First Impressions

I did a Plasma Pyramid run with moog along with much discussion about the new updates.

First off, when logging into the game, the time is significantly reduced to log in. Thank you STS for that, it was quite annoying pre-update.

The “Enter world” screen could be modified in my opinion. I like how simple the layout is, and definitely makes it easier for newer players, but it also took away an important feature to me: The town selection screen. Would it be possible to add just one more button, the map selection button? It would really benefit me, and I’m sure many other experienced players.

The new world map looks really good, I like how uncluttered it is. It also seems more intuitive.

The new faces are quite the selection! I have only seen the mage faces (since that is all I play), but there are some good ones on there. I went with the tribal face The standard 5 plat is a very reasonable thing to require when choosing your own independent look. Also, I’m sure the more variety of faces will lead to less “clone” characters walking around. (kind of tired of seeing a group of MM avatars roaming the sewers lol)

A few bugs I have noted:
When I initially installed the update, it would turn my screen black, then revert back to my homescreen. I uninstalled it, redownloaded and installed, and it is working fine so far.

When I click on the “Join” button on my friends list, no matter where said friend is, I get disconnected from the server. However Moog was able to join me in Plasma Pyramid on his second try (first try he got disconnected).

Now about the GCD..
While moog was disconnected from attempting to join, I began to run PP solo. Boy was that a challenge! Timing skills is very difficult to adjust to once you are used to having no cool down between them. While wearing full MM with wand bonus, I almost died 3 times… in PP… That was a shock. This is going to be a massive learning experience about timing skills before combat (buffs, magic shield), and while in combat.

Now when moog joined we began to double team the PP map (both on our mages). He and I played our pre-GCD style and succeeded in the completion of the PP map, but it was slower than I could have done solo pre-GCD. “I think this is the end of the solo days” moog said, and I happen to agree with him. We noticed that mob HP seemed to be less. I was one hitting many of them, when pre-GCD I would not have. Not sure if bosses have changed at all, will have to do more research. I did notice the lightning skill seemed to take effect much quicker, I would cast and almost instantly it would hit (whereas pre-GCD I would cast, followed by a pause, then the bolts would strike). The “available combo time” seemed to be longer as well, which is necessary with the cooldown.

Both of us think GCD will revolutionize the playing style of all builds. Mages have become MUCH more necessary on a team. Since there is such a long cooldown, it takes a whopping 2 seconds to cast all buff/debuff skills. That is the difference between life and death. Throw on a heal and a rev, and you are over 3 seconds. IMO there will have to be 2 mages on each team. One that is the debuff, heal, and rev mage. While the other is the Attack, combo, buff mage. One can simply NOT cast all spells in a group of mobs and be successful. You need a team. Another option would be that one mage chooses one debuff and the freeze skill, and the other chooses the second debuff and the firestorm skill. That way the combo would still be performed, and both can be active members of the team.

I know the devs mentioned they were going to tweak the mobs hp/our damage to make it work better, but I think decreasing the amount of damage a mob can deal is the best option. Getting hit by 10 mobs with pre-GCD (from now on I’m going to call pre-GCD, PGCD) damage is quite damaging, along with the inability to cast heal/drain life (due to it cooling down between attacks), make it MUCH more challenging. By decreasing mob damage (leave our damage how it was PGDC, no need to change that if mob damage is reduced), it would even out the survivability time.

I will wait until I have more experience with the GCD to make a final opinion of it, but for now I’m sticking with “challenging”

Question: Are passwords to maps case sensitive? If so, it might be a good idea to make them not so. Some phones auto capitalize the first letter of a word, while others don’t. If a host creates a password and doesn’t realize that it is capitalized, no one will be able to join the game even with the password being “known”.