newbies make a crap ton of money coming out of minia and Lodi. Dude I'm going to say we quit giving them crap at this point cause I'm going to be broke and I've seen newbies with more gold them me.
Lowering the dragon bashing speed -will- drop the inflation rate. The problem being that prices for credits are already high and it will take a long time for them to drop because gold sinks don't really exist outside of boats, though upcoming tradeskill changes might change that.
I would definitely like to see dragons get major traits though, if their bashing dps is similar to other classes baseline, then it will fall behind lesserform just because they don't have access to lucky/aim to kill. It would make classes that rely on other stats than con/str worse in dragon than classes that do, but I think the benefit still would outweigh that.
That said, dragon survivability is still huge compared to lesserform so their is a significant advantage to using it for lightly artied players, especially for knights, monks and blademasters who can't use SoA in lesser.
If dragon benefits certain people over others, why would the other people who it doesn't benefit go for it then?
I guess that's my main beef. Dragon's supposed to be highly attractive to everyone in all circumstances (artied and not), and like I stated earlier in the thread, that's not currently the case. Otherwise you're going to have an end-game prize less people will care about, thus less time spent bashing, thus less people spending money to help their character bash... etc etc. It also just feels lame. Why shouldn't my (or another int-based class) reward be as awesome as it is for a knight, or a blademaster?
I am a fan of allowing dragons to have major traits again to help balance things again, but I don't know if that's quite enough to give the class back its "oomph, this is an awesome thing I worked hard for and I like it very much!".
And I love too Be still, my indelible friend That love soon might end You are unbreaking And be known in its aching Though quaking Shown in this shaking Though crazy Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Since people have pretty much exclusively been discussing top-end (tri-trans) bashing, I'd like to add that the changes look great for newbie bashing. Young knights and serpents especially have gotten huge improvements.
I also think this is probably the end of a metric ton of work of cleaning up the PvE code: Accentato damage being based on maximum health rather than any other appreciable stat? Sure. I'll buy that as "working as intended".
There's room for tweaks and alterations. I understand the bitching on both sides of the equation, but it's not like this is a permanent, say, Shallam-sinking thing.
@Sarapis, @Tecton whatever happened to our dragon lairs. You know when you gave us dragoncraft there was talk about each dragon being able to get their own lair. Now would be the time to give them to us since you just make dragon bashing suck a lot.
Why shouldn't my (or another int-based class) reward be as awesome as it is for a knight, or a blademaster?
Well it wasn't before anyway. Str based classes who got dragon had a better return because the arties they had that boosted Str also benefited dragonform. The form is the same for everyone, the difference is that other things you buy might have more value because they affect both dragon and lesser. A BM with a SoA for dragon bashing gets substantially less utility from it than say an occultist, simply because it is less valuable to have it while in lesser for a BM while the occultist gets full use out of it either way.
Allowing major traits in dragon would mean than classes that take nimble already would have a slightly better dragonform for bashing than those classes that don't, because the major bashing attack takes balance, but there are still skills in dragoncraft that rely on eq so other classes would still get use out of the eq-quickening trait, especially with the eq-quickening artifact that you probably have already too.
Genuinely confused with the responses from the admin side RE Dragon -
I understand that we in Achaea are a close knit community that is
able to express themselves freely, but @Sarapis - and yes this may earn
you ire but I don't really mind at this point - learn some customer
service skills as one of, if not the most, senior person in a company
that has a public appearance over the forums, because the attitude that
you give off via text (which may be completly misinterpreted by me)
comes across as arrogant, belittling and hostile towards people who have
a right, as a customer (I assume most of these people have and continue
to buy from IRE) and as an invested party, to gripe about changes, and
it is your responsibility to keep your cool as a representative from IRE
and for Achaea and not go about belittling what they are saying.
If I have misinterpreted your comments, then I apologise.
Anyway, back to Dragon - so far the response to Dragon has been;
They are still the best at hunting due to tankyness
They have their own skillset
They are defined by the players
They are a PVE powerhouse
They were breaking the economy
Being purely analytical, you have slowed dragon bashing, yet they have retained their tankyness - so what does being a dragon PvE powerhouse mean, outside of being able to tank things but take just as long if not longer to kill them as their lesserform counterparts?
What direction is dragon taking in regards to being an endgame PvE reward, other than a purely cosmetic skin and a health boost?
