Overhaul

[bmc85uk]

Introduction.

Some of the changes proposed herein are quite drastic, stepping away from the current mechanics of the game. While many of them are common suggestions from members of the community that, in my eyes, gel with the game seamlessly, others (namely the skill tree proposals) require almost completely reworking certain areas of the game.

1. The Health & Mana System.

With the current system, health and mana only increase by the points allotted into STR and INT, 2 points spent equating to 1 HP/MP gained. Given that over the course of the game players will naturally expect their character to get stronger, it then becomes a necessity for damage and spell cost to be capped by unorthodox methods.

If health and mana increased naturally with level as in most RPGs, players are given a feel that their character is getting naturally stronger from the core; there is more difference between a low and a high level character, greater room for customisation by the player and a lot less complication with balance as the level range increases.

STR/INT should have a greater effect on regen to correlate with the increase, ideally at level 100 you would want to regenerate at the same rate (as a percentage). Imagine that the warrior and enchanter are exactly opposite in health and mana as they are with the current system, the base values I used for calculation are:

Warrior – 154HP – 3.08H/s +11HP/level (full regen in 50s)
Archer – 112HP – 1.72H/s +8HP/level (full regen in 65s)
Ench – 98HP – 1.23H/s +7HP/level (full regen in 80s)

At the current level cap, with no points allocated to STR (or INT for MP) this would yield:

Warrior – 638HP – 12.76H/s
Archer – 464HP – 7.14H/s
Ench – 406HP – 5.08H/s

Perhaps not the ideal values for balance, however I feel that with these amounts, and some tweaking to PvP/PvE damage, it would balance quite nicely, also making higher dungeons harder for low level characters as they should be.

2. The Skill System.

Using the current skill system, by level 61 characters will be accumulating skill points with no place to spend them. I’m sure you’re fully aware that freeform customisation was a key feature in the (early) success of Star Wars Galaxies and allows a player to create something truly wonderful and unique.

While customisation is already available to some degree, the inflexibility of the skill system as well as the forced race/class combinations puts a choke hold on this past a certain point. Customisation currently works because all three characters, despite being completely different types of class, have almost identical skills to allow them to adapt to different play styles, they can all debuff, boost defense etc. Rather than explaining the obvious, I’ll come straight to the point with my ideas for reform.

Skill trees seem to be the most popular suggestion from the community, with very little in the way of opposition. They are a very flexible way to allow players to develop their characters into something that fits their own style of play.

So far it has been suggested that each race/class be given two branches to pursue, each representing a style of play typically available to these class archetypes in RPGs. Instead of this, I would suggest that all 6 branches be open to allow any race to make their own skill set. I remember seeing someone say in a thread, “What, allow everyone to be everything – no thanks” however I see one of the core limitations in this game is restricting each race to one class and one skill set.

2.1. Warrior.
Defensive tree.
A pure tank designed as a real team player, low damage output but incredible survivability & ability to hold aggro, especially against large groups of enemies. Natural resistance to debuffs and root/snare.

• Weaker attack & stronger taunts
• Heavy HP/Armour & HP regen buffs
• Hit % buff
• Small Hit debuff
• Beckon
• Stun
• Passive increases to Armour/HP, Regen & Debuffs

Offensive tree.
DPS tank, still able to tank well but substantially worse than a pure tank, not as good at holding group aggro but good enough for single targets, respectable damage output. Given that the pure tank will be able to absorb massive amounts of damage, the DPS tank should be able to break root/snare through the use of some form of ‘Berserk’, balancing out their ability to contend in PvP.

• Stronger attack & weaker taunts
• Light HP/Armour buff
• Attack speed buff
• Small Crit/Hit buff
• Small Dodge % debuff
• Beckon
• Root
• Passive increases to Damage & Hit. Weaker passive increases to Armour/HP

2.2. Archer.
Burst damage tree.
More focussed on damage output overall, very much pure DPS aided by single target debuffs. Still with substantial Dodge for survivability, yet due to lack of debuffs, more fragile than the DoT Archer.

• Strong attacks with longer delays
• Heavy evade buff
• Attack speed debuff
• Armour debuff
• Root
• Snare
• Knockback
• Passive increases to Hit, Crit & Dodge.

