Quirks and other things that might send you screaming.

jesad

So now that we have all decided that this is, in fact, a pretty good game, let's go over some of the things that might happen to you while you are playing that could cause you to flip out and lose your freaking mind.

I will attempt to discuss only the things that I have personally experienced and not things that I have heard or heard that other people have heard.

I will also attempt to explain each one of these situations to that you don't have to go hunting in other places "Like I did" in order to find the answers to your questions.  I feel like I am ahead of enough people in the things that I want to do now that I can share this stuff without making you, the readers, too much of a threat, so here goes.

1. When you begin as a blacksmith you will be introduced to the daily blacksmith quest guy.  Soon after you will be asked, by this game guy, to make an item that you do not have a recipe for (some sort of dart or dagger or something).  You will go out and find the recipe but upon creating the item will still not get exactly what the daily blacksmith guy is asking for.

It will be at this point where your brain will go "WTF?"  You might ask someone what is going on or you might submit a bug report, because it is certainly going to feel like a bug.  IT IS NOT A BUG.  It is a design of the game that demonstrates to you that one recipe can yield a variety of different kinds of items.  Patience will show you that this is true.  But in a lot of situations cool heads don't prevail and the next thing you know you have someone upset and ranting about poor customer service when, in fact, customer service has nothing to do with this issue.

 

2. After solving the problem of the hidden daily recipe item, that same guy, the blacksmith's assistant, might give you a quest to create something which you will not only have to go out and get a recipe for, which you will not only have to be the right level to make after having acquired said recipe, BUT WHICH WILL BE EXTREMELY RARE AND PLACED IN AN AREA THAT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO SOLO, meaning that even if it did drop, there is a pretty good chance that you might not get it.

Solution to this problem?  Stop messing with that dude.  He is clearly there just to frustrate you.  One day that recipe might drop, and one day you might actually make the item that he is looking for, but between now and then you could grind out grandmaster blacksmith without this kids help and be well on the way towards making your own uber weapons (or whatever if this happens in other scenarios) without having to constantly grind that one particular zone for that one particular recipe, or even worse, get gouged for it by the super inflated prices of greedy vendors.

 

3. You can not just create an official guild.  Oh you can create a guild, that's not hard.  But in order for that guild to become official you would need another 5 people (accounts) to acknowledge your guilds worthiness before it became a legitimate guild.  Also, you have (I think) 3 days from the time you create a guild to the time you get those 5 others to join before the guild goes POOF too and you have to start all over again.

Not a big deal, actually not a bad way to go, but it does make me question about 4/5 of those 20 million accounts that you always hear this game brag about.

4. You can not just disband an official guild.  Having had to acquire the 5 people to make your guild official, it is of course not going to be as easy to disband that same guild.  Currently, in order to disband a guild the guild leader must instigate a voting process that gives every member of the guild the opportunity to aye or nay that leaders decision.

Abdication is easier as it simply requires the leader to quit and give ownership of the guild to someone else.

But if you are trying to disband a guild that you have become frustrated with, either because of non-participation, inaction (because guild require their members to be at least somewhat active in maintaining that guild) or whatever, it is going to take you bare minimum 72 hours to get that done, and if you don't toss everyone out prior to doing so, you still might not get it done.

What I found out is that even after trying to circumvent this process by tossing out anyone who could have voted against the disbandment, that it still took 72 hours of me being alone in the guild, and a relog after said 72 hours (or it could have been divine intervention because by that time I had already put in a ticket) to actually get the guild to disband.

Prior to that relog, the timer just reset to another 72 hours, and that was enough to send me screaming.

So solutions.

a. If you are going to make a guild make sure that you have 5 people that are going to make it with you or you might be in for a pretty long process.

b. If you are going to make a guild, make sure that it is actually going to be a guild and not just a group or a clan, because as a guild you are required to do things that require more numbers than just that starting 5 to achieve, and you might just be locking 5 of your friends, or people who were just kind enough to help you out, into a dead end situation.

c. If you are going to disband a guild, try abdicating first, it is honestly the cooler way to go.  If you are serious though, kick everyone to the curb first then start the disbanding process, being sure to relog your character AFTER the 72 hour timer has expired.  If this doesn't work, put in a ticket and relog again.  DO NOT CLICK THE DISBAND BUTTON AGAIN.  This only restarts the timer.

