Air Shield users

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Barugon, Dec 2, 2020.

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  1. Cora Cuz'avich

    Cora Cuz'avich Avatar

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    Well, if the hamster jumps out of the way, and the ball goes with him, then neither gets hit...
     
  2. Echondas

    Echondas Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    Kinda? I was thinking of that too, but then I envisioned the size difference of the hamster vs. the ball, and how effectively they could actually cause the ball to move out of the way by throwing themselves against the side and avoiding some pain? Taking that mental image into SOTA, I can sorta see dodge having a tiny impact, or maybe a glancing blow to the Air Shield 'bubble' .. but if my suspicions are correct, and it's factoring in at 100% effectiveness.. that doesn't seem right.. IMHO at least.
     
  3. Echondas

    Echondas Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    "Summons a shield of air that grants additional air attunement and also blocks all damage at the cost of great concentration. Air specialization increases the duration."

    So .. you're saying it's not a bubble around the player, but a literal "shield", ie: directional? That might add some cool combat mechanics for subterfuge/rogue players, to get behind the enemy and bypass the shield entirely - but I think that would frustrate people.

    Also, I am interpreting 'great concentration' as focus - but someone else might interpret that as meaning you need to be standing still and not attacking or doing anything else.
     
  4. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    If I dodge, the attacker misses and there's no damagee to me, so there's nothing for the shield to block.
     
  5. A'chelata

    A'chelata Avatar

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    Here's my 2 cents as an air archer who bards:

    @Chris @Elgarion @Sannio @Ravalox

    The cure can't be worse than the disease.

    Players shouldn't have to suffer for improperly designed or implemented functions of the game. You can't introduce barding into the game as it currently is, leave it in for as long as it has been, and then go back and totally change it so that you can only be a bard for a group and nothing else (ie, must have instrument in hand to bard). Too many people enjoy solo play, as well as it is often hard to find a 'group' to bard for, when there is so damn little worthwhile group content in the game. Yes, sure there are areas that you could do with a group, but try to consistently find a group to do that with on a regular basis, where there's no freaking good loot drop rates or quality of items in the current market in any of those areas to make it worth the time and expense to do so.

    Try doing the breach with a group of 8 or 10, examine your costs of gear loss, potions, regs, ammo etc. How many times are you going to do that for the maybe 2-6 artis that 'might' drop and most likely 75-90% of those drops you would be lucky to sell for 10-20k and those drops are split among the group. I can do the breach with just @Jikininki , so between us we get all the drops and it still is really not worth it. How many groups are using a dedicated bard and doing Lord British's Castle Scene? How many groups are using a bard and doing Despair? Or Tartarus? or Spindelskog? This is the year we fix loot, right?

    If you want to kill the bard, just make it where they can't use other weapons while barding and they will soon find themselves as useless as checking your bag for loot after doing any of these scenes is.

    As to the air shield. It's very simple, you have a specific issue, put a cap on it. No need and no sense to start monkeying around with formulas and completely re-working skills etc. How many times are we going to let people build play styles based upon the implementations of the devs and then destroy their build just because of some 1% anomaly that could be solved in 10 seconds with a cap? I am air spec'd 128 , with 150 air shield, and even with 348 dex, my transfer rate is still .4 If someone has enough dex to be at zero, then surely they have very little strength or intelligence, and probably isn't really a character to play on a regular basis as much as it is something to push the limits of the math. Even if it is still a viable character, so what? put a cap at .1 or .2 or even .3 and problem solved. You don't have to make everyone suffer for a problem that only exist at 1% or less, and would erase hard work done by 30-60% of the rest of us. It's decisions that do that, that is responsible for soooo many lost players.

    Don't **** with air shield other than to cap it. It's fine.

    Meanwhile you have coup de grace doing 16k in damage on one hit, and no one seems to have a problem with that.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2020
  6. A'chelata

    A'chelata Avatar

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    Addendum:

    This game has come a long ways, even though it should have been there much sooner, but until the loot and economy gets a boost, none of this **** really matters anyway, because other than the first few times for the newness etc., nobody really does these scenes anyway, in any consistent and worthwhile way. Everyone cries 'BUT, BUT, BUT, CRAFTERS HAVE TO BE KING', so now, we have practically no playerbase to drive the economy, whereas, if grinding was actually rewarding enough and fun, we would have a much larger player base and supply and demand would actually work in the economy. But instead, we have arti's selling at 7k which usually never even comes close to covering your expenses and time of actually getting it. Sure, there are some higher selling artis, and they sit and sit and sit on vendors all over the game. wtf, what's the difference in 'keeping a close lid on loot to prevent some unknown economy disaster' and killing the economy by having such a completely upside down risk vs reward system that ensures there are never enough players to actually drive demand?

    Quit ignoring the biggest reason people leave or don't stay and FIX LOOT!
     
  7. Violet Ronso

    Violet Ronso Avatar

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    I think Robert managed to get around 600+ dex and close to 300 dex. He was for sure at 0.1, and possibly very close to 0 transfer rate. Granted he had tons of experience invested into air so it made it a bit stronger, but I think we are nearing the stage where many people will be able to reach those numbers. Remember, people maxed out at 1m exp/hour before, and few were those who could actually reach that. Now, its 8m exp/ hour, and people can usually push for a mill or 3 more within their hour. This means progress is at least 8x faster meaning all those top of the line builds are just a few steps away for many.

    As for your idea about a cap, I agree, a cap could solve the issue much faster, but this really needs to be thought out so that you don't reach a stage where its useless going above a certain level, like how Taunt at 140 has a 0 second cooldown, or night step (or the Moon Teleport spell) at lvl 120 has a 0 second cooldown. This means that once you reach that specific level, it is almost entirely pointless to raise it higher, and that would make it so some skills have "technical" caps and others don't, so either go for all skills have real caps or no skill has none.

