Notice!

We moved!

Please visit us at our new location which can be accesed through http://forum.legendarena.com/ or via legendarena.mypunbb.com

Zoid's big list of suggestions; All my ideas gathered over the round
Topic Started: Jul 1 2009, 11:13 PM (337 Views)
Zoid	Jul 1 2009, 11:13 PM Post #1
Coppersmith Posts: 78 Group: Members Member #234 Joined: Jul 1, 2009	Ok, here's the great big pile of suggestions I've been mulling over for the duration of the round. Some are more important than others (class balancing is a must), and some are easier than others. I'll try to designate which ones should be easy to code and which ones are more involved. Classes: It's pretty obvious the classes aren't at all balanced. If I had to measure them on a scale of 1-10, I'd say Rogues are a 10, Trademen are a 7, and Warriors are a 4 or 5. 32 of the top 50 levels are Rogues and 34 of the top 50 ranked players are Rogues. For those of you who think this is just because more people play Rogues, in ranks 51-250 there are 78 Rogues, or 39%. This is almost balanced (balanced would be 33%), but the top 50 players are 68% Rogues, so you cannot argue there are more top ranked Rogues because there are simply more of them. Even the area in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate, current ranking (since this is based mostly on charm strength and level), Rogues still make up 60%. The reason for this is simple, Rogues start out more powerful and scale better than the other classes. Warriors don't scale very much at all (slightly, since they save more money the more life they have, but that's negligible) and Tradesmen scale roughly at a square root pace (since their bonus is basically ordering larger charms), while Rogues scale linearly (the finishing move does triple damage regardless of whether you're doing 1 damage or 100). Since the finishing move basically ensures that you'll win the close ones, a Tradesman or a Warrior must be considerably stronger to win regularly against a Rogue. This is more difficult to do than you'd think, since once everyone hits about level 60, even if you have 30 more total charm power (which is quite expensive, that's getting power 45 charms when Rogues get power 35, which is fairly reasonable to expect), you're still only maybe 10% more powerful, which isn't enough to make the difference. Further, in order to actually get 30 more charm power, you have to order charms 36 power stronger, to compensate for the +5 agl. Lastly, add in the random combat system and Rogues tend to be avoided and win more often on defense, giving them less experience loss. Even now, if I'm fighting a Rogue and a miss turns into a critical hit, it can easily change the battle from me winning with 250-350 life left to me losing. Simple Changes (easy to code, I think): Remove the agility bonus to Rogues. Leave it on the subclass without the finisher, for obvious reasons, but it's quite clear that they simply don't need it. Buff Warriors considerably. I'd say give them an extra +5 strength at level 10 and boost the healing to 1/2 (Warrior) and full (berserker). This also gives them a neat ability, that they can kill very quickly (since they don't need to heal), saves them money, and makes them unkillable if you can't kill them in one stamina. Trademen aren't too bad off, but still need a little bit more. They do get much better in the late game, for obvious reasons, so I would recommend boosting the inital skillpoints to 50 or 60 and not giving any for the subclass. This will help in the early game to even things out a bit more (enabling them to go for combat skill much sooner), but not too much in the late game when everyone has maxed skills anyway. More complex changes(not necessarily easy to code): Change the Rogue's finishing move to a first strike type move, to help with the random factor. At the start of a battle, they get a first strike for 2/3 damage (Rogue) or 1.5 times normal damage (operative), then the battle proceeds normally. The damage done is lower than the finishing moves, but they happen every time. Stats: Agility is simply too weak, which further exacerbates the Rogue issue (Rogues scale very well with strength). I would boost the effect of agility by about 15%. Another of the big imbalancing things about this round was that agility wasn't worth much and life simply didn't help against Rogues (you could boost life, but that just meant you'd be at 20% sooner). The Master Finishing Move can be treated as two extra attacks, which mean a lot less when every battle goes for 20 hits (so one person does 20 hits and the other 22) as opposed to 10 (so one person does 10 and the other 12). WP Score: I like this better than not having it, but I think it could use some tweaking. What would be fun is changing this to straight win % for individuals, but using it as another clan ranking. That way, a clan that suffers attrition (which a LOT do) halfway through the round could still have a shot at a top ranking slot. Obviously it would need some tweaking to make it non-exploitable, but it would be nice for a clan of only 8 people to be able to compete for a top slot. Personally, right now I feel as though WP score is too easy to exploit and too easy to mess up and knock yourself out of the rankings from the beginning (as I did, prayed 600 stamina into endurance at the start while in a clan, d'oh). Spamming: This used to be unpleasant when I played before, but now it's gotten downright ridiculous. We no longer have to F5 the market all day long to buy a decent charm, but it's no coincidence that the top 2 players were horrendous spammers. Yes, I know plenty of other games work so that the more you play, the better you are, but don't we want LA to be better than those games? You're not going to attract more players with "just another" game that in order to win you have to devote your life to it. Simple suggestion: Increase experience lost when killed by a lower level and decrease experience lost when killed by a higher level considerably, maybe as much as 50% each. The vast majority of the spamming is done by someone of high level to someone of not quite as high level (i.e. they find a soft target and just kill him until he dies of it). What this change will do is make it easier for those who have been spammed to get revenge (which is much more fun for everyone than simply banning spamming) and make it less profitable to spam one target unless you're very powerful. If you ARE very powerful, then it won't affect you very much since people will still have a hard time killing you, but if you just got to high level because you spammed the crap out of 1 or 2 players and aren't that strong, you'll get beaten back down very quickly. This change may also be accompanied by an increase in defensive experience gain (so that those who are high level because they're really strong won't be hurt much by it), but you have to be careful with that or people will use it to cheat. Complex suggestion: Again, I think most people who have been spammed would much rather get revenge on their tormenter than just make spamming illegal or undoable. Thus, I suggest that there be some threshold of number of kills per day that someone can kill a player (I would say max stamina/5) before they get penalized. The penalty would be that for a certain period of time, the spammer is worth 8 warpoints to EVERYONE, regardless of clan wars. As before, this makes it so that those who really are very powerful won't be hurt that much, but those who simply found a soft target and beat it senseless will get similarly beaten senseless. Sponsoring: This, plain and simple, needs to be against the rules. Individual ranks should be individual ranks, not how much your clan helped you ranks. I'm not sure about any