Venom Guild Post (LONG POST)

[Xanthia]

This post is being written by Xanthia and Azrael with input from the members of Venom.

Thesis: Improvements to the gaming mechanics are not only necessary to improve gameplay but to ensure the quality of players and content in the future. There are many ways to achieve this goal, however this process is very time consuming and mana draining. This is where the loyal, engaged, and trustworthy community members and beta testers of the game have pooled resources together to engineer a document like the one you are about to read. Without further ado, it's time to "Shake off the SOE," and turn and burn! Enjoy! (No pun intended for the DEV's just sounded funny)

Abstract: We are going to provide one TLR post that will cover all the issues that need to be fixed in the game as it is right now and ideas for the future. The post will be discussing the pressing issues of PvP Imbalance, distribution of statistics, friends joining passworded games without a password, the issue of currency, trading optimization, PvE farming and boss killing, and finally guilds. Also the post will be a in-depth look at the DEV's bible for the long term direction of PL that we would like to see the game move toward! Ideas like Removal of Player Distributed Stats, Extensive Crafting System, 10-Man Raids, Achievement Points, Skill Trees, 6 New Hero Classes, and classes wearing class specific gear only.

PvP balance:

There has been a lot of ideas floating around about how to make PvP a more balanced and enjoyable experience. Probably the biggest issue players have had with PvP combat is that it simply doesn't last long enough in many cases. There have been serveral fixes applied by the devs to fix this issue, and the result has been that sometimes PvP fights last too long, and sometimes it is far to quick. There are two main culprits: The artificial lowering of damage done in PvP as opposed to PvE by the developers, and the dominance of cooldowns in PvP. The damage systems in PvP and PvE should be universal. Instead of changing damage artificially, it would be better to change the statstics of characters. In the next section is an explanation of the changes to be made to statstics. Briefly however, strength would provide a heavy increase to HP which would make PvP battles last longer. PvE damage from mobs would simply be changed in order to compensate for any changes to the stats system. This would also make PvP more challenging, and make the role of the tank more necessary, since players without and strength and only dexterity or intelligence, would in effect be "glass cannons." To put it simply, Cooldown spells define PvP. The problem is so great that one can reliably determine who will win a fight based on who has their cooldowns ready or not. Most notably are the cooldowns Iron blood, Rage, Evasion and Focus. Cooldowns should either be less powerful, or have a much longer timer on their cooldowns. Combat should not be based entirely on rage and focus specifically, and to a lesser extent evasion and ironblood. There is also an issue with damage mitigation, where a player can hit an opponent that is buffed for very little damage, but then hit for high damage when he crits. For instance, if a player has a high armor rating, and normal attacks are hitting that player for 2-10 with a 2 hander, that 2 hander will still crit that same player for around 130 damage. There seems to be an issue with crits doing far more damage than an auto attack would against the same enemy. Skills that are for direct target should not go off if the target is out of range. Avians evasion should work while the player is moving. Elven healing is the biggest thing needed in PvP to offset the no potion use, however, healers are unable to use heals correctly because they are killed in 2 hits with Blessing of Vitality up and Magic Shield up. A player should never be killed in 2 shots with 108 armor rating. Elves should have a much higher heal ability to offset the large damage that other classes can produce, and a second less on the spell regeneration.

Hybrid Classes

Hybrid classes are simply getting out of hand. The best example of this is the Avian class. Avians with strength builds for example are able to use two handed weapons with very high top end damage to heavily boost their ranged abilities. Besides it making absoluelty no sense for a two handed weapon to be used in a long range attack, these hybrid classes make certain skills too powerful. We have already explained that the cooldown skills dominate pvp. Because of this, an Avian in pvp uses focus, then break armor, and then unleashes his/her shot skills. When the target is buffed (evasion, BoM, ironblood), these are the only attacks that will matter, any other attacks will have minimal affects. What this means is the only attacks that really matter are the skill based attacks, all of which work at range, and with the two hander's damage. Melee attacks after that are a bonus at best.

Singling out the Avian two hander is easy because of how ridiculous and yet effective it is, but this can be applied to any hybrid class. Not only do these hybrid classes often not make sense, but they are impossible to balance with other classes in a systematic way, because every change made to their skills or damage also affects players who play the same class with the weapons that were intended to work with their skills.

