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Focus cost has increased

Discussion in 'Release 31 Feedback Forum' started by Vaclav, Jul 1, 2016.

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  1. Lord Andernut

    Lord Andernut Avatar

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    I think you have some useful feedback for devs here, but I think your comments about devs making "Knee-jerk, off-the cuff" changes could be applied to your own post a little bit. You might be getting incredibly angry over what was an accidental change, or that might be part of a series of changes. They're balancing combat/damage/focus costs and inevitably will go too far in one direction or the other.

    I was just reading your post and boiled it down to:

    -Focus Costs are increasing with skill level (which I believe is known)
    -Increasing your focus pool causes spells to use more focus (that sounds weird to me if ALL spells work off percentage of your focus!)

    If you have 100 focus and your firebolts cost 10 focus each, you get 10 firebolts.
    If you wear a helm that gives you an extra 100 focus, and all your firebolts now cost 20 to cast and give the same amount of damage and still just 10 firebolts that sounds like a bug and probably not working as intended.
     
  2. agra

    agra Avatar

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    Punishing the player by improving? How can that possibly be considered a good thing?

    Simple example:
    I start the game. New character. I want my character to be specialized. I specialize in using a limited number of glyphs in combat. As a result of this specialization, my focus cost rapidly rises to be more than 20% of my focus pool, per cast.
    As a result, I can cast 5 glyphs, and then I'm out of focus.
    My focus pool rises something like 1-3 points per adventure level. My focus costs all rise faster, and in greater proportion, punitively. By reaching GM, I'm punished.

    But the really great part? As a result of a combination of poorly designed and poorly implemented systems like this, there is a calculated sweet spot for every skill where the focus cost vs. damage is ideal. So all the players that "just play" are further punished by exceeding that calculated ideal.

    There is so much wrong with mixing these two types of mechanics it's hard to fathom how they ever thought this would work.
    Just crafting balance alone, never mind all the rest of the core systems in the game... they can't work together with mismatched systems like this.
     
  3. Dariog

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    Well, they recently adjusted the wolves from all running away to attack-if-attacked. Maybe they will soon adjust the focus problem too; I certainly hope so, because it's an even more critical problem than the wolf thing.
     
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  4. Roycestein Kaelstrom

    Roycestein Kaelstrom Avatar

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    Based on what you describe, the coefficients that are used to setting up the focus amount per skill level will need to be adjusted to make it scale with the normal gain rate for INT innate and the INT that comes from ADV level.

    My character is at around lvl 60ish, I have about 460 INT. I can tackle 5-skull multiple mobs at the same time with purely spells: chain lightning, stone fist, earth quake, discharge, the fire AOEs. My total focus only went down to between 1/3 to 1/2 depending on the type of the mobs. Most of the spells I'm using only have the level around 60-70. Perhaps it may drain a lot more should I have all of them near GMs.

    It might still come down to the "manage your skills" principle where you may want to raise your INT to support these high level spell first. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of choosing level 1, 2, 3, .. 10 of the spells to control the amount of focus we want to spend on.

    I agree with you that the current set up may hurt those who "just play" (and not mix/max the system) the most when they specialize on certain favorite skills without raising the INT accordingly.
     
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  5. Lord Andernut

    Lord Andernut Avatar

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    Specializing in a limited number of glyphs may not be as advantageous as also specializing in focus-giving abilities, but useful feedback.

    I think I'm mis-interpretting your previous post.

    Were you saying that increasing your focus pool increased the cost of your skills?

    I think that if you level up a skill to GM without having a character prepared to use that then you will probably find it is not worth the damage increase.

    Perhaps they could have locked you out of higher skill levels by tying it to an adventurer level, but they have given players the flexibility to level up their character as they see fit. I see this as akin to, say, Diablo, if you work your way all the way up the tree to a level 70 skill and you're only at level 10 it is not going to be easy or efficient to cast despite the fact it does massive damage.

    "there is a calculated sweet spot for every skill where the focus cost vs. damage is ideal" - this is pretty useful feedback if that sweet spot is the same for all characters.
    -------------------------------------------------------
    Example:
    Here's an example using how the damage/mana would increase from another game but fictional numbers for convenience.