Damage over Time tree.
More focussed on debilitation of opponents, still with formidable damage output (higher than a DPS tank) a valued team player with some very sought after AoE debuffs. Lower damage balanced by increased survivability as a result of debuffs.

• Weaker attacks with DoT & Debuffs (Damage, Regen)
• Heavy evade buff
• Hit debuff
• Armour debuff
• Root
• Snare
• Knockback
• Passive increases to Hit, Damage & Dodge.

2.3. Enchantress.
Offensive tree.
The traditional wizard, massive burst damage potential, some minor protection buffs and heavy roots to allow for survivability.

• High damage single target nukes
• Weaker AoE nukes
• AoE snare
• Root
• Damage debuff
• Hit debuff
• Weaker mana shield (Lower armour buff with lower absorption percentage)
• Passive increases to MP/Regen & Magic damage (possibility of spell crit?).

Defensive tree.
Essentially a heal/buff machine, a very valued team player, focussing on debuffs & DoT as an offense and HP/regen/armour buffs for defense, culminating in a class with potential for good survivability but one that is easily overcome if mistakes are made.

• Weaker DoT spells
• Heavy group HP/Regen/Armour buffs
• Heavy heals
• AoE knockback
• Stronger mana shield (Better armour buff with either less mana drain or higher absorption percentage)
• Passive increases to MP/Regen & Heal strength (possibility of heal crit?)

How skill trees work exactly is something that would obviously require much testing, if a character could follow multiple trees simultaneously, or if a character would be restricted to a primary tree until certain levels, when secondary/tertiary trees would be optional, and if these trees would be as powerful/mana cost effective as secondary/tertiary choices compared to being the primary.

As a footnote, skills should not be limited by stiff variables i.e. -50 damage, any clarification you could give as to why this has been done would be much appreciated. Mana cost should also increase with skill level, restricting the use of very high skills at lower level.

[bmc85uk]

3. Knockback, Ranged Combat & Stun/’Rubber-banding’.

3.1. Knockback.

I have already expressed my concern with the amount of knockback currently in game, while I feel the feature is needed as part of crowd control, it’s use is currently enforced as knockback is tacked on to skills. Knockback also happens a lot in PvE to a lesser degree, characters often jostling about, when using melee weapons (daggers especially with such a short range) so many attacks are missed and I feel that this shouldn’t ever be the case, in my opinion knockback should be substantial only, not incremental.

I find that my pet hate is constantly chasing enemies around, and in worst cases, chasing them back to their starting position as they have been blown out of their leash range.

In PvP this gets worse, with 1v1 it’s quite annoying, especially as some of the warrior’s attacks cause knockback (feel free to clarify why this is the case), only made worse by the fact that ‘stunned’ opponents can still use skills to knock you away. With group PvP, it becomes incredibly frustrating, as a melee class I spend most of my time being bounced around like a pinball; doing little to no damage.

While removing knockback would leave certain builds at a disadvantage, (thinking mainly of the INT Enchantress) as with other games, there are ways to get around this. With knockback there is no half measure, you either knock your enemy out of weapon range, therefore completely negating all damage, or you fail and get left at a big disadvantage.

Having root/snare/stun and/or damage debilitating debuffs as a substitute allows the melee class to stay active in combat against a weaker target. Certainly with the Enchantress I would lean more towards debuffing the opponent perhaps with a root/run tactic while debuffs are inactive & refreshing.

My main gripe with knockback at the moment is how much of a mess combat becomes as a result, the game slows down, targeting becomes very difficult and ranged characters get a huge advantage. While there are measures for the warrior to combat this, in group PvP, one beckon is no match for several potentially huge knockbacks, especially when beckon often pulls a target not just towards, but past your location.

3.2. Ranged Combat.

I am of the opinion that kiting should never be used in PvP; except for when a root or snare is active (not kiting in the traditional sense). Given that all characters have the same run speed, at optimal distance a ranged class could potentially kite a melee character indefinitely, the advantage of a ranged character should not be the potential to avoid all incoming melee damage, but to avoid it some of the time.

Given that the archer has the best Dodge, this should allow for reasonable survivability in PvP, the only advantage of a ranged character should be easier chance to land the first blows, as well as standing at a safe distance while an enemy’s movement is disabled/impeded.