coding that can be done for this, but rule changes are needed. I played another game for a while, Ogame (weird name, fun space empire builder) where there was a very simple but very good rule: You can transfer and help players as much as you want, as long as they're weaker than you are. Any transfer or help of a weaker player to a stronger one is against the rules, and it's pretty strictly enforced. As such, multies aren't of much use in there as even if you're not caught with the multi, you'll get banned for "pushing" anyway. A similar rule would be good here and would solve the "oh, but I just had 42 friends who don't play anymore who wanted to sell me their tokens for 5 credits each" problem. Top ranking: It's better than the old system of "whoever orders the biggest charms on the last day wins," but still lacking. I have two suggestions for making it better, both of about equal complexity I think: 1. Have the top ranking points scale with time elapsed. My suggestion would be that the top ranking points you get are normal*(1+days elapsed/30) basically increasing it by about 3% each day. This means at the end of month 1, you get twice as many points as at the beginning of the round. At the end of month 2, you get 3 times as many points. This properly puts the emphasis more on the end of the round without neglecting the beginning. 2. Keep top ranking the way it is, but divide "final" ranking into 3 parts, top ranking, level, and current ranking (remove level from top ranking calculation, of course). Top ranking would then be a measure of how strong you have been the entire round, current ranking is how strong you are now, and level is how well you did with that strength. Total ranking would then be all 3 summed with equal weight given to each. This would add a lot more interest to the end of the round and more calculation, such as do I weight gain 4000 to get higher in level or do I put those points into stats for higher current rank? Endurance: I think I've created a monster. Originally it was a new idea that had never been done before (in round 5). Now it's something that everyone has to do in order to compete. As such, I think it's against the primary description of the game now "choose your path..." A determined spammer can get a level with 60-70 stamina, so it feeds into itself much too well now. Suggestion: Decrease stamina gained and increase max stamina gained. I honestly would say give people 30-40 more max stamina but not any stamina at the moment. Reducing it back down to 5 stamina though would be sufficient to hamper this rat race at the end. I would advocate putting it at 5 stamina gained and 20 max stamina gained, so that people wanting to do it for the sake of not fighting often could do so but it wouldn't be hugely necessary to do it at the end of the round. Battle system: I think I suggested this before way back in round 5, but one of the major problems with random battles (which we all hate) is that the range of damage is so high. This is compounded by Rogues. You can get hit with 9 times the damage you did last time when fighting a rogue, which just makes things too random. Suggestion: Keep the average the same but lower the range to double, so damage of 3-9 would now be 4-8. Same average damage but a smaller range. It's still enough of a range so that some random factors would influence battles, but not as much as it is now. Alchemy: With the new alchemist skill, you can pretty much kill anyone as long as your charms aren't horrible. The problem is that if your targets come online and potion up as well, you're screwed. Suggestion: Remove the restriction that you can't use a potion if you have one running. Don't make them stack, just make it reset the duration at full strength. This was yet another thing making Rogues too powerful in the end game. Everyone had enough money to buy potions most of the time, and tradesmen had more than enough (I've been buying them almost all the time for the past 2 weeks and I have over a million credits to my name in the bank or in GC). Making it so you can potion up continuously will give tradesmen and warriors a much needed boost (warriors save a ton of money from healing in the end game) over rogues once the additional charm power simply isn't enough. Praying: This is also too random. It can make a huge difference in the early round if you pray a couple times and get something and then go fight, but you have to get lucky. In addition, praying for endurance is WAY too random, I got 30 stamina for my first two 150 stamina dumps and then 130 when I prayed 210 stamina. Suggestion: These should give a guarantee that is whatever their average is. So if you should, statistically speaking, get 2 endurance for each 5 you pray, then just make it that you get 2 endurance each time you pray. They can make or break and early round attempt at high level and rank, so they really need to be reliable. GC Auctions: I didn't like this at first, but it's actually pretty nice. For most of the round it doesn't matter, but it will still go dry toward the end and so GC becomes a more precious commodity. Vastly better than the old F5 the market all day long Suggestion: Works well as it is, but I would change it so that the highest unique bid wins instead of the lowest. This won't affect anything for most of the round, but when the market goes relatively dry it will make it so that money is now a factor, which makes it less of a chore to bid on auctions and gives an advantage to those who have planned well and managed their finances well. Wars: I've always thought that it's dumb that you PEACE a clan to hurt them. This also makes the final warpoint rankings fairly meaningless, since you aren't really in control of it (if nobody has a mutual with you, you aren't winning warpoints). Also, 9 wars is too many. I was in a 1 man clan and wasn't even in the top 20 levels for a while and when I declared war on UC and JL, they had the space to declare back. Who you war with should be a pretty strategic decision, and it's just not right now. Suggestions: If clan sizes stay the way they are, reduce wars to 5 again. Maybe even have them 5 regardless of how big the clans are. You may get fewer targets per war with smaller clans, but there are also fewer people competing for your targets. Also, make every war worth 8 warpoints. Perhaps give some sort of experience or other bonus to having a mutual, but the final clan rankings should be based on what you did, not whether or not nobody would war with you. End of Round: This has been annoying for as long as I can remember. It's like being in the last quarter of a basketball game and not knowing if you have 30 seconds left or 15 minutes. The game really needs to end at a set time. This round is a perfect example of this too, if the round had ended before about 18:00 (four hours after the earliest time yosh said it would), The Order would have won both warpoints and size. If it had ended at 21:00 UC would have won both. Since it went to the very end, I think UC won warpoints and TO won size. UC gambled that it would end later and it did, most of TO (including myself) gambled that it would end earlier and it didn't. The winner of the round shouldn't be the clan that makes the best guess to when yosh is going to get around to hitting the "off" switch. I think this is all I have right now. The game is really doing well and I don't want to sound too critical, I just want to see it better. Discussion and disagreement are welcome and I hope yosh takes some of these suggestions into consideration. I'd offer to help code but I think the game is written in a language I don't know (I know FORTRAN and C/C++ really well and java and assembly sort of well). Glad to see a great game back and at it again.