    Icestorm level 1 - 1-5 damage for 10 mana.
    Icestorm level 2 - 6-10 damage for 15 mana.
    Icestorm level 3 - 8-12 damage for 20 mana.
    Icestorm level 4 - 10-20 damage for 30 mana.
    Icestorm level 5 - 15-20 damage for 60 mana.
    Icestorm level 6 - 20 damage for 100 mana.
    Icestorm level 7 - 22 damage for 150 mana.

    One could argue that level 2 or 3 or 4 is the "sweet spot" depending on your character and that nobody would ever upgrade from level 6 to level 7 in this tree.

    But the "sweet spot" depends on your character's other abilities. So at a certain point level 7 may make more sense because you have other supporting skills that either reduce over-all mana costs, or increase mana regeneration to the point that Icestorm level 7 is now the sweetspot. But if you were to immediately go to level 7 (GM) while at a low character level in other supporting abilities you would find that 150 mana for 22 damage makes no sense when you could get 22 damage for 150 mana when you could get 22 damage for 45 mana at three casts of level 2 Icestorm.
    ---------------------------------------------------


    This mechanic may not carry well to SotA for various reasons, but I'm not shocked/surprised by seeing that as spells increase in power they are not necessarily scaling in focus per damage costs as well.

    For damage you have three things to balance:
    Time per cast.
    Focus per cast.
    Damage per cast.

    It sounds as if leveling up the skill is causing more damage in the same amount of time, and therefore you are doing more damage per second while leveling up your skills - if you level them up quite high you can now really burst out damage but your very high DPS is coupled with a very high FPS (Focus per second, not frames).

    The balance "may not be right" but at least in this case players are being given the choice, you can stop leveling up a skill at any point by sticking it in maintenance mode. We could use better numbers however and the meta-gamers could look for issues in the system where it could be tweaked. It should probably never make sense to keep a skill at level 60. It should only make sense to keep a skill at level 60 until you have supporting skills that allow you to sustain that skill at 100.
     
  6. Arkah EMPstrike

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    If its going up with each level thats cool, i like that. Alot better than casting a spell that hits 3 targets and hitting them all for between 60 and 180 damage and stunning them all for a cost of 6 focus out of a total 500 focus pool.

    If there are any early game issues with it then those should be adressed specifically, but the overall implimentation of this is great
     
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  7. Berek

    Berek Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Yes, in general it should be easier given that your focus pool increasing. It's not meant to be an infinite grab at any point for taking down monsters, let along early in your character's development :).
     
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  8. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Just a few points of clarification.

    Except for spells that do damage, the focus cost for all skills under 40 has not changed in 5+ releases.

    The increase that came about last release was that as skills and spells get more powerful, the cost for them goes up. This only starts for skills over a 40 skill level.

    Before these changes, high level players were unable to run out of mana. Having a focus pool that never runs low except at low levels is pointless. It is supposed to be a limited resource and supposed to force players to actually think about how to best use it. It was never intended that players should be able to use tier 4 or 5 skills spells endlessly without pause.
     
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  9. Dariog

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    I appreciate the clarification, that does make sense. Speaking only for myself, it came as a bit of a shock to find that areas which used to be easy were suddenly difficult to survive again. For example, Crag Foothills ... those skeleton archers have become quite an annoyance, perhaps too much so. A little adjusting here and there might be in order; maybe make the focus cost not quite so high on higher level skills ... and tone down those high-level archers just a little bit.

    As for higher levels players previously being unable to run out of mana ... well, I managed to do just that a few times, and I'm level 88. I do it even more often now. Oh well, maybe I just need to practice more and improve my combat skills. I still enjoy the game.
     
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  10. Isaiah

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    This seems totally fair considering that it does more damage. Also that small amount of focus reduction from using no weapon, or a wand/staff, and the focus reduction we can earn from the focus skill tree will actually become more benificial for us the more we progress as well. What is a 15% focus beifift if all spells max out at 20 focus? It only seems fair that if the spell or skill is more powerful the focus should also require a larger pool, (considering we should have a larger pool at higher levels).

