Release 31 has made the game unplayable...

Oddly enough, I dont know if its R31 or the fact that I took my cloak off but last night was the first time in 6 months that I didnt crash at all (3 hours of play and in zones that are notorious crashing zones). Really odd, not one crash.

But they did break my PoT (my best guess is that they locked it and forgot to move it), I cant do anything to it until a patch happens.

 

I'll agree with first sentiment! More fun, not sure about that one.
If I'm fighting an Elf that is my level or below, and crit'ing for 300-500 I shouldnt be at 1/3 mana when the fight is over. I can figure it out, but for a new player that gets one or two casts of a spell before being out, it'd be tough.


I more wondered if you find yourself running out of mana in just regular, run-of-the-mill fights.

Seems so.

 

Just to be clear, I guess my point is there should be a happy medium between 'having so much we dont know what to do with it' and 'I'm always out of mana'.

 

I find all fights to be regular run of the mill fights. This isn't a very sophisticated combat system. If I'm not fighting a troll or something with advanced AI where I have to actively pay attention then I'm just spamming damage spells at whatever is in front of me.

But to answer your question, if I'm fighting one thing I'm using about 100 of my 150 or so focus points to kill it. If I'm fighting multiple things then I start to run out of mana before I can kill the second thing.

I don't understand your logic here. What difference does it make if you crit or don't crit? Your attacks cost X focus. If you're criting then you should have more focus left over, if you're not then you're going to burn through more of it. But your statement seems to assume that because you crit high you shouldn't run out of focus? What?

 

I guess.

I literally (I can't express this enough) LITERALLY fall asleep at the keyboard fighting mobs. I often wake up and find myself just standing there being attacked by two or three mobs and not dying. It's really boring. I don't know how you grinders do it. I assume you script it and go do something with your lives.

But having to manage focus, no longer being able to tab target anything, these are very welcome features to me. I find much of what the OP and some others are crying about is that the game is making people actively pay attention and develop rudimentary player skill that is hard to script.

 

The crits matter. Its a measure of my DPS. If I can do those numbers (occasionally, not every hit) then I shouldnt be running out of mana on any 'normal' mob. It should be killing them way before I'm out of mana. Even if I just get 2 crits in a fight.

Lets not make such assumptions about me. Mostly because none are right.

I'm not arguing mana wasnt too cheap. Just saying in this first iteration they went to far the other way.

 

Still hoping for 0 HP/Focus regen unless you have eaten for HP reg and used a meditaion skill to regain focus this yoyo thing we've had for ever is just depressing IMO

 

Yeah, I kind of spelled that part out immediately after the sentence you quoted. The question I had for you was, "But your statement seems to assume that because you crit high you shouldn't run out of focus?" You would know better than I would why if you're criting at 300-500 twice and the thing still isn't dead, why that's happening. Does it have 6000 hit points? Is the regen rate increased? Are all of your non-crits doing 5 points of damage? It's a question I can't answer, but you should be able to answer.

On a macro level, maybe Chris just wants you to stop being able to solo whatever you're fighting?

I wasn't pointing my figure at "you" I was using the term "you" to point at a broad base of players. I have no idea what "you" do or don't do.

Perhaps, or maybe you're playing the game in a way that Chris is no longer encouraging? I have no idea, I've only made it into the 50's a few times and that took heroic non-exploiting powers by me to achieve.

From my perspective, it's hard for me to fathom doing 300 to 500 crit damage to begin with. Yet I did kill a Troll solo (wearing basic cloth) when I was level 44 or something.

 

Like it or not.. it IS still pre-alpha by Portalarium's definition (alpha being "feature complete") they've gone with since kickstarter.. and it probably still will be for awhile after final wipe. I get the argument but people need to get it into their skulls that final wipe is NOT the same thing as release. No amount of rational or debate is going to change that. There WILL still be a lot of bugs and polish, tweaking and new features still left to do after final wipe hits. Nothing is going to change that and what will come will come.

Public opinion from all sides is one of the pitfalls of developing in the open.. we can't let the process be driven solely by worry that people will have a negative outlook on a release and that everything much be perfect and everyone happy before a release goes out. Especially when they're committed to releasing every month all the way to the end of development sometime after EP5. They miss that deadline and people would be screaming broken promises (only they'd actually have a legitimate excuse).

Or would you prefer all development be behind closed doors until the game is ready for beta so we wouldn't have to worry about bad steam reviews?

 

Maybe you're right.
This time around I've not played much. My only GM's are in crafting (Alch and Smithing woot! ) I'm not in the upper echelon of players this wipe, and totally fine with it! Yet I'm still level 88 and can DPS with best of em (just no defense! )
As for exploits I dont know, I grind, I dont exploit either.

 

Inner Calm: 78
Intelligence: 48

 

Again, not trying to say you do or don't do anything. My comments are towards the general population (I should make that more clear, my bad).

 

Oh yeah!

I meant to add this to one of my posts above but forgot. I think another advantage to the focus drain (improvements!) is that it balances out magic and melee a little better. We've had so many hybrid characters running around doing it all that many people probably don't know how to manage their focus effectively, all their points going to strength and dexterity, or whatever gave them the most hit points.

 

We have fixes in place for some of these going in next patch (auto attack losing focus and L/R mouse button movement). We are examining the combat balance issues as well.

The cloth crashes we are looking at but they are Unity threading issues that are inside the engine that we have to work around to stop so they are incredibly problematic.

 

Have to disagree, when 8 experienced players that are lvl 84+ can't hold a CP past the first few waves, it's not a balance improvement, it just renders the current end game content unplayable.

 

I wont be Playing until mouse key bindings are fixed...its hard to have fun being forced to use mouse keys you use for something else.
I know its development ...but really..

 

That will be soon, maybe today.

 

Patch is up but not the notes yet.

 

We are working on a patch we hope to put out this evening that will bring back the mouse button movement concern and a few other things. Please standby while we try our best to get this to you before the holiday weekend.

 

Interesting.. and how long do you suppose 8 high level players should be able to hold a control point? How many is a few?

This is a genuine question as I don't know how tough it is or how many is a 'few'.. but I would think high level players would want a challenge so it seems odd to complain about getting a thrashing now and then.