Classes must be changed so that they can only use certain weapons and armor. It is best to add new classes, which would be rather easy quite frankly compared to balancing 3 classes that are in effect 9 different classes. At the very least however, skills should only work with weapons that fit the skill. In other words a range skill should not work with a melee weapon, and a melee skill should not work with a ranged weapon.

[Xanthia]

Distribution of stats

Strength should provide a signigicant boost to health points. It has been said many times, but the reality is that the only reason to invest points into strength is to allow for the use of strength base d equipment. Players should have a reason to invest points into Strength. Our belief is that Strength should provide a significant boost to a player's Hit Points. The idea here, combined with a reversion of the pvp system which would remove any artificial alterations to pvp damage, is to have players with high strength have high survivability. The amount will have to be adjusted, but we think that 1 point of strength should give 4-7 health points. If a ursan were to have 112 strength for instance, and strength gave 5 HP per point, then the ursan would have 860 HP (with the base HP included). Again, keep in mind, players would be again doing the same level of damage they were doing before the developers change the pvp damage system. Dexterity builds should continue to do a higher of damage than other builds, but dexterity should provide the same amount of stat boosts to all classes. Avians should not gain more from dexterity. Intelligence in this new system, would also provide a boost to spell damage enchantment to magical skills. This would include all elven abilities, as well as such abilities as avian roots or restore for ursans and avians. This will give players a more of a reason to spec intelligence, and a larger benefit from it. What this would create is longer pvp battles in multiple ways, and at the same time give players a reason to spec their classes with a combination of statistics points. Statstics will do more than define what a player can wear, they will in their own way define the their character.

Armor

Once the above changes are implemented, the armor system should be altered. The difference in armor ratings of the classes is minimal. As an example, its not the armor rating of a ursan that will really help the ursan survive longer than an elf with an off hand. Instead iron-blood is what helps the ursan the most. The difference in mitigation should be greater between armor types. There also exists a problem with players buffing their armor to the point where too much damage is mitigated. A player should rarely if never do 0-5 damage to an opponent. The numbers and percentages on damage mitigation need to be completely reworked.

PVE AND PVP MUST HAVE THE SAME COMBAT SYSTEM

Friends joining passworded games

Friends should not be allowed to join your game just because they are on your friends list, you basically debuffed the "Invite" button when you allowed this to happen. You made an invite button for a reason. Player's only allowed to join game if you do one of two things. 1. Get Invited via "Invite" button 2. Have the password to the game and correctly enter it. This would solve the issue with games being joined randomly by people on your friends list that you have no intention of farming or grouping with. Also, when players join and then it is the leader of the group's responsibility to either remove him so that room can be made to invite someone wanted or send him a message telling him to leave. Also, in PvP format which had already been discussed, if a guild or group is trying to work on builds or practice something they are unable to with the constant harassment of joining players who want to see whats going on. What is the point in a passworded game if everyone on ones friends list does not need a password to join, including all of your groups friends list.

Currency

There also needs to be a baseline for currency which will be pronounced when the Broker/Auction House are introduced, however we would like to see a few features noted. We would like for you to be able to purchase with gold a LARGE amount of slots to sell items. We would like these items to stay on the broker as long as the player chooses to leave them there and also for them to be able to be sold when the player is offline. In other games that I have played a 10% broker fee is applied, and I feel that it is a fair price, all things considered.

Trading Optimization

- To reduce the hassle of initiating a trade with someone in a populated town, we should be given like a pop-up box to accept or decline the trade. The current system is a hassle since we have to find out who initiated the trade with us, try to find then, and tap them, switch to trade tab in order to accept the trade. Another idea is that we can simply just tap the message ("Sally wants to trade with you") to go straight to the trade screen.

- There should be more precaution steps before processing a trade. Sometimes users may accidentally hit the trade box while scrolling up and down the item display list. A pop-up box to confirm the trade would be beneficial.

PvE bosses are still farmable

PvE bosses are supposed to be hard enough that it requires a group of 4 or 5 to kill. Bosses should not be able to be farmed in less than 3 minutes per round. You should never be able to train the entire zone while killing all the bosses and not die. The regular mobs and bosses all need a HUGE buff. A group of 5 should barely be able to kill more than 3 regular mobs at a time, let alone train an entire zone. Boss fights should be much much harder, a healer should have to work to keep the tank alive, and if any adds pop up, the group should have to run or really buckle down. This is how the game would be able to keep replayability. As it is now, honestly, I get so bored running behind 4 of my guild members and just throwing down some heals and occasionally using Lightning storm. It bores me to death that I can watch tv, carry on a conversation with someone on the phone and farm bosses like this. Please make them MUCH harder.

