12 replies to this topic

[9632130515120055620]

If there's one thing that's been bothering me a lot lately it's honing. While gathering my eddga set I found the painful bit wasn't even getting it, rather the honing attempts needed to get what I wanted. For some classes honing can be pretty simple and you only need a few attempts at it; swordies are pretty happy with INT, VIT, AGI, vigor, STR is passable and PvP hones if they're that way inclined, but for others who only really need certain stats it can take a lot of attempts to get something decent; beastmaster for instance. I only want STR, AGI, VIT and vigor, everything else is pointless to the class, but I often get some decent hones but a line or two of INT, SP, haste or whatnot ruins the whole thing. I actually used a total of 38 scrubs to get a decent hone on my pants.

 

The main problem here stems from how inaccessible honing scrubs are; the only way I can get them right now is via the mimics (an awful drop rate, like 2 scrubs an hour, and it's ending soon) or from buying old HHB stacks. Now that I want to create another class character I'm going through the same scrubbing hell again; still don't have a good hone on my first SM piece, I've just been getting garbage like STR and SP. This really needs to be looked at; for me to spend 38 scrubs would equate to 3.8k KP - that is NOT acceptable for just one piece of armor. Yes, I was unlucky on that one, but the other pieces took around 10 tries each to get something good. My suggestion is to simply make kafra NPCs sell scrubs for 500z a pop; constantly scrubbing a piece of gear to get bad hones over and over is not accessible to people without loads of zeny to throw around, and hones are basically half of a gears' stats at this point.

 

Keep the oils and 100% polishes in KP shop and stuff, but please just make it more forgiving than it is right now.

Edited by 9632130515120055620, 13 April 2015 - 11:47 AM.

[Shinyusuke]

honing simply need to disappear no pvp or pve balance can be acquired with honing around and the new eddgar with that crazy honing just made things worst

[ZeroTigress]

Things were better before honing.

[9539130505041340330]

Kinda like to see runes, and refinement disappear along with hones to be honest. They're all things that create a disparity amongst the player base.

[Shinyusuke]

Kinda like to see runes, and refinement disappear along with hones to be honest. They're all things that create a disparity amongst the player base.

It's not only that my opinion is that they (developers) made some really bad choices and to fix then they made bandaids not thinking to the future but only the present, so we have that increase in difficulty between new contents made to balance the power of ppl with endgears full runed, refined and honed but that make the new content crazy difficult for newer players that would't rune and refine gears that are not end content. They changed seedrunes to be less effective but for lazines (?), they did't think in this way they would increase the power of classes that use all the stats for example knight, war and cresc that use bot INT and STR. They decreased eddgar stats to balance the game BUT to make it still appealing they increased honing power on them the result is a way higher power gap between identical gears with different honing. The defence of lv80+ mobs is over 90% there is no way to create monsters over lv90 because 100% defence would make them immortals. I really don't understand how a development team can do such big mistakes.

Edited by Shinyusuke, 13 April 2015 - 11:04 PM.

[Greven79]

I agree with most parts of your statement, Shinyusuke. But I want to comment a few things:

 

Honing:

Item stats and honing seem to be based on a formula that uses the item level as a calculation base. So IMO, the devs didn't ruined Eddga explicitely... they just increased the item level. So players now compare the hones of a ML35 Eddga (item level 99) with ML30 Cazar (item level 95).

 

I already requested that formula in the VCR "forum", but without luck.

 

Defense:

It isn't problematic that monsters have such a high defense rate. And they can't get immune to damage => There's a defense cap at 75%. Rates above 75% are just a protection against penetration, guild skills and armor rip effects. Even a 115% defense rate could be seen//written as a 75% plus a 40% reduction of penetration. It would still be working, but the formulas would prevent such a defense rate. (this doesn't mean that 75% defense rates are loveable)

 

It's something totally different with damage reduction though. 100% would make you immune to damage and anything above heals you (negative damage = heal).

 

 

But now on the most important part:

 

How can developers do that?

