Game is WAY Too Easy

I will speculate and say that maybe 10% of the player base can solo high level content so saying the game is WAY too easy may be true for them but not the other 90% of us.

If it's too easy, go do the Rise and fight Coral Slimes, massed mages and Obsidian trolls, the Clockwork Dragon in Blood Bay, the Ghost Corpion, the new Ancient Dragon, etc. etc.

I strongly disagree that the game is WAY too easy....at least for the other 90% of us.

P.S. I also respect the massive amount of time it takes folks to get to where they can solo high level so nerfing them, or abilities they have, is NOT the answer either.

 

Who me? Overemphasize something?! Never! You're probably right... but word on the street is it's pretty easy. And when we open to the masses, a lot of power gamers will descend on us. Not sure what the goal is there.

 

And I have none.

I'm not saying that what you're saying is untrue, I'm saying that what you're saying is only true if certain conditions are met.

 

I don't think there's an objectively right amount of difficulty in a game, nor is there a correct specific amount of content that "can not be soloed" even in a multiplayer game.

It's really a function of the player base the developers are trying to reach. Whatever that playerbase wants is the right amount... and the business question is whether there is enough of that playerbase to keep a company afloat and keep a multiplayer game viable.

Now I like myself a good group oriented game. I like group (and multi-group) content. But I'm not sure it's needed to keep a multiplayer community thriving. It's needed if that's the thing that draws in that specific community.

From what I can see, SotA does a great job of intertwining the community through the crafting and gathering linkages to adventuring. Crafters make the gear, gatherers gather and sell the materials, adventurers buy the gear... and most people do at least a bit of at least a pair of those three things. If I'm reading that right, it really doesn't matter if the PVE content requires a group or not. What matters is that playing the game requires you to interact at some level with other players some of the time. It's not the hook that hooks me, but it's a hook and it might be the right hook here. That it doesn't hook me doesn't mean I'm not a customer, just that the main hook of the multiplayer game isn't my draw... the game has other draws to it (the world you can live in comes to mind).

It's an important question to raise and an interesting discussion all the same.

 

The vibe I get from this thread is that "solo players are doing something they should not be allowed to do".

I'd offer that many of us play SOTA in a way other than following a high level party around, then later using that pooled experience to whack a dummy to level up as many GMs as possible as fast as possible. There are those of us taking our sweet old time, smelling the roses (of lower level content) along the way, plodding along training a number of skills more slowly in a balanced approach instead of min/maxing one at a time. And that we now can actually slay a more difficult monster, or navigate sieges smartly, is not something that we have done to take advantage of the game so much as it is something that we have earned....often without much help from others...or a training dummy. No reason this form of progress shouldn't be allowed to continue.

The training dummy on the other hand...maybe there is something to be examined there.

 

I take exception to the "any player" comment there, @Brass Knuckles
"Any player" who has help or who has 8 hrs/day may be able to, but that's not the "average" new player.
If a "new" player is truly "new" (IE - knows nothing about SotA prior to starting) and has no assistance from other knowledgeable players - would find it quite difficult to hunt a Tier 5 after only a month of playing.

 

What how - - - I argued this EXACT scenario L O N G ago and was told over and over that it not a big deal and would not be an issue . . . ITYS

Now the sad thing is it has already been abused and manipulated and as a result those of us that are in this scenario are reaching the point of "end Game" there is not much left or much reason. This sis till done in under a year which is / was to fast :-(

Ah well what do I know

 

Just curious @Gix - What's your AdvLvl and how many skills do you have at between 80 & 99 ?

 

I cannot solo any bosses or sieges with my archer who is level 85. Disagree.

 

Instead of making existing content harder or unattainable, I wish the focus would be on creating new content to be harder and leaving the existing content as is.

 

I’m in early 60s now and [Blade] and [Acrobatics] are the only skills I have at level 80. [Silent Movement] and [Opportunity Strike] closing in at level 73-ish.

I can do a full diagnosis of my character stats if you want

 

About Greymark...have you run into one of the new Reavers there yet?

About sieges...I can solo some of them at 95 (104 boosted with necklace and devotional). Depends on which bad guy shows up, and/or how many of them. Soloing a siege takes me a decent amount of time (probably 30-40 minutes? I fight cautious) and hardly ever is there a drop. So yeah...I can solo some sieges. I sometimes die trying some cabalists, A few I just run from because they aren't remotely doable for me. A few of them are relatively easy. I like the variety in the cabalists' difficulty levels.

I think I have 20 GMs now. The new Reavers aren't entirely cake - I've run into two so far, in Greymark and in Whispering Woods. Both dropped...wood.

Not sure I agree that sieges should automatically be group though, it's pretty cool to free a town from one on my own when it works. What I would like is a parade in my honor.