[Xanthia]

Guilds

I think that guilds should be an intrical part of the pocket legends community. The guilds should run the game. Where joining the best guild is a huge advantage or enables you to be recognized more than if not. I think that a guild tag should be visible under your name like this: <Venom>. Guilds should have levels just like players adventure levels, and when the adventure levels go up, the guild levels should go up. The way that the guild can raise the level should be to complete renewable quests that give a very small amount of experience. This will promote players to improve their guild and should be able to be accomplished by either 1 person all the way up to 5. I think these quests should scale depending on how many players there are in the group. To form a guild a group of 5 players should have to go to a special instance and clear the zone without dying and then provide 5 million gold to the NPC at the end of the zone to form a guild. If you fail this process you should not be able to enter the instance again for 7 days. This will keep the number of players trying this zone to a minimum. There will be 3 guild halls. Level 1 should be available at Guild Level 5 and should cost 5 Million, Level 2 should be available at Guild Level 20 and cost 20 million, and Guild Hall Level 3 should be available at Guild Level 35 and should cost 30 million. These guild halls should be able to be kept public or made private (You must have the PW to get in, friends list join's should not count). The guild halls should be places where the guilds can do everything. This is where they should be able to join games, GvG action should start from the guild hall. There should be a Market Broker in the GH. When crafting is released, all of the required crafting tables should be able to be purchased for the guild. There should be a fuel broker for crafting. Guilds should not have a monthly maintenance fee because of the high price of the hall.

Removal of Player Dictated Stats

If this game is going to move forward as an MMO and a game in general, there needs to be a point where the stats that we place in Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence all cease to be under the players control. If this would happen this would allow you to create more armor that are class specific so players could "Customize" (I hate that word btw) and would not have to be like other players. This would happen in 3 ways; gear, skill trees, and hero classes. When this occurs this will create a baseline so that you can start to build solid classes instead of having flimsy classes that can be manipulated by what ever gear set or statistic distribution is popular that week.

Extensive Crafting System

Crafting is something very special to me, I throughly enjoy the art of crafting. To be honest I want to model crafting in this game after Everquest 2. I think that crafting in EQ2 is incredible. It is not boring, but it is an active process, you can't just keep on hitting "Craft" skill like you do in WoW and the item will just chance it. In this system you will have buttons at the bottom of the crafting window that will do certain things while you are crafting, their will be 3 levels of success and there will be Combo's you can achieve in the crafting room. Like it might ask you to push a certain crafting button, if you do, you will get rewarded in the quality of your item. There will be # different types of harvesting required to complete crafting. Mining, Foresting (Chopping Wood), Foraging (Food Units to Cook), and Fishing (for Cooking). All of these items will work on a Tier Base. Like Forest Haven is Tier 1, Darkwood Forest is Tier 2, Balefort Castle is Tier 3, Fathom Crypt is Tier 4, The Lost Expedition is Tier 5, Ancient Swamps is Tier 6. There will be two types of quality of harvesting, either Common or Legendary. The common's are what one will use to craft the majority of items. The Legendary's are what Legend Level items will be made from, these will be very rare, they will come form the same place just by chance you will get a rare. When you level you can purchase the scroll of your level's tradeskill items from a Merchant by the crafting tables along with fuel (Which will be differentiated by tier), however to sucessfully craft a Legend Level item you must find the Master Scrolls off of a mob, these are equilivent of Pink drops and are tradeable. The Legendary(Rare) harvest items are also tier based. (Ex. If you are making a Level 4 Legend Item you will need a Tier 1 Legendary resource) The types of crafting will be Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Jeweler, Alchemist, Woodworker, Tailor, Chef, and Carpenter. The armorsmith will make all the plate types of armor. The profession will craft chest and helmets. Weaponsmiths will make all weapons that are wielded by ursans. Jeweler's will make jewels and will imbue weapons. Alchemist's will make potions, Elixers, and will Imbue Armor. Tailor's will make leather, and cloth armor. Chef's will make food and drink that will increase your H/S and M/S respectively. Woodworkers will make Wands, Staffs, and Bows. Carpenter's will make every item that will be placed in your home, or guild hall.

