The Sword is Mightier than the Fizzle!

So Baron, Captain Jack is going to give you a little bit of tough love for a moment. You haven't played much in R14 and are missing information since about R12, haven't ever leveled a character past mid-30s, but you are creating these threads standing by a statement which your inexperience doesn't qualify you to do in the first place, then asking everyone for videos to prove you wrong?

Captain Jack thinks Baron needs to go download some capture software and take videos himself. Prove it can't be done yourself, and then we'll tell you what you are doing wrong. Savvy?

 

Videos of me getting owned in pvp will not be hard to come by.

At the moment I'm convinced that my connection speed and computer are just too good for this game. My working theory is that the people with the worst connection win the most. In conjunction with that I think polearms are so horribly overpowered that they are the next deciding factor. If you mix in connection speed, polearms, and then allow players to heal themselves with death magic....well that's been going on for several releases, but I wouldn't call that build a "mage".

The devs have stated many times that at level 30 you should be able to compete with anyone. I've found that to be true - statistically. Sure, there's an advantage for someone that has 40 plus levels of INT or STR on top of what I have, but the matches are still close (from what I've observed from pvp tournaments).

So many it's you that don't know Jack? I'll sting some videos together over time though. It's going to take me a while to level (to 30 again).

BTW, this is from R13. I can tell you based on my experiences so far, NOTHING has changed the latency factor or the fact that polearms can hit people that are barely on their screen (on the client side).

 

Yeah, I wonder if Chris fixed his backwards latency logic for R14. I'm doubtful but at least we can see some of that with the game forcefully disconnecting you if have low FPS. I wonder if it'll do the same if you have high latency or lots of dropped packets, etc. At the very least, it shouldn't favor them so extremely like it has in the vids you've shown him.

Plus, I hope he fixes it so that none of these low fps, high latency, dropped packets systems become the client "masters" like in the past.

 

i agree with the OP entirely. I'm not even going to bother giving any feedback on the "ballancing" of any of the skills at this point because it doesn't seem like they are listening to what we are saying.

REAGENTS IRRELEVANCE:
However I will offer that I personally have no incentive to use reagents.

1. They are too expensive for the damage of the magic user's spells. The spells do so little that it requires you to fire 10 fireballs to kill a large red spider. If I bought reagents I could never play a mage.
2. The fizzle chance is within reason. Since reagents cost too much for the damage output I don't mind a little fizzle. IF they made the fizzle 80% or 90% I still wouldn't buy the reagents because I would not want to play a mage. So no amount of fizzle chance is going to entice me to buy reagents.

There isn't any need to add anymore points to this. I'm fine playing a mage doing weak damage and having fizzels. I would rather they just remove reagents entirely though. Being forced to have a fizzle or a reagent cost feels like a double penalty considering spells cost so much mana in the first place (mana cost + spending skill points on Int instead of Str to carry more stuff should be enough penalties). Not to mention the stacking of glyphs which is bothersome to me.

If it continues down this path where spells do so little damage (causing us to cast so many of them), then reagents (and fizzles for not using reagents) need to go away. I'm fine if the spells just use mana. It only seems fair.

An alternate solution is to allow spells to do far more damage so I use less spells to take down monsters. So if reagents make the spells do SIGNIFICANTLY more damage then I might buy them, but it must be really worth the cost at least 4x the average damage the spells do now. As for PvP, I am losing interest in the whole thing. A pure mage is just not fit for PvP. I don't think this is headed down the right path to make PvP a viable option.

I am having fun with this release, and the world feels more alive. These combat issues are the only down side for me.

 

Although I have noticed that spells are doing similar damage stacked now to reduce the need for stacking, but rather than increase the damage of the single glyphs they opted to make the damage weak all around.

Although I'm still grateful that stacking is less important, I wish they would remove it entirely still. Since it is still here it would be nice to at least try giving us an auto stack, to at least select one skill and stack that one skill. for example if we have 3 fire arrows on the toolbar we could select one of them and click the stack hot key and then we would have a level 3 fire arrow in a signle gliph. it is less than having to stack. Although I would still much rather that stacking were removed entirely, and that might be the easiest and the best option.

 

I think they are listening. I just don't think they're balancing the combat system properly until they've finished actually building it.

 

You know what it is that I'm feeling? For those of us who give lots of feedback and are defending these systems it would be nice to have an idea as to what they are thinking. I know they have to be careful what they say because people will hold them to their word. That is to be expected, but to have an idea of what they intend to accomplish would be nice.

I am finding it very difficult to know where they are standing becasue chris has been saying for 6 months that we will be seeing a major increase in the power of the mage to make them more powerful but I haven't seen it, and when I see my guy doing less and less damage each release I'm a bit confused. (sure every once and a while I do critical damage and sometimes that actually does a lot of damage but most of the time critical damage does nothing more than normal damage). So having a little info as to what they are doing would be nice?

ALso I'm having trouble keeping track of the actual damage I'm doing. For all I know I am doing more damage. If I fire a fire arrow I get all kinds of fire damage for a while, and if I stack them is it doing two separate hits? I don't know. If so then it is helping, but maybe it isn't. We (or at least I) do not know what is taken into account to do damage or to be effective.

 

I think it would be nice if every release or quarter, they went over the current state of the game in general.

Like where mages are currently at to where they want to go. That would answer your concern and enable us to give better feedback.

 

exactly. Although before they start releasing crafting skills they need to do something about resource yields because I have been trying to make a wooden chest that needs 4 boards and after two days of playing I only have like 3 maple logs. Everywhere I go the trees are already chopped down. The only time I really get anything other than gems is from random encounters.

 

They are definitely listening. There's absolutely no doubt about that.

 

Yeah they have proven that they do listen. I guess there are so many expectations for a new release, and there is no way to get all of our expectations met in every way.

I spent 4000 to buy 25 of each reagent. That is a lot. At the rate I fire spells I will burn through them really fast. In UO 25 of each reagent was an ok amount to travel with because the spells did enough damage that a flame strike and a an explosion and an energy bolt was potentially a powerful enough combo to kill another player. I played a warrior mostly so I knew if I missed a mage that I needed to get out of his range rather quick. ON A SIDE NOTE: I was able to beat most mages out there with my warrior, although lots of people cried foul and said the mage was over powered. I think not. It was their playstyle that needed to change, and the result was them nerfing things and messed up skills... in fact the skills today are all screwy in modern UO.

However in SotA the spells don't do as much much damage and will increase the number of reagents we need to burn through. 25 of each reagent wont' last more than a few random encounters because I have to use so many low damaging spells.

 

FYI -- I did try using reagents and it did make me considerably more effective. I didn't realize just how much those fizzles were taking me out of the game, and it appears to use noticeably less focus (which I forgot happened). Although after one encounter with some red spiders I was down from 25 of each reagent down to 19 of each fireball reagent. So I still cannot legitimately sustain this since killing these spiders don't give me anything but experience.

Reagents need to be far more common. In UO there were random reagents all over the place and we could pick them up as we played. We still bought stockpiles of reagents but being able to gather them along the way is nice. It would be ashame if every mage had to use all their crafing skill points on gathering reagents though.

Maybe some opponents could carry bags of reagents. If we fight a mage it would be nice if they had like 10 of each reagent (or more because we have to burn reagents to kill the guy). Or necromancers and liches be rich in death magic reagents. There just needs to be more reagents. And maybe a price cut for reagents is sorely needed.

 

Yeah that latency thing is horrendous for PvP.

 

definitely. I hope there is a resolution for this.