In addition to this, in PvE ranged enemies will try to maintain a safe distance, once again this for me is not a fun or interesting mechanic, just like their human controlled counterparts, archer type enemies should have substantial Dodge to allow them to evade incoming attacks without the irritating ‘Benny Hill’ style chases, similar to this, mage type enemies should be allowed mana shield, both should be allowed use of root and snare, albeit to a limited degree. Currently in AO2, mages are the most annoying enemies to kill with ridiculously high health and armour; they should be annoying in a traditional sense using root, snare and mana shield to survive.

3.3. Stun/’Rubber-banding’.

The way that certain attacks in PvE will stop movement, giving the illusion of ‘Rubber-banding’ is something I find very annoying, to me it feels like the game is broken or my connection is bad. When I first started playing, I originally thought this was down to connection problems.

While I can see that it may have been implemented as a means to stop kiting, I feel that there are already sufficient measures in place, coupled with over-zealous knockback and running ranged enemies this gets very annoying. It’s a common occurrence that attack skills will miss, potentially knocking enemies in undesired directions as a direct result of being suddenly ‘teleported’ a few steps back. Mage enemies are possibly the worst for this behaviour, as fireballs have this effect on a player (even when the actual attack misses).

I don’t know any other MMO that has this problem, although for most other MMOs’ run speed is changeable by use of potions/skills/spells/mounts. If this were removed, enemies could be given abilities of their class types to allow them to halt running/kiting players in their tracks through conventional methods; however they should not use these too often. Enemy run-speed should be slightly increased to compensate for pathing issues, just enough to keep up with a player so that knockback would still be useful. There is nothing more irritating than a computer controlled character cheating to compensate.

Removal of this may cause problems with the current PvE mechanics; however there are more conventional and less irritating ways to achieve the same end result.

4. Critical Hits.

I think there is currently far too much focus on critical damage. Both the warrior and enchantress can currently raise their Critical % by a significant amount, something which I think should be reserved for DPS classes.

One hit deaths (both PvP and PvE) are almost exclusively down to the sheer frequency of critical hits, meaning that without them, PvP fights will last unnaturally long times and enemies in PvE will cause almost no damage. Given the stiff health system, critical hits endgame are almost always lethal for mages and archers, and even with good Dodge, you can pretty much guarantee you’ll get at least one incoming critical hit per fight (no mean feat considering how short combat is).

I have never played a game where critical hits are so abundant, and being as common as they are takes all of the magic away. Although I’m not sure how much critical damage will be reduced by the changes in 1.3, the frequency is still too high.

[bmc85uk]

5. Combat Rebalance.

5.1. Dodge & Hit.

As a warrior with 31 Dodge unbuffed, in PvE (I’m making a rough guess here) I dodge around 70-80% of incoming attacks, when buffed (61%) I evade pretty much 99%, PvP is similar but varies a lot more due to buffs & debuffs from opponents.

I would imagine that Dodge is subtracted from Hit (up to 100%) and the result is the actual hit chance, which begs the question – what are the enemies hit chances in PvE? Presumably very low – possibly to allow low evade characters a better chance of survival?

I would expect Dodge to be indicative of how much my character would actually evade incoming blows. Any player with 0-5 Dodge should only Dodge up to 5% of incoming attacks from an enemy of the same level, with my Warrior buffed to 61% Dodge, I would expect to typically evade 6/10 incoming hits from a Warrior type enemy.

Hit is currently very misleading, I’m told that above 100%, Hit is only useful as a safety margin to allow for debuffs, above 100% it should have some impact to actual hit, even if diminished. For me, the ideal situation would be a throttle on Hit above 100%, with a much slower increase past this threshold. Perhaps a throttle of 1/3 so that, for example, a full DEX character with around 180% Hit currently would display an actual hit of around 127%, making a roll against high Dodge much more feasible, yet still landing almost all hits on non-evasive class types. As already mentioned, STR and INT should have a more noticeable effect on Hit, reducing the need to filter points into DEX for classes specced in either stat.

5.2. Weapon Procs.

As far as I can tell, all procs can currently land even when the attack itself misses, this applies to the stun effect from certain enemy attacks as well. I have also noticed that some, if not all procs will self-stack.