Outkast19	Jul 1 2009, 11:32 PM Post #2
Executioner Posts: 25 Group: Members Member #227 Joined: Jun 1, 2009	Seems like a summary of our in game discussions this round! I agree with a lot of this, some of it I would say needs tweaking a bit. Especially the weighted ranking, that I find important as well as the balancing of the classes.
Don't start nothin', there won't be nothin'.


immacommy	Jul 2 2009, 03:56 AM Post #3
Painter Posts: 30 Group: Members Member #186 Joined: Apr 8, 2009	Good logic throughout your proposed changes... I agree with most of what you argue except for the warrior class changes. +5 additional strength along with full life healing is extremely overpowered. The strength is huge, especially in the beginning of the round and healing would make some completely unbeatable.



Arakan	Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM Post #4
Soapmaker Posts: 82 Group: Members Member #66 Joined: Dec 5, 2008	Very good post, I will address a few points: Class balance: Tradesmen get attacked so much they lose way more than the 10% income bonus, I'm estimating I lost that + the extra 10% to fishing. It was not uncommon for me to log on after not being on for 10 hours and literally have less than 5k credits. Because of this I received less money from income than any rogues of similar level. And my character did not even start getting weak until after level 50 (my first 2 charms were both 40 power) when I started saving his att points. Tradesmen need some way to actually retain the money they make. Spamming: After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person. Top Ranking: This is a really good idea you have, might have to tweak some of the numbers but great suggestion (as long as classes get rebalanced). Endurance: I kind of like it, some people would rather help their clan and get more WP's/levels while others or solo players are shooting to stay in the top ranks and would rather spend it on other attributes. GC Market: If you make it so the highest unique bid wins people are just going to bid from the highest and go down by 100 each time and sit on the GC's. This would end up being really lame with clans that have already upgraded bidding and sitting on GC's for 24 hours over and over again. Alchemy: Yea, this is a pain in the ass, it's great the skill gives you such a boost but increasing the duration so much sucks bad. What's the point in having armor drop by 1 each time when it gets close to running out. I agree that taking new potions should bring you back to the max. End of Round: I really don't like how people can jump clans at the end of the round. If you leave a clan you should not be able to join another one for 5 days (wasn't something like this implemented in another round? what happened to it?) Anyways alot of these issues can only be addressed when proper class balancing is addressed. Edited by Arakan, Jul 2 2009, 06:12 AM.



paavma	Jul 2 2009, 10:04 AM Post #5
Engraver Posts: 282 Group: Members Member #138 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	Arakan Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM Spamming: After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person. but the person spamming still gets exp but yeah cut the exp/money loss of the person losing but the spammer continues as normal



Arakan	Jul 2 2009, 10:14 AM Post #6
Soapmaker Posts: 82 Group: Members Member #66 Joined: Dec 5, 2008	paavma Jul 2 2009, 10:04 AM Arakan Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM Spamming: After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person. but the person spamming still gets exp but yeah cut the exp/money loss of the person losing but the spammer continues as normal Yea I mean I don't think we should penalize those who play alot, but spamming basically penalizes those who cannot play alot, so I think this is an adequate solution.



paavma	Jul 2 2009, 10:24 AM Post #7
Engraver Posts: 282 Group: Members Member #138 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	maybe just cut the money they gain from spamming someone to 0 after so many battles so they would have to find a new target but then i think warrior would become a more popular class then



paavma	Jul 2 2009, 10:41 AM Post #8
Engraver Posts: 282 Group: Members Member #138 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	how about this for classes aswell would make them fairer but the tradesman needs to b changed Rouge - 5 agility at lvl 5 no finisher Warrior - 5 str at lvl 5 no healing Tradesman - 25 life no special moves so theres no special moves and do the same for the subclass aswell and also change the weapons so that a rouge has something which could say hit twice and a warrior which hits only once but is twice as strong as one rogue attack and the tradesman class is normal and does neither super strong or super fast attacks



Mhuahaha	Jul 2 2009, 04:12 PM Post #9
Herder Posts: 2,712 Group: Forum Admins Member #1 Joined: Nov 21, 2008	Arakan Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM GC Market: If you make it so the highest unique bid wins people are just going to bid from the highest and go down by 100 each time and sit on the GC's. This would end up being really lame with clans that have already upgraded bidding and sitting on GC's for 24 hours over and over again. You could remove the top cap.
Don't ask.... I AM MERELY A FORUM ADMIN. I HAVE NO IN-GAME POWERS.


Zoid	Jul 2 2009, 07:21 PM Post #10
Coppersmith Posts: 78 Group: Members Member #234 Joined: Jul 1, 2009	immacommy Jul 2 2009, 03:56 AM Good logic throughout your proposed changes... I agree with most of what you argue except for the warrior class changes. +5 additional strength along with full life healing is extremely overpowered. The strength is huge, especially in the beginning of the round and healing would make some completely unbeatable. Warriors wouldn't be as strong as you think. At level 10, everyone has 66 stat points, so Warriors would be effectively 15% stronger than everyone else. Once you get to level 20 though and everyone has 106 stat points, Warriors are now only about 10% stronger. They don't scale as well as the other classes and this is ok, as long as they're really strong to begin with. My suggestions give one class that's strong at the start and weak at the end (Warrior), one that's weak at the start and strong at the end (Tradesman), and one that's roughly the same the entire round (Rogue). Also, keep in mind that it's not until level 25 that full healing would be available, and only to the Berserker. By level 25, a Warrior is only about 8% stronger than a Rogue or Tradesman. This can be overcome by either the master finishing move or by a small charm or potion. Besides, I think we can all agree that Warriors pretty much sucked this round. Beamygrunt did well, but he was about it (and Beamy/Prawn is an excellent player from back to at least round 4). It would take quite a bit of buffing to make them overpowered. The GC auction is a good point, some safeguard would need to be put in to prevent people from just sitting on all of it. I'm not sure what that would be right now though, so changing auctions to highest bidder is not currently a good idea. Edited by Zoid, Jul 2 2009, 07:23 PM.



zelda	Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM Post #11
Florist Posts: 770 Group: Members Member #9 Joined: Nov 26, 2008	IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen. I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again. It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes.
LA wont die with yosh running it.


Zoid	Jul 2 2009, 08:02 PM Post #12
Coppersmith Posts: 78 Group: Members Member #234 Joined: Jul 1, 2009	zelda Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen. I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again. It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes. That's why the small changes at a time. 20 extra skillpoints for the Tradesman and -6 stat points for the Rogue shouldn't change things THAT much. Keep in mind that Rogues will beat the crap out of Tradesmen until Tradesmen start getting their charms. Since Tradesmen don't really see the fruits of their class until about halfway through the round (when the fishing or mining fleet is done), that's a long time for Rogues to be beating them. Remember also that Tradesmen don't scale linearly, since charm costs increases at about a rate of power squared. Also, do not forget that current ranking was still 60% Rogues at the end of the round, a rank in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate due to bigger charms. At the end of the day, what still matters most is how well you do in battle, and it takes an awful lot of stat points to make up for the master finishing move. Sub had about the same spread of stat points as I did (same ratio of agl/str/life) and about 22 fewer total stat points and I still could not kill him without potions. Lastly, I do not believe there was a single tradesman in the top 20 rankings, so it would still take a lot of tweaking to make tradesmen what rogues were this round. Even if you get 3 times as many points, that still may only be gaining .3 or so per update at the very end of the round. Looking at how far behind most tradesmen were in top ranking, the ranking weight change would still not have affected things too much.