    One way to do it could be to put the max tra safer ratio at 0.2, no matter your skill level, dex and whatnot, this means a player could invest in dex and levels to reach the 0.2, but a player with much more exp could invest less in dex and more in air shield, and have the same results but with more of another stat point, this means you can either push your levels to reach that 0.2 if you invest enough time, or cheap it out with dex at the cost of another stat point, I think that could work.
     
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  8. A'chelata

    A'chelata Avatar

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    that could absolutely work, would give players multiple options to reach the cap, and would not destroy the use of air shield in the process, so i'm absolutely positive that they will not choose that option, as it would go against the goal to punish players, that is indeed the whole premise of the game according to @Lord British , and they are quite good at it, as evidenced by the complete meltdown of their customer base over the development time of this game. You can argue development choices all you want to, but you can't argue the facts and numbers through those years. Do ya'll realize we barely have 1% active players of the original backers of this game? That is a record breaking spiral of customer loss that should be used as a course study in how not to develop a game in the name of an 'industry legend' supported by 'industry professionals'. I don't think it's possible to have done worse, short of closing the game, which they almost did. How many times to you have to hit your head on the wall before you realize it hurts?

    Robert is definitely an anomaly, and he definitely has put a ton of xp and high end gear into his build, but he is the exception, not the rule. There is an easy fix, and there is a fix that will piss off and alienate a much bigger percentage of the pitifully small player base. I think robert can survive just fine with a .2 cap, he may not be happy with it, and i wouldn't blame him too much, but it isn't just his air shield that makes him the great player he is.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2020
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  9. Violet Ronso

    Violet Ronso Avatar

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    Hahahaha I actually busted out laughing reading that!.

    And yes, Robert is an exception, I'm just stating that these exceptions are going to become much more common over time.

    Also, I think that a big part of the very vocal player base that argues changes and balancing don't always see the whole picture, and I'll admit I did get heated with changes without seeing the whole picture, an example being the new potion skills. At first, when I compared them both, I consider the potion effectiveness passive stupidly too weak, common, +33% at lvl 100, that means my strength potion does 20 instead of 15, big woo-hoo. What I did not consider is ALL the possible potions I could take at the same time, this means at GM I can get + 5 Strength, +5 Dex, +5 INT, tons of regen, movement speed, attack speed, and even more dex (and some dodge) from the shadow potion, resistances too, so basically that +5 turned into a +100, but I was too tunnel visioned on 1 specific impact. I think too many tunnel vision on one thing, become outraged, simply because this game has way too many micro complexity systems that make a tiny change result in multiple possible outcomes.

    I think a good idea for the Friday streams would be one where Chris goes over the balance changes and explains them to show us why some changes seem minuscule while others seem huge, yet all of them make 100% sense when you see the whole picture. I started playing Teamfight Tactics on my phone, and the main dev does this on YouTube, and trust me, I did not complain about a single change because everything made so much sense when wearing his goggles instead.
     
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  10. Ravalox

    Ravalox Chief Cook and Bottle Washer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    Note: I have changed the title of this thread removing the indication of a Nerf being expected. As we have not indicated this, the title is misleading. The issue has been verified, but has not yet been reviewed or worked on by the Dev team. Though it is possible that a change may be required, this has not yet been discussed.
     
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  11. Violet Ronso

    Violet Ronso Avatar

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    You know, we are simply very passionate!
     
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  12. A'chelata

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    Good ideas (from the people who actually play the game) has never been a problem. Implementation of those ideas has always been the issue. Instead, we get decision after decision, or delay after delay (this is the year we fix loot, right?) that has continued to eviscerate the player base until we are where we are. I'm not impressed, not in the least.
     
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  13. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    This!

    BTW, how does barding figure into the issue?
     
  14. A'chelata

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    Someone pointed to barding as another dex boost, and suggested that we kill bards to prevent that extra dex from being used for this air shield purpose. Sounds about right.

    We have all of these developers who have worked on this project through the years, but evidently not one serious businessman who understands customer base and numbers. If we had even 10% of our original backers playing and supporting the game, we would have had sooooooooo much more $$ to develop the game faster and richer with content and it could snowball into serious success. Basic business metrics are universal, not limited to a single industry. Can ya'll tell that all this pisses me off to no end? Geeze, it wasn't that hard, and you had a built in 60k customer base at the start.

    I'm going to take my blood pressure medicine and stop posting. Like most scenes in this game, it's just not worth the effort.
     
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  15. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    My apologies for the title. I just know that if something elevates some small group to godhood then it will be adjusted; usually to the detriment of all.
     
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  16. A'chelata

    A'chelata Avatar

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    it's hard to use a scalpel when your toolbox is full of sledge hammers.

    Dammit! I said i was stopping. *grumbles unintelligibly*
     
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  17. Barugon

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    I might give this a try to help my crap-gear-using self get a little boost. I really would prefer they fix Blind though.
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2020
  18. Asclepius

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    I TOTALLY support a cap on air shield rather than a nerf. I call myself an “average” player, and mostly run solo due to random logins. The last nerf was disheartening, I had achieved a transfer rate of 0.4 and was pushing for 0.3. I was instantly bumped back to 0.5 and am still showing 0.4 (actual around 0.37). With my build I think 0.3 is eventually attainable- I’m good with that, just don’t shift the goalposts again. A cap at 0.2 sounds more than fair - very few will actually get there and the whole player base should not be hurt because of one or two aberrant players.
     
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  19. King Robert

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    Robert has not got .0 ever .......
     
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  20. Girlsname

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    Valiant Warden + .2 air shield...

    Maybe this is another issue.

    ;)
     
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