Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
- 6.2K All Categories
- 3.1K Everything Achaea
- 1.5K North of Thera
- 26 Archives of the Terraformer
- 257 The Matsuhama Arena
- 885 The Golden Dais of Creation
- 299 The Scarlattan Theatre
- 149 The Blank Canvas
- 2K Getting Help
- 412 General Questions
- 258 Quick Class Questions
- 1.3K Tech Support
- 313 Client Help
- 486 Curing Systems and Scripts
- 841 Off-Topic
- 255 The Wander Inn
- 586 The Universal Membrane
- 298 Class Discussions
- 298 Individual Class Sections
- 20 Alchemist
- 9 Apostate
- 30 Blademaster
- 9 Depthswalker
- 14 Druid
- 4 Infernal
- 20 Jester
- 19 Magi
- 34 Monk
- 11 Occultist
- 8 Paladin
- 7 Priest
- 29 Runewarden
- 18 Sentinel
- 26 Serpent
- 20 Shaman
- 9 Sylvan
Comments
Smaller, mechanical critiques:
Broader, more conceptual thoughts:
Aside from these, I think the largest obstacle to Battlerage being a resounding success is that it added things for us to do while we bash, but it didn't change how we bash. Is it more strategic? Yes. Does it encourage coordination in groups? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, bashing is still just mashing the same macro, just with some "freebies" on the side. It's still pretty mindless, especially if you've whipped up some convenience scripts to help you manage it. (And I use the term "scripts" loosely, I just have a macro I press when I have 75 rage, that fires the damage abilities one after another, 1 second apart.)
If we're trying to make bashing more dynamic, instead of Battlerage being freebies that we do on the side of our regular bashing attacks, make Battlerage abilities things we do instead of our regular bashing attacks. If I've saved up enough rage for my big damage attack, or if I'm trying to coordinate with an ally by giving a key affliction so they can capitalize on it, that should take my EQ/BAL action instead of slapping a Battlerage ability onto my regular bashing attack. That would bashing feel less like bashing, and more like PvE single or group combat, which could be fun. (To compensate for the lost DPS, the damage-based Battlerage attacks would need to be buffed, and the affliction-based Battlerage attacks could start inflicting damage of their own, so someone on "support" duty is still contributing damage, just not with their boring old bashing macro.)
I'm not trying to knock anyone's hard work. I know it's a new system, and given the scope of the project, I'm impressed how quickly it came together. I know tweaks are coming, I just wanted to throw some fodder into the think tank while it's still in its infancy.
We all know that bashing will never be as complex as PK (this is a good thing). The addition of Battlerage initially had a lot of people coming up with class combos and strategies, but after people started crunching numbers we soon realized it wasn't worth it.
You will bash with 95% efficiency if you just make your attack macro bigbattlerageattack;smallbattlerageattack;bashingattack. Even if you went further than the 1 second cooldown and made BR attacks consume BR balance and use BR if used off cooldown/etc. it wouldn't make any strategic difference. People would just write more complex scripts to handle it.
When I used to bash, I was able to go AFK at will, chat with people, answer questions, etc. Now, unless I break automation rules, I can't help newbies or chat on clans or anything like that.
It's great that we added afflictions to bashing. Unfortunately, like Aerek, I don't feel all of them are useful. The fear/aeon ones are decent for honours mobs. But coordinating afflictions for extra damage attacks doesn't feel rewarding at all. Even if you doubled the current bonus it wouldn't feel powerful.
We've been informed that if you use battlerage most efficiently, you will bash at the same speed as you did before. Why? Additional complexity and features should increase your ability to bash 'perfectly' and more quickly. You shouldn't have to have a complex script to be able to bash as well as you did before. Gold drops have already been nerfed, a lot of classes have been nerfed significantly.
Dragon - used to be the absolute kings of bashing. Post-nerf it was barely above average. I really, really feel that Dragon should offer VERY significant bashing rewards. Quite bluntly, if I didn't already have dragon, I would have absolutely no interest in putting in the effort to get it now. It isn't a status symbol anymore, it isn't extremely powerful in fighting (it's still useful, but most of the time your lesserform class will be just as useful overall), and the bashing is lackluster for the amount of time you spend getting it. Please reconsider making Dragon the bonus it used to be.
Seriously - without using the battle rage abilities hunting red scorpions can make me wonder if they're immortal again.
This might discourafecne from bashing as much or it might reduce my interaction but it's definitely different to before.
I highly suggest everyone spamming the damage battlerage abilities on their default attack alias/button to stop doing that.
Bashing, even solo, changed a lot for me.
And, just because 2 is not enough, After the increased battlerage decay span, I feel it's too long, again, if you are building huge amounts of rage, you are doing something wrong. I think I would like to have that reduced, but rage won't fully reset, just fade away at a decent rate
Just one question. Are battlerage artefacts being considered? Slower decay time, faster rage building, damage, etc. Anything at all?
Thanks Boss
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
If someone, hypothetically speaking, got an artefact that allowed an affliction to stay on a denizen for the whole span of time, despite battlerage attacks using it, I would want to hunt with that person - it would mean that the party could dogpile a target with their fourth battlerage skill without worrying about using up the affliction.
That would make me so~ happy. And encourage group hunting.
Battlerage encourages group hunting as it is.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
It's also not like a raid group in something like WoW where you only have a set number of spaces (and need a certain group setup). You might prefer that somebody have an artefact but I can't see anybody not taking them just because they don't have it, even if you also have somebody of the same class with that artefact willing to go along.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
Of course peope can be nice and just always invite people, and people do try to do that, but it's always better if people are incentivized to do the thing you want (in this case, including people). I honestly have no idea if it's an actual problem or not though.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
edit: assuming hunting appropriate areas, and not spots way below yours guys' level.
edit: I'd assume exp is the same.. every other formula is the same as other ire games.
Hrm, Groups already covers it, at least in theory. I guess the question is whether a 4 person "cap" of sorts is the right number. If it's unlimited, people will scream (maybe rightly) that you can't just have a huge group going around smashing things. Anyway, it does seem like it could lead to the sort of thing Shirszae mentioned with artifacts, not because people are specifically trying to be exclusionary, but because they'll want to optimize their group.
The real advantage is being able to hunt more difficult areas in a group than you could solo (which is impossible to generalise, so there's no way to say what the optimal group size is or how much it increases xp gain). In the past, this wasn't really an advantage because you'd still be greatly limited by the availability of denizens, it just helped to mitigate the disadvantages of group hunting. Now that the effective supply of denizens has increased a lot, it's likely that group hunting in higher level areas that you can't handle yourself is better than solo hunting. Probably not a lot better, though.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
Tl;dr I hunted with scrubs before the changes, why would that change now?
I think what you and others are saying (Sena) is that the larger effective supply is based on the assumption that a lot more people will be group hunting a lot, and using areas which I am assuming tended to go untouched, so basically, bringing existing resources that weren't tapped very much before into play (correct me if wrong).
If what you just said about group hunting vs. solo under this new system is true though (and I haven't misunderstood where the bigger effective supply is coming from), then once the novelty wears off here, most people will likely still be hunting solo, which is fine, and we never wanted to force people to hunt in groups because it's unreliable, but there very well might not be a bigger (effective) supply of denizens. I like the idea of tapping existing areas (they're there, and the player base is hungry, so yeah, find a way for people to be able to tap them), but totally separate from the artie question, it might need more incentives from what you're telling me. I mean, so that people are actually trying to hunt those areas first, not frantically trying to get a group together when everyone realizes all of the "solo" areas are bashed out.