62 replies to this topic

[Rimmy]

Okay, we've already had a recent thread about this from Yurai, but since the professions update patch will be looming over us "soon," according to GMs/CMs, I think it's important we revisit this issue once more.

First, I recommend reading Yurai's previous thread to understand the topic if you're not sure what this is about:

Future Patch Concerns

There's also a thread on the IAH Dragonica forums regarding the professions/production update that brings up some good points.

Now, I would like to add my voice to a suggestion players in other versions have already made: Considering how greatly a potential 3.0x stat amplification system could affect Dragon Saga's game mechanics, would it be possible to ask that Gravity Games/Barunson rework the system to have a lower maximum amplification?

IMO, 1.5x should be the absolute maximum for this system, although personally I think something closer to 1.3x would be ideal. A 30-50% maximum amplification increase makes it somewhat more reasonable... While I feel the proposed 200% increase (stats are normally 100%/1.0x) is just extreme overkill.

If that is an unacceptable solution to WP, then I would like to ask that they at least consider introducing changes similar to what GM Jin hinted at on the IAH forums:

We're suppose to release last week but we're still asking for some changes to the amplify soulcraft option mechanics. So, they are trying to see if they can change the mechanics of it.

Btw, from what developers told us is everything inside is not cash based for now. That includes the insurance scroll used for crafting.

Let me explain on how we hope it will work.

Step 1 : Soulcraft Expand.
Step 2 : Pass! Expand by 1.5
Step 3 : Soulcraft Expand
Step 4 : Pass! Expand by 1.8
Step 5 : Soulcraft Expand
Step 6 : Fail (Drop back to 0)

Hope they will approve on this.

We're either removing the insurance scroll or change the effect of it.

First, I like the fact that this system will, reportedly, not require cash use AT ALL, which should at least give everyone a fair shot at making use of it effectively.

Second, I also like Jin's indication that IAH's Dragonica seems to be making it so that amplification has a significant chance to fail and also works progressively, so that you can't go from 0.0x to 3.0x amplification in one try.

Third, I feel that removing insurance scrolls altogether sounds a bit extreme, but if it's the only thing that stops the new system from destroying whatever balance the game mechanics currently have, then so be it.

I can't seem to find the post now, but I'm pretty sure one of our own GMs/CMs said something similar to Jin in that the WP team is still trying to resolve some of their concerns about the professions update. I would assume that after reviewing our previous concerns they may have discussed it with GG/Barunson and suggested fixes similar to those Jin alluded to, but can't be sure without an official word.

On that note, is there any new information the WP team can provide for us with regards to what sorts of changes/revisions may have been made to our "version" of the professions update, if any?

Also, if you want to voice your own opinion about the update, please feel free. Or don't. I just wanted to try to keep this topic alive while it still has a chance of making a difference.

[StormHaven]

Ok this may seem off topic but aside from amping I'm concerned about enchant and SC transfering :|

[Rimmy]

Ok this may seem off topic but aside from amping I'm concerned about enchant and SC transfering :|

Care to be more specific? The professions update includes those systems too, so I think it's certainly fair to discuss them here.

[Coolsam]

I'm sure getting the necessary materials will take hours. Any word if the stuff needed to do amplifying will be sellable in open market? If so, then some monopoly will trick the lazy people.

[StormHaven]

Care to be more specific? The professions update includes those systems too, so I think it's certainly fair to discuss them here.

You're able to transfer SC options weapons/armor within 10 lvls.
so basicly legend a lvl 1 equip then transfer to lvl 10 and so forth.
enchanting works basically the same way but it's within 5 enchant lvls i think. so it's get a +10 and a +15 and transfer to the +15 and it becomes a +20 iirc

Edited by StormHaven, 01 July 2011 - 11:31 AM.

[sXcDennis]

I think the suggestion of decreasing the chance of getting a success rate in it is a great idea! But.....
Perhaps it should be given as a weekly event instead! If it's given out of the blue, eventually, even if it's rare to succeed people will get it. If it was given as like a weekly or monthly event, people will strive their best that week/month to get that 3x with lowered rates, and enjoy the rarity of it!

[Maronu]

You're able to transfer SC options weapons/armor within 10 lvls.
so basicly legend a lvl 1 equip then transfer to lvl 10 and so forth.
enchanting works basically the same way but it's within 5 enchant lvls i think. so it's get a +10 and a +15 and transfer to the +15 and it becomes a +20 iirc

I thought that with enchanting it had a chance of transferring anywhere between two levels higher and two levels lower, but I could be wrong. I really don't see a problem with it taking less mats to legendary or it being easier to upgrade. I find the current difficulty for sc to be pretty ridiculous, and welcome anything that makes upgrading less cash dependent.

