Where have all the relics gone???

A party loot system would be a great addition. FFXI had that from the start, all loot goes into a common pool, everyone can lot with a random roll or pass, forced drop if not resolved in 5 minutes or if more than 10 items in the pool.

And for what it's worth, I never got a relic drop, but then I wasn't out power farming. I haven't even had a CotO drop in months.

 

we haven't had a start yet tho, so there is still time ^&

 

But we need folks like them to test the high end stuff now, as opposed to after release. I mean, come on, there's always a bright side

 

That's not how the system works.

The more XP you have in your pool, the faster a skill gains in level. If you have all your skills open, you will quickly deplete your xp pool and your skills would stagnate. And it doesn't take time because you only need to click a skill a couple of times to gain the benefits.

I saw a friend of mine with a 2 million xp pool teleport into the house we share, get out his gust ball, click 3 spells 3 times each, and the spells all went up a point per click - and they were in the 70's at the time. At the end, he only had about 1 million left. It took all of 2 minutes to switch to his leveling stack and cast those spells on his gust ball. True, you can do that in the field but it is way less efficient.

It counter-intuitive, like a footballer playing a game so he can get better at football training.

 

Ill help ya out here, well geared players over powered magic tree for soloing bosses (Death magic) and the understanding of the boss mechanics.

When you can crit often for 700+ in the magic tree bosses dont last long.

Swords are good for the last 20% massive crits but the first 80 prevents them from being top of the game.

Archery,Blugeon, Polearms no way jose.

In summery there is a big ballance issue, that rewards the flavor of the month.

 

What you're seeing is an illusion. Let me explain why..

1. You always get the same XP for any particular kill..
2. A skill will always take the same amount of XP to raise. Let's say a skill takes 2 million XP to raise. It will always take 2 million to raise regardless of whether you save it all up first or train it as you go.

You think it's faster to build up your pool and then dump it into the skill all at once.. In all that time you're not putting XP into the skill so it's stagnant until you open the proverbial flood gate but you still have to take the time to build up the pool.

If instead you're letting that skill improve as you go.. you get the benefits of that training sooner which means you may get that XP faster (depending on the skill and how you're using it.)

The assumption you're making is that I'm advocating NOT locking the rest of your skills. I never said that. You still lock the skills you're not training up to funnel your XP where you want it to go.

The difference here is.. when you're saving up.. skills are stagnant and that makes saving up take that much longer PLUS the extra time to actually dump the XP into the skill. Where as training as you go your skill is always improving as you go. You don't have to wait for the benefit and you don't have to take the extra time to dump the XP because it's already in the skill.

There 2 scenarios I see where saving up XP is beneficial.

1: When you want to train up skills outside of combat.. like say you've already mastered a skill set and you want to add another.. ie I've GM'd blades.. now I want to build bludgeons.. but because the skill is low it's not reliable for what I want to hunt.. so I use blades to save the XP and dump it into bludgeons later until those new skills are high enough to be reliable.

2: When skills require resources.. ie ammo /reagents. Since each use takes a percentage of the pool.. a larger pool means fewer uses to train up. which means less resources required..

But speaking in terms of sheer efficiency.. training as you go is the way to go. Lock what you don't need in order to funnel XP into the skill(s) you're working on and let it ride.

You see what you're not taking into account here is the time it took to earn that 2 million XP.

 

So far there have been Artifacts that were created and dropped, (more on higher level MOB's). Now we have the Cabalists that also drop forms of Artifact that allow one to use the items as Patterns. The drop rate on all of these is fairly low, except for those who have the high enough skill levels (regardless of where they got them)

Both times it has been pointed out that High Level players have been able to Solo large groups of High Level Mobs and the Town Sieges including the Cabalists. That they are camping these areas doing them over and over and over again. That means those players collect the majority of the Artifacts, set the in game prices and in some case start their own business of selling the items for RL Cash. The Devs reaction to all this is to make the MOB spawn harder to do or add complexity to the skills the MOBs have.

The result of that is, the High Level Player can still Solo the high Artifact Areas, and maybe it takes them a little longer but in the end it also takes Partied players longer and essentially changes nothing. The Artifact drop number drops but all it does is raise the prices of the items since the same people are getting those artifacts. All Partied Players end up with is a harder time killing Bosses, and higher level MOB's.

