Themo: end of release feedback

Ok, thinking more.. and posting more lol! Now who's hijacking?

I can see decay (or a cap) needed to keep our characters somewhat unique.. we shouldn't all have the same character at the end of episode 1... anyway.. carry on.

 

the most important part we need to keep in mind here is this: the fun factor.
how fun is it, when combined with the other mechanics in the game?
as it stands now, since it is broken i choose to not comment on that, as i'm certain the devs have ideas in store for us.

 

That will always happen, to a greater or lesser degree, in my experience. Many players will end up with such similar builds, that appearance aside, they will be 95% the same. Very few players are willing to gather hundreds of thousands of log entries, parse them, repeat them, analyze them, and then decide what is best for their play style.

For PvE combat, I'm skeptical there's going to be that many viable builds. It typically comes down to 1, 2 or rarely 3 builds that are viable, with mutually exclusive skills/innates.
In this case, there's really not that much to it. There's no depth here. There's only two mob types (ranged or melee) and as far as I know, keeping an NPC melee opponent at range, indefinitely, is not currently a design goal. As such, if it's currently possible, it won't be for long. If it is possible, and is a design goal, that will be the #1 build. Why? Because avoiding all damage and doing all damage, with the least risk, is ideal for speedy resource acquisition. There are no skills for splitting groups on pull, so that's not even in the picture. *yawn*

Beyond that, it comes down to CC'ing ranged targets so they don't move, at least long enough you can get enough DoT's on them that they die relatively quickly, as a melee character.
Once skewer is fixed, the stacking CC immunity buff will prevent rooting, stunning, or otherwise CC'ing ranged NPC's indefinitely. That leaves root at max, and other stun skills left as the other most likely build. Again, presuming that CC'ing an NPC target indefinitely isn't a design goal. Chasing NPC's around is less popular than just burning them down at range, or kiting, slowing, or otherwise CC'ing them at range, hence this likely being #2.

Many of the options in the "extra" trees primarily adjust things related to offensive resource pools, so again, that favors a ranged CC+DPS build, depending on design goals. Due to the rather ... well, I'll just say unimaginative combat interface (Sorry, Portalarium, Chronicles of Spellborn already tried and failed at this) and the public reaction to it, no time has been spent on innovating the combat system to be something truly innovative, dynamic and reactive. If that had been the case, and the deck system had been tossed for it's logical and UI flaws initially, it's possible SotA could have had a really innovative combat system that would promote more viable unique builds. Not so, today.

There's very little change (or at least, none that I can parse) in weapon damage by level. Glyph Level appears to only affect accuracy (or hit/miss, if you prefer). As such, critical hits play a much larger role in damage output versus other combat systems. But beyond that? meh? Using a sample size of over 500 hits, there's less than 5% from the bottom to the top of a given weapons damage range standard deviation/damage distribution. That means the damage spread on an 8-24 damage weapon, there's less than 5% variation in every potential damage number (8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24) spread out, over time.
I could be wrong, and more parsing is always required to get more accurate data points, but there's not much mystery in SotA combat, as it stands today, from what I can see.
Pick the weapon with the largest damage, the largest number of targets, and the longest reach. Max the skill/glyph/level for that weapon type. Profit! Given that current situation, I think "all have the same" is going to be common. Oh, and yes, this means crits will be likely be severely nerfed before EP1 launch..

 

lets wait until the next big crafting push to see what can be done there.. i'm at least hopeful that the current weapons we've seen are placeholders for something much more intricate and neat to add to combat.

i also cant wait until they focus on magic weapons like staves and wands.. my overall hope for combat, is for them to balance all weapon types so none is too overpowering on another, but just based on your playstyle, which is more effective for you.

 

Also, just because I had 15 minutes to burn..

Ran a test, 7 minutes exactly per weapon. First weapon one handed blade, cutlass, second weapon, 2h axe (bludgeon... yeah).
So, test duration is 420 seconds. Auto Attack only against a gustball.
350 swings in 420 seconds 1h blade.
350 swings in 420 seconds 2h bludgeon.

.... alrighty then!

 

I wonder the same thing. The changes may be wonderful making decay a more practical mechanic. But even so, in the end, you can always say "but i'm being punished for not playing".

Current answer is "you will be able to go to the oracle to get rid of the decay". But from there you can ask "how often?" If you can go everytime you want, then you're replacing the annoyness of losing progress with the annoyness of going to the oracle everytime you log in or you come from socializing. If you can't go everytime then you can go back to the original question.

@Fister Magee, If you're willing to go through thick and colored wall of text maybe you want to check this thread i wrote and leave your opinion. It describes a whole progression system including the concepts we have in place atm but with different implementations. Not saying I had the definitive answer, but i clearly see it as a viable answer that at least doesn't punish people for not being online. Oh if you already seen it and you didn't find it interesting i apologize from the shameless plug.