    If it didn't do this then what incentive is there for warriors to increase their focus pool? why not just raise strength and health, or dex? Although warriors do have that benit too since they can charge their attacks. Pure magic users have to consider using other means such as passive stance, and focus potions (all of which are of no value if we have 700+ mana pool and each spell does 15 focus per spell and you regenerate 7 focus per second). All making these focus reductions more valuable to be able to even use the passive stance without it totally making it impossible to cast spells at all.

    I don't see any problem with this at all.
     
  11. Dariog

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    The problem is that it penalizes higher-level characters too much. If the goal is to make the game more challenging and therefore more interesting, I'm all for that; but I think they've overdone just a bit, and need to adjust those focus costs back down some ... not necessarily all the way back down to where they were. I think most folks would consider that a reasonable solution.
     
  12. Mandalar

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    @Chris Thank you for the feedback/information/perspective. I now have an understanding of how to balance my skills/Avatar progression. I "Highly Recommend" adding this information regarding focus costs to your game guide/instructions for commercial release. This information is a must know for future players to establish expectations for game play. Again, thank you for addressing our concern/feedback/question.
     
  13. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    I didn't say that they haven't over shot the mark. However the more powerful character should probably be able to do as many moves or cast as many spells as a character at say level 20. At level 20 we are pretty much novice, but not exactly newbies either. However I wouldn't see a problem if a character with 100s in skills being able to cast as many spells or use as many special attacks as they did at level 20, but the trade off is that they are better attacks, and in some cases significantly better.

    Now each character has the option to increase focus, and also raise skills to reduce focus cost and get equipment that lowers focus cost, and like I mentioned before there are skills and potions that restore focus faster too. So It is possible that some players might have a an above average focus pool for the power of their spells/skills, and some might have less focus pool. Who knows.
    Although in the long run I don't see this being a downside for high level characters UNLESS diminishing returns causes it to be undesirable to progress any further. However I think there are plenty of diminishing returns as far as skill points are concerned anyway so that might not be nessisary, but a fireball that does 20 points of damage to each opponent in the explosion radius probably should require a bit more focus once it starts doing 50 or 100 points of damage to each person in the radius (plus DOT and possibly a larger radius). The reason being is that a higher level character is probably going to have to use less fireballs to do the job as it took at level 20 (using less reagents and less focus) So a person with 700 focus should never need it.

    ******************

    The only thing that concerns me is that if the focus increase is too high that it forces ALL players to take the same exact skills to reduce focus costs. Then that would sort of not be cool. Why should we all be forced to take the same skills? IT should be optional.
     
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  14. Dariog

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    Solaris, you make some good points. Another thing to consider is the fact that the high-level character is going to be facing much tougher opponents than the low-level one. I'm level 88 with 8 GM's, and these increased focus costs have caused me to die in areas that I shouldn't be dying in. On the bright side, I've learned from that and maybe it's made me a better player. I guess there's something good to be said about everything.
     
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  15. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    I haven't been able tobplay for about a week and I restrted my character and never had a chance to develop him yet so I really cannot give personal feedback.

    Between going to parties and the zoo watching my kid all week, I've also had a major migraine that put me down a day and I am still stuck with a dull headache ... so I cannot really bare to look at my desktop's monitor for more than 10 minutes. Heck even my kindle with blue light dimmed is bothering me.

    I need to get back in the game before final wipe for several reasons but I don't think I'm going to find out what that feels like till I gain that level after final wipe.
     
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  16. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    Although I would hope that not every scene scales to our level like that (or at least most cap off at some point). Then leveling might not be that rewarding except for PvP.

    However don't we need places like that to keep leveling as fast? I don't know because I cannot experience it at this point. Although I would hope that zones scaling should have some sort of limit.

    Although I would hope that special points of interest like certain dungeons, towers etc, even low level ones, it would be awesome to scale higher than nonstory based forest areas or whatever.