I think incantation should be made useful, so int-artied players can get an advantage as well. Currently, fully artied incantation (L3 sash, L3 collar, diadem) is still worse than unartied gut, so players with magic artefacts get no PvE benefit from them in dragonform. Buffing incantation a little, so that artied incantation is at least better than unartied gut, would even it out.
Bit meh about the dragon changes, but can see why it was done. I can't see it changing the in game economy much but I guess with it less viable to earn credits in game it should boost sales a bit and keep Achaea going and the coders paid.
Those who only have the option or prefer to grind are just going to have to quit your orgs, stop talking to people, and auto-bash more hours a day!
I really like fishing. At least I like the concept of fishing. I wish someone would break me into the fishing mold, so I could too be a fisherman of excellent girth.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
Come, my young Padawan. Let me show you the way of the rivers. Together we will learn, laugh and cry. But a time will come when Sapience needs us, when the prophecies of old come to life in the form of fishy doom the people will come to us and we will stand atop the mountain and tell them : No.
@Saeva Because the ability of some players to generate outsized amounts of gold compared to newbies makes newbies inherently poor, and that problem gets worse the larger the disparity gets.
If Dragons can generate more gold, and they want to sell that gold for credits, then the supply of gold is increased and the value of gold will drop. So, those people have to sell more gold to get the same amount of credits, and it's just a wash. Econ 101.
A worthwhile concern, I can respect wanting Dragon to not be head and shoulders better at PvE than all other options. The thing is, Dragons kill so fast because they're high level and thus have a massive crit rate (and there's a number of classes that possess a similar level of tankiness). Crits are a far (far) bigger contributing factor to 'area clear times' than the Dragon 'class' itself and the dps output it may have on paper before those crits factors in.
Level 99+ people hunting in lesserform will still clear stuff incredibly fast and generate gold from bashing waaaaay faster than newbies. So I don't see specifically adjusting Dragon abilities (so severely) accomplishing a great deal in terms of addressing the income disparity between high level and low level characters.
I also understand that it can be rather tricky to find the right balance. I'll assume that the overall goal is to keep Dragon a relevant, strong choice while also ensuring that lesserform isn't obsolete for PvE the second someone hits 99. Situational usefulness, depending on the class.
In any case, it's refreshing to see such an open door policy/interaction from the admins. Kudos for that.
Aside from the fact that Gut was hitting literally almost double the damage of any other attack, so you only needed like a crushing critical at most to kill most things.
PK and Dragons are really apples and oranges. I'd also argue that someone who is awesome at PK in Achaea has earned certain rights and privileges that other players can't access (ie, a different form of consistent experience gain and often membership in the Achaean Combat Council, which may in fact help make their PK better than others through the information and interactions they have access to).
Just because one is heavily involved in PK does not mean they're ACC. Personally I'm not in it, nor do I want to be. I have learned everything I know through practice and reading what is available both in game and on forums/pastebin. Saying PKers and Dragons have "earned certain rights and privileges" doesn't make sense. They have earned knowledge and experience, and in the case of Dragon - a new skillset and a language.
Teleporting across the world might be slightly faster than using wings, a vibrating stick, or speed walking but honestly for the time it takes to dragonform and then travel that route I might as well hoof it - and I do. About the only real advantage is when traveling to Ulangi because you don't have to pay the initial ferry. Maybe if there were more Gare exits this would be a more significant class advantage.
Then go earn something. Get Elder Dragon - which you should be able to do now that they've made things slightly more tedius for all the basement dwellers who are auto-looping the talisman areas 24/7.
I was playing long before dragon class skills came out, so I recognize that what Dragon means is defined by the Garden. I also acknowledge that you may be tweaking things as you go along. But at this point I don't see any significant reason right now for my other characters or anyone else to invest time in bashing to dragon (or beyond 90 for that matter) or, conversely, using dragon for bashing. I hope that changes.
From what I've seen and read here, it sounds like what they're doing is a great thing. They're essentially leveling the playing field for all classes. And hopefully less unartied Monk/Runie/Shaman rolling to dragon in 2 IRL weeks and then being used as credit factories for peoples' main characters.
This is also going to possibly affect house influences. Can't speak for other classes because I don't have 50 alts, but I think these changes are great for serpent houses because now serpent hunting is actually fun. Serpents in my house would often say "I'm quitting the house so I can go monk and bash to dragon." or "What arties do I need to PK to dragon? Hunting is too slow. A lupine? That's too expensive for me, I'm going monk. Bye." Now they're given a whip as novices and hunting is actually enjoyable instead of "this is so boring... it takes me 3 minutes of hit and run to kill one sidhe knight."
