Another realistic perspective on combat

[aelvana]

It's not impossible. If you only tried one or two mobs, and they got a few good rounds, it'd appear impossible (it did to me at first). Just remember that with less HP, and causing more damage, the fights won't all fall close to the 'average' fight. Some will be easy, some will get you your ass handed to you. Solution? Wear heavy and fight relatively safe 1k mobs.

There's also a narrower range of mobs that you can beat for experience. You can no longer kill anything from 1 to 50 levels above you. You've got to seek out and remember what you can kill, just like any other MMORPG.

And here's an important point to keep in mind -- your defenses against a level 60 mob are no better than your defenses against a 100 mob. If you can barely beat a level 60 mob, this Does Not mean you won't be able to beat a mob your own level! If you're 100 in fight, that level 100 mob is going to be just about as strong vs you as a level 60 mob.

Whether this system sucks or not, well that's another topic. I'm just trying to keep these points in mind and get around my "MMORPG pre-programming." Hopefully I can help others get around it too, in case they don't change patch 1. They may not, since it does actually work ok.

[dpkdpk]

Nicely said. The sky didn't fall.

[raynes]

After trying this new patch and the combat system I found two things...

1) Learn what level mob is equal to your own level (for my level 71 melee, it's 2 stars in maiden groove).

2) Stick with that level mob and you will do fine.

[jjm152]

It's not impossible. If you only tried one or two mobs, and they got a few good rounds, it'd appear impossible (it did to me at first). Just remember that with less HP, and causing more damage, the fights won't all fall close to the 'average' fight. Some will be easy, some will get you your ass handed to you. Solution? Wear heavy and fight relatively safe 1k mobs.

Great advice there. I'll make sure to load up a suit of heavy armor with the +120 action penalty on my mage. I'm positive it will make a huge improvement in my rates of success >_<

Seriously, thanks. I never would have thought of that.

There's also a narrower range of mobs that you can beat for experience. You can no longer kill anything from 1 to 50 levels above you. You've got to seek out and remember what you can kill, just like any other MMORPG.

I had to do this before the patch. I didn't use Blind exploits when I soloed. Now however I cannot defeat anything my level, or in many cases 20-30 levels lower than me without risking death penalty every time I fight. This isn't fun. Not even remotely close to fun.

And here's an important point to keep in mind -- your defenses against a level 60 mob are no better than your defenses against a 100 mob. If you can barely beat a level 60 mob, this Does Not mean you won't be able to beat a mob your own level! If you're 100 in fight, that level 100 mob is going to be just about as strong vs you as a level 60 mob.

My lord, that doesn't strike you as completely bizzare? That your defenses never progress past a point that you can achieve almost 1/5th of the way through your entire career? This so must obviously be an unintended consequence of the patch. There is no rational way to explain this mechanic in the game.

Whether this system sucks or not, well that's another topic. I'm just trying to keep these points in mind and get around my "MMORPG pre-programming." Hopefully I can help others get around it too, in case they don't change patch 1. They may not, since it does actually work ok.

You may think it works ok. I do not. I suppose if I wanted to get to my car right now I could just toss myself out the window. Most people would prefer to use the stairs.

There are also HUGE problems with the current game mechanics that you are glossing over. The teaming situation for mages for instance right now is practically intollerable. For instance:

A full team of players all say level 100 is perfectly capable of fighting a monster with current game mechanics that is level 160-180. No exploiting, no cheating. Just flat out melee and copious amounts of healing. Anyone who has played this game up to that level and grouped recently must realize this as a solid fact.

However, as a mage (offensive affliction, elemental magic). I cannot affect anything with any degree of reliability anywhere REMOTELY that high above my level. This means that there will be fights (in my case a few in a row) where I do not get any experience points because my spells are resisted over and over again. Hell I get near a 50% resist rate on my nukes on things +10 levels higher than me. Things my own level resist me about 2 in 5.