    To not have a WOW experience where weak dungeons are meant for low level players. Perhaps going back as a higher level player might be fun if it got tougher and had better loot. Although I wonder if that dilutes the player population by spreading players out. Although that isn't muh of an issue except for PvP. Right now there aren't enough people to pvp in shardfalls but who knows howbthat will change in the future.

    To be honest it might actually be more fun for a person flagged pvp to get caught off guard in some place they didn't expect it. Then again maybe not? That is something for down the line at this point the pve is clearly more important.
     
  17. Xi_

    Xi_ Avatar

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    why does everything always seem to get balanced with a penalty? can't you just make it harder to increase your focus?
     
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  18. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    HERES THE BIG KICKER TO ME...

    Is difficulty scaled based upon character level or average skill level??????

    The problem I see here is it is based upon level alone, this will force us to maximize our skills rather than choosing the skills we want based upon being fun or whatever.

    For example a player who is level 80 and has several trees with 100s or higher in lots of skills are more likely to deal better damage than say another level 80 player who decided to keep most of their skills in the 60s to 80s range to have a broad spectrum of skills and alternate decks for different scenarios.

    ****************************************

    It seems like if it is based upon base character level rather than the average of all offensive skills the player has then obviously some players will find they cannot handle scenes very well at all and get overwhelmed as they gain levels (and then that would definitely be a punishment for gaining levels).

    Even averaging the skills a player has can cause people to constrain their decks to only offensive glyphs (since the more offensive dense a deck it already is more efficient at finishing off opponents rather than having decks mixed with non damaging spells like heals and other crowd control that we don't need all the time but is useful at times). While it seems logical that players should have a benifit for building better decks than others, it would still be sad to have a supped up scene based upon an average of skills that we aren't even able to use in the fight.

    **********************************************

    Although it still seems better all around if the game scales based upon an average of your top 20 best combat skills, AND character level. That would be more accurate than basing it only on level, and only on skills. That way a level 50 guy who has 100s in a single focused skill tree won't run into the trouble of missing half the time because their skills are high but their experience is still low (or maybe I don't know enough about how a hit is determined or not).
     
  19. agra

    agra Avatar

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    The focus cost goes up as you get better at it. The focus required to cast the glyph goes up after you reach skill 40 in that glyph.

    Examples:
    R31 fire arrow 20: 6F, flame fist 30: 5F, ice fist 28: 8F, ice arrow 18: 8F, stone fist 24: 6F, obsidian arrow 20: 6F.
    R31 fire arrow 66:10F, flame fist 71: 8F, ice fist 80: 15F, ice arrow 73:14F, stone fist 73: 11F, obsidian arrow 59: 9F.

    Your focus pool goes up slowly with adventure levels, but the focus cost per skill can go up much faster, relatively/comparatively.
    For example, if you really wanted to be a master of water magic, it could be that you could get 80 in ice fist long before you reached 300 focus pool (around adventure level 50) so each cast would be somewhere between 5% and 10% of your focus pool, per ice fist. That means somewhere between 10 and 20 ice fists, and you're OOF. (presuming you get to 150 focus pool around adventure level 8 with cloth starter gear)

    If long fights are going to continue to be part of the storyline or adventure scenes, then focus regen is a pretty big deal now.
    Auto attack (or non-stop free attack) becomes a requirement to sustain DPS on a fight longer than 2 minutes, imo.
     
  20. Dariog

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    For higher level characters, cloth armor with enchantments to increase focus now becomes a necessity. They've also increased fizzle chances rather dramatically, and this makes life a whole lot tougher for anybody who wants to cast spells ... especially if you use heavy armor. However, heavy armor is necessary to have any chance to survive some areas. So, with cloth you cast more spells but you die too quickly; with armor you live longer but you die anyway because you can't cast the spells needed to kill the monsters. Catch-22.

    However ... It's really not as bad as I made it sound there. With a few modifications of strategy, you can do just as well now as before, at whatever level you are. It will just take some practice, and trial and error. We'll all be starting out again at low-level soon, to do it all over again. Just one more time.
     
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