10-Man Raids

This is essential for your hard core players. This would be the first real end-game content. This would enable you to properly place Pink items in the game, instead of them being common loot for farmers of regular level bosses. This should be bosses that require the most elite form of teamwork and great communication between all players, requiring pinpoint placement of each raid member to ensure victory. There would be no pots allowed in raid zones. Remember, Raid's are set-up to try and fail the group, they are supposed to be extremely hard. Most of the time, raids are not completable by "common" players who do not play the game alot and have the best gear or best players around them.

Achievement Points

This is a secondary form of experience, this is experience that is earned in very specific ways. When you gain a level in achievement, this point can only been spent in your skill tree to improve the quality of your skills. However, there are unique ways in which you can earn Achievement Points (AP). The experience is given when you accomplish things for the first time that are worthy of notice. Achievements like killing a named boss for the first time, completing a zone fully, every adventure level, when you hit max level, when you visit a POI (Point of Interest) these will need to be implemented into the game, completing quests, getting titles, and achieving a certain rank in PvP and you only get AP Exp for doing these things for the first time. Achievement points are only gained for the character you are playing, not your entire account.

Skill Trees

This is where players would go to spend their AP (Achievement Points) that they earned to better their character. A character will have two skill trees. One will be his Base Class, like Ursan, then when he reaches Hero Class he will have access to his second tree. These trees are like Skill Points we have not, they level up your skills. I know there has been a lot of complaining about "Customization" well this is the answer, if you buy into this method of gameplay you will have more "Customizing" options then you know what to do with. However, you will only be able to put points into your skill tree. (Example; If you are a Ursan-Guardian you can't put points into any other skill trees other than the Ursan one and the Guardian one.)

[Xanthia]

6 New Hero Classes

Once a character reaches the Max Level as a Ursan, Avian, or Elf you then are required to choose a Hero Class and each Base Class will have 2 Hero Classes associated with it. When you reach max level you are then prompted to decided which path you will venture. You will start again at level 1, however you will have all the spells up to the max level of your base class. But, you will gain the equivalent of that many spells in your Hero class that will go on to specialize your character even more. Once you transformed into your hero class, you would unlock all of the zones on Heroic level which would be twice as hard. Players who had not unlocked Heroic Mode on their character could not play in the Heroic Zones, however a Hero would be able to go and play the normal zones. Once you became a Hero Class you would not longer be able to use potions. They would be transfered to your next highest level character that is still able to use potions, if none meet requirements then you would be funded gold for the equilivent of potions you have.

The classes will go as follows Avian will be able to become the Hero Class of Ranger or Assassin. Rangers will be bow specialists, these classes will be masters of death from above. They will learn the art of traps and master the precision of arrownautics

The Assassin class will be the specialists of daggers, shiv's, and talons! These backstabbing rogues will be one with the shadow. They will master the art of sneak and perfect the critical strike. These will be your true weapon specialists, mastering the precisions of dagger movements.

The Ursan Base class will have a choice to transform to either a Guardian or a Berzerker.

The Guardian is the epitome of a meat shield. These enraged ursans use thick armor and daring shields to deflect even the strongest of blows from the mightiest foes. This will be the true tank in a group and will be needed if a group is to venture to far into the wild.

Berzerker is the opposite of the Guardian, they are the enraged ursans. These damage dealers are specialists in taking damage and dealing more damage. These are not the best option for a tank, however they can take a lot of hits and will be standing at the end of the round. This is the only class beside the Assassin that is capable of dual weilding.

The Elf base class will transform into either a Templar or Wizard.

The Templar is the God Healer, these chosen few take Healing to another level, they have mastered all forms of healing and specialize in preventing death from their allies instead of dealing it to their foes. Using Holy spells these physician's call on their powers to aid the weak. This Hero Class has also mastered the art of Curing.

The Wizard is the Master of Spell Damage, no other class can match the insane damage afflicted by these magic moguls. They control at will the properties of the elements (Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water) and wield them as a assassin would their sword.