 

It's not just their fault. It's the human nature to blame. Most players stick to a game to get better or to be better than the rest. But you can't get better indefinitely. So any formula will fail sooner or later. That's the reason why other games either simply end or trick their players:

 

Example - Diablo II & elemental resistance:

When you play the campaign, your resistance to elemental attacks gets better and better. You usually achieve high percentages at the end of that campaign. So how did the Diablo II devs address it? They simply aded a "Nightmare" and "Hell" mode with a -30% // -100% penality. In addition, the level-up progress was slowed significantly in these modes.

 

So basically, their formulas weren't balanced either. They just reduced them now and then.

That's something RO2 could have done as well: F.e. a 30% penality on any percentage // rate as soon as you reach ML1... or to let players begin at lvl1 again, just like RO1 did.

___________

 

But seen more generally, It's about an easy question:

Why do players want to achieve higher crit. chances for example? Shouldn't it be obvious that this can't go on infinitely?

 

And in this way, it's foolish to believe that LotS was any better. Players achieved insane crit. chances, >100% hit chances, high parry rates, etc. as well. That's why the devs HAD to change the formulas. They tried it with lower Crit/Agi bonuses, a new hit/dodge calculation and formulas that give diminishing returns. No doubt, their "fix" was miserable, but still: praising LotS is more about a fix character level NOT about stable formulas.

 

The only solution...

... to this problem is IMO to ntroduce an equally powerful counterpart for every player improvement!

 

An example:

Your hit rate might be still the same you had at lvl1. Why? Your opponents got more dodge instead. So you just increased the value, but not the resulting rate.

 

And that's what the devs would have to do with all other effects as well!

 

But not every stat has such an easy counterpart. Cast speed, haste, vigor, etc. don't care about the values your opponents have. And no, they won't be balanced just because they could have the same benefits as well. All these effects have a finite maximum. So your character level ought to keep the final rate stable, even in regard of increasing gear bonuses. And IMO, other effects shouldn't be improvable at all - like movement speed, range, etc. It threatens the overall balance towards aimed effects, casting time, etc.  The only way for that would be a compensating drawback. but that's awfully difficult to keep in check.

 

So there are simple options, there's just noone willing to go that way.

[Shinyusuke]

I agree with most parts of your statement, Shinyusuke. But I want to comment a few things:

 

Honing:

Item stats and honing seem to be based on a formula that uses the item level as a calculation base. So IMO, the devs didn't ruined Eddga explicitely... they just increased the item level. So players now compare the hones of a ML35 Eddga (item level 99) with ML30 Cazar (item level 95).

 

I already requested that formula in the VCR "forum", but without luck.

 

No matter what is the formula they used they can always decrease the starting value (min value obtainable) or even better the max value obtainable.

If the formula was y = 2x+ 50 with  0 < x < 10  the minimum value ofy would be 50 and the maximum value would be 70 if this value is too much you can either reduce the constant ex.  y = 2x + 25 at this point the min value would be 25 and the max value 45 you would acquire an high reduction but you would maintain the same gap if instead you reduce the x coeff. you would have y = x + 50 the min value would be still 50 but the max value would be 35, in a move you reduced the max value and the gap between min and max.  Also if the constant was based on gear's stars example c = 10*n_stars this statement would still work but instead of reducing only the x coeff. you can reduce also the coeff that multiply the stars. What I'm pointing is that differences in a game are good but they need to be as little as much is needed to not make them the prominent part, honing can't  be the main aspect of the gears but the base stats would be.

 

Defense:

It isn't problematic that monsters have such a high defense rate. And they can't get immune to damage => There's a defense cap at 75%. Rates above 75% are just a protection against penetration, guild skills and armor rip effects. Even a 115% defense rate could be seen//written as a 75% plus a 40% reduction of penetration. It would still be working, but the formulas would prevent such a defense rate. (this doesn't mean that 75% defense rates are loveable)

 

It's something totally different with damage reduction though. 100% would make you immune to damage and anything above heals you (negative damage = heal).