Mhuahaha	Jul 2 2009, 10:33 PM Post #13
Herder Posts: 2,712 Group: Forum Admins Member #1 Joined: Nov 21, 2008	Zoid Jul 2 2009, 08:02 PM zelda Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen. I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again. It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes. That's why the small changes at a time. 20 extra skillpoints for the Tradesman and -6 stat points for the Rogue shouldn't change things THAT much. Keep in mind that Rogues will beat the crap out of Tradesmen until Tradesmen start getting their charms. Since Tradesmen don't really see the fruits of their class until about halfway through the round (when the fishing or mining fleet is done), that's a long time for Rogues to be beating them. Remember also that Tradesmen don't scale linearly, since charm costs increases at about a rate of power squared. Also, do not forget that current ranking was still 60% Rogues at the end of the round, a rank in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate due to bigger charms. At the end of the day, what still matters most is how well you do in battle, and it takes an awful lot of stat points to make up for the master finishing move. Sub had about the same spread of stat points as I did (same ratio of agl/str/life) and about 22 fewer total stat points and I still could not kill him without potions. Lastly, I do not believe there was a single tradesman in the top 20 rankings, so it would still take a lot of tweaking to make tradesmen what rogues were this round. Even if you get 3 times as many points, that still may only be gaining .3 or so per update at the very end of the round. Looking at how far behind most tradesmen were in top ranking, the ranking weight change would still not have affected things too much. The trader's strength comming at the end can be proven by none other than the brilliant cerber. From personal experience killing him, I only had the pleasure untill a month before rounds end. After that he got such great charms that I never was able to beat him again. Even with potions. Not only that, but cerber was ranked first in the current ranking. An awesome feat. Looking at that, I think the trader did, for him, just as it was designed to do. It performed well. Keeping that in mind, it would only seem logical to me, to take the trader as a guide. Instead of adjusting every class to the rogue, adjust them to the tradesman. But I'll think about how you could possible adjust them right from that vantage point.
Don't ask.... I AM MERELY A FORUM ADMIN. I HAVE NO IN-GAME POWERS.


Zoid	Jul 2 2009, 11:20 PM Post #14
Coppersmith Posts: 78 Group: Members Member #234 Joined: Jul 1, 2009	Mhuahaha Jul 2 2009, 10:33 PM The trader's strength comming at the end can be proven by none other than the brilliant cerber. From personal experience killing him, I only had the pleasure untill a month before rounds end. After that he got such great charms that I never was able to beat him again. Even with potions. Not only that, but cerber was ranked first in the current ranking. An awesome feat. Looking at that, I think the trader did, for him, just as it was designed to do. It performed well. Keeping that in mind, it would only seem logical to me, to take the trader as a guide. Instead of adjusting every class to the rogue, adjust them to the tradesman. But I'll think about how you could possible adjust them right from that vantage point. Cerber did perform well, but also note that Cerber was never highly ranked in top ranking or in level. The end boost just wasn't strong enough. The changes to Rogues and Tradesmen really are fairly minor. Tradesmen won't really come into their own until about level 35-40, at which point Rogues will still be 97% as strong as they used to be, and that's if they do not order charms (the higher the charm power, the less the loss of 6 agility will hurt) and Tradesmen will merely have 20 more skill points to spend on combat skills.



Sub	Jul 2 2009, 11:23 PM Post #15
Glassblower Posts: 35 Group: Members Member #121 Joined: Jan 24, 2009	I heard a rumor that tradesman will get life boost in new beta



paavma	Jul 3 2009, 09:09 AM Post #16
Engraver Posts: 282 Group: Members Member #138 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	^ seems fair as i said warriors get str, rogues agil and traders should get life



Xclusive	Jul 3 2009, 11:51 AM Post #17
Moneylender Posts: 140 Group: Members Member #137 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	To response to the trader fact, I think traders did have a chance this round, I was able to compete since half the round in the top50 ranks, i finished 26th. But the HUGE mistake I made, was to go after mining, I didn't have a single fishing boat, and I stopped at 30 miners, so you could barely say that I did this round without Fishing AND Mining, which are the power of a Tradesman. If I went fishing, as I should have, I would sure be way higher in top rankings, and maybe even following the path that Cerber did, except that I did a bit better earlier in round.



Xclusive	Jul 3 2009, 12:03 PM Post #18
Moneylender Posts: 140 Group: Members Member #137 Joined: Feb 12, 2009	About the changes post, I like a lot, and I dislike a few things. About the classes, it looks all good, and I think it will make the gap smaller and classes will be more balanced, not perfect offcourse, but it will never be perfect. I think the warrior shouldn't get full healing, but 3/4 or something like that would fit better, most of the time they don't need to heal then after fighting, and it prevents them from getting overpowered to people. Agility is indeed a bit to weak, but it isn't necesarry to change (yet) Wp-score is a good rank for individual ranks, but I think it might be changed to win percentage, since it is for individual ranks, and not for clanranks Spamming shouldn't be rules out, you still have a chance to compete for top20 without sittings hours after the pc, and those who work hard may be higher ranked then those who don't. Sponsering system from you won't work, sponsering will always stay, no matter what, it's a part of the game, and as long as it doesn't get to bad, we shouldn't bother. Your toprank idea is brilliant I say, we should deffinitly use it. Endurance should stay at what it is, it's part of the endgame, go up 10 levels in the last 2 days to jump in clansize, we really shouldn't remove it, if you want to play for the topranks, you also have to option to not put it in endurcance, but most people just enjoy the leveling and we shouldn't remove it. Battle system and alchemist ideas should also be implemented to the game, would get some annoyings things out. Wars system shouldn't be changed to your idea, maybe another idea would be good, but I don't think your idea is better then the one there is now. Overall, very nice ideas.



Zoid	Jul 3 2009, 10:29 PM Post #19
Coppersmith Posts: 78 Group: Members Member #234 Joined: Jul 1, 2009	Another note on the trader thing. Cerber was highest current ranking, BUT he put far fewer points into endurance than Cloud or Sub. Cloud was strong enough to put 20 levels (he ended with 950 max endurance) into stamina, so he had been saving them since level 64 and still was very high in current ranking.



