Twilight Forums

Originally the narrative and the amount of time needed to finish all of the space station content made it necessary to drag out the unlocking of the space station areas over a period of many, many days. This was cut down to about 1 week after the introduction of retcon (atleast I believe the original took longer than 1 week, 3 if I'm not mistaken), but this still feels like a really long time to wait. I'm aware a space station isn't built in a day, or even a week, or a year, but let's just say a magical time vortex opened and a fully operational space station just happens to jettison out of it into the exact place we need it to be.

Some discussion happened on this in chat, and I have come up with a compromise. Allow us to instantly unlock the space station, but in doing so, we forfeit the extra mettle gained. Because I could care less about mettle at this point, having bought everything the store has to offer me >.>

The extra mettle isn't the reason it takes a week to open the space station, just a minor reward for doing it. It's a single piece of mettle, and anyone with average speed could complete two 5 mettle runs in that time. There's a whole narrative behind the reason it takes so long, something that probably isn't going to change just because you're impatient and want it open right now. Why not ask to instantly be level 75, because that's what you want right now but you don't want to wait a month to farm up the xp?

Harry Dresden wrote:The extra mettle isn't the reason it takes a week to open the space station, just a minor reward for doing it. It's a single piece of mettle, and anyone with average speed could complete two 5 mettle runs in that time. There's a whole narrative behind the reason it takes so long, something that probably isn't going to change just because you're impatient and want it open right now. Why not ask to instantly be level 75, because that's what you want right now but you don't want to wait a month to farm up the xp?

There's quite a difference between asking to be level 75 because it will take too long, and asking to have access in 1 day to a location that takes 7 real days to open for nothing but superficial narrative reasons. If the narrative is the reason, alter the narrative, which isn't hard to do. See magical time vortex. There are a lot of things that can be justified by narrative... But seeing as a space station being built isn't realistically in a timescale of days anyways, there's no point to drag it out. You shouldn't be able to hop back and forth between locations across the city using no time, but you get to do it because it would be inconvenient not to. This is the same principle. The initial reason for the long wait wasn't because of the narrative, it was because Ryme was still working on finishing the content. The narrative was written to suit that purpose, not the other way around. Now that the content is finished and can be redone with retcon, there's no reason to postpone it.

Thorak wrote:My personal opinion is that it's ok for the space station to take this long the first time, but I think it would be nice if it went faster consecutive times but with a lvl restriction.

However, the main reason why not to change this as I see it is that it would take away development time from other things which I would say would improve the game more (like lvl 14+ quests/new areas/items and so on). I don't see this as such a big issue since you can just wait and it will be done eventually...

There's actually a very fast way to do this due to the sequential nature of the flags. Since progression in the space station is marked by having all the flags that activate as each day goes by, it can be sped up with next to no real 'development' time by adding in all the flag marking code to happen as soon as you go see Susan the first time. This would literally take about 2 minutes for anyone familiar with the code. The rollover code for changing the flags wouldn't even need to be touched, albeit it'd be useless to keep it running if it was made instant unlock. It would take slightly longer to implement the optional forfeit of mettle idea, but I would estimate that to take around 5 to 10 minutes longer than instant unlock, and then you wouldn't have to clean up the rollover code. This isn't a hard thing to do, and Kinak doesn't necessarily have to do it himself even. I would do it myself if Kinak didn't have time or motivation.

The space station is completely and utterly optional. There is nothing up there that is required for any quest aside from self-contained space station quests. Furthermore, none of the planned future quests involve the space station, so it will continue to be completely optional. As an optional zone, there's no reason not to let narrative be the primary driver for its unlocking.

And while I wouldn't have a problem with shortening the process (eliminating one day of robot skirmish and cutting off a couple days on the construction), I wouldn't go along with having it be a one day process.

There are no quests that involve it, but there are a ridiculous amount of welding recipes that require items that can only be gained from the space station areas.

