Can't switch modes for another boss anymore?

How is that game going now ?

 

I think they “survived” till 2013 and since 2014 or 2015 there is some kind of private server......but I'm not sure.
Anyway it doesn’t matter if they were successful or not. If one of the thousands of systems/ideas is good why not adjust the idea. Nearly nothing anywhere is really new just adapted or used in a different way.

 

the idea of having dynamic mobs strength and spawns for all scenes is very good.
We had that in Tabula Rasa, where instances become harder and were dynamically adjustet on players levels.
I think this would be a very good feature to SotA.
Imagine not having tiers for scenes, but adjustet spawns to your groups or solo strength?!?

 

I think tiers would be still good to represent the general danger of an area and should remain.
But the dynamic adjustment for mobs in a region sounds interesting even if there are some concerns to think about. E.g. if an adventure level 120+ avatar is entering a region it could be impossible for “normal” avatars to fight the monsters…I think some mmo’s bypass this problem by adjusting the damage/health of the monsters in real time. E.g. for a level 57 avatar the monster will be also level 57 but for the level 89 avatar also the monster will be level 89…but I do not like that solution as it is not understandable why a monster should adjust his level to fit his opponent.

But maybe within some kind of range the difficulty of enemies could be change depending on the avatars in a scene.

E.g. in a tier 1 scene the monsters are normally level 5-10.
If more than 2 avatars are in the scene the level of all respawning enemies raise by 20% (level 6-12)
If more than 5 avatars are in the scene the level of all respawning enemies raise by 40% (level 7-14)
...
For each avatar with an adventure level that is twice the max normal level (in this example 20+) there is added additional 5% to that level calculation of the respawn.
And maybe there is a max level for tier 1 like level 20. No matter how many avatars are in a tier 1 scene at some point all respawning enemies are level 20. (and maybe just in tier 5 there is no such limit)

 

or just only available in S/FMO???

 

Nope. The RNG was even more your enemy. The most fun was a drop slot which was a 100% drop, where 98%+ of the time it was the item nobody wanted, and 2% of the time it was the godly item everybody wanted, and it was a force spawn with limited availability of the pop item. And they would both be Rare/Ex (can't have two, can't trade), which means if everybody in the party already had one, the crappy item would never appear in the loot pool, further lowering morale. FFXI, especially in the earlier years (before 2009 or so) was really hardcore harsh.

That might work in a raid area, but not when people can join and leave at any time. It's also kind of a lame mechanic, there really should be things in an MMO world that nobody (or almost nobody, players can be very resourceful) can solo.

 

WOOT! New griefing mechanism! I'm gonna level up way high and sit in noob zones so they can't kill anything!

 

WoW forced you to do an entire dungeon before a boss, you kill the boss, and it almost always drops something nice (to the point where alot of those nice things werent rare), then the game knows you completed it and locked you out for a long time. Since the items were character bound, there is no issue with people having multiple accounts to farm and sell the good items and flood markets with them.

One of the things they want to do with the economy of this game is to be sure there are very valuable and rare drops. And also to ensure there is substantial value behind crafted gear as well.

Simply adding greater artifact drop chance and slowing respawn is not the answer because many have several accounts, and if a artifact dropped constantly from a boss, the person with 6 accounts would bring them in like they were harvesting cotton. Then they would have no real value.

So what's the answer? How do you preserve:

The ability to feel value from drops
The freedom to explore areas when you choose
The value and rarity of the items people are after
The freedom to trade/sellt he dropped rare items
The desire to use player-created goods?

 

The bosses in WoW felt like bosses, honestly SOTA bosses don't. They feel like the elites in WoW.

 

But there is a fundamental difference in what SotA wants to have in thier game that WoW decided they could sacrifice in theirs to achieve what they have now. Those differences are listed int he post you quoted and are some of the reasons they arent forcign scripted fights, character bound drops, 100% drop rates, and dungeon lockouts like WoW does.

What portalarium is trying to do is to preserve those things i listed. And they do need to do it in a more exciting way, but simply increasing loot and respawn is not going to accomplish it.

 

You add a quest hoop to jump through.

You get to pick up X pseudo-repeating quest which reset for that player in Y time.
X picks from a list where you don't get the same twice in a row. Which prevents farming a specific boss.
The quests need you to perform Z number of subtasks before going for the boss.
Defeating/Solving the boss flags the individual player's quest. Which lets players team up but only quest holders get the flag.
Then the quest reward XX gives a guaranteed nice loot pack with a high drop rate of Rares.

This lets you control XYZ parameters on an individual level. Which you can then get metrics and toggle up or down to your hearts content.

For instance you could have RND.X++ per quest solved. So that the more quests you've done the higher the X random roll is.
Or the larger the number of Y tasks.
Or the Xx reward drop gets lower the more times you have done that particular X quest line.

Then add two quest givers (one good and one obsidian) and sprinkle generously with flavor and lore.


However that takes work and planning. Something a shoestring project doesn't necessarily have.

 

It's essentially dead but not for the reasons you might believe in.

Quests were extremely buggy, the game suffered from performance issues, poor matchmaking (10 vs 3 in a scenario wasn't fun) and one faction was basically dominating every server due to overpopulation and class/race imbalance. The devs refused to address the issues and kept the game in a poor state long enough for the entire player-base to jump ship.

The public quest system in Warhammer Online is possibly the best iteration/execution of the idea to date. The quest/backstory/bestiary/achievement book thing was not only the best quest-log UI I've seen in any game, it puts others to shame. The trophy-style character decorations made each player unique and the crafting system was also pretty good.

Folks participating in PvE would directly influence the progress PvPers had and the victories from PvP gave bonuses to the PvEers.

So "How is that game going now?", well it's an EA published game... so that should answer your question.

You look at what Diablo 2 did and you fix the gold inflation issue it had.

 

I heard Themo was the leader of the big guild in the dominant faction <.<