Figured instead of reply in 5 threads I would roll it up in one.

1) DR is a great game. Stephen and his team have done a good job. Here is where I, uniformed non game design guy, see the real challenge. The game is aimed at causal gamers and has done a great job filling that niche. That being said, this game has made me a hardcore gamer again..which by my own personal criteria means I am playing 15+ hours a week. So now the designers must be able to satisfy both sets of consumers if it hopes to compete with the new Q1 2008 mmo's launching. This is based on the assumption they want to establish long term accounts vs people playing 2-6 months then moving on to a deeper content game.
Where I see this most evident is on the pvp server. When people hit level 100, they farm awhile..get the leet gear..and then do one of two things..quit or move to pvping 75% of the time. This is based off my own personal experience of course, and I have a friends list that looks like a level 100 graveyard.
Now, there is talk of dominant strategies etc. The real culprit is endurance. Ever fought a level 100 full endurance archer with shadow resist as a shadow mage? Or a 85k hp fighter who can roller, fear, butcher, slow u? Its not the mage build that is the dominant strategy..its endurance.
If I play as a mage with 74-76k endurance..that leaves me 8k mana. Not nearly enough to kill a good pvp'r in one mana dump.

This is where chunk 2 comes in. I cant really comment since we are all just speculating until we get to try it on pts. But I will anyway The proposed changes without addressing endurance overall leads to the warrior king. Anyone who cant see that, hasnt pvp'd enough imo. I will however keep my moans and groans to a minimum since stephen is a "professional game designer" , and give him time to prove the new fixes will actually make the game more competitive for the casual target market.
I sometimes come across as a jerk on the forums but is only because I actually do care about the game. I have seen many games pvp..."fixed" suing the formula...

Determine dominant strategy
Remove dominant strategy
Wait 1-2 months
Remove new dominant strategy that was created from the removal of previous dominant strategy

Anyhow, not sure how coherent some of my ramblings mght be since I am all over the board. Thoughts????

Hehe, you sure can bring it pretty funny.
Now.. to be honest my level 100 friendlist is a grave yard too, silence all the time.
I think its very good to wait until you can actually test things, before giving comments in either a good or a bad way.

Now.. I do understand whats being ment with the fighter will be king, and until I test it, I wont say anything about it. Still there is a chance that indeed the fighter will be overpowered a bit, but hey! We got the internal testing, the Q&A, and the PTS before it finally arrives to the casual player. And Sure the big problems will be filtered out that way already before it hits the real servers.

To comment the endurance problem, I indeed see the hp being boosted that far up to just win. Still I think that isnt everything, a mage has 3 bolts in most cases, each hitting pretty hard, I as a ranger with .23 speed can hit around 1.2 - 2.3k damage, and my crits are pretty nerfed. The mage, hits.. and im not sure.. maybe 3 times a second when being close? A fair bolt will make 700-1.2k damage, 3x that makes 2.5 - 3.5k damage, lets say. When I compare that its pretty the same. Still theres one thing: The resistances. I am a ranger myself as pretty much of you know, and I need to get my crit, my speed, my dps, and my Agility mostly from gear, while mages need to get int like I need agi, but get AND a set speed, so no need to look for that, get Resistances for FREE on pretty much all gear, and get faster gear so they can indeed dodge pretty much all special shots away, like poison shot or putrid.

Now I really want to see this on the PTS, because remember: We all want a good challanging fight, and some people really want, here you go

haha jay i think i moaned and groaned for the both of us and you basically are saying the same things i have already said.. I think i spoke my opinion enough about this topic and will let you all comment on jays post

I fully agree with your analysis Jay, this is all really about endurance. Reality is that you have no chance vs a good PvPer if you have not put emphasis on your hp. Of course you still need to tune enough agi/int/str depending on your class, and still need good gear, BUT hp still dominates, all other parameters would then differentiate ppl who have understood that.
When i first encoutered a ranger level1.. and got killed i was amazed and looked for the trick. No trick, just hp. Based on that, i built my own ranger level1 and had fun chasing all other lvl1 rangers, and pawned them all. Simple as that. Now i'll be more than happy to throw that toon away in chunk#2 (not playin it anyway).
All that to say again that the real flaw is hp. Most of my last matches against good fellows 100 are like tank versus tank, where we pound at each other for ages given our respective amount of hp, and where one will break fight when low (this is where mages are better as they run faster ). Final score would often be like 0-0 or 1-0. Not very exciting i must confess.
All that said, I would be really happy to see that hp dominance change. Chunk#2 would not solve anything. Endu mages will have to be pretty much more skilfull, endu warriors will probably prevail.