If Dodge/Hit was fixed, procs would not need to land on missed attacks, proc frequency should then be lowered considerably, and the ability to self-stack removed.

Weapons with proc abilities should not be so abundant in my opinion, so many weapons have them that it takes the magic out of having a weapon with such capabilities. In an ideal world, common procs would be removed and restricted to a few sought after weapons, spears/tridents are by far the best option in most cases due to the armour break, making most other options obsolete. This should either be removed or weakened considerably. Only the rarest weapons should have powerful procs, and even then probably not as strong as many of the current ones.

Procs could also be added to certain armour giving short term beneficial effects such as Defense boost or HP/MP regen. This again should only be on the rarest of items.

5.3. Enemy archetypes.

Enemy archetypes currently follow some very strange rules, the hardest seem to be the Mages, taking far longer than anything else to kill, they try to maintain a safe distance by running backwards, coupled with the stun from their weapon attacks this is very tedious. With split skill trees, this would open up avenues for offensive and defensive Mages, aside from this; Mages should be the weakest enemies, following their human counterparts as closely as possible, rooting/snaring the player to avoid damage, using nukes and heals accordingly, with a Hit of around 65-90% dependant on level.

Archers seem to be the weakest, however they are potentially the most lethal, and in my opinion they are probably the least broken of the current enemies. Archers should be slightly tougher, aside from the critical damage (which has been fixed) their damage output is currently reasonable. Unbuffed an Archer enemy should have 90-115% Hit dependant on level.

Warriors are only slightly tougher than Archers, yet far weaker than Mages. Warriors without a doubt should be the toughest of the enemy types, they should have higher damage than a defensive Mage, but less damage than an Archer, relying less on critical hits and more on consistent damage. Warrior archetypes should have around 75-100% Hit dependant on level.

Bosses seem to be buffed in strange areas, Lesser D’jinns for example, having abnormally high Dodge for such a large character. Bosses should also follow archetypes with enhanced abilities, better focussed in these areas than a standard enemy, ideally following their look, a D’jinn as a large muscular character should be strong and hardy, not evasive. Bosses should have naturally high Hit, around 105-130% dependant on level.

[bmc85uk]

6. Equipment & Loot.

While the grading system works to a degree, pinks are so much better than lower grades that I'd never settle for anything else. As other people have mentioned, an item of a higher level should only be marginally different to a higher grade item of a lower level.

Items from each grade should be as equally useful as possible, of Legend/of Mastery etc. are pretty much obsolete. Rarest & Uniquely named items should be in a separate item grade in my opinion, all of which should be uniquely named.

Bucklers have better defense than Pharaoh’s shields, I appreciate that they were a new addition with AO2 but this is the kind of thing that really perplexes me, Pharaoh’s shields are the same grade and yet obsolete due to being super ceded by Bucklers that are better in every way. Larger shields should have higher defense, to balance this out they should have a penalty to Dodge, in my opinion, the same should apply to plate armour, which is also better in every way than Leather.

Certain items are overpowered, Isis being a prime example, I don’t understand why armour with the highest Defense is also armour with the best Dodge (either dodge the damage or soak it up – not both). I like the quirkiness of Pocket Legends, but in some aspects it doesn’t work. Ideally I’d give Isis high Defense, +HP and H/s, any armour with Dodge should suffer Defense loss, advantages could then be stacked in different areas if needed.

Drop-rates for early campaigns are currently broken; if anything, chances of drops should be higher, as nobody stays at any level other than the cap for too long. If drop-rates were fixed there would be an extra incentive to go back and run dungeons with other lower level characters.

Regeneration is also far too dependant on equipment, though I imagine with a revamp to the Health and Mana system this would be changed.

Item level restriction, while required to some degree, forces the player to grind towards the level cap in order to equip the best items. Given that the game is organised in to 5 level chunks, and the difference between level 41 and 45 items is negligible, it would be nice if requirements could be reworked.

If requirements were done by ‘Tiers’ (corresponding with dungeon level ranges) rather than levels, there would be no rush to reach the highest level to equip the best items for each dungeon. With items already split into grades (many of which are obsolete) further splitting them by levels seems unnecessary, especially when the difference between each level is so small.