On topic, really the only problems I see with amplification is that it will make players even more difficult to kill and most or all of the classes could end up with so much evade that they will only be hit 30% of the time regardless of aim. You could reduce amplification or remove it, but I can think of other possible solutions as well.


For fixes, I think it would be interesting if we didn't have our hp increased when we are in pvp, or perhaps weapons could be enchanted to a higher level than armor (+40 weapons and +20 armor or something). The aim and evade system should be totally revamped imo. I'm not sure if the 100 base aim system will continue to work with such huge stats, so perhaps we could have that eliminated and be able to get aim on every equip that we can get evade and get an amount of aim that is a little lower or equal to the amount of evade we can get. Agi should be changed to give an equal amount of aim and evade. If needed the hit formula could be adjust and determined by a ratio of aim to evade with lowest possible value staying 30% and highest being 100% of course.

edit: This might have been suggested before #6

Edited by Maronu, 01 July 2011 - 12:37 PM.

[StormHaven]

I thought that with enchanting it had a chance of transferring anywhere between two levels higher and two levels lower, but I could be wrong. I really don't see a problem with it taking less mats to legendary or it being easier to upgrade. I find the current difficulty for sc to be pretty ridiculous, and welcome anything that makes upgrading less cash dependent.

On topic, really the only problems I see with amplification is that it will make players even more difficult to kill and most or all of the classes could end up with so much evade that they will only be hit 30% of the time regardless of aim. You could reduce amplification or remove it, but I can think of other possible solutions as well.


For fixes, I think it would be interesting if we didn't have our hp increased when we are in pvp, or perhaps weapons could be enchanted to a higher level than armor (+40 weapons and +20 armor or something). The aim and evade system should be totally revamped imo. I'm not sure if the 100 base aim system will continue to work with such huge stats, so perhaps we could have that eliminated and be able to get aim on every equip that we can get evade and get an amount of aim that is a little lower or equal to the amount of evade we can get. Agi should be changed to give an equal amount of aim and evade. If needed the hit formula could be adjust and determined by a ratio of aim to evade with lowest possible value staying 30% and highest being 100% of course.

edit: This might have been suggested before #6

ordinary i would welcome the easy of crafting but combined with amping it becomes ridiculous.

[Rimmy]

I'm sure getting the necessary materials will take hours. Any word if the stuff needed to do amplifying will be sellable in open market? If so, then some monopoly will trick the lazy people.

Not sure if the materials can be sold in the market, but I'm almost positive they can be traded between characters/mailed because you need materials from multiple classes to create anything, from what I understand.

You're able to transfer SC options weapons/armor within 10 lvls.
so basicly legend a lvl 1 equip then transfer to lvl 10 and so forth.
enchanting works basically the same way but it's within 5 enchant lvls i think. so it's get a +10 and a +15 and transfer to the +15 and it becomes a +20 iirc

Maronu is right, the enchant system is -2, -1, =, +1, or +2 enchant when you transfer. You can use insurance to negate the negatives, and the game shows you the success rates for each possibility (at least, it did in the videos I saw).

I think the suggestion of decreasing the chance of getting a success rate in it is a great idea! But.....
Perhaps it should be given as a weekly event instead! If it's given out of the blue, eventually, even if it's rare to succeed people will get it. If it was given as like a weekly or monthly event, people will strive their best that week/month to get that 3x with lowered rates, and enjoy the rarity of it!

I like the idea of making 3.0x as rare as possible if it is included in the update. I don't really know how you'd fit it into an event, but knowing how creative our GMs/CMs have been thus far, I'm sure they could probably think of something.

I thought that with enchanting it had a chance of transferring anywhere between two levels higher and two levels lower, but I could be wrong. I really don't see a problem with it taking less mats to legendary or it being easier to upgrade. I find the current difficulty for sc to be pretty ridiculous, and welcome anything that makes upgrading less cash dependent.

On topic, really the only problems I see with amplification is that it will make players even more difficult to kill and most or all of the classes could end up with so much evade that they will only be hit 30% of the time regardless of aim. You could reduce amplification or remove it, but I can think of other possible solutions as well.