The way the game mechanics are right now, in a full team fighting monsters that give 1000 to 1500 xp at my level, I cannot in any meaningful way, shape or form, contribute to my team using my chosen career path.

I posted this in another thread and after people yelling at me about how stupid I was, the best advice I got was, "ask your friends to fight something lower".

Sorry, but that is not a viable solution to this problem. I am not going to ask 8 other people to gimp their XP rates just so that I can have a 50/50 chance of landing an affliction or nuke on a monster.

The game mechanics right now, regardless of if they are do-able or not, are quite flatly broken. They were not tested to any degree by anyone, they were just shoved into the game at random.

People can say Nevrax has this great vision or what not, but honestly if you buy that I have a bridge to sell you. You need to look no further than the newbie "Yubo-Gate" fiasco of two days ago to show that they haven't a clue how the combat mechanics in their own game works.

Ask yourself this:

If on the eve of both your FREE TRIAL and the launch of the most anticipated MMO' in history, would you consider it a good idea to introduce changes into the game that make it impossible for a newbie player to defeat a suckling yubo.

People who are supporting Nevrax, you must seriously address this issue. I know it causes you a deal of pain and cognitive dissoance, but there is no rational way to explain that these changes are having their intended affect if they would so collosally blunder something so simple days ahead of their major push to get new subscriptions.

If you accept that Nevrax is a business that intends to make money.

If you accept that the Free Trial is intended to garner them more subscriptions (and hence more money).

If you accept that they are launching it on the day of the release of the most highly anticipated MMO in the short history of the genre and are trying to compete in some way or another.

Then you must explain why they would introduce a change that disallows new subscribers from ever advancing their melee past level 1.

Also please explain the reason why the eventual fix to this problem was on the second emergency patch (not the first mind you) and only occured after someone was kind enough to point it out on the forums.

o.O

They made a mistake that they quickly realized would have the effect of turning off new possible subscribers and fixed it.. *only after someone showed them it was broken*

Now there are two was of looking at this:

1) Nevrax does not like to earn money and intended for suckling yubos to decimate people curious about the game and only relented after fan outrage on the boards.

or

2) They didn't test these changes at all and do not fully comprehend the effects they are having in the game.

I wonder if free subscription members will have access to these forums? I wonder what next weeks flame fest is going to look like if things continue as they are?

[rodrigoq]

Personally, patch 1 threw my confidence in nevrax.. then the 2 emergency patched slightly renewed my that confidence, but still, the game was still not fun. Not only were my fight/magic lines pretty much borked, ALOT of friends and guildmates left after patch one and never looked back. I intend to do the same. I have nothing to really stay for now.. pre patch 1 I could log in any time of night or day and find 15-20 people I knew, was friends with or in my guild to hunt with or socilize with. Now.. I have a hard time even finding 1 or 2 people to even group with to hunt, or just chat with while I harvest.

Bad timing for such a bad patch IMO.. Especially with WoW open beta starting monday. Prior to Patch 1 I had no intention whatsoever of playing WoW or EQ2. Given the current state of Ryzom, and what I no longer have to look forward to in Ryzom, I will try the WoW open beta to see if I'll enjoy it.

Even my RL brother who I grouped with regularly has since cancelled his account after patch 1. He is a 88 melee, in q100 heavy made from a mix of excellent/supreme/choice roots mats...In his words: "When I logged in, I ran to 4ways to join a mal clopper group. While running a scowling started to attack me, so I went to drop it so I could keep running, it killed me in 6 ******* hits! and I couldn't even hit the ******* thing!. After the 3 tries and a baying goari raping me I asked wtf had happened and found out all mobs were friggen uber now and mals ganked now. Then I logged in yesterday(saturday) and got raped again by a pussy kizoar. I'm not playing a game like this, cant even kill a gingo I owned at lev 40."

Similar story for just about everyone else I knew who cancelled after the patch and/or the 2 emergency ones.. even mega fanbois I knew just said screw it..