I have no straightforward solution. Normalizing HP would be too restrictive imo. What about a non-linear system that provide less hp for every endu point above a certain threshold (say 60k). That would bring players think twice before throwing too many points in endu, and incite some smart tuning.

my other 2 cents.

I agree that the dominance of endurance is at the core of this issue.

Our strategy is to reduce that dominance by increasing the value of the other attributes when compared to endurance. Our goal is to make each attribute equivalent -- depending on your build and play style, of course.

The mage skill mana adjustment is part of that strategy. Higher mana costs for mages puts pressure on intellect, making endurance less valuable. Endurance is still valuable, but you'll feel the burn if you neglect intellect as a mage.

The melee attack rating adjustments for warriors is also part of that strategy. Warriors oftentimes focus on agility and endurance, leaving their strength low and relying on base weapon stats and bonuses to generate damage. Giving melee types more attack rating takes pressure off of agility, freeing them up to have more health or increased damage from strength.

The regen modifications are also part of that strategy. A big part of the dominance of endurance is because of how regeneration works. In the current build, health regenerates at 3 percent per second after 5 seconds have elapsed without taking any damage. The effect of this regeneration rate and timing is that folks can retreat for a handful of seconds and completely regenerate their health. This is very difficult for a ranged attacker to deal with. In the new build, health regenerates at 2 percent per second after 10 seconds have elapsed without taking any damage. This makes winning by attrition a much more feasible strategy -- if you can keep damage on an opponent at least once every 10 seconds then you can whittle them down.

Will these changes "fix" the dominance of endurance for all time? Nope. But it moves us closer to a world where picking other attributes is more meaningful.

More iterations are to come. With more adjustments.

steve

stephen you need to get a grip as fighters do mostly str with melee mastery...

Listen i knwo you want to make this game better but unless you do each build in test it wont happen..

being strict now your testing team shoudl be given their pink slips and be gone...NOTHING from them is an expoilt and correct me if i am wrong that is there job

Mad Melee Mastery helps alleviate the need for agility, that's true. But fighters still need quite a bit of agility to hit other well-armored opponents. Hitting a mage shouldn't be a problem for a warrior if they get close.

So, if a warrior wishes to fight only low defense opponents then they can use less agility. But, as soon as you put them up against someone with good defense -- it's time to watch the pretty red "Miss".

An all-strength warrior isn't a very good choice. So many wiffs, it's crazy. Mad Melee Mastery only multiplies your attack rating... it doesn't give you the base attack rating needed before the multiplication.

An all-endurance warrior isn't a very good choice either. Can't hit the broad side of a barn and the damage potential is pretty low compared to a strength warrior.

A good strength / endurance mix isn't a bad choice... so long as you can live long enough to tolerate missing 60% or more of your attacks.

This may be news to you, Clamm, but we already test many character builds before we release each patch. We spend weeks testing as many aspects of the game as we can before pushing the version out.

Frankly speaking, your last comment makes almost zero sense to me. Are you suggesting that we fire all of our testers? That doesn't seem like a good idea to me...

steve

If tanks are able to seldom miss mages or low defence targets with few if any agility points spent other then mad melee mastery then why did they need such a big boost to damage by freeing up points for strength or end.

Theres no downside for them other then to other high defence tanks. Now they get better defense better attack and better health.
Mages die in far to quick a time to tanks as it is with resists and the current state of the game. Also why is reflection gear getting nerfed to 50% of its current value?
The problem with pve players coming to pvp and getting owned wont go away with this patch. They're still going to get owned as before.
But those of us that pvp regularly and have to fight players like asw or wreckit with their ability to destroy 80k mage hps in under 10 secs are seeing all kinds of flaws in this plan.

I know your goal is to have the best game posible but devs can be wrong. There's alot of empty server mmorphs out there that had devs with good intentions behind them.

Edited by aanna (11/21/07 06:14 PM)

what aanna just said