For fixes, I think it would be interesting if we didn't have our hp increased when we are in pvp, or perhaps weapons could be enchanted to a higher level than armor (+40 weapons and +20 armor or something). The aim and evade system should be totally revamped imo. I'm not sure if the 100 base aim system will continue to work with such huge stats, so perhaps we could have that eliminated and be able to get aim on every equip that we can get evade and get an amount of aim that is a little lower or equal to the amount of evade we can get. Agi should be changed to give an equal amount of aim and evade. If needed the hit formula could be adjust and determined by a ratio of aim to evade with lowest possible value staying 30% and highest being 100% of course.

edit: This might have been suggested before #6

I agree with pretty much everything you said here, except I'd add that keeping the 3.0x amplification system only seems reasonable if you fix the aim/evade calculations so that both stats get the same bonus from agility, as you have suggested. It's been brought up before, but nothing's changed, so I see no harm in bringing continuing to bring it up.

Evade stacking is by far one of the most broken features of the game in PvP, simply because it's pretty much impossible for most classes to stack enough aim to hit the most stacked evade stackers more than about 40-50% of the time, even if they stack the maximum amount of agility and aim rate available to their class. The only real exception is PFs, to my knowledge, b/c they have an aim rate buff and nice aim rate boosts on some of their sets. As Yurai put it somewhere, I think that every class, when stacking maximum aim rate possible for the class, should be able to hit at least 70-80% of the time on even the most extreme evade stackers, or somewhere around there. If you put all of the time, effort and resources into achieving the max aim rate for your class, you should have a decent hit rate on those players.

Then again, considering that amplification will significantly increase critical damage stacking potential for all classes, perhaps evade stacking will be a less significant problem when you're taking huge chunks of HP away each time you get a lucky hit. It's hard to say at this point, but either way I don't think it's fair that stacking aim rate is considerably less beneficial than stacking evade rate. There needs to be some kind of equalizer, as Maronu suggested, otherwise every class will have untouchable evade and no one will bother stacking aim rate much at all anymore.

Edited by Rimmy, 01 July 2011 - 01:02 PM.

[Kazu731]

Primarily as a PvE player it's hard for me to take this update as seriously as everyone else is. But I just wanted to get a clarification on that suggestion Jin had posted.

Is he saying he wanted the self-made insurance scrolls erased from the system entirely and add difficulty to the upgrade? I don't think that's necessarily a great idea for a fix, to be honest. It seems more like "Just spend all your time farming to do it and hope you get lucky." Regardless if the system reaches crazy levels or not, I think it shouldn't be entirely without control.

[Rimmy]

Primarily as a PvE player it's hard for me to take this update as seriously as everyone else is. But I just wanted to get a clarification on that suggestion Jin had posted.

Is he saying he wanted the self-made insurance scrolls erased from the system entirely and add difficulty to the upgrade? I don't think that's necessarily a great idea for a fix, to be honest. It seems more like "Just spend all your time farming to do it and hope you get lucky." Regardless if the system reaches crazy levels or not, I think it shouldn't be entirely without control.

Like I said, I'm not crazy about it either, but if it's a choice between that or breaking PvP completely with the 3.0x system (+insurance guarantees), I'd go for the former just to keep PvP alive somewhat.

[Kazu731]

Like I said, I'm not crazy about it either, but if it's a choice between that or breaking PvP completely with the 3.0x system (+insurance guarantees), I'd go for the former just to keep PvP alive somewhat.

Oh, I agree entirely. It'd be silly to choose that over the proposed suggestion. I can't help but feel guilty if we get a better system than Japan since they've had it for an entire year, though.

[Yurai]

The main problem is just the aim/evade ratios. Amplification would completely destroy this and make every single class have more evade than what the highest aim stacking class can hit.

[Coolsam]

The main problem is just the aim/evade ratios. Amplification would completely destroy this and make every single class have more evade than what the highest aim stacking class can hit.

If I'm correct, the highest aim possible is between 400-500s. While evade can now stack 1,000+. And if I'm correct, you need at least 100 aim above the opponent's evade to hit them the majority of the time. Which will be physically impossible to obtain when the opponent's evade hits quad-digits.

My concern is soulcraft options like +Move-spd and Critical damage/rate. Imagine the highest possible CD/CR/Movespeed.

[Yurai]

If I'm correct, the highest aim possible is between 400-500s. While evade can now stack 1,000+. And if I'm correct, you need at least 100 aim above the opponent's evade to hit them the majority of the time. Which will be physically impossible to obtain when the opponent's evade hits quad-digits.

My concern is soulcraft options like +Move-spd and Critical damage/rate. Imagine the highest possible CD/CR/Movespeed.

No, you're not correct. Also, critical damage stacking would be the cure to all the health/defense stackers.

Edited by Yurai, 01 July 2011 - 05:40 PM.

[Coolsam]

No, you're not correct. Also, critical damage stacking would be the cure to all the health/defense stackers.

