Nerf Envy Bow

Because you can only hit that in a certain moment of a fight. These skills can't be compared to normal charged attack or common skills like aimed.

 

Excuses, excuses.

 

OK, so I spent about 4 hours in all constantly farming the stupid woman, no bow.. I dont play often and this is part of why, when I do farm the "in thing" some moron comes trying to KS it cos as an archer half your hits are like 20 and then you might get some good 400+ damage ones, but few, whereas cos you already have agro the moron can go stand behind let forth a fluffy of good damage from behind and then tada, coup de grace and hes done.

I dont mind grind, hell Ive played everquest on and off for 19 years.. mostly on. But, I dont have great gear, cos chewing through your gear with damage is dull to have spent a load of money on it, buffs dont last out a fight, and its just tiresome.. Im not the kind person who logs in a game and expects to find groups so I go about my life.. always have.. so sure, my lvl 99 character could be way higher if I joined every UT group going, but playing for 20-25 mins then stopping for the rest of the hour feels rather crap..

 

He also said that polearms would be getting a nerf too.

 

They should nerf mages also imop soooo many zeros sure they are no other numbers in front of those zeros it’s still op

Oh wait wrong thread sorry carry on!

 

You ever have a really good line in your head, but you don't want to use it for fear of giving anybody ideas?

 

No never has that happen either, I try not to think to much about what I’m saying. Hurts less that way.

 

It most certainly can be compared. With specialization at 100 what percent of the fight is it available? And keep in mind its in a tree that already has an off the chart dps skill that also does a healing debuff...oh yeah and it stacks 3 times. Oh yeah, and it can be done with any decently crafted swords. No need to farm a 30k spider to get it. Oh yeah it might as well be ranged cause once its applied you can go sit in the Prancing Pony and drink a beer while it ticks. Oh yeah, it also hits like a truck EVERY time it is applied. No need to crit it to be effective like every range skill. yeah range needs a nerf, yup mmm hmmmm

again, none of my comments are aimed at PvP.

 

You need % of mob's hp to be able to use one skill (as you already said too) and melee range. If you want I can post again 1500-2000 dmg hits from 20-30 meters (you dont need the old envy bow for this).... if thats balance for you, then I don't have nothing more to say.

I agree about no need to keep nerfing stuff, coz every items should be tested before launch to the live server. What we should stop now is push devs to nerf more weapons because our lovely ranged tree was nerfed.

To avoid all these dramas they should start testing all new items on QA, playing more (devs) and allowing players to test all new things related to combat.

 

I think we are on the same basic page @Rada Torment . You may be seeing range hits I'm not seeing and I'm certainly not the one scoring them. I actually don't care how big the big hits are(thou I like bit hits I can't deny)...I more care about the avg of the hits. I totally get random large hits in PvP might be annoying but in the grand scheme of PvE its a non issue as long as the avg over time is something reasonable.

BTW, any skill tree thats basically at max dps while its just hitting free shot after free shot is pretty questionable.

 

Nerfing ranged next release? These releases just keep getting better and better.

 

This may seem irrelevant at first.. but watch this.. this sums up to me where sota has killed off some of my interest and why things like eq live on well for me.. and more over.. raises towards the end the exact questions in my head.



In short, why do people what games dumbed down when actually its more compelling and forfilling when its harder.

Nerfs happen in every game. There were times in EQ when necros rulled the world.. (this image sums it up)

 

This isn't about adhering to rigid promises. Those promises are already broken. Like, shattered with a sledgehammer.

But if the vision truly was for player crafting to be relevant then the best in slot artifact nonsense has got to stop. You talk about fun experiences for PvE, you think a new player coming in wants to be told that in order to be an effective mage they need to cough up half a million gold, to buy their dolus/sages/warlock chain, and their elemental rings and then all the gold/silver to enchant/mw their artifacts ... or they can just forget about it? Or a new archer given their shopping list of required artis, and so on and so forth. Go forth and grind until you have these items or money to buy em. And then you are done on gear.

I'm 100% with you that the state of crafting in this game needs serious attention, the RNG needs to go in the first instance. I reject your UO comparison though, I grandmastered enchanting within a week or so of persistence here as a fresh character, before double xp. Nowadays you can get enough producer XP to gm a craft in a day just harvesting stuff. Because of the way the skill returns diminish, grandmaster only a few % lower than someone who's dumped 100 times that much XP into a skill. Its certainly good enough to make decent stuff, the problem is the RNG. The problem has always been the RNG, the pointless frustrating RNG. The specialization bandaid isn't a good fix, it just means everyone makes more characters to be able to craft gear. Bad system.