Loot could still be level cap restricted with a slightly worse ‘Tier’ restricted alternative, but across the board there would only be two versions of each item, one usable through all recommended levels of the dungeon, and a special version for the level cap. In EverQuest II there is no variation on item levels, items have certain level requirements and that is where it ends. There’s no tedious task of finding the best level version of a specific item with marginally better stats; however every item in EverQuest II has a level requirement.

In my opinion, a boss should always drop more loot than a regular enemy, there is no incentive to solo at the moment, while team play should always be encouraged in MMOs; where community is the heart of the game, solo play should also be an option with its own advantages.

If bosses had the potential to drop 2-3 items minimum, soloing would have its own reward and group play would be relatively unaffected. If the 3rd - 5th item drop chance was added when the last players joined, the maximum amount of drops would remain unchanged. The difficulty would be working out who received items if the number of drops exceeded the number of players. Items could either be assigned randomly, sequentially by pecking order (first come first served or alphabetically) or a new looting system could be introduced.

With the nature of MMOs and ‘epic’ loot, and hardcore dungeons somewhere down the line, I feel that some form of advanced looting system will eventually be needed. Depending on how time consuming this would be to implement, could a basic version be introduced early on?

With the item grading system, the player could specify a minimum grade to be considered for a /roll, with all below that grade either distributed sequentially or set to leader only. Items above the boundary could then either be rolled for, or a Need/Greed system could be used, where the item is displayed in a loot screen, each player chooses Need, Greed, any that select Need automatically roll against each other, if none select Need, then those who selected Greed roll against each other, rolls for looting could be done automatically as part of the loot system.

7. Experience.

This is another area where Pocket Legends is very stiff, with experience determined by enemy level rather than the enemy itself, quick kills are the way forwards, with AO2:3 being a prime example.

In other games where experience is specific to each enemy, it is much easier to alter the rate at which the player can accrue it, and mishaps like AO2:3 could be quickly eradicated. Bosses could reward more experience making them worth while to defeat for such a purpose, the player would be encouraged to complete levels properly instead of ‘farming’, and equipment could be found through natural methods.

It’s a widely shared view that the 5 levels of an expansion are over far too quickly, and with item level restriction, to me they will always feel like a grind, if bosses only dropped items for the characters level or a ‘Tier/Cap’ system was adopted, there would be no rush to reach the level cap as most loot would be potentially useable, thus allowing levels to be strung out far longer.

[bmc85uk]

8. Farming & Power Levelling.

8.1. Farming.

Unfortunately with the current item level restrictions, I will always rush to hit the level cap before I start to look for equipment, however with the current mechanics, fighting through entire dungeons of regular enemies is too monotonous, and I find myself too unenthused as to try and find the items I need.

Boss brawl dungeons are a step in the right direction, although they then become the only dungeon that people play in an expansion to get loot. Would it be possible to implement a respawn timer for enemies? This would allow a group to run a single dungeon without a restart. Although a restart button is something I would prefer over having to remake the game itself, if the need for this could be eradicated altogether it would be something I’d look forward to.

With dungeons as linear as they are, a Magic Portal similar to the ones implemented in the Townes could be placed at the end of a dungeon to allow the group to progress on to the next level, the buttons that appear could be removed altogether; I’m assuming a player can now leave a dungeon via the world map, and if not then definitely through the menu system. Missing a few enemies in a dungeon would no longer be an issue, and with the right respawn timers, a group could stay in one dungeon, farming for rare loot in a far less tedious way, also adding to the sense of a persistent game world.

With the above changes, the current method of farming; training entire dungeons of enemies all the way to the boss, would become a thing of the past. It would no longer matter that the ‘stun’ effect from enemy attack had been removed, running to the boss would no longer be required. As with a traditional dungeon in an MMO, you would clear the generic enemies en route to the boss(es) and then routinely cycle each boss spawn until you were satisfied and could move on, with minimal grinding through standard enemies in between.

In light of this, early single boss dungeons should drop the less rare loot (as is currently the case with Plasma Pyramid; mostly armour sets and existing weapon types from the previous Alien Oasis campaign), and the later multi boss dungeons could contain the more sought after loot (such as Plasma Swords, Daggers, Talons, Staves, Wands, Blasters and 2 Handers with AO2 currently).