I'm not? Well yea your right Critical Damage stacking is a good idea. Jewellery and belts give 5% max critical damage. While capes give about 30% max. Amplified and combined with set bonuses would make +475% or higher critical damage possible if it stacks correctly depending on class. (Ninjas/Paladins I believe would have easier time reaching those numbers. Other classes would be like 100-150% lower than the exact highest number after amplification.)

And I aint too worried about Move-spd option on soul-crafting as it applies to boots only.

[Kazu731]

My paladin currently has around 315% or so CD. It wouldn't be 900% with amps but it'd be ridiculously high. Also considering there's a damage cap on crits it doesn;t really matter.

[Yurai]

My paladin currently has around 315% or so CD. It wouldn't be 900% with amps but it'd be ridiculously high. Also considering there's a damage cap on crits it doesn;t really matter.

I doubt you'd be critting above 215k damage in PvP, so it does matter. I'm not entirely sure if that cap still exists since f7 allows for more than 215k damage.

[Kazu731]

I doubt you'd be critting above 215k damage in PvP, so it does matter. I'm not entirely sure if that cap still exists since f7 allows for more than 215k damage.

Well, I meant it more of a broad statement for those ridiculously high numbers of CD. But you're right and I've never actually seen it tested on our server.

[Coolsam]

Actually it's not a cap per say, it technically doesn't show any damage above 215k. I believe people say criticals damage cap because that damage was mostly possible via critical hit. At least that's what I think.

Edited by Coolsam, 01 July 2011 - 07:25 PM.

[Kazu731]

Actually it's not a cap per say, it technically doesn't show any damage above 215k. I believe people say criticals damage cap because that damage was mostly possible via critical hit. At least that's what I think.

When the cap was shown, it as shown to not display any numbers and not do any damage.

Edited by Kazu731, 01 July 2011 - 07:52 PM.

[Coolsam]

^Ahh I see. It's because the game used to not have damage that high possible. But you'd think it was removed what with F7's towers hitting millions of damage per hit. But even with all the CD stacking and amplifying, Yurai is right 215k in pvp aint possible. Especially with what the CD stacker's opponents are wearing.

[EriolN]

Now I'm as much worried that they'll overdo it, nerf to much, as I'm worried about ampli breaking the game.
Taking insurances entirely is not a good solution, it should be revisited on per stat basis, it shouldn't work at all on some, like phys drop and movspeed. Should be lower on agi, especially with new ninja crit rate buffs (ouch ouch ouch)
, should be lower on dodge obviously. But unfortunately they don't have time, or they're too lazy to do that.

Edited by EriolN, 02 July 2011 - 01:33 AM.

[Maronu]

Now I'm as much worried that they'll overdo it, nerf to much, as I'm worried about ampli breaking the game.
Taking insurances entirely is not a good solution, it should be revisited on per stat basis, it shouldn't work at all on some, like phys drop and movspeed. Should be lower on agi, especially with new ninja crit rate buffs (ouch ouch ouch)
, should be lower on dodge obviously. But unfortunately they don't have time, or they're too lazy to do that.

Just imagine what that solution could do! Will all the equips that are already x3 be nerfed if the ability to use insurance is removed? Probably not. Will players who amplified early have stats that then become nearly impossible to achieve? Of course we don't have to worry about that yet, but if changes take place once we have already have professions we could have even more balance problems between new/casual and old/hardcore players than we already have with heirlooms.

On professions in general:
Atm, I'm not even sure if there is a point in sc transferring upwards, at least for pvp, thanks to the fact that amplification is capped at x3 rather than a specific numerical value for the equips. Sc transferring downwards sounds broken because I believe you can transfer the stats of an equip that is high level to any lower level equip, ignoring the 10 level difference you need for sc transferring upwards. Imagine bsq characters with the stats of capped characters. If the goal of professions was to make the game more casual why not adjust the cost of soulcrafting and enchanting so that it is roughly the same at all equip levels (to prevent profiting from scing low level equips) and put a cap on the maximum stat values for each equip. Rather than just letting players amplify to x3 of a stat, let players amplify until they reach the cap for the equip (set that cap lower than x3 of the original max option values), and don't let players transfer stats if the stats break the limit for the equip they are transferring to.

Can you sc transfer after amplifying because I may be a bit confused on how some of the system works.

[Slayze]

Just an additional bit of information, but jDGN has the damage cap too. (no idea on the details; didn't research too much.)
The players there generally refer to it as a "bug", but I don't think there's any official word on it.

Edited by Slayze, 02 July 2011 - 08:44 AM.