I get what you're saying about the loot. But if we start having wearable gear auto-generate and drop they might as well just remove the crafting system entirely and be done with it. Its already been marginalized by artifacts in a lot of ways, and is as you point out, inaccessible due to high material costs due to a 99% waste rate on resources. So you have a high cost, high waste, low return system with an additional time consumption requirement (hours and hours and hours of gathering, even more hours and hours and hours of refining), ...or gear can fall from the sky. Your choices are make gear fall from the sky to make a 'better pve experience' or ....fix the broken crafting system for the same result.

Would it be a better game if it was like Diablo? Autogenerated random loot? Named / boss mobs dropping something good almost every time instead of 1% of the time? Maybe it would. But its a pretty fundamental change, tearing up the core fabric of the system and forget about any sort of gear economy or tradeskill system. I personally prefer to work for something, gather materials, and craft something custom for my character, not rely on the Big Loot Generator in the Sky to spit me out something that is kinda sorta what I want, maybe. I am getting SO SO SO sick of "slot machine of the avatar" and "sotamath" and basically that the underlying premise of this game is "random chance". Its embedded in almost all the game's systems.

 

What you describe is exactly what the majority of players do want. They enter a game, look at what type of character they want to play whether tank or healer or mage and what the high end drops are for their play-style and then progress towards that. That might be by camping these items when they get to the relevant level or saving up the gold to buy them. It is about looking ahead and looking forward to that amazing item drop. What the game offers instead is crafting it themselves or grinding gold and then running around a city where the vendors lag in eventually to look at long lists. It's just not a fun way of getting item upgrades in an RPG.

At this point looking at where the game seems to be, it needs to be attracting new players and new money. If that means some of the old money don't like changes to improve the games appeal then that's tough. It's about what's good for the life of the game.

 

So my whole problem with this discussion is that the justification is it can one shot in PvP. Balancing on PvP does not work if you talking 1 v 1 dueling. A build or combination will ALWAYS be OP. If there is isn't it just hasn't been found yet.

My understanding from Chris (from the live streams and old tech talks etc) is with diminishing returns you are supposed to be competitive in PvP with skill level 80s and at adv level 80-100.

IF this is case then EVERY build can one shot in PvP.

At those kind of levels player in light armour have 700-800 HP, heavy armour has 900-1000. I have seen most skill crit for over 1k damage.
This will be a balance issue forever, the way most games get around this is to scale damage down in PvP. Archeage for example had a necklace that gave at lowest level 50% PvP damage reduction and could be levelled up by increments up to 70%.

From the same things he said archery is supposed to be the highest single target DPS. If this is the aim then archery is not working as intended. You don't see archers killing single target bosses quicker than sword and polearm users.


Regards
Spung

 

I'm not sure where you're getting your majority of players from. Most of the new folks I talk to are really excited about the prospect of crafting gear until they realize how broke the system is. They don't even know the artifacts exist until they end up in pretty good crafted gear, and realizing the only way to improve further is to invest in best-in-slot artis which are low % chance world drops for the most part. Most of these items you can't "camp" - not in Sota. If you wanted say, a lich ring - its not like you go kill liches, if you want a sage's sash, you don't kill mage-monsters - nope, you have a 0.0001% chance of getting it off absolutely anything. Cabalist hoods you can plan for, inasmuch as you know which one drops it, but I know people who have been killing cabalists for MONTHS and not gotten the hood they want. This isn't like most games, where you know that X item drops from Y mob and you can go farm it. Even the "envy bow" had a disgustingly low drop rate and because everything in the game wears out, and is subject to RNG for improvement mods, you don't need to farm 1 and done, you need to farm 5 or 10.

I agree the vendor situation is bad. This is a side effect of the bad RNG system. If we could get past that, then crafters could offer bespoke work, instead of listing all the piles of failures and junks trying to recoup a fraction of the cost. I agree that looking at vendor after vendor of garbage is not a fun or useful way to spend one's time.

And yes, you're right, we need to keep the new folks interested and often the quality of life changes that do so irritate a bunch of the old folks. I don't particularly have a problem with that, if the changes are sensible and make the game better. I think if the desired items were "farmable" as you say - linked to a specific mob/scene with a drop rate that meant if you spent an evening killing it, you'd get it - then we'd be on to something.

We absolutely do NOT need more random generated garbage to go along with all the crafted garbage though. I don't see that improving the game at all, just making more of a mess, while also making crafting even less relevant than it already is. Unless such drops were also accompanied by a significant increase in utility to salvage skill (ie, deconstruct the stuff for something more than a few pennies worth of scraps) - otherwise you have no consumption, you just have more bloat of items.