 

5. There are spending limits.  Guy walks up to you and says "I have this really neat thing that I am willing to sell you for this amount of money, whattaya say?".  You look at the thing, decide that it's worth it, click on it to buy it, and in spite of having more than enough money to do so in your pocket, you can not.

This is because you have probably spent too much money today.

A lot of things cost money.  Crafting items, certain ways of practicing kung-fu skills, birds in order to use the mail, the mail, a lot of things.  So it's important then to be careful how you spend you money in a days time because once you have hit that limit (and I honestly don't know what that limit is), you will not be able to spend anymore money until tomorrow.

This function applies to both bound and unbound cash (which is explained elsewhere in these forums).

Thus, not being able to buy something is not a bug.  It is as designed.  Likewise not being able to do daily crafting quests, not being able to easily create or disband a guild......oh wait!  This next one is a doozy, and I actually love it.

6. You can not disband a non-official guild.

I.e. if you never intended on getting those 5 people in the first place, you will never be able to get out of the fake guild that you created, and it will also never become official.

Solution - get 5 people to take pity on you so that you can become an official guild and then disband your official guild. LOL

I think that one was done completely to penalize the millions of armies of one out there that have existed in so many other guilds.

7. It is an open PVP world but it also has laws.

No, you can not do what you want to do.  No, you can not just walk down the street in the middle of the day without someone twice as big as you coming along, and if they want to, pummeling you into the ground.  You also can not just go around indiscriminately killing people either however.  There are laws, and lawmen in this game, and if you break enough laws, those lawmen will hunt you down.  Likewise there are factions, agendas, and all manner of other kinds of things that might even make you take a second look at who you even hang out with .  A lot of this stuff is not going to be apparent in the beginning either, but once it becomes so, it might, if you are that kind of person that likes to ignore the rules of the game and play your own way, get pissed.

This is not a bug.  This is a world.  Or at least it is trying to be.

 

So with all of this stuff said, let's see, what else?  Does anyone else have anything to add?  I am looking for things that you THOUGHT were bugs but really weren't or things that seemed messed up but you later found were not.

 

Oh wait.  One more thing, and this is weird.

The supposed botting that goes on in that game can easily be circumvented by simply paying attention to what you are doing.  The player is always faster than the bot, and so in cases of harvesting, all you have to do is be on it when the node pops and 90% of the time you will get to it first.

Often times though, certain types would rather kill the bots instead of racing them to nodes.  This gets them in trouble with the law, and sometimes their school, and the next thing you know they are on the forums crying.

Don't let this happen to you.

Pay attention.  I have no real reason not to assume that the rampant botting that goes on in this game is not also by some kind of weird design.  I could be wrong, but it just seems to be way out of check in one way, while simultaneously being representative of the real world in another.

Whatever, it all remains to be seen.  But these are some of the things to look out for if you decide to try this title.  I suspect the same things are going to be true no matter which iteration you try as well, I'm just posting it here because this is the version that I currently play.

bcbully

Awesome post man. Like I keep saying, the game aint perfect lol, but there is nothing else like it. Let me think, hmmm I got one!

 

During the tutorial, one of the storylines has you drink wine with a NPC to get him to give you information. This wine is given as a quest item. I clicked it and expected an update on the quest. No such luck. I click again. This time it tells me to meditate (Sit and breath is a skill you learn near the start that regens heath and energy) so I don't get drunk. I did, still nothing!!! It had to be a bug!!! It wasn't.

 

After about another 10 minutes... I figured it out. One click went to him, another to me, eventually I got the update. I think I logged off after that lol. Looking back on it, it was showing a glimpse of the Random Encounter system and gaining an NPCs affinity (or hatred). Pretty cool now, but back then super frustrating.

 

I was lucky there was NOTHING else to do. This was during the DF:UW push back debacle and two months into playing Planetside 2. PS2 is an awesome game, but I'm a mmorpg player, I had my fill of shooting for the time.