Satan wrote:There are no quests that involve it, but there are a ridiculous amount of welding recipes that require items that can only be gained from the space station areas.

I'm not opposed to reworking these areas, but this isn't really an inspiring reason to do so.

The items in question are all tradable and can be carried between retcons. Which means you can either get them from the mall or, if you insist on doing it yourself, unlock the space station once and stockpile whatever you need.

Is that really too much to ask? I mean that seriously. It doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Cheers!
Kinak

Kinak wrote:

Satan wrote:There are no quests that involve it, but there are a ridiculous amount of welding recipes that require items that can only be gained from the space station areas.

I'm not opposed to reworking these areas, but this isn't really an inspiring reason to do so.

The items in question are all tradable and can be carried between retcons. Which means you can either get them from the mall or, if you insist on doing it yourself, unlock the space station once and stockpile whatever you need.

Is that really too much to ask? I mean that seriously. It doesn't seem too unreasonable.

Cheers!
Kinak

Obviously I'm going to unlock it and get the items for myself. I wasn't expecting it to be done before I finished unlocking the space station. I won't have any need to go back there once I get the rest of the items, unless more weld or assembly recipes involving them are created. I'm simply asking for the sake of others who might also be inconvenienced by the wait. If they were available in the mall, I would buy them; Unfortunately, due to retcon taking away access to the area, hardly anyone has access to these areas for long anymore (if they even choose to unlock it), and the ones that do aren't selling /any/ of the space station crafted items. For the same reason, not too many people have them available for trading purposes. It's certainly not unreasonable to wait 7 days. I'm not lazy. I mean, I've spent years searching for all the URs personally. I've painstakingly collected 1 of almost every attainable item in the game. I have the ability to wait long amounts of time to realize in-game goals. I just feel that the 7 day waiting period is unnecessary and inconvenient, and doesn't really add to the game. In general most of the features I ask for are things that happened to me and I wouldn't want other people to be inconvenienced by in the future. I was the first and only person to accidentally autosell an ultrarare item back when such a thing could be done, and the reason it can't be done anymore is because I told Ryme I didn't care if I got the UR back, as long as it was prevented in the future. Granted this is on a much smaller scale than that, but I feel like other people will be inconvenienced by this to some extent, and it's not that hard to do. Like I said, I'd code it myself :p

Satan wrote:Like I said, I'd code it myself :p

I think it's safe to say if I wanted it done, it'd be done already

It wouldn't shock me if there were another way to open up the space station at some point, but it won't be to make rare items more common and it won't be as simple as flipping a switch.

Cheers!
Kinak

They're not really rare items, anyway. Just new. The recipes were only put in a week ago, give people time to make them and I'm sure they'll show up in the mall.

Harry Dresden wrote:They're not really rare items, anyway. Just new. The recipes were only put in a week ago, give people time to make them and I'm sure they'll show up in the mall.

Actually, the recipes I'm talking about are the illuminum, malkamite, and byzantium recipes. Moltinum only uses items that are metalmorphed after being bought from the foundry. I dislike that the only reason they're rare is because no one ever has access to the space station for long anymore, and every single one of the items is used in a weld, sometimes more than 1. They aren't hard to get or hard to get the materials for, just no one bothers to farm them because it's an optional quest that takes so long.

Sounds like that's a niche market ripe for someone to exploit.

Satan wrote:There are no quests that involve it

Unless you count the (reward-like) involvement of Outer reaches of space in that other, even higher-level, very optional quest.


I have nothing else to add, except that the highest-level area needed for moltinium is in the desert.

xKiv wrote:

Satan wrote:There are no quests that involve it

Unless you count the (reward-like) involvement of Outer reaches of space in that other, even higher-level, very optional quest.


I have nothing else to add, except that the highest-level area needed for moltinium is in the desert.

Oh. Well, yeah, to actually get the components. If you already have the infernium, then you just need up to industry.

Out of spite, I'd just like to say that I'm not enjoying the waiting time to unlock the space station, post-real-time event. <.<