Classes wearing Class Specific Armor

With all the modifications that want the game to move toward, this idea is HUGE. If every player would not be allowed to wear any gear or equip any weapons that are not one of that characters chosen professions. I know that there are a lot of you out there that will complain about this because you want "Customization," however, when we get 6 new classes and AP and Skill trees there will be more customization then you will know what to do with, but wearing gear that is not even for you, makes the game look kinda bad, IMO, and also makes the classes look unstructured.

We here at Venom would like to thank you all for reading and supporting everything we do. We look forward to positive support of this thread and we hope that the DEV's will look at this and see that it took us 4 days to formulate a document like this and we would like to see these questions answered. We hope to see you all in-game and look forward to grouping with you soon.

We will use the second post to update this thread and add changes and modifications as we see fit.

[Evante]

This looks great so far xan = ) I rlly like what you said about the pvp balance and completely agree on the class specific weps. Just keep it comin for ppl to see hehe.
Hmm... For the hero class not being able to use potions, I think they should be able to use them, but have a cooldown of 30 seconds for it, so that way, your gear does not completely have to have ms and hs.

[Kirei]

Guilds

Level 1 should be available at Guild Level 5 and should cost 5 Million, Level 2 should be available at Guild Level 20 and cost 20 million, and Guild Hall Level 3 should be available at Guild Level 35 and should cost 30 million.

does your enchantress like conjore money??? or are you just stinking rich, cuz those are ridculous amounts

[Evante]

does your enchantress like conjore money??? or are you just stinking rich, cuz those are ridculous amounts

I actually think it needs to be that expensive, then, having a guild hall of that level will mark the 'rank' so to speak of your guild.

[Kirei]

oh i totally agree it should be expensive, just no that much

[BestHyun]

Great post Xan. This is going to be interesting to read. haha my input is only like a few lines

[Xanthia]

oh i totally agree it should be expensive, just no that much

Think about it though, if the top rank is not something that takes a while to get, then it is not appreciated as much when you have it, and everyone else has it as well.

[Kirei]

like i said i totally agree, but it should be like maybe 1 mil for the first one 3 mil for the secend one and 5 mil for the third one.

[Xanthia]

like i said i totally agree, but it should be like maybe 1 mil for the first one 3 mil for the secend one and 5 mil for the third one.

Not high enough, if it stands how you said, Venom would be able to purchase all 3 right now. Remember this is a guild effort, not an individual one.

[Kirei]

Say what?!?!?!?!?

[Banned]

All this just seems way to overly complicated for a mobile MMO. And I especially dislike all the restrictions on builds and armor. Ugh, I would hate PL if it were like this.

[Kirei]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
hellz ya

[Dizko]

Just read it.

Found some of it to be boring personal opinion and some to be just a Venom guild flag.

However - 75% of what you guys have said is spot on. The devs would do good to read and consider it.

Nice work.

[Advance]

I guess I have a bit of work cut out for me if this goes through then Xan?

[Azrael]

I could have written a lot more in the sections i wrote but the holiday weekend took up my time.

There are going to be people who don't want class restrictions on gear, but that same sentiment will ensure that PvP stays a underplayed and lackluster experience thats impossible to balance or take seriously. Its simply impossible to balance classes that don't have restrictions. The suggestion made was to have more classes rather than 3 with no limitations. I think the developers like the current system because its provides more than three classes (in theory) without having to make new classes, and some players like this because they think it makes the game interesting and dynamic. Obviously from the OP, i don't agree.

[Synozeer]

Great post. I agree on a lot of points. People say it's "just" a mobile MMO, but it's really not - it's on the iPad, and that's a gaming platform like no other. There's nothing stopping this game from being more in depth with its game mechanics. I like the game, but I know if the class structure and stats system stays as basic as it is now, I'm going to lose interest with the game (as I've already started to). I've been talking about how we need a better hit point system for a week or two and I think this is the first thing that really needs to be revamped. With that base change, it paves the way for all the other changes.

[Rebel]

For people who don't want the end of hybrid classes by making class specific gear think about this.

The reason that we choose to make hybrid classes is the horrible variety of classes to choose from. If more classes were made, than that would give us more things to choose from. Also, the hero classes will add much more depth to class choice. With more choices, people wouldn't have the need for hybrids.

Another thing that I think is very necessary is the crafting that was in this post. With the new classes to try, crafting, and guilds, this game will have a much more playable aspect.