 

I am only going on anecdotal evidence from the people I have spoken to (which is a fair number as I have done some Youtube content on SOTA with several thousand views overall) and the consistent I have heard is that ultimately the gameplay loop felt pointless as all it is is an XP grind (the majority didn't want to do the crafting grind, spend days in a mine mining and "shopping" for items is the least fun you can have in an RPG). What you say about the hood is exactly what people want. The drop rate is really silly on it but it's that chance that is the addiction. It what keeps you coming back. Many players will stay in one place for weeks/months to get the item they want and it's that chance that keeps them in the game and while they are there maybe they will spend money in the shop.

It's all just IMHO of course along with listening to what a lot of people have said but SOTA is a frustrating bag of potential at the moment and while the focus is still on the sim life/crafting side of the line then it won't meet that potential. The Envy Angel was a great test to see what was possible but it turned out to be a big fail, seemingly because the old money didn't want items in the game that was better than their crafted stuff.

The response would be that if that is what players want, let them go and play a different game and that response would be fine if SOTA was doing really well.

 

Different circles, I guess.

The idea of a less than a % chance of a drop on something that you have to kill for weeks/months with no reward whatsoever is the very OPPOSITE of what I find most people want, and is the reason why the loot in this game is so frustratingly disappointing. In most games, if you see a special mob with a special name? You go kill it - its usually worth the effort.

In this game, unless you are one of the 1% steamrollers, bosses are something that simply aren't worth bothering with. The time they take to kill (unless, as I say, you can steamroll it) - is never worth the reward.

Its not about skill, or loyalty to the game, or dedication, or persistence - its all about luck. And that gets really old, really fast.

Most players don't mind putting in the time to earn stuff - even days/weeks/months - as long as they can see some sort of progress or end in sight. With Sota, its all just a giant gamble, and you watch other players getting lucky while you continue to get nothing - so you grind cash to buy the things you want since they never drop, or you decide screw it and go play something else. For every person thats like "yeah, nice drop!" there are 100 who think "ugh, just got s*** again."

I'm tired of seeing people leave because the only way to get the stuff you're after is to rely on the great slot machine in the sky. It becomes log on, go kill something 50 times, get nothing, log off. Try again tomorrow. Do the same. How many days do you keep doing this?

Crafting, (if they got rid of the RNG), is different - it allows you to build toward / work toward something, define a goal and work your way toward it. Gather materials, build up skills (or network with people who have the skills) and participate in the market. Crafting was always meant to be the core "where gear comes from" and the harvesting/refining/materials systems were built with that in mind. There are special components/ingredients/recipes to got from combat but crafting was supposed to be the glue. Crafting relies heavily on combat, both to get materials, to level it (since you can't harvest without fighting), to fund it (since its a cash sink unless you have combat related revenues), etc. Its an integral part of the game, and if we decide "well actually, lets make crafting pointless and let people farm gear from fighting" then it becomes another fighting game.

Now maybe you're right, and that system isn't working for everyone, because of whatever reason or preference. Maybe we'd be better off if we stripped all the "life skills" type stuff out of the game, the fishing and agriculture and crafting and housing and decorating and just went to a "kill things, take their stuff, equip it, kill bigger things" style. That certainly seems to be more popular in the modern market as evidenced by player numbers in games with that type of model. But I don't think it'd be Sota anymore. The team had a certain vision, and that vision included a lot more than combat-loot-repeat. Maybe that doesn't appeal to the masses. And I agree that population is a concern. But at what cost?

 

I meant the named mobs with the chance of dropping a specific thing and not the current drop system if I wasn't clear. As I said it is why games like EQ are still so popular and the Envy Bow an interesting development. On the Envy Bow by the way it's not so much it was reduced in power, it's just that apart from that it is very lack luster. How hard would it have been to add some interesting ability on it while lowering the damage. Maybe a short duration root proc or a proc that has a % to go off and do extra damage against undead. Anything that still makes it an interesting drop and worth camping.

I don't think we need to strip out the sim life stuff. Some people love it and good on them. I think at this point though the housing, crafting and periphery systems like fishing etc are well fleshed out but the attention is still on these primarily. I guess it is a vicious circle for Port as the only way money is coming in at the moment is to keep making things for people to buy.

Listening to the recent streams, it seems as though Port are going to rely more heavily on player dungeons for PvE content anyway so it doesn't seem as though much is going to change. Good for those that don't want change.