CLouD7	Jul 4 2009, 05:01 PM Post #20
Woodcarver Posts: 58 Group: Members Member #93 Joined: Dec 25, 2008	"Spamming: This used to be unpleasant when I played before, but now it's gotten downright ridiculous. We no longer have to F5 the market all day long to buy a decent charm, but it's no coincidence that the top 2 players were horrendous spammers." iam considered as a spammer 0_0 "The vast majority of the spamming is done by someone of high level to someone of not quite as high level" dude that is wrong spamming is done to kill higher level to get more exp y would sum1 wanna spam lower level, that would be waste of time and exp "Alchemy: With the new alchemist skill, you can pretty much kill anyone as long as your charms aren't horrible. The problem is that if your targets come online and potion up as well, you're screwed." well in the first 2 months people dont take big potions . uv still got a chance to beat them if they pot up to kill u offensively. i think the alchemist skill is perfect the way it is. its not like i benefit much from it cuz i took potions in the last days of the rounds but still its fun and now people train in the start and then increase alchemist skill and get to higher level it has given a new way to play the game. if u are able to buy potions over and over again then DAMN people are gonna spam the living hell out of people who are higher level "Wars: I've always thought that it's dumb that you PEACE a clan to hurt them. This also makes the final warpoint rankings fairly meaningless, since you aren't really in control of it (if nobody has a mutual with you, you aren't winning warpoints). Also, 9 wars is too many. I was in a 1 man clan and wasn't even in the top 20 levels for a while and when I declared war on UC and JL, they had the space to declare back. Who you war with should be a pretty strategic decision, and it's just not right now." i was scaring u back then lolz XD "End of Round:" yes it should be totally random that a round can end anytime on the last day. the round wasnt even ended even at 23:00 hours so it was obvious that itll end within the last hour that wasnt fun at all. i think gambitto came 10th cuz of that which further more reduced the fun for me "Another note on the trader thing. Cerber was highest current ranking, BUT he put far fewer points into endurance than Cloud or Sub. Cloud was strong enough to put 20 levels (he ended with 950 max endurance) into stamina, so he had been saving them since level 64 and still was very high in current ranking." dude i was level 84 he was around 75 . i had 30 more attributes than him lol Edited by CLouD7, Jul 4 2009, 05:23 PM.



1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)

Zoid's big list of suggestions; All my ideas gathered over the round

Topic Started: Jul 1 2009, 11:13 PM (337 Views)

Zoid

Jul 1 2009, 11:13 PM Post #1

Coppersmith

Posts:: 78
Group:: Members
Member: #234
Joined:: Jul 1, 2009

Ok, here's the great big pile of suggestions I've been mulling over for the duration of the round. Some are more important than others (class balancing is a must), and some are easier than others. I'll try to designate which ones should be easy to code and which ones are more involved.

Classes:
It's pretty obvious the classes aren't at all balanced. If I had to measure them on a scale of 1-10, I'd say Rogues are a 10, Trademen are a 7, and Warriors are a 4 or 5. 32 of the top 50 levels are Rogues and 34 of the top 50 ranked players are Rogues. For those of you who think this is just because more people play Rogues, in ranks 51-250 there are 78 Rogues, or 39%. This is almost balanced (balanced would be 33%), but the top 50 players are 68% Rogues, so you cannot argue there are more top ranked Rogues because there are simply more of them. Even the area in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate, current ranking (since this is based mostly on charm strength and level), Rogues still make up 60%. The reason for this is simple, Rogues start out more powerful and scale better than the other classes. Warriors don't scale very much at all (slightly, since they save more money the more life they have, but that's negligible) and Tradesmen scale roughly at a square root pace (since their bonus is basically ordering larger charms), while Rogues scale linearly (the finishing move does triple damage regardless of whether you're doing 1 damage or 100).

Since the finishing move basically ensures that you'll win the close ones, a Tradesman or a Warrior must be considerably stronger to win regularly against a Rogue. This is more difficult to do than you'd think, since once everyone hits about level 60, even if you have 30 more total charm power (which is quite expensive, that's getting power 45 charms when Rogues get power 35, which is fairly reasonable to expect), you're still only maybe 10% more powerful, which isn't enough to make the difference. Further, in order to actually get 30 more charm power, you have to order charms 36 power stronger, to compensate for the +5 agl.

Lastly, add in the random combat system and Rogues tend to be avoided and win more often on defense, giving them less experience loss. Even now, if I'm fighting a Rogue and a miss turns into a critical hit, it can easily change the battle from me winning with 250-350 life left to me losing.

Simple Changes (easy to code, I think):
Remove the agility bonus to Rogues. Leave it on the subclass without the finisher, for obvious reasons, but it's quite clear that they simply don't need it.

Buff Warriors considerably. I'd say give them an extra +5 strength at level 10 and boost the healing to 1/2 (Warrior) and full (berserker). This also gives them a neat ability, that they can kill very quickly (since they don't need to heal), saves them money, and makes them unkillable if you can't kill them in one stamina.

Trademen aren't too bad off, but still need a little bit more. They do get much better in the late game, for obvious reasons, so I would recommend boosting the inital skillpoints to 50 or 60 and not giving any for the subclass. This will help in the early game to even things out a bit more (enabling them to go for combat skill much sooner), but not too much in the late game when everyone has maxed skills anyway.

More complex changes(not necessarily easy to code):
Change the Rogue's finishing move to a first strike type move, to help with the random factor. At the start of a battle, they get a first strike for 2/3 damage (Rogue) or 1.5 times normal damage (operative), then the battle proceeds normally. The damage done is lower than the finishing moves, but they happen every time.

Stats:
Agility is simply too weak, which further exacerbates the Rogue issue (Rogues scale very well with strength). I would boost the effect of agility by about 15%. Another of the big imbalancing things about this round was that agility wasn't worth much and life simply didn't help against Rogues (you could boost life, but that just meant you'd be at 20% sooner). The Master Finishing Move can be treated as two extra attacks, which mean a lot less when every battle goes for 20 hits (so one person does 20 hits and the other 22) as opposed to 10 (so one person does 10 and the other 12).

WP Score:
I like this better than not having it, but I think it could use some tweaking. What would be fun is changing this to straight win % for individuals, but using it as another clan ranking. That way, a clan that suffers attrition (which a LOT do) halfway through the round could still have a shot at a top ranking slot. Obviously it would need some tweaking to make it non-exploitable, but it would be nice for a clan of only 8 people to be able to compete for a top slot.

Personally, right now I feel as though WP score is too easy to exploit and too easy to mess up and knock yourself out of the rankings from the beginning (as I did, prayed 600 stamina into endurance at the start while in a clan, d'oh).

Spamming:
This used to be unpleasant when I played before, but now it's gotten downright ridiculous. We no longer have to F5 the market all day long to buy a decent charm, but it's no coincidence that the top 2 players were horrendous spammers. Yes, I know plenty of other games work so that the more you play, the better you are, but don't we want LA to be better than those games? You're not going to attract more players with "just another" game that in order to win you have to devote your life to it.

Simple suggestion:
Increase experience lost when killed by a lower level and decrease experience lost when killed by a higher level considerably, maybe as much as 50% each. The vast majority of the spamming is done by someone of high level to someone of not quite as high level (i.e. they find a soft target and just kill him until he dies of it). What this change will do is make it easier for those who have been spammed to get revenge (which is much more fun for everyone than simply banning spamming) and make it less profitable to spam one target unless you're very powerful. If you ARE very powerful, then it won't affect you very much since people will still have a hard time killing you, but if you just got to high level because you spammed the crap out of 1 or 2 players and aren't that strong, you'll get beaten back down very quickly. This change may also be accompanied by an increase in defensive experience gain (so that those who are high level because they're really strong won't be hurt much by it), but you have to be careful with that or people will use it to cheat.