To me the answer is not in changing the characteristics of the MOBs but in how the loot is determined. I would suggest the following type of system.

1. Anyone who does a Boss MOB (Dragon, Daemon, Cabalist etc.) Solo would have the lowest Drop rate of all. Eg. 1 out of 100.
2.The highest rate drops would go to those who are Partied. - eg. If you had 2 in your Party the drop rate might be 1 out of 75. If you had 3 - 4 in your party it might be 1 out of 60, It would continue on this way until with a party of 8 (or higher if they ever get an new system in) the drop rate might be 1 our of 25.
3. This brings up the Third Category of Un-Partied Multi-Players. In this case I would suggest that the drop rate be a higher than Partied Players but still based on how many people actually damaged or healed other players in a battle against one MOB. As an example if there were 2 Damagers, the rate might be 1 - 80, 3-4 in-partied Damagers might be 1 out of 65.

Seems to me a system based on something like this would then only require one change in a formula for balance. The numbers I provided are only examples, they could be much higher or lower depending on how rare you want an item to be. What a system like this does however is gives those who participate in a group and work as a group have a better chance for reward without wasting ones time doing a MOB over and over again only to have to go pay some other player Gold or RL Cash to acquire an item. That is unless the goal is to create businesses based on the sale of artifact items in Real Life. If so then the game is basically ruined already and it does not matter much what happens any longer.

 

I like your suggestion Gamician. I can't begin to tell you how tired I am seeing one/two people solo a difficult boss farming for arties that they sell either for lots of gold/RL cash. Just last night once again seeing someone with 50+ GM's three shot kill a boss that would take a group of regular players with concerted effort to take down. What I don't get is why something is not done about this? They shouldn't have so many freakin GM's. We have seen folks with 119 GM's. Seriously? Every time a method is "discussed" to do something about this the only ones it ever seems to affect are the more casual player. They want us in multi but what is the point? We NEVER stand a chance against someone with that many GM's. It never should have been allowed in the first place.

 

Seeing a lot of what sounds like envy in this thread. look, let me make 3 things clear

1. I would be perfectly happy with exchanging real cash for game items result in account bans, the only person on my ignore list earned the spot by offering to sell me crafted armor only if I paid on PayPal
2. my in game vendor has lifetime sales of about 40k, almost all of it in the first 4 months of persistence
3. not sure I've ever killed anything you would consider a boss, certainly have killed some named things, but no dragons or demons and I've spent very little time in rise because I cant..rise to that difficulty.
4. yes I do own property and have access to dev+ no there are no master threads of how to "keep the little man down" or "things to make sure you exploit before it gets nerfed on live"

But I have zero nada no interest in having to group to kill something, especially with a forced nerf of xp (which they did do) or loot %. I did my time staring at walls in Everquest, never again.

People put in the time to get to where they are, that was their choice, being upset that they did or could is just flat wrong, and again comes off sounding like envy.

 

No, it's not an illusion, it's efficient. It saves reagents and time and, at a certain level where it takes 100,000xp to raise a skill 1pt, it's the only way to get any improvements at all. This is why, if your xp pool gets too low, the game gives you a warning. In order to level efficiently in sota, a player must have a big XP pool, and the only way to get a big XP pool is to switch off most of your skills (if not all) while adventuring.

The 2 mill xp would have had to be earned regardless of whether you allocate it while adventuring or when you get back to your training dummy.

One of the attractions for me to sota was the skill system because I remember playing and enjoying Asheron's Call back in the day, and it had a similar skill system. In Asheron's Call, while adventuring you got XP allocated to the skills you used so they leveled up while you played. When you gained an adventure level, you got a pot of XP to allocate to any skill you wish, and these skills included things like running and jumping as your regular combat skills. It was a really cool system that allowed a player to truly customize their character. I was kind of hoping for the same here, and it sort of is, only Porta added a dummy to it and made it a grindmare.

 

Reagents yes.. time no..

No.. it's how you're able to SEE rapid improvement. Let's say it takes you 6 hours to earn that 100,000 XP. If that XP is going into your skill as you train.. then at the end of that 6 hours you're done. You don't see the progress bar moving because it's slow.. but it IS moving. If you're saving up for a huge dump into you're skill.. it STILL takes 6 hours to earn the XP PLUS the time it takes to dump it into your skill. That's the illusion you're seeing. It seems fast because you're making it all happen at once... AFTER you've spent all that time earning the XP.

