New Combat Focus regen rate is way too low :D

Which is unfortunately, I think, the diametric opposite of what they were shooting for. But that's ok, they are pretty good at that, ie:

Robust Combat System = who can stack cards in a deck the best?
Meaningful PvP = kill the bastard that just pickpocketed you clean
Consequential Actions = you just killed 2 mobs, consequentially you are now so worn out you must rest longer than it took you to kill them

C'mon guys, it's not freaking rocket science . . . . or are you specifically shooting for a 20k, at your peak, customer base? Let me give you a tip that might hit closer to home . . . imagine ....... if each item you had in your cash shop had a potential customer base of 250k instead of just 5k . . . . . that only happens if you design a game that has 'fun' involved in 85% of all systems and functions.

 

I agree on all your points above @Grumpy .
And you sum'd it up well with next one:

That pretty much sums up the current state of mob combat.
Which, as you have noted, is not good.........

 

Ok i laughed
Funny stuff indeed

 

Here's another of my favorite posts of recent:

And, once again, I agree completely.

 

That will teach us to have fun grinding.

"Hey! Grinding is supposed to be boring and filled with frustrating deaths. Quick! to the test lab, we must find a way to making boring tasks more boring. People are just simply having too much fun playing our 1000 ways to die in Sosaria simulator"

*Dramatized re-enactment" any likeness, impression, or hidden meaning is strictly by chance as all words have been changed from their original context to protect the identify of the victims involved.

 

Most of us accept the necessity of the grinding, the thousands upon thousands of mobs that one must kill to advance skills, even a single point, at higher levels.
Accept that, create a long term goal, whatever. Grind grind grind. There's no reason to make the grind more tedious than it already is.

Out of combat regen is fine, I got no issue with that.
My issue is when I press Z to leave combat, I have to wait 8-10 seconds for that to even happen most of the time, before the regen even kicks in. If I could leave combat and move myself to safety while regenerating, fine. If I'm going to be stuck in combat all the time, the combat regen needs to be better. As of now its practically nonexistent.

This is to say nothing of course of actually having to keep fighting. Most fights for me now I use skills for the first half then autoattack it while waiting for focus for the second half, occasionally having enough focus to cast something.

 

My problem is that when I'm not in combat mode and I'm attacked then I automatically go into combat mode but my weapon is not drawn and I have to wait for skills to cool down before using them.

 

Yes, kind of a related issue. If I just had the option of choosing not to engage, or to disengage and utilize the out of combat regen rate, that would ameliorate most of my issue with the focus. However if something hits me, it puts me in combat, even if I'm not hitting back, and nerfs the regen rate down to 1 focus per second. This forces most fights to end with autoattacking for crap damage while getting beat on. There's just no reason for this, it enhances gameplay experience in no way whatsoever just adds time sink. People adjust to kill things they can kill with a full focus bar and that's it. We'll then sit and wait for focus. There's already far too much sitting and waiting - spend about 20 hours a week staring at the refining screen for crafting. If I go out and do something, I don't wanna sit and wait!

 

Lol this thread is all over the place from threats, to begging, to everything is fine as it is. This is definitely development. It is an emotional roller coaster at times. I have made the new armor pieces and weapon for my healing spec. I am noticing a big difference by changing armor to heal in. Hopefully and truly I say hopefully everyone else is trying everything they can to use what is in the game.

To just magically put focus and fizzle rates back and not consider the reasons for them will be such a waste imo. I do see some really good comments here as well. Now if Chris tells us what the reason is and that it is so we make potions, buffs, food, armor stats more viable then this what we have to do. I am not convinced there is no reason for the changes. If the counters to the changes are not viable then why have them.

So I say check it out and post your comments. Don't have it be fix it or I'm leaving. How about here is what I've done, and here is what I see from it. We are being developed this very moment. This will help us all in the long run. Get a grip, well please. I am not getting enough info from reading this thread the way it is being done. Imagine how Chris feels. He needs to know. Tell us what you are doing and what you have tried along with your complaints, and I'm not saying that some have not done this. To fix the system all the variables have to be known well IMO.

 

+1 to "I like the current focus regeneration, makes it challenging and asks for food. Before, food was useless."

 

My issue isn't necessarily with the combat regeneration rates; it's more to do with the down time. Standing around waiting is simply not fun.

