A question to all of those complaining about combat...

[raynes]

2000xp for a dehydrated slaveni

[guhack]

Something I did not see mentioned here is your downtime to fight another mob while going solo. If I want to take a risk I likely could solo a mob for 1-2k experience (as some are suggesting) but what is your risk vs. reward vs. dowtime?

At 116 Pike with HP armor & jewelry I have 2250 hp's & Self Heal for 1.2k. Going after the experience some are, is doable, but risk would be nearly 50% especially considering how mob damage increases exponentially while character HP is linear. This is not including 5+ minutes of downtime afterwards.

My 2 cents

[jjm152]

Something I did not see mentioned here is your downtime to fight another mob while going solo. If I want to take a risk I likely could solo a mob for 1-2k experience (as some are suggesting) but what is your risk vs. reward vs. dowtime?

At 116 Pike with HP armor & jewelry I have 2250 hp's & Self Heal for 1.2k. Going after the experience some are, is doable, but risk would be nearly 50% especially considering how mob damage increases exponentially while character HP is linear. This is not including 5+ minutes of downtime afterwards.

My 2 cents

This is a concern that you won't see many of the Ryzom-fanboi brigade addressing. They are pretty much purely fixated on proving that you *can* kill something (anything!) for experience at this point.

The fact that:

1) Your success rate has decreased and the death penalty has stayed the same.
2) That the downtime is completely horrendous.

cannot make it into their equations because it sheds an unfavorable light on the recent design decisions made by the developers.

However, I agree with you - The risk/reward scenario in this game is completely out of whack. If perhaps there was too much reward for very little risk pre-patch, the developers have swung in the complete opposite direction where now there is too much risk and not enough reward.

Personally, when I die (and it happened even prior to this patch) I would like for it to be because I messed something up. There should atleast be an illusion in this game that the decisions the player makes at the keyboard have more of a factor on the outcome of a battle other than, "There is a monster I can defeat, lets hit it with attack #1 until it dies".

Right now however, that is not the case. A great deal of combat is left up to the wimsy of the random number generator. You cannot even with a modicrum degree of accuracy determine which experience giving mobs in this game you can defeat on a regular basis.

I have gotten lucky and defeated 1500 xp mobs with little difficulty, and then against the same mob moments later been sent packing. I have been decimated by 39xp mobs faster than 1000xp mobs. My tactics are the same - indeed they need to be the same since combats are so short and brutal now there is no time for doing anything but using your most damaging attack in succession.

There are so many obviously poor design decisions that went into this patch that it honestly baffles me that people cannot admit that perhaps Nevrax needed to test this quite a bit more before pushing it live. I mean, it would seem that at the very least the two subsequent emergency patches in a row would dictate that their original premise is not unassailable.

Instead, they call opinions like this flames and whines and cheerfully poke their heads back into the sand after they are done patting each other on the back.

I frankly, do not get it.

[raynes]

This is a concern that you won't see many of the Ryzom-fanboi brigade addressing. They are pretty much purely fixated on proving that you *can* kill something (anything!) for experience at this point.

The fact that:

1) Your success rate has decreased and the death penalty has stayed the same.
2) That the downtime is completely horrendous.

cannot make it into their equations because it sheds an unfavorable light on the recent design decisions made by the developers.

However, I agree with you - The risk/reward scenario in this game is completely out of whack. If perhaps there was too much reward for very little risk post patch, the developers have swung in the complete opposite direction where now there is too much risk and not enough reward.

Personally, when I die (and it happened even prior to this patch) I would like for it to be because I messed something up. There should atleast be an illusion in this game that the decisions the player makes at the keyboard have more of a factor on the outcome of a battle other than, "There is a monster I can defeat, lets hit it with attack #1 until it dies".

Right now however, that is not the case. A great deal of combat is left up to the wimsy of the random number generator. You cannot even with a modicrum degree of accuracy determine which experience giving mobs in this game you can defeat on a regular basis.

I have gotten lucky and defeated 1500 xp mobs with little difficulty, and then against the same mob moments later been sent packing. I have been decimated by 39xp mobs faster than 1000xp mobs. My tactics are the same - indeed they need to be the same since combats are so short and brutal now there is no time for doing anything but using your most damaging attack in succession.

There are so many obviously poor design decisions that went into this patch that it honestly baffles me that people cannot admit that perhaps Nevrax needed to test this quite a bit more before pushing it live. I mean, it would seem that at the very least the two subsequent emergency patches in a row would dictate that their original premise is not unassailable.