 

I got your point but now immagine if the defence of every monster is always 50%  this give you multiple vantages:

1) you have fixed point every level to balance the damage dealed by players so you can focus on balance between players

2) no matter what level are the monsters developers can still make them various for example in dayr they can increase a bit the defence on turtless or on scorpions (the ones with natural armor) for example up to 60% and decrease their attack speed (for turtless) or change in slow dots (for scorpions), instead wolfs or mukas can have their defence decreased to 30% (no natural defence) but their attack increased (thorn and theets), this would give out a higher variety to the monsters but each level would have always the same kind of stats only increased according with the level.  I think that what has tro be increased is not the defence % since you soon obtain the level cap but the player damage and the monsters HP in a way at every level a player need the same time to kill each kind of monster. At that point a players could chose to kill turtless using more time but suffering less damage per second or killing wolfs using less time but suffering higher damage.

 

 

But now on the most important part:

 

How can developers do that?

 

It's not just their fault. It's the human nature to blame. Most players stick to a game to get better or to be better than the rest. But you can't get better indefinitely. So any formula will fail sooner or later. That's the reason why other games either simply end or trick their players:

 

Example - Diablo II & elemental resistance:

When you play the campaign, your resistance to elemental attacks gets better and better. You usually achieve high percentages at the end of that campaign. So how did the Diablo II devs address it? They simply aded a "Nightmare" and "Hell" mode with a -30% // -100% penality. In addition, the level-up progress was slowed significantly in these modes.

 

So basically, their formulas weren't balanced either. They just reduced them now and then.

That's something RO2 could have done as well: F.e. a 30% penality on any percentage // rate as soon as you reach ML1... or to let players begin at lvl1 again, just like RO1 did.

 

Diablo 2 could use this system only because this is a finished game RO2 is a game that can potentially never end and RO1 is an already vast game instead RO2 is too small to jet encounter these problems

___________

 

But seen more generally, It's about an easy question:

Why do players want to achieve higher crit. chances for example? Shouldn't it be obvious that this can't go on infinitely?

 

And in this way, it's foolish to believe that LotS was any better. Players achieved insane crit. chances, >100% hit chances, high parry rates, etc. as well. That's why the devs HAD to change the formulas. They tried it with lower Crit/Agi bonuses, a new hit/dodge calculation and formulas that give diminishing returns. No doubt, their "fix" was miserable, but still: praising LotS is more about a fix character level NOT about stable formulas.

 

The only solution...

... to this problem is IMO to ntroduce an equally powerful counterpart for every player improvement!

 

An example:

Your hit rate might be still the same you had at lvl1. Why? Your opponents got more dodge instead. So you just increased the value, but not the resulting rate.

 

And that's what the devs would have to do with all other effects as well!

 

But not every stat has such an easy counterpart. Cast speed, haste, vigor, etc. don't care about the values your opponents have. And no, they won't be balanced just because they could have the same benefits as well. All these effects have a finite maximum. So your character level ought to keep the final rate stable, even in regard of increasing gear bonuses. And IMO, other effects shouldn't be improvable at all - like movement speed, range, etc. It threatens the overall balance towards aimed effects, casting time, etc.  The only way for that would be a compensating drawback. but that's awfully difficult to keep in check.

 

So there are simple options, there's just noone willing to go that way.

 

The only real big mistake developers did in RO lots was to use not level depending stats and or skills, BT wil always be broken with this formula, the real fix is not to change it but only to put a level dependency on it ex now BT works as crit_damage% = INT*0.4 and if it was =(INT*0,4)/(c*LV) ? The c would be needed to tune the equation. This simple change would noit only automatically cap the crit damage but would also make INT runes less powerfull with trhe game acquiring more levels and to permit the introduction of new even more powerfull runes to maintain the crit damage instead of increasing it.

 

I'm sure that easy fix are possible the important is to find them having in mind that this game will gain new levels so everything need to be explicitly or implicitly related to monsters and players level.

[Greven79]

No matter what is the formula they used they can always decrease the starting value (min value obtainable) or even better the max value obtainable. If the formula was y = 2x+ 50 with  0 < x < 10  the minimum value ofy would be 50 and the maximum value would be 70 if this value is too much you can either reduce the constant ex.  y = 2x + 25 at this point the min value would be 25 and the max value 45 you would acquire an high reduction but you would maintain the same gap if instead you reduce the x coeff. you would have y = x + 50 the min value would be still 50 but the max value would be 60, in a move you reduced the max value and the gap between min and max. 