Complex suggestion:
Again, I think most people who have been spammed would much rather get revenge on their tormenter than just make spamming illegal or undoable. Thus, I suggest that there be some threshold of number of kills per day that someone can kill a player (I would say max stamina/5) before they get penalized. The penalty would be that for a certain period of time, the spammer is worth 8 warpoints to EVERYONE, regardless of clan wars. As before, this makes it so that those who really are very powerful won't be hurt that much, but those who simply found a soft target and beat it senseless will get similarly beaten senseless.

Sponsoring:
This, plain and simple, needs to be against the rules. Individual ranks should be individual ranks, not how much your clan helped you ranks. I'm not sure about any coding that can be done for this, but rule changes are needed.

I played another game for a while, Ogame (weird name, fun space empire builder) where there was a very simple but very good rule: You can transfer and help players as much as you want, as long as they're weaker than you are. Any transfer or help of a weaker player to a stronger one is against the rules, and it's pretty strictly enforced. As such, multies aren't of much use in there as even if you're not caught with the multi, you'll get banned for "pushing" anyway. A similar rule would be good here and would solve the "oh, but I just had 42 friends who don't play anymore who wanted to sell me their tokens for 5 credits each" problem.

Top ranking:
It's better than the old system of "whoever orders the biggest charms on the last day wins," but still lacking. I have two suggestions for making it better, both of about equal complexity I think:

1. Have the top ranking points scale with time elapsed. My suggestion would be that the top ranking points you get are normal*(1+days elapsed/30) basically increasing it by about 3% each day. This means at the end of month 1, you get twice as many points as at the beginning of the round. At the end of month 2, you get 3 times as many points. This properly puts the emphasis more on the end of the round without neglecting the beginning.

2. Keep top ranking the way it is, but divide "final" ranking into 3 parts, top ranking, level, and current ranking (remove level from top ranking calculation, of course). Top ranking would then be a measure of how strong you have been the entire round, current ranking is how strong you are now, and level is how well you did with that strength. Total ranking would then be all 3 summed with equal weight given to each. This would add a lot more interest to the end of the round and more calculation, such as do I weight gain 4000 to get higher in level or do I put those points into stats for higher current rank?

Endurance:
I think I've created a monster. Originally it was a new idea that had never been done before (in round 5). Now it's something that everyone has to do in order to compete. As such, I think it's against the primary description of the game now "choose your path..." A determined spammer can get a level with 60-70 stamina, so it feeds into itself much too well now.

Suggestion:
Decrease stamina gained and increase max stamina gained. I honestly would say give people 30-40 more max stamina but not any stamina at the moment. Reducing it back down to 5 stamina though would be sufficient to hamper this rat race at the end. I would advocate putting it at 5 stamina gained and 20 max stamina gained, so that people wanting to do it for the sake of not fighting often could do so but it wouldn't be hugely necessary to do it at the end of the round.

Battle system:
I think I suggested this before way back in round 5, but one of the major problems with random battles (which we all hate) is that the range of damage is so high. This is compounded by Rogues. You can get hit with 9 times the damage you did last time when fighting a rogue, which just makes things too random.

Suggestion:
Keep the average the same but lower the range to double, so damage of 3-9 would now be 4-8. Same average damage but a smaller range. It's still enough of a range so that some random factors would influence battles, but not as much as it is now.

Alchemy:
With the new alchemist skill, you can pretty much kill anyone as long as your charms aren't horrible. The problem is that if your targets come online and potion up as well, you're screwed.

Suggestion:
Remove the restriction that you can't use a potion if you have one running. Don't make them stack, just make it reset the duration at full strength. This was yet another thing making Rogues too powerful in the end game. Everyone had enough money to buy potions most of the time, and tradesmen had more than enough (I've been buying them almost all the time for the past 2 weeks and I have over a million credits to my name in the bank or in GC). Making it so you can potion up continuously will give tradesmen and warriors a much needed boost (warriors save a ton of money from healing in the end game) over rogues once the additional charm power simply isn't enough.

Praying:
This is also too random. It can make a huge difference in the early round if you pray a couple times and get something and then go fight, but you have to get lucky. In addition, praying for endurance is WAY too random, I got 30 stamina for my first two 150 stamina dumps and then 130 when I prayed 210 stamina.

Suggestion:
These should give a guarantee that is whatever their average is. So if you should, statistically speaking, get 2 endurance for each 5 you pray, then just make it that you get 2 endurance each time you pray. They can make or break and early round attempt at high level and rank, so they really need to be reliable.

GC Auctions:
I didn't like this at first, but it's actually pretty nice. For most of the round it doesn't matter, but it will still go dry toward the end and so GC becomes a more precious commodity. Vastly better than the old F5 the market all day long

Suggestion:
Works well as it is, but I would change it so that the highest unique bid wins instead of the lowest. This won't affect anything for most of the round, but when the market goes relatively dry it will make it so that money is now a factor, which makes it less of a chore to bid on auctions and gives an advantage to those who have planned well and managed their finances well.

Wars:
I've always thought that it's dumb that you PEACE a clan to hurt them. This also makes the final warpoint rankings fairly meaningless, since you aren't really in control of it (if nobody has a mutual with you, you aren't winning warpoints). Also, 9 wars is too many. I was in a 1 man clan and wasn't even in the top 20 levels for a while and when I declared war on UC and JL, they had the space to declare back. Who you war with should be a pretty strategic decision, and it's just not right now.

Suggestions:
If clan sizes stay the way they are, reduce wars to 5 again. Maybe even have them 5 regardless of how big the clans are. You may get fewer targets per war with smaller clans, but there are also fewer people competing for your targets.

Also, make every war worth 8 warpoints. Perhaps give some sort of experience or other bonus to having a mutual, but the final clan rankings should be based on what you did, not whether or not nobody would war with you.

End of Round:
This has been annoying for as long as I can remember. It's like being in the last quarter of a basketball game and not knowing if you have 30 seconds left or 15 minutes. The game really needs to end at a set time. This round is a perfect example of this too, if the round had ended before about 18:00 (four hours after the earliest time yosh said it would), The Order would have won both warpoints and size. If it had ended at 21:00 UC would have won both. Since it went to the very end, I think UC won warpoints and TO won size. UC gambled that it would end later and it did, most of TO (including myself) gambled that it would end earlier and it didn't. The winner of the round shouldn't be the clan that makes the best guess to when yosh is going to get around to hitting the "off" switch.