Instead, they call opinions like this flames and whines and cheerfully poke their heads back into the sand after they are done patting each other on the back.

I frankly, do not get it.

Actually the more I fight things, the more sense the new systems (yes systems) make. One thing that people seem to be ignoring is the new systems that lets you know what level a mob is. This is very important to combat now. Here is what I have found so far. The stars on the mobs are levels of 10. Each background color represents an area. That area is setup for a certain level.

So in Witherings (land of the Zorai). The Cities of Intuition are level 0-50. So a one star mob would be between level 10 and 20. Two stars between level 20 and 30, three stars between 30 and 40, and four stars between level 40 and 50.

Maiden Groove is level 50-100. So one star would be between level 50 and 60. Two stars between levels 60 and 70. Three stars between level 70 and 80. Four stars between level 80 and 90.

My level ranges might be a bit off, but that is the general idea. I found this out becuase at level 71 I am getting 1000xp for a 2 star mob. I am assuming that 1000xp means you are fighting at your own level. When I hit a three star I got 2000xp. Which would make some sense as it's 10 levels above my own. A four star I got my ass kicked as well I should, its 20 levels higher than my own.

Now having said all of that. If you fight mobs at your star level, you will have almost a 100% success rate at killing. You will also be able to kill a decent amount before having to recharge. IF you try to kill higher than your level your success rate and downtime change accordingly.

After really playing with it, it's very obvious what the devs had in mind. First they wanted people to fight mobs at their own levels. Second they wanted people to go out and fight a wider range of mobs.

Take the time to learn it, and you will see it's not this horrible mess people are making it out to be.

[jjm152]

Actually the more I fight things, the more sense the new systems (yes systems) make. One thing that people seem to be ignoring is the new systems that lets you know what level a mob is. This is very important to combat now. Here is what I have found so far. The stars on the mobs are levels of 10. Each background color represents an area. That area is setup for a certain level.

So in Witherings (land of the Zorai). The Cities of Intuition are level 0-50. So a one star mob would be between level 10 and 20. Two stars between level 20 and 30, three stars between 30 and 40, and four stars between level 40 and 50.

Maiden Groove is level 50-100. So one star would be between level 50 and 60. Two stars between levels 60 and 70. Three stars between level 70 and 80. Four stars between level 80 and 90.

My level ranges might be a bit off, but that is the general idea. I found this out becuase at level 71 I am getting 1000xp for a 2 star mob. I am assuming that 1000xp means you are fighting at your own level. When I hit a three star I got 2000xp. Which would make some sense as it's 10 levels above my own. A four star I got my ass kicked as well I should, its 20 levels higher than my own.

Now having said all of that. If you fight mobs at your star level, you will have almost a 100% success rate at killing. You will also be able to kill a decent amount before having to recharge. IF you try to kill higher than your level your success rate and downtime change accordingly.

After really playing with it, it's very obvious what the devs had in mind. First they wanted people to fight mobs at their own levels. Second they wanted people to go out and fight a wider range of mobs.

Take the time to learn it, and you will see it's not this horrible mess people are making it out to be.

I don't know what part of, "I cannot defeat anything my own level" I can make any more clearer.

For some reason, I just cannot. I have the best equipment I can get. I have over 900 pts in extra HP jewelry. The best I can do right now is to blast 600 xp mobs with just elemental magic because my afflictions of both types refuse to work. If I try to fight something that will give me 1000xp I do not have this 100% success rate that you are talking about. Heck I have literally gotten my rear handed to me by an enemy that give me 39 xp.

The game right now is just far too random. There is no skill or strategy involved, its all "find appropriate monster, hit powerful attack". If the random number generator is kind, you get XP. If it is not, then you do not. Sometimes you get DP.

If they wanted to reduce peoples leveling rates, I would have much rather prefered they just lowered experience than altering combat so drastically. A lot of the fun of picking the appropriate action (or string of actions) to defeat an enemy is simply just gone.

If I wanted to, I am perfectly capable of hanging out by some water and blasting stuff to death with my spells for experience. But the point I am trying to get across is that particular style of game play is not very fun. I would have a 0% chance of death and a guarenteed rate of about 1800xp/minute.

To be completely honest, if I was to go full on cheese and exploit terrain to my advantage I could be earning about 6000xp/minute.