 

Well I asked for it, lol! I'll check it out!

 

i would have hoped fewer swings on the 2h weapon, and if math were done on damage dealt, i'd have further hoped for very close numbers between the two. - hence why i believe they havn't balanced it yet.

 

Do you have any speed improving passive skills on these two? I know there's a blade passive, I don't know about bludgeon.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos I absolutely agree with you about skills managing. I don't like powerplaying and this run for the best build is something I absolutely hate. I play a game to have fun and not to win at all costs. I want also to be surprised by events and gameplay, to explore and make roleplaying. A specific build for RPPvP could be reasonable (a soldier in a front line as example) but would never be my main character.

 

I think it is realistic to assume that a casual player with little playing time will hardly stand a chance against an expert player of the same level whose physical dexterity and use of tactics has been honed by constant practice.

Nevertheless, I would welcome a test of this assumption in the pre-alpha, that would allow any player to temporarily set their adv level to 100.

The only fear I have is: if casual players still couldn't hold their own in a fair fight with the experts, the cry would go up that the fight was still unfair because of the number of grandmaster level skills that the experts have "grinded". Then we would have to raise the casual players' skills to grandmaster level just to make them equal. If the casual players still found themselves losing against the more experienced players, the cry would go up to give the experienced players some kind of handicap to equal the playing field.

In my opinion, eliminating any kind of progression in this game would ruin it for more people than it would satisfy.

For PVPers who want to fight other PVPers on an equal footing, the only solution I can think of which wouldn't affect all other players would be to have some kind of free-for-all arenas which automatically set players who entered to the same skill and adv levels.

 

No the free arenas are a bad idea. Where is the pleasure to fight with your main build, that you created from the scratch playing and "grinding", yes, why not.

My idea to make average or above average (up to 70) easy for casual players and keeping the GM difficult to achieve so the experts can be rewarded.

But if I can have an above average character as casual player, I would be more than happy, and I think all casual players would be. If they complain, they are wrong.

 

How about equal chances? New players and players who don't play that much get an EXP modificator so that they can close the lines to the others quickly!

 

no. I don't like it. Daily players must be rewarded. Let's have an idea with RPPvP. Those players will be the Lieutenant while the casual the simple soldiers. It's fair, and it's ok. If you want to rank higher you must play more. It's the right way. This for combat. But players who prefer to craft and explore must not be penalized by decay. They must have fun. Combat decay could be higher than other skills decay, as example.

 

It sounds more like a punishment. "If you don't play every day then you will never make it to a higher rank!" - "But I have little kids, a wife and a job.... I cannot play more!" - "We don't care - muahahahaha!"

 

They'll get there eventually (or at least should be able to imo)... just not as fast as those who are able to dedicate more time to the game.

What's fair is to reward everyone for their effort; even if the player has a valid reason for not being able to play daily, that doesn't justify a flattened progression. I wouldn't mind some kind of "rested" bonus like the one featuring in most MMOs where the time you are not playing you build up a little reserve of increased XP earning. But how is a permanent bonus fair for those that dedicated all their time into being the first?

 

Those who play daily do have advantages. They can craft more, explore more, decorate their house faster etc.
Basically I don't care as I will play at my own pace but I was thinking if it is fair that those who cannot play more do have even more disadvantages in progression...

 

I know! both surprised and glad of reading your comments regarding something about multiplayer

As i said before I agree with little pushing to help those that can't dedicate more hours, like rested XP and that kind of stuff, but that incentive should be for everyone, proportional to the choosed element. The way rested XP works in WoW is that as you're offline you get a portion of your xp bar, and while filling it you get triple xp. Once you fill your xp bar up to that point you keep earning xp at standard rate. That way if i stopped playing for 4 hours before start playing for 20 hours straight maybe i have a rested bonus that made those 20 hours leveling equivalent to 21.5 hours. Looking at the other case, if somebody spent 16 hours offline and then plays for 2 hours, rested bonus allows him to make that leveling time worth as if he spent 5 hours playing (assuming rested bonus increase per hour is lineal).

What i'm trying to say is that an EXP modificator may be cool to compensate things, but not big enough to make things "equal". It's also hard to talk about xp rewards or bonus while being offline because what we have atm is exactly the opposite...

 

Just because I prefer the offline mode doesn't mean that I won't be playing online, too In fact I will. I just want to experience the story offline at my own pace with as much immersion as possible. And I think that the offline mode will offer that. But of course I will also be online from time to time with another character. So I am interested in features regarding the online modes, too.

 

I know at least one person in my guild that was over the moon with this level of bug chasing and was extremely grateful for Attenwood's help with a crafting bug, so I agree this was a great way to handle things