I think this is all I have right now. The game is really doing well and I don't want to sound too critical, I just want to see it better. Discussion and disagreement are welcome and I hope yosh takes some of these suggestions into consideration. I'd offer to help code but I think the game is written in a language I don't know (I know FORTRAN and C/C++ really well and java and assembly sort of well). Glad to see a great game back and at it again.

Outkast19

Jul 1 2009, 11:32 PM Post #2

Executioner

Posts:: 25
Group:: Members
Member: #227
Joined:: Jun 1, 2009

Seems like a summary of our in game discussions this round!

I agree with a lot of this, some of it I would say needs tweaking a bit. Especially the weighted ranking, that I find important as well as the balancing of the classes.

Don't start nothin', there won't be nothin'.

immacommy

Jul 2 2009, 03:56 AM Post #3

Painter

Posts:: 30
Group:: Members
Member: #186
Joined:: Apr 8, 2009

Good logic throughout your proposed changes... I agree with most of what you argue except for the warrior class changes. +5 additional strength along with full life healing is extremely overpowered. The strength is huge, especially in the beginning of the round and healing would make some completely unbeatable.

Arakan

Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM Post #4

Soapmaker

Posts:: 82
Group:: Members
Member: #66
Joined:: Dec 5, 2008

Very good post, I will address a few points:

Class balance:
Tradesmen get attacked so much they lose way more than the 10% income bonus, I'm estimating I lost that + the extra 10% to fishing. It was not uncommon for me to log on after not being on for 10 hours and literally have less than 5k credits. Because of this I received less money from income than any rogues of similar level. And my character did not even start getting weak until after level 50 (my first 2 charms were both 40 power) when I started saving his att points. Tradesmen need some way to actually retain the money they make.

Spamming:
After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person.

Top Ranking:
This is a really good idea you have, might have to tweak some of the numbers but great suggestion (as long as classes get rebalanced).

Endurance:
I kind of like it, some people would rather help their clan and get more WP's/levels while others or solo players are shooting to stay in the top ranks and would rather spend it on other attributes.

GC Market:
If you make it so the highest unique bid wins people are just going to bid from the highest and go down by 100 each time and sit on the GC's. This would end up being really lame with clans that have already upgraded bidding and sitting on GC's for 24 hours over and over again.

Alchemy:
Yea, this is a pain in the ass, it's great the skill gives you such a boost but increasing the duration so much sucks bad. What's the point in having armor drop by 1 each time when it gets close to running out. I agree that taking new potions should bring you back to the max.

End of Round:
I really don't like how people can jump clans at the end of the round. If you leave a clan you should not be able to join another one for 5 days (wasn't something like this implemented in another round? what happened to it?)

Anyways alot of these issues can only be addressed when proper class balancing is addressed.

Edited by Arakan, Jul 2 2009, 06:12 AM.

paavma

Jul 2 2009, 10:04 AM Post #5

Engraver

Posts:: 282
Group:: Members
Member: #138
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

Arakan
Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM
Spamming:
After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person.

but the person spamming still gets exp

but yeah cut the exp/money loss of the person losing but the spammer continues as normal

Arakan

Jul 2 2009, 10:14 AM Post #6

Soapmaker

Posts:: 82
Group:: Members
Member: #66
Joined:: Dec 5, 2008

paavma
Jul 2 2009, 10:04 AM
Arakan
Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM
Spamming:
After someone attacks you 10 times in a day you should no longer lose exp or money from being attacked by that person.
but the person spamming still gets exp but yeah cut the exp/money loss of the person losing but the spammer continues as normal

Yea I mean I don't think we should penalize those who play alot, but spamming basically penalizes those who cannot play alot, so I think this is an adequate solution.

paavma

Jul 2 2009, 10:24 AM Post #7

Engraver

Posts:: 282
Group:: Members
Member: #138
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

maybe just cut the money they gain from spamming someone to 0 after so many battles so they would have to find a new target but then i think warrior would become a more popular class then

paavma

Jul 2 2009, 10:41 AM Post #8

Engraver

Posts:: 282
Group:: Members
Member: #138
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

how about this for classes aswell would make them fairer but the tradesman needs to b changed

Rouge - 5 agility at lvl 5 no finisher
Warrior - 5 str at lvl 5 no healing
Tradesman - 25 life no special moves

so theres no special moves and do the same for the subclass aswell

and also change the weapons so that a rouge has something which could say hit twice and a warrior which hits only once but is twice as strong as one rogue attack and the tradesman class is normal and does neither super strong or super fast attacks

Mhuahaha

Jul 2 2009, 04:12 PM Post #9

Herder

Posts:: 2,712
Group:: Forum Admins
Member: #1
Joined:: Nov 21, 2008

Arakan
Jul 2 2009, 06:11 AM
GC Market:
If you make it so the highest unique bid wins people are just going to bid from the highest and go down by 100 each time and sit on the GC's. This would end up being really lame with clans that have already upgraded bidding and sitting on GC's for 24 hours over and over again.

You could remove the top cap.

Don't ask....

I AM MERELY A FORUM ADMIN. I HAVE NO IN-GAME POWERS.

Zoid

Jul 2 2009, 07:21 PM Post #10

Coppersmith

Posts:: 78
Group:: Members
Member: #234
Joined:: Jul 1, 2009

immacommy
Jul 2 2009, 03:56 AM
Good logic throughout your proposed changes... I agree with most of what you argue except for the warrior class changes. +5 additional strength along with full life healing is extremely overpowered. The strength is huge, especially in the beginning of the round and healing would make some completely unbeatable.

Warriors wouldn't be as strong as you think. At level 10, everyone has 66 stat points, so Warriors would be effectively 15% stronger than everyone else. Once you get to level 20 though and everyone has 106 stat points, Warriors are now only about 10% stronger. They don't scale as well as the other classes and this is ok, as long as they're really strong to begin with. My suggestions give one class that's strong at the start and weak at the end (Warrior), one that's weak at the start and strong at the end (Tradesman), and one that's roughly the same the entire round (Rogue).

Also, keep in mind that it's not until level 25 that full healing would be available, and only to the Berserker. By level 25, a Warrior is only about 8% stronger than a Rogue or Tradesman. This can be overcome by either the master finishing move or by a small charm or potion.

Besides, I think we can all agree that Warriors pretty much sucked this round. Beamygrunt did well, but he was about it (and Beamy/Prawn is an excellent player from back to at least round 4). It would take quite a bit of buffing to make them overpowered.

The GC auction is a good point, some safeguard would need to be put in to prevent people from just sitting on all of it. I'm not sure what that would be right now though, so changing auctions to highest bidder is not currently a good idea.