I like the equalization across classes. That's amazing. Bashing is something tedious that was made even more tedious for too many classes due to one class or another being two times faster, tankier, etc.
I don't like the dragon changes. In my eyes, that significantly widens the bridge between artied and non-artied. Before, you could invest time to get dragon and be able to kill things as fast as your average arti monk. Gut did decent damage with or without criticals. Now that it's equalized, with dragons doing roughly as much as lesserforms, it's even more about artifacts. A stygian pendant is 6% more crits and higher likelihood of harder-hitting criticals. Damage artifacts will have a greater impact relatively speaking than survival artifacts, especially at the dragon level where survival isn't really a concern.
I appreciate the direction of these changes, but I think that dragons should retain superiority in bashing. People have spent ungodly amounts of time playing the game to attain dragon specifically so they can bash faster; suddenly taking that away without very good reasoning is going to do a lot more harm than good. The gold income reasoning is a bit flawed because you're only shifting the gold advantage from people who play a lot (anyone who wants to spend time getting dragon) to people who have a lot of disposable income (artied up people, who are likely dragons too). That is my primary concern. It's getting harder and harder to be able to truthfully say artifacts aren't necessary to compete.
This is also going to possibly affect house influences. Can't speak for other classes because I don't have 50 alts, but I think these changes are great for serpent houses because now serpent hunting is actually fun. Serpents in my house would often say "I'm quitting the house so I can go monk and bash to dragon.".
Hence my question about why aren't we all about as "efficient" as Monks instead of lowering the few efficient classes, making bashing even more boring than it was.
I have not even tried to hunt since the change, and I do not know yet if I will dramatically see a difference. I am lvl81 and spending 3 IRL hours to send the exact same command to get 1% experience was already something I was not really happy to do (in particular when a death costs you 5% and you also have to find an aera not cleared yet).
Honestly, I believe all the debate is here, whatever class you are or about the dragons complaints. Even them, or people artied to death, everyone seems to agree on one thing. Why is bashing in Achaea so damned boring?
I think this change isn't necessarily bad, it just came in early. Would much rather have seen these changes come in alongside the new bashing system that Aringar is working on. As it is, several classes have to live with a nerf in a very tedious, boring portion of the game, at least until some new bashing changes are introduced to liven things up.
As far as dragons: its a reward for a massive amount of PvE, that is (or has been) intended to make you considerably better at PvE. Obviously you get the higher base stats still, but I think it would at least make sense for dragons to have the highest bashing DPS, even if its not by a huge margin.
Accentato damage against denizens is not modified by any racial statistic (to prevent double-dipping).
In response to a few other comments/questions, I'm going to be spending some time today looking at weapon damages. I suspect that there's a breakdown in the normalization calculations for weapons with high speed stats which will require some adjustment, and I'm also going to see about tweaking some of the numbers with doubleslash vs single weapon attacks.
I'm envious of Aetolia's endgame system. Doesn't it just give racial bonuses/stats? I like the idea of staying the same class all the time, personally.
I'm envious of Aetolia's endgame system. Doesn't it just give racial bonuses/stats? I like the idea of staying the same class all the time, personally.
Dragon used to be a stat boost, you'd keep your class skills but with a few extra dragonny bits. OP. O to the muddy-funstering P.
Tharos, the Announcer of Delos shouts, "It's near the end of the egghunt and I still haven't figured out how to pronounce Clean-dat-hoo."
After thinking about it a bit, the Dragon change is a good thing for Achaea overall. A wider range of people from all classes and levels will be able to purchase more affordable credits down the road.
I would imagine that a bulk of CFS purchases are made by the top Dragons grinding 15+ hours a day, raking in millions of gold a week, and pushing up the market prices.
Therefore, by scaling back how much gold Dragons can earn, and bringing all class DPSes more in line, Saracton have done the opposite of "cock-blocking IG credit purchases" and instead put everyone on a level playing field.
Its not the most ideal response to IG inflation, as most MMOs tend to respond to inflation with releasing new gold-sink content, but Saracton already have their hands full with releasing class changes, House reworks, events, etc. They simply don't have the time to go designing another enormous gold-sink like ships.
Nerfing dragons was the easiest and perhaps the most effective way, long-term, since material possession gold-sinks like ships become less desirable over time anyways.
tldr: everyone can afford CFS down the road, not just the dragons who were bashing up millions weekly.
