I want to talk about a few things and provide some input regarding the game. Following is a brief overview of the things I want to discuss.
Development
F2P release schedule
Minion targeting
Snow blindness
Why swordmen are bad
CC OP
Why trade is okay-ish as is
Loading times
World bossing
I appreciate the development the designers are putting into the game. Some issues have been addressed and there are many to go, but I do see progress, which is a basic expectation I have.
With regards to development, I think IMC heavily botched the release schedule. When they initially announced the 3 month buy in, they KNEW they would need that time to properly prepare the game for f2p release. And look, after slightly more than 3 months, many issues are finally getting ironed out. And on top of that, the game still isn’t f2p, since new membership has been closed for over a fortnight. 3 months is the time they knew it would take for enough of the VIP buy ins to reach 280 and fully experience the game’s content and bugs, so that IMC would be able to find them and fix them. Instead, they had to dedicate too many resources to server migration and expansion that they couldn’t fix backend issues. If they had adhered to the original schedule, those issues would have been resolved prior do f2p release and the game would be open to new players right now. Instead, the re-opening on steam looks weeks out still. I hope that the people who made the very poor decision to bend to the loud crying of whiners (about the proposed 3 month buy-in only access) have learned to not base their decisions on the selfish braying of people who are not going to provide IMC with any income anyway.
Supposedly there was a patch where minions wouldn’t be targeted. It doesn’t seem to be working for me, whenever a warlock summons that templeshooter my UI automatically selects it. Thus, I can no longer see the HP, buffs, or debuffs on the target I am trying to attack. This is an issue I would like to see resolved. I do not want to be have to ever ever see a friendly minion in my UI.
I play a swordman. For me, when I am in a party if I can get one, I am having some trouble seeing the monsters I am targeting beneath all of the shiny magic effects. Often times I find myself facing the wrong direction while attacking, because I cannot see my character underneath all the visual effects. In fact, the only way I can keep track is by watching the health bars. But more importantly than the mechanics of it being troublesome, the gaming experience is terrible. I know wizards like to see mobs blow up with lots of shiney sparkles, but as a swordman player, I enjoy the sight and sound, the lovely THWACK and THUNK of ramming my 2 handed sword through demonflesh. All of that shiney, pardon my french, bullshit, is super annoying. I don’t think that party leveling and enjoying the game experience should be mutually exclusive. To put it bluntly there isn’t a WoE player on RO who doesn’t use an edited GRF or the 3rd party program that shows AoE effects as as colored ground tiles specifically b/c of the snowblindness issue. This is an issue I would like to see resolved. Add an option to remove or simplify effects from other players.
The reason swordmen are bad is not because of damage. There are myriad reasons but the large part is because of the fact that swordmen are not ranged, and are not granted a significant enough bonuses for having to move to and stand next to their target to attack it. In PvP, a major issue is that swordman have to attack on the ground, which can simply be jumped over, and there is no reward for having the skill to connect a hit against a jumping target. Perhaps this could be changed by making swordman damage much much higher, but I think that simply creates an issue of power creep. While I don’t envision a patch in the immediate future, I do expect that something beyond simple damage buff be provided to balance the class and the game.
Some suggestions:
- Jumping costs X stamina, where X is an integer greater than 1, and jumping is impossible with 0 or 1 stamina.
- If a player uses target lock, using skills or z attacks automatically face the character at the target and uses the skill in the proper direction. Still granting skills that do multi attacks in that direction don’t allow the character to change facing. Say that using the stabbing skill would face you toward the locked target, but you wouldn’t change facing till the skill ends even if the target moves.
- Add attributes to some skills, or change the mechanics of some skills or weapons so that they cause additional damage or have additional effects if they hit a target that is in the air or is jumping.
- Allow swordmen to use attacks and skills while moving, balance by adding or increasing mana or stamina cost to such attack or skill usage.
CCs in this game are OP as â– â– â– â– . While it is entertaining and sometimes needed for the PvE experience of the game, CCs make the game fun for only one player in a PvP situation. One player gets to play the game while the other literally might as well just sit and wait to lose with their hands in their lap. There needs to be balancing related to CC in order to make PvP fun for the general playerbase. Some suggestions I have regarding this are:
- Add a mechanic increasing your resistance to a certain CC effect if you have recently been effected with the same. For example, base resistance for not being effected with a specific kind of CC within the previous X seconds, then base resistance + (bonus resistance)*(#times inflicted) for each time being inflicted with the CC within an allotted time period.
- Add a mechanic that reduces the duration of inflicted CC if the character has been inflicted recently. Instead of the above method, which would eventually grant 100% blanket resistance until a certain duration expires, allow the character to get CC but reduce the duration instead.
Compared to the gameplay issues and other problems, the trade system is hardly a problem. I would agree it could be addressed and it might be easier to do so than change other things, but it is almost insulting to get trade UI and system fixes when there are many other deeper issues to resolve.
Edit: This bible wasn’t finished when I misclicked post earlier and still isn’t finished now. Will re edit and post later. Wife aggro.
One of the big issues with gameplay is the massive, MASSIVE load times. This is such an issue because players are attackable while loading, but unable to respond. The map overhead while loading is so bad it takes 20-30 seconds to change map, channel, or relog. This issue needs to be addressed.
Moving back to how the whiners complained and wrecked the game’s release, they did so because they didn’t want the people who bought into early release to overpower and own all the end game content. Well guess what, it happened anyway. As in any MMO, the people who bought in early and lived in the game moved onto the end game content and now rule it in an incontestable manner. World bossing, it isn’t even a matter of picking the right circles any longer. The players who farmed it early and made the silver off loot sales were able to upgrade those expensive attributes to 100%, were able to make those expensive upgrades to +15. New players who roll correctly into the current boss meta simply cannot compete, cannot gain the boxes, cannot make the silver as quickly. Because of entrenched competition, new players with even infinite time to invest will take exponentially longer to progress to the same point as their entrenched competition. The world boss debuff is a simple and effective method to address this, but if not that, then something needs to be done about world boss monopolization.