 

First of all, the formula you use isn't similar to the current one, so you might have not understood what I mean.

 

VIGOR_RATE = 200 * VIGOR / (VIGOR + OFFSET)

with OFFSET = 40 * LVL + 2000

 

The important difference is that the offset is part of the denominator. If you would lower it, the percentages would go up.

 

So let's better have a more precise look at this formula. It consists of two parts, the offset and the remaining part. If the offset is 0, the 200 * VIGOR / VIGOR part will always result in 200. If the offset is a positive value, the 200%.will be unreachable, but you can get REALLY close. See: 200 * Infinity / (Infinity + Offset)

 

Since vigor exists both in the numerator AND denominator, the proportion towards the offset is what counts. An example:

 

Z = X / (X + Y)

 

IF X = 1Y THEN Z = 1Y / 2Y = 1/2

IF X = 2Y THEN Z = 2Y / 3Y = 2/3

IF X = 3Y THEN Z = 3Y / 4Y = 3/4

...

 

IF X = 1/2 * Y MEANING 2X = Y THEN Z = X / 3X = 1/3

IF X = 1/3 * Y MEANING 3X = Y THEN Z = X / 4X = 1/4

IF X = 1/4 * Y MEANING 4X = Y THEN Z = X / 5X = 1/5

...

 

The pattern should be obvious... and it's identical for all these RO2 formulas. The part we haven't included in the previous statements is the 200, which defines the unreachable maximum. So let's do this now, but let's use some real values as well: At level 80, the offset is 5200 (40*80 + 2000).

 

IF VIGOR = 1 * 5200 THEN RATE = 1/2 * 200

IF VIGOR = 2 * 5200 THEN RATE = 2/3 * 200

IF VIGOR = 3 * 5200 THEN RATE = 3/4 * 200

...

 

IF VIGOR = 1/2 * 5200 MEANING 2*VIGOR = 5200 THEN RATE = 1/3 * 200

IF VIGOR = 1/3 * 5200 MEANING 3*VIGOR = 5200 THEN RATE = 1/4 * 200

IF VIGOR = 1/4 * 5200 MEANING 4*VIGOR = 5200 THEN RATE = 1/5 * 200

...

 

You see. If your vigor is equals to the offset, your resulting rate is 100%. If you have twice as much vigor instead, it's 2/3 * 200 or in other words 133% vigor rate.

Would be nice to see a player with that much vigor. I'd like to see how a 133% cooldown reduction would look like.

 

The 200 in this formula is that what you described as x coeff. So you're actually stating that it would be wrong to decrease it to a useful value, because it would lower the possible range from 0~200% towards 0~100% or even 0~50% (the case with critical & parry) and that's this would be bad because it doesn't lower the minimal rate (here 0%).

 

See, my arguments are that it's REALLY, REALLY necessary to decrease the x coeff that I call the unreachable maximum. Sure, we can then discuss whether it makes sense that a lvl1 character has a offset of 2040 already, but you can't decrease THAT one without increasing the rates at any level. The only real option there is to lower the "2000" part, but increasing the level-dependant one.

 

 

[Modified for readability]

 

I got your point but now imagine if the defense of every monster is always 50%  

 

this give you multiple advantages:

1) you have fixed point every level to balance the damage dealed by players so you can focus on balance between players

2) no matter what level the monsters are, developers can still make them diverse

 

For example:

Iin dayr, they can increase a bit the defense of turtles or scorpions (the ones with natural armor) up to 60% and decrease their attack speed (for turtles) or change in slow dots (for scorpions), [..]

 

I think that what has to be increased is not the defense% since you soon obtain the level cap but the player damage and the monsters HP in a way at every level a player need the same time to kill each kind of monster. At that point a players could chose to kill turtles using more time but suffering less damage per second or killing wolfs using less time but suffering higher damage.

 

Sure, that's something I'd like to see as well... and not just for PvE opponents, but for players as well. I just commented it in my last reply to point out that it's not the tragedy as it sounds if monsters have 90%+ defense rate. So I could imagine Dayr Desert Turtles to have such a value to be resistant to armor penetration as well. I just wouldn't make it the norm.