Open mortal building things or w/e, and make more areas that are damage-heavy enough to prohibit lesserform, glass-cannon types from hunting there, to appease the dragons. Everyone wins!
Comments
There is generally a problem with newbie funds. Comparing it with a dragon's is not the way to fix it.
newbies make a crap ton of money coming out of minia and Lodi. Dude I'm going to say we quit giving them crap at this point cause I'm going to be broke and I've seen newbies with more gold them me.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
Since people have pretty much exclusively been discussing top-end (tri-trans) bashing, I'd like to add that the changes look great for newbie bashing. Young knights and serpents especially have gotten huge improvements.
I also think this is probably the end of a metric ton of work of cleaning up the PvE code: Accentato damage being based on maximum health rather than any other appreciable stat? Sure. I'll buy that as "working as intended".
There's room for tweaks and alterations. I understand the bitching on both sides of the equation, but it's not like this is a permanent, say, Shallam-sinking thing.
@Sarapis, @Tecton whatever happened to our dragon lairs. You know when you gave us dragoncraft there was talk about each dragon being able to get their own lair. Now would be the time to give them to us since you just make dragon bashing suck a lot.
Well it wasn't before anyway. Str based classes who got dragon had a better return because the arties they had that boosted Str also benefited dragonform. The form is the same for everyone, the difference is that other things you buy might have more value because they affect both dragon and lesser. A BM with a SoA for dragon bashing gets substantially less utility from it than say an occultist, simply because it is less valuable to have it while in lesser for a BM while the occultist gets full use out of it either way.
Allowing major traits in dragon would mean than classes that take nimble already would have a slightly better dragonform for bashing than those classes that don't, because the major bashing attack takes balance, but there are still skills in dragoncraft that rely on eq so other classes would still get use out of the eq-quickening trait, especially with the eq-quickening artifact that you probably have already too.
Genuinely confused with the responses from the admin side RE Dragon - I understand that we in Achaea are a close knit community that is able to express themselves freely, but @Sarapis - and yes this may earn you ire but I don't really mind at this point - learn some customer service skills as one of, if not the most, senior person in a company that has a public appearance over the forums, because the attitude that you give off via text (which may be completly misinterpreted by me) comes across as arrogant, belittling and hostile towards people who have a right, as a customer (I assume most of these people have and continue to buy from IRE) and as an invested party, to gripe about changes, and it is your responsibility to keep your cool as a representative from IRE and for Achaea and not go about belittling what they are saying.
If I have misinterpreted your comments, then I apologise.
Anyway, back to Dragon - so far the response to Dragon has been;
They are still the best at hunting due to tankyness
They have their own skillset
They are defined by the players
They are a PVE powerhouse
They were breaking the economy
Being purely analytical, you have slowed dragon bashing, yet they have retained their tankyness - so what does being a dragon PvE powerhouse mean, outside of being able to tank things but take just as long if not longer to kill them as their lesserform counterparts?
What direction is dragon taking in regards to being an endgame PvE reward, other than a purely cosmetic skin and a health boost?
I think incantation should be made useful, so int-artied players can get an advantage as well. Currently, fully artied incantation (L3 sash, L3 collar, diadem) is still worse than unartied gut, so players with magic artefacts get no PvE benefit from them in dragonform. Buffing incantation a little, so that artied incantation is at least better than unartied gut, would even it out.
Yes, but how does this affect fishing?
It's still really, really dull.
I really like fishing. At least I like the concept of fishing. I wish someone would break me into the fishing mold, so I could too be a fisherman of excellent girth.
-
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important
A worthwhile concern, I can respect wanting Dragon to not be head and shoulders better at PvE than all other options. The thing is, Dragons kill so fast because they're high level and thus have a massive crit rate (and there's a number of classes that possess a similar level of tankiness). Crits are a far (far) bigger contributing factor to 'area clear times' than the Dragon 'class' itself and the dps output it may have on paper before those crits factors in.
Level 99+ people hunting in lesserform will still clear stuff incredibly fast and generate gold from bashing waaaaay faster than newbies. So I don't see specifically adjusting Dragon abilities (so severely) accomplishing a great deal in terms of addressing the income disparity between high level and low level characters.
I also understand that it can be rather tricky to find the right balance. I'll assume that the overall goal is to keep Dragon a relevant, strong choice while also ensuring that lesserform isn't obsolete for PvE the second someone hits 99. Situational usefulness, depending on the class.
