can purchase a biped plot doesn't mean anything. Not like he can do anything with it once he has it. Sure he can have his biped alt work it, but in that case he might as well had his biped alt buy it.

[Pharcellus]

because regardless of your preferences new trismus is above all a tier 1 island, thus, there are t1 crystals there. just because it isn't intuitive to you doesn't make it wrong.

Skalkaar is a Tier 1 island. New Brommel, New Vassarak, and New Koraelia are also Tier 1 islands. There are NO crystals on ANY of those places. Kinda shoots that concept out of the water, eh?

I wasn't stating preferences, I was asking a question. Bordering on ad hominem isn't an answer. I never claimed it was wrong, contrary to your assertion.

don't get me started on how useless gerix is... just having the new trismus trainers point you in the direction of chiconis and dralk would have been perfectly sufficient. forcing people to go to kion just to introduce them to the trophy hunter is unnecessary. again.. just have the trainer explain the trophy hunters. a little more text in the NPCs that already exist wouldn't be that hard and would go a long way.

Probably, but it couldn't hurt to have a "Dragon area" on Lesser Aradoth, like up on the Kion Volcano, with a Lair, Gerix, and a pad/portal.

now THAT makes sense... _that_ i could agree with.

I wasn't making that as a suggestion. I wouldn't want Lairshaping to be introduced on Skalkaar any more than I would want it introduced on New Trismus, or any of the other starter islands. It is a PRESTIGE class and, just like all other biped prestige classes, does not need a presence on the STARTING islands.

yeah.. right. give us something that convenient to work with then tell us we shouldn't use it. that defies human nature.. we'll almost always take the simplest route available. why can't resource spawns simply be increased to make up for it? (and while we're at it, fixed, so that the gems and crystals are actually _in_ the mine again). there are so many occasions where turqoise runs out... and there are about 6 to maybe 8 wisps by that channeler.. that's tough to even support a lot of newbies if there happen to be a lot around.

It is meant to be convenient... for NEW PLAYERS. It is an introduction to the game for newbies, so ease of access to resources near machines is the goal. Increasing resource spawns would encourage more veteran player abuse. Newbies aren't expected to stay on that island for any significant length of time, so it will rarely be crowded. Back at release, there were a lot of newbies populating the various islands, and resource contention amongst them was almost non-existant. Of course there weren't any veteran players around to contend with, and most everyone was eager to get off the starting islands and get into the world.

and you think it's just lairshapers that use trismus for high level work? i can assure you plenty of bipeds use trismus beyond level 20 as well... i don't see why that's so wrong.

I can. Just like Amon said. It is a starting island for newbies. Lots of veteran players showing up, using the island for actual work, competing for scarce resources with the newbies means that new players have a bad experience and may not want to come back. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with them reinstating the 10cp/level portal fee back to the newbie islands. The consigners will continue to be stocked, but it might discourage those who are venturing there to "abuse" the island.

[Death-knell]

Well LO said auggie was T5 and everyone disclaimed it, Amon was talking about the Tier 3 crystals because thats what we querried him about

[Pharcellus]

Sprite - *PJ* Will dragons still be able to own biped plots, after the release of lairs?
Sprite - *LexDivinia* If lairs can not be owned by a biped, will biped plots no longer be available to dragons?
Smeglor - The non-lair plots are not "biped" plots; they are merely surface plots. None of the existing surface plots have any racial restrictions, nor will they. There may be new racially-restricted surface communities in the future, however.
DavidBowman - I'll add there WILL be. http://hz.stratics.com/content/commu.../hoc092905.php

There have been other chats in IRC where they have stated otherwise. I don't have a source to cite, since IRC is not publicly logged anywhere. Even still, as Goriax pointed out, a Dragon owning a biped plot is not a very significant argument in that regard.

Are all races/classes/items/etc flawed in design because they aren't equivalent in function, merely analogous?

Good game systems are designed on the principle of REWARD FOR EFFORT. At their core, X amount of effort should see Y amount of reward, regardless of who is expending the effort, or how they are doing it, as long as it is within the rules. The difference is in the special effects, or representation. There may even be times when a specific reward for any particular effort is useless to the expender, but the rest of the game should be set up so that it is easily exchanged for a reward that is useful to the expender of the effort.

When it comes to something as core to the game as property ownership, function should be equivalent, though form can vary widely.

Half the people I talk to want dragons and things dragon associtated to be different in uniquefrom biped and biped associated things. The Other half seem to want them to be exact biped carbon copies.

"Different and unique" doesn't have to mean "useless and gimped". Lairs ARE different. They have their own representation in the game that is different and unique from surface plots. However, they should still obey balance and fairness rules that should be in the core of the game system. Last time I checked, a Dragon player pays the same amount of money per month to play the game as a biped player. Their respective experiences should be different and unique, not just based on what race they are, but all the other factors that affect their gameplay as well. However, on average, the results of efforts they expend during play should not place them at any more advantage/disadvantage than any other player, given equivalent amounts of effort expended.

The aren't going to please everybody. And they appear to be taking the former route with dragons.

No one ever asked them to please everybody. However, that cannot be used as an excuse to rush out a mostly untested, unbalanced pile of crap, either.

I could comment forever on things they might change with lairs, prices, plots, structures, etc. But I'll stick to commenting on how things are.

..and how they are I find subpar, even with low expectations to begin with, and is one of the major reasons I am seriously considering calling it quits at this point.

And while you may exhibit both sides of things, the post was specifically addressed to dragonaide who delights in exhibiting only the side where it appears to him that dragons are getting shorted, not those where they come out ahead.

Maybe he doesn't see it as "coming out ahead". I know I sure don't. I don't have plans to put a bunch of large, high-tier structures in my Lair that don't solve my needs, and would take forever for me to build to boot.

[PJ]

Now while i still disagree with the arguments because they rely on comparing plots to lairs. Which yeah building silos in lairs is worse then building them on plots, and building halls/houses in lairs is better then building them on plots.

But my digging has come up with a point against lair silos that I can support. Because it doesn't rely on comparisons between silos and lairs, and is purely about lairs.

Looking

Some perusing of the Lair footprints at http://home.comcast.net/~ksulitan/Lair_Pieces.xls

(thoughtfully provided by Tympest)

has shown to me that the volume occupied by higher tier silos, would be substantially better served by being filled with severall t1 silos, in both number of stacks and in bulk storage. I'm not sure how exactly silos are accessed in lairs, so I can't say if ease of access for a large t6 silo even matters in the discussion.

So while I don't agree with that being able to fit fewer silos in a lair then on a plot matters. I do think there may be an issue because there seems to be no benefit to building higher tier lair silos.