No fun anymore, no one to play with, just harvest, die, or fight and die and woork off dp all night.. I wish patch 1 had never came to be..

[aelvana]

It's exactly as I say. I love to post, love to argue, am an experienced gamer, an experienced programmer, was sure I knew the new mechanics were impossible. Long story short, my thinking that I couldn't fight anything came from me still thinking about the old mechanics. I was mistaken, after thinking I'd done enough testing to have a good handle on how fights would work out.

Jjm, how much time is left on your account? Name a time, log in, I have full access and will meet you anywhere. We'll find mobs you can fight. Any DP we get in the process I'll help you burn off spamming big heals ungrouped.

I was in your shoes for a couple days, and knowing what I learned last night, I can't honestly believe anyone who says they can't solo has put forth the needed effort and DP to find what mobs/where they can still fight. The range of mob is just narrower.

Please take me up on my offer though. The only time of day I'm tied up is overnight, 2AM - 7AM EST.

EDIT: I just remembered you're primarily a mage. This and many other threads you've been replying in are about solo fight, which is a different ballgame. This thread is about solo fight. Of course the advice I gave on armor doesn't apply to you. Your comments don't apply at all to solo fight, either. Why reply here? If you want me to demonstrate that solo fight is very doable, my offer still stands.

[jjm152]

It's exactly as I say. I love to post, love to argue, am an experienced gamer, an experienced programmer, was sure I knew the new mechanics were impossible. Long story short, my thinking that I couldn't fight anything came from me still thinking about the old mechanics. I was mistaken, after thinking I'd done enough testing to have a good handle on how fights would work out.

Jjm, how much time is left on your account? Name a time, log in, I have full access and will meet you anywhere. We'll find mobs you can fight. Any DP we get in the process I'll help you burn off spamming big heals ungrouped.

I was in your shoes for a couple days, and knowing what I learned last night, I can't honestly believe anyone who says they can't solo has put forth the needed effort and DP to find what mobs/where they can still fight. The range of mob is just narrower.

Please take me up on my offer though. The only time of day I'm tied up is overnight, 2AM - 7AM EST.

Aelvana,

The problem I am having is not if I can defeat something or not. It's if its *worth* it for me to defeat them. I am perfectly capable of finding an enemy that I can defeat. However I am not capable of finding an enemy that I can defeat based on my actual playing abilities.

This is the situation I am in (I explained this in another thread).

SOLO:

I can hang out by some water and with a relative degree of success (1 in 10 resist rate still for some reason) defeat lower level enemies for about 600xp a pop. I can do about 3 of these a minute for 1800xp a minute. Which is pretty good XP rate post patch IMHO.

However, the only reason why I can defeat them is because I out damage them at range. I just cast one spell (I get to pick the damage type, whoopie) and if it gets too close to me I back into the water. Rinse, repeat.

Like I said in my original response: Definately do-able.

This gives me almost a 0% chance of collecting DP (assuming my link doesn't freak or I don't crash) and a comparitively good rate of advancement.

However, it is as boring as dirt. Also, there are no opportunities in this routine for me to use my other magic lines (defensive/offensive affliction) for me to raise them up. So I am pretty much stuck raising elemental magic.

This is vastly different from before the patch when i would take much greater risk and the game was much more fun. Before I would target a 2500xp or 3k xp mob and attempt to use nukes/fear and my amp (blind for a quick halt, then another fear) to take out targets that could wipe me easily with my 0 defense as a caster. This was fun. I could beat them if I was careful. The XP reward was nice, but honestly if it was 1/2 that I wouldn't have cared really.

To me, the situtation where I am using all my abilities and recieving somewhat appropriate reward for the risk is more fun. The situtation where I pick a low HP mob and just blast it to death for XXX points is not fun.