In any case, it's refreshing to see such an open door policy/interaction from the admins. Kudos for that.
Aside from the fact that Gut was hitting literally almost double the damage of any other attack, so you only needed like a crushing critical at most to kill most things.
I used to hunt in lesser all the time. Easier for me to fight if I get jumped!
Change bop back!
This is also going to possibly affect house influences. Can't speak for other classes because I don't have 50 alts, but I think these changes are great for serpent houses because now serpent hunting is actually fun. Serpents in my house would often say "I'm quitting the house so I can go monk and bash to dragon." or "What arties do I need to PK to dragon? Hunting is too slow. A lupine? That's too expensive for me, I'm going monk. Bye." Now they're given a whip as novices and hunting is actually enjoyable instead of "this is so boring... it takes me 3 minutes of hit and run to kill one sidhe knight."
I like the equalization across classes. That's amazing. Bashing is something tedious that was made even more tedious for too many classes due to one class or another being two times faster, tankier, etc.
I don't like the dragon changes. In my eyes, that significantly widens the bridge between artied and non-artied. Before, you could invest time to get dragon and be able to kill things as fast as your average arti monk. Gut did decent damage with or without criticals. Now that it's equalized, with dragons doing roughly as much as lesserforms, it's even more about artifacts. A stygian pendant is 6% more crits and higher likelihood of harder-hitting criticals. Damage artifacts will have a greater impact relatively speaking than survival artifacts, especially at the dragon level where survival isn't really a concern.
I appreciate the direction of these changes, but I think that dragons should retain superiority in bashing. People have spent ungodly amounts of time playing the game to attain dragon specifically so they can bash faster; suddenly taking that away without very good reasoning is going to do a lot more harm than good. The gold income reasoning is a bit flawed because you're only shifting the gold advantage from people who play a lot (anyone who wants to spend time getting dragon) to people who have a lot of disposable income (artied up people, who are likely dragons too). That is my primary concern. It's getting harder and harder to be able to truthfully say artifacts aren't necessary to compete.
i'm a rebel
Hence my question about why aren't we all about as "efficient" as Monks instead of lowering the few efficient classes, making bashing even more boring than it was.
I have not even tried to hunt since the change, and I do not know yet if I will dramatically see a difference. I am lvl81 and spending 3 IRL hours to send the exact same command to get 1% experience was already something I was not really happy to do (in particular when a death costs you 5% and you also have to find an aera not cleared yet).
Honestly, I believe all the debate is here, whatever class you are or about the dragons complaints. Even them, or people artied to death, everyone seems to agree on one thing. Why is bashing in Achaea so damned boring?
I think this change isn't necessarily bad, it just came in early. Would much rather have seen these changes come in alongside the new bashing system that Aringar is working on. As it is, several classes have to live with a nerf in a very tedious, boring portion of the game, at least until some new bashing changes are introduced to liven things up.
As far as dragons: its a reward for a massive amount of PvE, that is (or has been) intended to make you considerably better at PvE. Obviously you get the higher base stats still, but I think it would at least make sense for dragons to have the highest bashing DPS, even if its not by a huge margin.
I got to say, the change kind of hurts as a shaman. We were like a glass cannon, now much less cannon-y.
Compared with Runewarden, for example, they get better armor to mitigate incoming damage while, from the looks of it, we do the same amount of damage.
Did talismans drop rates get reduced as well? Almost all of the outriders in Istarion, not one dragon talisman amongst them
OK, I have one question, Accentato is now based on weapon damage, is it also based on Int since it is a magick attack?
Accentato damage against denizens is not modified by any racial statistic (to prevent double-dipping).
In response to a few other comments/questions, I'm going to be spending some time today looking at weapon damages. I suspect that there's a breakdown in the normalization calculations for weapons with high speed stats which will require some adjustment, and I'm also going to see about tweaking some of the numbers with doubleslash vs single weapon attacks.
I'm envious of Aetolia's endgame system. Doesn't it just give racial bonuses/stats? I like the idea of staying the same class all the time, personally.
Dragon used to be a stat boost, you'd keep your class skills but with a few extra dragonny bits. OP. O to the muddy-funstering P.
Open mortal building things or w/e, and make more areas that are damage-heavy enough to prohibit lesserform, glass-cannon types from hunting there, to appease the dragons. Everyone wins!