8.2. Power Levelling.

Power levelling is a feature that should be available within MMOs, however the way that it currently works causes much discontent within the player base. Power levelling should never be done in areas designed for the mentor, if players wish to power level, it should be done in dungeons designed for a level close to the lower player. In order to prevent power levelling in dungeons that are too high, experience could be throttled when killing enemies more than a certain amount of levels above the player. For example, any enemy more than 5 levels above the player could be restricted to 0.25 experience, or have the experience gain incrementally reduced the further the level gap increased.

9. PvP.

PvP currently feels like a hasty addition rather than a full feature of Pocket Legends, although things are being proposed and bugs fixed, implementing features to support fair, competitive matches & tournaments will be the biggest incentive for people to take part.

There is currently no way to referee a PvP match properly, the host of the game, regardless of whether they are a spectator or participant, should have access to admin features for the match. The ‘Undecided’ group could be split into 3 sub sections to allow for a referee and spectators within the game.

NEUTRAL

Referee
Player1
Spectators
Player3
Player4
Unassigned
Player5
Player6

The referee and spectators could be implemented either as 'ghosts', only visible to non combatants and untouched by any skill use, or simply not placed as characters at all, scrolling the screen to view the match. Referees and spectators would use a separate UI setup with no skills or auto attack. Where potions would be in PvE, the game host could have a button for a match command screen - reset match, move player to team, kick/ban etc. to assist in moderating a game.

The ability for a player to change sides without rejoining a game would be a very helpful addition, as well as a health display for your target. If possible, a team/score screen would be a fantastic feature, viewing players from both teams, their kill/death count (for the game in progress) and the ability to inspect them from this screen. This would be an excellent way for all players to view current match progress, this could be the default screen for the ‘Match’ button where the potions would usually be, with a moderators sub section for those with admin rights.

For PvP to become truly fair, safe spawns should be added. Currently, spawning can leave you separated from your team; potentially just as fatal as spawning close to enemies. With safe spawn areas, each team would have a home base, allowing for seamless integration of a Capture the Flag game mode into any map. With team PvP should also be an optional function for round based combat, where the round continues until an entire team is dead, score could then be determined by rounds won instead of kill count, although kills/deaths should still be displayed in the match screen, Resurrection would then be useful within this game mode.

10. Transitive Targeting.

The use of target assist in MMOs is crucial to good group cohesion, while this has already been suggested several times on the forums, there is a way to implement it without the need for macros.

Players are currently unable to target team mates in both PvP and PvE, I don’t know if this feature was simply overlooked, not feasible on the device platforms or vetoed to avoid over complication; however with the game evolving into something that closer resembles a fully fledged MMO as time goes on, this would be a very welcome addition.

Both EverQuest II and Anarchy Online allowed the user to transitively target enemies through other targets, should this feature be made available it opens the game to a variety of new functions. Aggressive actions could be directed towards the sub target, friendly actions could be directed to the main target, and single target friendly skills would become a viable option.

All of this would be conducive to hardcore/nightmare/raid dungeons where good teamplay is essential.

11. Chat Commands.

Although not essential, more chat commands would give players the means to manually use many of the games existing functions, as well as allowing for use of some currently not present.

• /reply /r
• /friends /fr (listing all friends online when blank, various different uses to filter results, /fr X where X is the level, /fr X X where X is a lower and upper level limit, /fr CLASS)
• /who /w (as with above)
• /follow /fo
• /assist /a
• /guild /gu (guild chat)
• /group /gr (group chat)
• /invite /in (group invite)
• /ginvite /gi (guild invite)
• /ignore /ig
• /played /pl (characters play time, birth date, current server time)

[laquint]

All i can say is thats alot of word's can you just say one word?

[ratava]

Hey bmc85uk, awesome posts! Always enjoy reading these.

You cover a lot and tbh need to put more time in answering.

2 things gut reaction I disagree with: I play archer and love kiting - a bit of skill and suits my offense philosophy: Play as unfair as possible! ; )
Maybe there is too much knockback? Knockback works more satisfactory if u knockback the enemy off a cliff or something scoring instant death and requiring correct lining-up, so maybe this is the missing feature of too much knockback??