The fact that combat is *do-able* does not mean that it is anything approaching fun. Fun for me would be taking on challenging monsters and knowing that if I messed up (me! not the random number genator) then I would be penalized.

Right now, I don't have that option. If i try to pick on something that I should be fighting (if I am reading this right, we should be getting 1k xp a kill from mobs... perhaps I'm totally wrong and that would explain alot), anyway if I try to tackle on that kind of enemy I know that a great deal of the battle is out of my hands and in the hands of the combat engine.

Hence my statement: I cannot defeat them. Because I'm not. The game is deciding for me if I am going to win or lose at that point. The risk there is very much not in proportion to the reward when I can be a weeny cheeseball and fight obviously weaker mobs for a faster XP rate.

Or even better yet, I can exploit and make faster XP than that by far and be at 0 risk as well.

But hey, I don't like to cheat.

Like I said in my previous post, its not about whats do-able, its about the risk-reward scenario. It's broken. I can undergo a high degree of risk for a slightly increased amount of reward or I can go undergo a very low degree of risk for a slightly decreased amount of reward.

In most popular MMO's there is an increasing scale of risk/reward where the farther up the risk tree you get, the more rewards you get. This is what encourages people to engage in risky (and highly fun) behavior. Right now we have people engaging in almost the opposite behavior (fighting weaker enemies than they are capable of) because the risk is not directly proportionate to the percieved reward.

And finally to boot, the resist percentages of monsters are so high right now that this factor is exaggerated greatly for those of us who cast spells. My risk is much higher against a 1000xp mob than someone who melees right now and it increases exponetionally past that point. Infact, if I was in a full team fighting enemies that give 1000xp (which I believe is the target point for xp in this game) the vast majority of my spells would never land on the target.

The system, it is broken. It needs to be tuned.

[aelvana]

It's one thing to prove that it can be done. Now that I know it's not that hard in heavy, I'm inclined to argue if someone says it's not possible.

It's a lot slower with downtime, and that's a different point, yes. Nevrax's only mistake was letting us get used to much faster EXP beforehand.

[jjm152]

It's one thing to prove that it can be done. Now that I know it's not that hard in heavy, I'm inclined to argue if someone says it's not possible.

It's a lot slower with downtime, and that's a different point, yes. Nevrax's only mistake was letting us get used to much faster EXP beforehand.

I am ok with slower leveling, I am not ok with not being able to have the opportunity to use my abilities or cherry picking monsters below my level for easy XP.

They could have put a 1k xp cap in the game and it would be a far preferable situtation to what we have right now.

[svayvti]

Nah, there are still a few mobs worth decent exp that aren't instant death.

Regardless combat is seriously messed up and we have a lot of people here on the forums living in denial trying to abuse anyone who disagrees with them.

If combat is so great, why the mass exodus? Are people willing to pitched the greatness of combat to an almost empty server population?

If discovered day one before most others who are now late raving about it that I could solo stuff for exp still. But...

It isn't rewarding

and it isn't fun.

Why is leveling speed more important than fun and a happy player population?

[jjm152]

Nah, there are still a few mobs worth decent exp that aren't instant death.

Regardless combat is seriously messed up and we have a lot of people here on the forums living in denial trying to abuse anyone who disagrees with them.

If combat is so great, why the mass exodus? Are people willing to pitched the greatness of combat to an almost empty server population?

If discovered day one before most others who are now late raving about it that I could solo stuff for exp still. But...

It isn't rewarding

and it isn't fun.

Why is leveling speed more important than fun and a happy player population?

Even scaryier - There are ways to slow down leveling without making the primary component tof a MMORPG (combat) frustrating.

[raynes]

Nah, there are still a few mobs worth decent exp that aren't instant death.

Regardless combat is seriously messed up and we have a lot of people here on the forums living in denial trying to abuse anyone who disagrees with them.

If combat is so great, why the mass exodus? Are people willing to pitched the greatness of combat to an almost empty server population?

If discovered day one before most others who are now late raving about it that I could solo stuff for exp still. But...

It isn't rewarding

and it isn't fun.

Why is leveling speed more important than fun and a happy player population?

Combat isn't this huge messed up mess that people make it out to be. Why is there a mass exodus (and I really think that's a bad term)? Because before the patch people would run out and kill a pack of ragus no problem. Or they would kill some kippes with no problems at all. Then they sign in and they can't just run up and kill things, they have to actually think about what they kill.

If you take the time to learn the system, then you will see it works. The problem is that no one seems to take to time to learn.