I do hope to see some zones added that are in between tier 5 and the Rise. But here's the thing at the high end...the line for solo between totally beatable and totally not doable is very thin. Most of the time you either know a way to beat it and then it's pretty simple (daemon, monkey room), or there isn't a way (or you aren't willing or correctly skilled to use it). The right way from here is by adding things like the Reavers, IMO. Stuff that you won't know whether it's gonna show up or not, and you gotta pay attention to when to fight and when to run.

Kinda like that wizard at the back end of Grannus Colossus - not that he randomly pops, just the first time I was there someone must have killed him. When he did pop it upset my whole apple cart.

What I mean is designing zones where there is still value solo, but then there's either areas you have to skirt or wandering mobs to watch out for, or random zone changes that will get you in trouble if you're not on your toes - those make grouping up a lot of fun, and still offer some solo fun playing the "doable spots" and watching your ass.

Also, bigger damn zones some day please k thx. Some of the newer ones are getting there (Grannus, K'rawl, Blood Bay).

And put our old Sequanna camps back somewhere new and improved! I miss those dudes.

As far as those who pull down 1 mil XP per hour, more power to you. Too boring - but good on ya as my Aussie friend says. I pull down around 200k xp an hour on average...when I am fighting and not crafting or shopping or talking or any of a lot of other things.

Someone in this string commented that most GMs take 1.2 mil XP. Those are the active skills, they are hardly worth taking to 100. The passive skills take far more than that.

P.S. My Aussie friend throws that "good on ya" thing both ways, I've noticed. I meant it in the non-sarcastic way.

 

Oh I am not saying everything is easy for me, not at all! I'm with you casual folks for sure. This is more what I've been exposed to in my (many hours in-game but not all combating) experience. My husband and another friend have said these things and I know from experience in other MMOs that the game has to be challenging (and reward those that beat the challenges) to people that are not casual or just really, really good at games!

And thank your for explaining the "good on you" thing. I understood but can see how someone would take it as overtly sarcastic! <3

 

Just want to point out, that the game is about one's path to these three virtues and how you stack up. That continues (hopefully E2-5) Not about how many GM's one has. Personally I think the end game comes E 5.

 

Love ya Ally but I disagree a bit - I think any game you will have those above the bell curve that can do this sorta thing, but the majority of us will find it difficult.. sure there’s stuff we might be able to do, but we’ll die every now and then enough to be frustrated and not get too powerful too fast..

Making the game too hard will just frustrate the majority to the point of leaving or doing something they find fun and rewarding.. kinda like if teleport and recall were removed or restricted ..

One solution I would propose is a “hardcore” mode that people could opt-into - that might require things like sleeping in a bed, eating food, using an outhouse, weather effects (different gear in different biome ), etc - which might offer some level of increased reward..

 

well.. there IS that little nagging XP requirement but ya.. given enough XP anything can be GM'd. Fwiw though.. merely having GM's or adv lvl isn't a guarentee of being able to slaughter stuff at will.. the time comes when experience (differentiated from Adv XP) is required. You need to know how best to use your skills etc. Trust me on this lol.. I die to stuff that's embarrassing that people lvl's below me handle without issue. You can mindlessly grind away (as I have done) on one thing and then get your ass totally handed to you in other situations. In any event... with the new changes YAY coming to grouping, I'd be surprised if we don't see more mob tweaks coming.

 

Didn't mean things were easy for you, I was actually just asking about whether you'd seen the reaver addition yet. It's a cool add IMO, and they're harder than I expected.

I pretty much agree with your original point, just not necessarily about sieges. I feel kinda bad when I just walk by one and can't do anything for the town, it's nice to be able to do something.

I really feel like they're adding more layered content, though. The Kobold Expeditionary Camp is an example, as is Grannus Colossus. The problem except maybe Grannus is that they're too damned small and the content levels aren't varied enough. In the Kobold camp, you've got one tough guy in the middle and the major difficulty addition around him is just numbers - it's the sheer number of kobolds near him,and more of them being ranged/magic.

What I hope to see some day is a much bigger zone, with some badass patrollers that you have to pay attention to avoiding, where the content level greatly varies.

My presumption is that everything here is intentionally small because the servers/infrastructure can't handle it. Gotta spin up separate instances. That's (at least currently) seriously limiting what can be done from a zone design/content challenge standpoint, I think. They're staying away from many of the things they would love to do, I think. Load times and efficiencies are part of it, definitely.

Like, even look at Blood Bay, it's pretty huge...but there's not really all that much in it.

I'm wandering from the point of the thread now.

tl;dr I agree with you.

 

Ok fair point, I guess barugon and mac are the perfect examples of this. Barugon just hit 8 gms and I remember mac at a cp in r36 (4 months after persistance) with about 70 gms for refrence dingle had 117 at this point. So play style and comitment do really matter.

 

Can you solo the Sieges?

 

100% agree on this !