I agree lower-levels seem to be a bit tight on drops, so this could be looked at? As a casual player, the AO expansions are keeping me ticking ok in terms of how long it takes to get through, so maybe the challenge is not high nough specifically for hardcore players?

I do agree Crit damage does make pvp a bit too harsh on quick deaths without any ways to rally and recover?

With builds, need to understand this for myself a lot more so cannot comment but what is the stat-driven skill hhange in V1.3 gonna do for this??

Finally, about posting on forums more than in game playing time, with mmo's generally get to the stage where u really get into the inner workings of the game as much as the progression side of it. In fact that is the very thing that I personally like the most with mmo games, that the game's limits and rules can all be potentially modified, adapted or refined. Unfortunately I now expect that sort of game growth in every other game, now!

Devs, would be good to hear your considered opinions.

[jonboy]

Nice, well thought out and logical. I agree with pretty much all your points.

[ishibashi]

truthfully i think this is perfect as it is >.< i mean im tired of being the only guy noticing that our chars hp from lvl 1-45 only increase by up to tops of what 200 but thats just crazy thinking lol,

[kavanah]

Things that need to be revamped as per importance before AO3 is released:

1) Remove critical damage from enemy NPCs in PVE. I'll refer to them as "mobs".

2) Up the %hit rate of mobs and use it to negate the dodge% of PC's

(tired of not being hit for 20 seconds and then being 2 shotted so fast I can't even spam health potions)

3) As previously stated, fix "rubber-banding". It feels like I'm playing Ultima Online on a 56k modem during a hurricane in South Louisiana while I'm running through AO2 maps. If you devs don't want us to "rush" then please refer to #2 as this will reduce rushing since we will actually be taking damage from mass mobs and not just standing still from spam stuns + lag.

If these 3 main things can be fixed by the time AO3 comes out, I believe you will have a MUCH happier community. Then you can begin on working out the kinks of skills, hybrids, stat conversions, added HP, and so forth.

Please hear us out on this devs... please. I truely believe this is the most important thing to worry about before anything else.

Also want to add, that if you dev's need extensive testing done, I would be more than willing to help out with it if I can somehow get into a test realm. Just a thought.

[bmc85uk]

Thinking about it, loads of mainstream MMOs run test servers, usually requiring a duplicate install of the game with seperate patch files.
I'd happily download another copy of PL if I could play on test servers to preview updates and give feedback.

In response to Kavanah above, I think those issues are pretty damn high on the list for me too, the game at the moment is tedious due to how PvE works. With the above being fixed it paves the way for further tweaks the system needs, but gives a much more solid foundation to build balance upon.

Something I'd already posted in another thread:-

1-Fix procs self-stacking/landing when attacks miss from enemies, remove player 'pain' noises playing when damage is not done & attacks don't land.
2-Raise Enemy hit chance, but lower amount of enemies in larger maps like AO2:4, 5 & 6.
3-Boost AC on mummies, lower AC on green AO mages, raise AC on AO melée mobs.
4-Lower enemy crit chance to make their damage more consistent not spiked.
5-Remove stun feature on enemy attacks, remove turn to shoot mechanic, either increase enemy run-speed or reduce player run-speed when attacking.
6-Add respawn mechanic & zone transitions to all dungeons, have previous instance maintained on server until last enemy has respawned to prevent farming over zone lines.

[kavanah]

Bumpy Bump till we get a dev comment =)

[bmc85uk]

I'm not so sure they'll comment, it's a lot of information to reply to, but here's hoping...

[kavanah]

i just want a simple comment:

"read it guys, thanks for taking the time to put this together"

[Cascade]

Did you help with this thread Kavanah?

[kavanah]

Did you help with this thread Kavanah?

Eh not really. Only by giving support and aggreement with it. BG did all the work.

[Staffed]

Ao much to read so little time I'm sure there are many good points in there

[Rashkar]

I like the entirety of this.... This should be addressed by the devs asap.... all of the arguments in here make alot of sense and should at least be taken into consideration. If there needs to be some sort of testing period im sure that alot of people would be willing to help!!

[azulflame]

First thought: holy [censored], that is a lot of words.

Second thought: a lot of work went into this.

Third thought: the development need to read this

[Sigkill]

Huge Necro, However I think the person who wrote this quit PL, sad because he had such great ideas