 

 

Diablo 2 could use this system only because this is a finished game RO2 is a game that can potentially never end and RO1 is an already vast game instead RO2 is too small to jet encounter these problems

 

To apply this concept to an endless game like RO2 would just mean regular downgrades (f.e. at lvl25, ML1, ML25; Ultimate Level 1, Uiltimate Level 25 ....). But that's an ugly solution, so I'd prefer a better defense // vigor formula. BTW: Other games like Torchlight give you an absoption instead. Meaning that you absorb 20pts of damage at level 1 and 2000pts of damage later. The advantage is that this can go on forever as well, but you still risk that they become immune to low-damage attacks... f.e. against underleveled enemies.

 

 

The only real big mistake developers did in RO lots was to use not level depending stats and or skills,

 

BT wil always be broken with this formula, the real fix is not to change it but only to put a level dependency on it ex now BT works as crit_damage% = INT*0.4 and if it was =(INT*0,4)/(c*LV) ? The c would be needed to tune the equation. This simple change would noit only automatically cap the crit damage but would also make INT runes less powerfull with trhe game acquiring more levels and to permit the introduction of new even more powerfull runes to maintain the crit damage instead of increasing it.

 

I'm pretty sure that LotS had level-dependant stats as well.

 

Battle Tactics could fixed that way - depending on how you scale c - but it would then still be the only skill that get's better depending on your statpoints. So we could cange any other passive skill the same way. The Assassin's critical bonus could rather be level-dependant on a stat f.e. And to find a well-balanced c is extremely hard.

 

So in my opinion, you could just assume an average and use this as a fix value instead (f.e. the 40~50% I mentioned sometimes). You just save yourself a lot of time.

Edited by Greven79, 26 April 2015 - 10:19 AM.

[Shinyusuke]

Just a little point i guess you misread or I didn't explain well:
I want to reduce the "x coeff" to reduce the gap between min and max level instead of the constant if i have to chose only one and to reduce both if possible.
About the formula i used that one only to make an easy example. If the coeff. is in the denomitor you just need to consider it as 1/n, as i said no matter what formula they use we will always find a constant or a starting value and a coeff that tune the increase of the value.
Another think I would never do is to use such strange formulas that repeat more than once the same variables, in a game poor of optimizzation these formulas just increase the problem.

Edited by Shinyusuke, 27 April 2015 - 04:12 AM.

[9632130515120055620]

I agree that honing is a completely unnecessary power creep whose only purpose on being added seemed to be $$$, but one of the main points I want to get across here is how inaccessible it is. If you're not a KP spender you have no access to a supply of scrubs and getting a good hone often costs more than the actual gear itself. In my case on the pants that took 38 tries to get something decent for my class, if I didn't have event scrubs this would equate to around 190k zeny at the 1:50 KP rate.

[Amilus]

I agree that honing is a completely unnecessary power creep whose only purpose on being added seemed to be $$$, but one of the main points I want to get across here is how inaccessible it is. If you're not a KP spender you have no access to a supply of scrubs and getting a good hone often costs more than the actual gear itself. In my case on the pants that took 38 tries to get something decent for my class, if I didn't have event scrubs this would equate to around 190k zeny at the 1:50 KP rate.

 

you always get free stuffs in this game, everything is free. honing scrub was given out in last mimic event, i got about 80+ scrubs from that.

[Shinyusuke]

you always get free stuffs in this game, everything is free. honing scrub was given out in last mimic event, i got about 80+ scrubs from that.

There is nothing most wrong in what you say, not because it's wrong what you say but the fact that this game push you to say that. Events need to be something to distract players not something needed to play this game in a decent way.

[Amilus]

There is nothing most wrong in what you say, not because it's wrong what you say but the fact that this game push you to say that. Events need to be something to distract players not something needed to play this game in a decent way.

 

just face it, this is what this game is heading to, and in fact for us F2P players who start from scratch, events do HELP us a lot in keeping pace with others. like it or not, everyone is anticipating another rush of freebies for 2nd anniversary, i started playing just after HHB V, so i'm looking forward for FREE infinium soon, please... haha~