Yes.. I believe I said something to that effect..

So let's say I'm trying to GM a weapon skill.. since the higher the skill is the more damage I do.. the faster I kill mobs as the skill increases.. and the faster I get the XP. But if I'm waiting to build a large XP pool and have the skill locked.. it will ultimately take that much longer because I'm not getting the benefits of improving skill.. and either way you go.. as you've just said.. you still have to earn that XP.

 

Chris has come out and said that the more XP you have pooled, the faster your skills will level. Once you're XP pool is fat, skills will level faster because that's how the math works... It will take the same amount of XP to take a glyph from 80 to level 90 regardless of how you manage your trees. However, if you have 2M banked, your glyph will rocket through because it's being pumped with an exponential amount more XP through the leveling process compared to someone without a pool of XP. It's more efficient and more effective way to level because it's been designed to be that way by the development team.

 

If you're looking at it that way that means you'll always have a huge pool of XP that will NEVER be used.. and you STILL have to earn all the XP that IS used. Does the skill go up faster because you're dumping more XP into it per shot? Yes of course it does. But only because you've spent all that time earning the XP in the first place. If you account for the time it takes to earn the XP then it's not faster. Personally, I don't relish the idea of having 2 million XP just sitting in my XP pool just wasting away.

What's a suitable analogy? Let's say we both need to travel for 1 mile.. I decide to walk. You wait for the bus. Your bus arrives to pick you up just as I'm finishing my mile. Your trip is a lot faster than mine but I got there before you. It's kinda like that.

We both start at the same time.. we both travel the same distance.. but I finished first because I was always moving forward the whole time.

 

No you won't... you'll be left behind at around level 40; and once your opponent reaches level 80 using this method you'll never catch him/her. You're literally months if not years behind at this point.

Anyone skeptical should try it - lock everything and pool 2M... then unlock a glyph or two. Raise those while fighting mobs and keep your pool @ or above 2M. You'll hit harder and level faster than ever before. The harder you hit, the faster you advance, the more XP you pool, the faster your glyphs level.

There's a management system in place for a reason.

 

Meanwhile, I'm earning that 2 million XP faster because I'm allowing it to go into focused skills that improve my ability to earn XP. Just how much time does it take to earn 2 million XP at a low level with all your skills locked? You're not going to earn it any faster until your skills improve. Your argument doesn't account for the time it takes to earn the XP in the first place.

 

this thread is not about leveling tactics.

 

Quite right. Though I did have another way to explain it I shall leave my part at that. I would be happy to continue elsewhere if anyone so chooses.

 

I do not envy those who have gotten where they are. There have been what some might consider programming snafus, that allowed players to amass millions in EXP prior to the developers taking steps to correct the situation. So players may be upset with the Developers because after the situation was corrected (which admits it never should have happened in the first place) that nothing was done to adjust the EXP players had earned this way. That now is water over the damn.

For those who have spent hours and hours at this game and worked to get where they are, I applaud their efforts. My issue is not with the fact that we have players at such High Levels but with how the loot system presently works. I do not even like the idea that Artifacts have been entered into the game. But now that they have I just request that they find a fair system for distributing those Artifacts so that they are not all in the hands of just a few players who can demand ridiculous high gold prices or sell the items for Real Life Gold. If they want to turn this game into a Pixel Flea Market, I want nothing to do with it.

 

I don't think it's important to lock glyphs until you've taken them to their min levels... Get everything you need to lvl 40 and lock it there. This is so important for the innates. Once they're locked and XP is pooling you can sort out what's important... Int, Dex, Focus, Str, etc. Get some starter crafted armor, use foods, blessings, etc... lock everything and pool. After you get 500k or more, you can concentrate on one or two glyphs and keep the XP pool growing while leveling. Check your pool and make sure it's gaining. If not, lock everything. Focus on leveling glyphs that enable you to crit harder and you'll advance through the skull zones faster.

And once you're tipping into adv level 80, now you're soloing most of the game. And this is huge for economic participation. You get more gold, more artifacts, more of everything when you're controlling the field. And I'd tell any new player that it all starts at level 40. This is how it works - it's not a big secret, people just don't do it for some reason.

 

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