Thoughts on this release...

So first lets start by saying thank you for another great release! Nice work! I hope that a few of these continue in the direction they have been set on in this release, I also hope that a few things changed get addressed immediately.

The good:

-Everything looks very pretty. I really like how everything is coming together here.

-The travel features work well.

-Combat feels fast and the animations look great, but read below for why combat now feels uneventful.

-Immolation is now fixed.

The bad:

-After the damage nerfs literally everything with the exception of body slam feels completely useless. It feels like everything I do has a very unimportant impact on any battle. I used to crit over 200 all the time and now my damage on crits is around 80. I am a GM in pole-arms.

-I am not sure what has changed with magic but it feels equally as useless. I am a GM in Death magic and it feels like a big waist of xp, its now a complete joke. I will hit with my GM death touch and damage/heal for 14... With the damage reduction it feels like you push a lot of buttons to do nothing.

-The "v" menu is completely jacked. All of the stats are completely off at the bottom. (I am hoping that this is why combat feels completely jacked because i refuse to believe that @Chris would let this happen to his epic combat system!!!)

-Looks like all the mobs are broken again and wont fight back. When they die, the stand back up and fall down again.

-The way the damage is now displayed on screen is a joke right?

-IF I HIT FOR "14" ONE MORE TIME WITH GRAND MASTER DEATH TOUCH IM GOING TO THROW MY PC OUT A WINDOW!

 

Yeah a good fix great balance

What are you fighting ? Undead?? And are you at full health??

 

Maybe one of the skills in the pole arm tree could be sharpening the dull stick into an actual halberd again .

 

i actually like the nerf of crit damage (bow). I was really OP even on low levels (adv. lvl 25, 200 hp, ~30-35 skills). I did 130 crits, 100 crits and even more. Now i feel more comparable to other players. On R26 i was the one hit wonder

 

I don't mind it either as I'm still killing high level mobs pretty easy with the nerf.

 

I'll hit it again tonight to make sure I'm not being mental.

Quick facts.

I'm 105 GM polearms.
I have 70 strength base.
I have one of the nicest polearms with a damage range of 9-26 (or something)
Last night I played for five hours and didn't hit over 100...

I was hitting in the 80's... When I would crit.

Skewer and spinning attack are both at Skill level 90 and I think I hit a few times over 100.

Before I would hit for 160 on a crit regularly.

I will do some pvp testing tonight as well. Before I could just barely hold my own against caster types and after this adjustment... I'm worried but I'll dive into that later tonight.

 

I plead the 5th...

 

And the game starts to go down hill fast as we are trying to balance PvP and the rest ahh well

Seriously, PvP will NEVER, EVER be balanced, as players will work their hardest to find the most effective mechanic, to exploit / abuse to kill as fast as they can. Time spent trying to offset their actions does nothing but take away from actual game design and it will never achieve balance :-(

I am not saying it is not something to be worked on but lets get a game for the majority (mass majority) then worry about PvP.

 

Pvp balance can be adjusted by modifying the damage done to players only ( add a pvp resistance to stats) that way my swing to a creature that has 4k health will still mean something, instead of that guy flagged for pvp with 350 life.. Personally if your not ready for pvp ( meaning your guy/gal isn't fully built for it) don't complain when you get steamrolled by those who are.. oh wait.. just don't flag..

 

Logs are here:
C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\Portalarium\Shroud of the Avatar\ChatLogs
You can check before the 25th and after, and compare directly every/any fight. If you want to provide a link to the logs in PM, I'll be happy to parse them before and after for some comparisons.
However, accuracy, that is, hit/miss ratio can't currently be calculated properly because misses do not enumerate skill names, at the moment. Beyond that, things like all damage for all hits of Thrust for example, would be trivial to parse out as a comparison R26 to R27, provided there's enough data to get a reasonable sample size.

 

+1


Chris please, please please, don't let PvP balance affect PvE. Doing this has literally ruined numerous other MMOs.

 

logged in, fought a few mobs, logged off...lost faith and lust

 

Exactly ..... unless they do it right, LoTR did it right .... when you clicked on a skill for example, it said Bow dmg. 50-65 (PVP 30-55) for example , of course it had more skills with it, .... it worked out great .... so you don't get nerfed for PVE or PVP . they did this to all the skills. So when i was not in PVP zone or flagged for it, my skills reverted to the PVE skill stats ... So it can be done ....

 

127 GM polearms.
54 strength base.
Nice bronze polearm with crit bonuses.
Bronze armor that should give +12.8% damage bonus.
I charge up free attack to 6 bars.
Last night I played for three hours, higher crits were around 330-350 and in R26 they were around 460-480. I'm still killing things at a good clip but might take an extra swing now... still cake but actually more fun for me.

Weapon, armor, str, skill bonuses all working correctly? Math had been slightly coded wrong before...

@Themo Lock thought this seemed more of a reduction than was talked about, too.

 

There is a huge reduction, only charged attacks hit that high. not done testing it.

 

@Chris This is the culprit you want to look at. Reducing critical hit damage has more effect on weapons that are more reliant on critical hits for their DPS. I'm looking at you daggers! The biggest base damage weapons can also charge even higher, but have a much lower critical hit chance. Granted you're reducing the ridiculously big hits with this change, but two-handers overall DPS is less effected by this change than the smaller weapons. This again is reinforcing the 'bigger is better' concept with melee combat.

An addendum to the above: In another thread discussing the reduction of the hardened leather material bonus it was brought up that this had to do specifically with PvP elements. I still feel that the massive charged attacks are unbalancing, but the other thing to consider is the current state of defensive stats. Due to the interplay of Resist & Absorption the bigger the hit the more effective the damage done is. This makes charged attacks super effective in pvp. It's just a bad combination which leads to adjustments that aren't needed for PvE.

I'd like to recommend removing Resist from the physical damage taken calculation. If only Absorption/Deflection are considered the percent of damage mitigated will remain constant instead of growing ever smaller the bigger the damage gets. Viola, no more 1 or 2 shotting. What to do with Resist? Before I knew what it did my first thought was that Resist had to with resisting magical damage. Give Resist a new lease on life, give it a new job and have it protect us from magic. They'll both still be things that you want on gear, but they won't feel like they're working against each other. Feel free to adjust the defensive stats accordingly for balance.

 

I found this info in a prior post of yours and I have to thank you immensely for this. No more scribbling and I can dump it right into a spreadsheet. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have data available this easy!

 

I just got done doing another 4 hour testing. This is not in my head...

If im being completely honest @Chris I know anytime a nerf needs to made people will gripe, but really I feel that this at-least with the way it has impacted my vantage point with what im doing with a polearm's is really DRAMATIC. Combat and the effort I've put in feels really empty.

I don't use charge attacks. Maybe charged attacks is where the damage is being thrown off. Auto attacks are a joke right now. The combat right now with what im doing feels really weaksause, and for someone who has put in as much time as myself.

I feel it needs another look. I am adventure level 78, GM polearm skill 105, skewer and puncture skill level 90 - With a unbuffed 70STR. I think if you plugged this stuff in with developer codes you would play with it and ultimately address the problem.