 

and why. Most games have it. You have to even 'sit' to regen in many games or stop and eat food. Not liking it does not make it reason enough to change it. It is important to make you use what's available to improve it if you have little patience for it. So what are you using and are they helping?

 

I understand that, it still doesn't mean that it has to be that way. Anyway, if you look at all the suggestions I've made so far then you'll note that most of them have to do with "recovering" from non-combat mode (since that's where we now spend a large portion of our time).

 

Don't have an issue with food being useful, even though its yet another cash sink and more stuff we gotta carry around, I'm willing to accept that.
But even the higher tier food adds less than 1 focus regen per second. (Bear Surprise - 0.8 focus/sec).
There are two things happening here:

1. In combat focus regen is minimal, once you're out of focus, you're done. Autoattack it to death or run away if its not close enough to dead, you're not gonna get enough juice back to do any sort of sustained fighting. If you're a mage with no autoattack, well, sucks to be you. If you're lucky enough that what you're fighting isn't hurting you a lot, you can stand there for 45 seconds whiffing at it with autoattacks if you want, but this is not fun nor engaging nor challenging nor requiring any skill - its basically standing there watching your character hit something and you've not got the focus to do anything other than wait.

2. Downtime between fights is increased due to slow disengagement from combat, increasing chance of additional spawns killing you or simply adding an unnecessary 10 second wait before you can even start to regen. Downtime is also exacerbated by having to wait for all your glyph cooldowns to spool up when you are changing back into combat.

Some people have issue with one, or the other, or both.
Food does not do enough to solve the problem.
Potions can't be used in combat unless you give up a precious slot, and cost so much to make they aren't really viable because its yet another cash sink on top of food scrolls gear repair kits etc. etc. etc. etc.


I get that we want these things to be useful, but for once it would be nice if instead of making regen worse, the items that we're supposed to use were made more enticing.


It doesn't help that at the same time we got hit with a massive focus nerf, a life attunement penalty was added to tap soul - the one skill that helps with focus regen - and that aetheric feedback has either been intentionally nerfed to uselessness or is broken, as it currently doesn't regen any additional focus. If aetheric was fixed that would solve most of my issues.


Another option would perhaps be to review the focus costs of skills, if this is the intended regen rate? Skills costing 20 focus on average for me, 1 focus regen per second, menas every 20 seconds I can do something? Really?

 

and why are you asking why? It is not just about the time you have to spend on things, imo it is about how do you counter that? These counters cannot be free and painless. If the reason for having the down time was just to have the down time then that would not make sense, but I don't think that is the reason. There has to be a reason for it. Look at all the things that give you less out of combat downtime. This is what needs to work and be balanced, not the downtime. Well IMO looking beyond what you see.

 

I know there needs to be balance but, from my perspective, the focus regeneration nerf made the game a lot less fun. I think some things could be done to alleviate that, like decreasing the cooldown when entering combat and automatically drawing a weapon when being forced into combat mode.

 

In a way perhaps it made it not as much fun but it also gave us an opportunity to look at how to fix it other ways. This part is working as intended, we need to try to solve the puzzles we are given. I do understand what you are saying as well, so I guess we will just see. Make sure you ask the questions for the hangout that will help the game in this and not just because. We need to know the reasons and counters.

 

*if* this focus regen is intended I can't see the reasoning behind it.

Essentially you have a ceiling to paint and you brought a ladder which is too short to reach. Instead of getting a bigger ladder (making food better and therefore worthwhile) the devs decided to lower the ceiling (nerf focus regen). I can't see this being by design but was more likely a result of laziness. They could have spent a couple of days coming up with how to change food to be more useful, made all the changes to the individual recipes, checked for balance etc etc or they could have just gone into the database and changed the focus regen rate from a 2 to a 1 with 5 minutes work.

 

Just to add my thoughts. The regen rate for focus is making the game disjointed because so many time outs are necessary. I'm grinding mobs now for skills gain and tabbing out to read forums etc as I await a full focus bar. This is not immersive. It's making the grind even more 'grindy'

Please reconsider what you have implemented and look again.

 

with all the spells, innates, potions, foods, and glyphs and stances, there shouldnt be any downtime unless you like downtime... I play and farm massive pulls and never have any downtime even when im grouped and even when i skip all harvesting. stop being cheap and go find your local alchemist and butcher/master chef and give her/him some work, enough qq, more pewpew, spend those gold coins and give these hard working crafters some work!