The way the game is set up right now, if I try to defeat something that I honestly feel like I should be fighting (1000 to 1500 xp mob) then I know quite for a fact that the situtation is completely out of my control. I will either get resisted and lose or I will not and win. There are no tactics involved in this fight, it is purely brute force and in some cases a lot of treading water.

Anyway, that is just the solo game.

GROUP:

I am a wet towel. The resist range for spells in this game is far narrower than the range at which melee is effective. A mixed group of melee and healers can definately take on enemies that I have a 1 in 20 chance of landing a nuke/affliction on. There is no solution for this than to group with lower level players (and kill their xp) or ask my group to fight lower level mobs (and kill their xp).

Obviously, I don't think that its very kosher to join someones team and then say, "Hey guys can you fight far below your capabilities so I can earn some xp by having a spell land".

There is honestly nothing to argue about here and I fail to see why so many people get hot under the colar when I bring this up. Perhaps I am phrasing it the wrong way so that they don't understand, I never claimed to be the worlds greatest communicator.

But in any regards, the game is out of balance. Certain "classes" (melee) have a larger range of effectivness against mobs than caster types (deff/off aff and ele magic particularly) while healing classes are always effective against any level enemy.

The degree of reward you get for engaging in riskier behavior is not appropriate to the degree of risk you put yourself in. If I attempted to solo 1000xp enemies with my magic, I am positive that eventually I would be perpetually in the DP unless I decided to camp the waterline. Even in that case two of my other magic lines would atrophy while I only gained experience in elemental magic.

The situtation has pretty much gone overnight from me having a wide degree of options as far as teaming and solo play goes, as well as tactics available to me to being forced into a box that says: You will fight monster type 'a' and you will use skill tree 'b' or you will not be able to progress.

Is this do-able? Yes it totally is. Is it preferable? I don't think so and hence my efforts to get this message across to the developers.

[keriann]

the game sucks now. nuff said. refer to the valid points I made wasting thousands of lines in dozens of other threads.

[aelvana]

I never claimed to be the worlds greatest communicator.

Actually, that post got across to me your gripes. As far as it being worth it, it certainly doesn't seem so. I'm readjusting to it myself because I'm willing to to play on.

As far as magic soloing being less fun, and there being less options, I wholeheartedly agree. I've decided myself it's worth it to me to re-adjust, because I love the game so much (I'm sick to death of 'stock' medieval MUDs and MMORPGs). It's a personal choice, I guess.

[fiadd]

I pretty much agree with Jim152's assessment, although I'd like to add a few more comments about trying to be a caster in a group.

One of the biggest problems I see with the current system is that they are apparently using a single resist formula for all spells. Thus to prevent people from doing the blind/stun lock down technique we were using before the patch, they have made it impossible to use any spell but healing effectively in a group situation (where you need to typically kill things 30-40 levels above what you would be soloing to get the same xp per person for a full group of 9).

The biggest change that they need to make from the magic point of view is to get rid of the high resist pass/fail system they have in now for all the spells, and put in a gradual resist system. An example of this type of system would be that the higher level the creature is compared to you elemental magic level, the greater the range between min and max damage on your spells, giving you a lower overall damage rate without having the frustration of having it resist all 5 spells you were able to cast before it was killed by melee and therefore getting no xp/being useless to the group.

They should change the affliction spells so that you always form a link, but the chance of the linked spell affecting the target should be calculated anew each tick. They should also change the link spells so that you can perform another action while maintaining the link, but with a large time penalty on the action (which will remove another big complaint of affliction mages from before the patch - which was once you got a link to form, you just stood there the rest of the fight). While certain afflictions will still be pass/fail, such as stun, others can be a gradual resist effect - slow attack can have tne amount slowed depend on the ratio of levels, etc. Finally, you need to rank the affliction spells with degree of impediment to the target, and have the resist rates change as such. Right now there is little difference between stun and sleep in the effect, but sleep can be broken by damage so is only usefull for suppressing adds - sleep should therefore be much easier to maintain on a creature that you want large groups fighting than would stun.