Edited by Zoid, Jul 2 2009, 07:23 PM.

zelda

Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM Post #11

Florist

Posts:: 770
Group:: Members
Member: #9
Joined:: Nov 26, 2008

IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen.

I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again.

It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes.

LA wont die with yosh running it.

Zoid

Jul 2 2009, 08:02 PM Post #12

Coppersmith

Posts:: 78
Group:: Members
Member: #234
Joined:: Jul 1, 2009

zelda
Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM
IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen.

I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again.

It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes.

That's why the small changes at a time. 20 extra skillpoints for the Tradesman and -6 stat points for the Rogue shouldn't change things THAT much. Keep in mind that Rogues will beat the crap out of Tradesmen until Tradesmen start getting their charms. Since Tradesmen don't really see the fruits of their class until about halfway through the round (when the fishing or mining fleet is done), that's a long time for Rogues to be beating them. Remember also that Tradesmen don't scale linearly, since charm costs increases at about a rate of power squared.

Also, do not forget that current ranking was still 60% Rogues at the end of the round, a rank in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate due to bigger charms. At the end of the day, what still matters most is how well you do in battle, and it takes an awful lot of stat points to make up for the master finishing move. Sub had about the same spread of stat points as I did (same ratio of agl/str/life) and about 22 fewer total stat points and I still could not kill him without potions.

Lastly, I do not believe there was a single tradesman in the top 20 rankings, so it would still take a lot of tweaking to make tradesmen what rogues were this round. Even if you get 3 times as many points, that still may only be gaining .3 or so per update at the very end of the round. Looking at how far behind most tradesmen were in top ranking, the ranking weight change would still not have affected things too much.

Mhuahaha

Jul 2 2009, 10:33 PM Post #13

Herder

Posts:: 2,712
Group:: Forum Admins
Member: #1
Joined:: Nov 21, 2008

Zoid
Jul 2 2009, 08:02 PM
zelda
Jul 2 2009, 07:46 PM
IF, the classes idea is implemented along with the idea that ranking points are worth more near the end, it wont be long until everyone is a tradesmen.

I really do get the impression that this will be a vicious cycle. Round 13, everyone who was anyone chose tradesman, round 14 everyone chose rogue. If these suggestions are implemented, everyone will choose the tradesman class again.

It's a truely complex job for someone to balance the classes.
That's why the small changes at a time. 20 extra skillpoints for the Tradesman and -6 stat points for the Rogue shouldn't change things THAT much. Keep in mind that Rogues will beat the crap out of Tradesmen until Tradesmen start getting their charms. Since Tradesmen don't really see the fruits of their class until about halfway through the round (when the fishing or mining fleet is done), that's a long time for Rogues to be beating them. Remember also that Tradesmen don't scale linearly, since charm costs increases at about a rate of power squared.

Also, do not forget that current ranking was still 60% Rogues at the end of the round, a rank in which you'd expect tradesmen to dominate due to bigger charms. At the end of the day, what still matters most is how well you do in battle, and it takes an awful lot of stat points to make up for the master finishing move. Sub had about the same spread of stat points as I did (same ratio of agl/str/life) and about 22 fewer total stat points and I still could not kill him without potions.

Lastly, I do not believe there was a single tradesman in the top 20 rankings, so it would still take a lot of tweaking to make tradesmen what rogues were this round. Even if you get 3 times as many points, that still may only be gaining .3 or so per update at the very end of the round. Looking at how far behind most tradesmen were in top ranking, the ranking weight change would still not have affected things too much.

The trader's strength comming at the end can be proven by none other than the brilliant cerber. From personal experience killing him, I only had the pleasure untill a month before rounds end. After that he got such great charms that I never was able to beat him again. Even with potions. Not only that, but cerber was ranked first in the current ranking. An awesome feat. Looking at that, I think the trader did, for him, just as it was designed to do. It performed well.

Keeping that in mind, it would only seem logical to me, to take the trader as a guide. Instead of adjusting every class to the rogue, adjust them to the tradesman. But I'll think about how you could possible adjust them right from that vantage point.

Don't ask....

I AM MERELY A FORUM ADMIN. I HAVE NO IN-GAME POWERS.

Zoid

Jul 2 2009, 11:20 PM Post #14

Coppersmith

Posts:: 78
Group:: Members
Member: #234
Joined:: Jul 1, 2009

Mhuahaha
Jul 2 2009, 10:33 PM

The trader's strength comming at the end can be proven by none other than the brilliant cerber. From personal experience killing him, I only had the pleasure untill a month before rounds end. After that he got such great charms that I never was able to beat him again. Even with potions. Not only that, but cerber was ranked first in the current ranking. An awesome feat. Looking at that, I think the trader did, for him, just as it was designed to do. It performed well.

Keeping that in mind, it would only seem logical to me, to take the trader as a guide. Instead of adjusting every class to the rogue, adjust them to the tradesman. But I'll think about how you could possible adjust them right from that vantage point.

Cerber did perform well, but also note that Cerber was never highly ranked in top ranking or in level. The end boost just wasn't strong enough.

The changes to Rogues and Tradesmen really are fairly minor. Tradesmen won't really come into their own until about level 35-40, at which point Rogues will still be 97% as strong as they used to be, and that's if they do not order charms (the higher the charm power, the less the loss of 6 agility will hurt) and Tradesmen will merely have 20 more skill points to spend on combat skills.

Sub

Jul 2 2009, 11:23 PM Post #15

Glassblower

Posts:: 35
Group:: Members
Member: #121
Joined:: Jan 24, 2009

I heard a rumor that tradesman will get life boost in new beta

paavma

Jul 3 2009, 09:09 AM Post #16

Engraver

Posts:: 282
Group:: Members
Member: #138
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

^ seems fair as i said warriors get str, rogues agil and traders should get life

Xclusive

Jul 3 2009, 11:51 AM Post #17

Moneylender

Posts:: 140
Group:: Members
Member: #137
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

To response to the trader fact, I think traders did have a chance this round, I was able to compete since half the round in the top50 ranks, i finished 26th. But the HUGE mistake I made, was to go after mining, I didn't have a single fishing boat, and I stopped at 30 miners, so you could barely say that I did this round without Fishing AND Mining, which are the power of a Tradesman. If I went fishing, as I should have, I would sure be way higher in top rankings, and maybe even following the path that Cerber did, except that I did a bit better earlier in round.

Xclusive

Jul 3 2009, 12:03 PM Post #18

Moneylender

Posts:: 140
Group:: Members
Member: #137
Joined:: Feb 12, 2009

About the changes post, I like a lot, and I dislike a few things.

About the classes, it looks all good, and I think it will make the gap smaller and classes will be more balanced, not perfect offcourse, but it will never be perfect. I think the warrior shouldn't get full healing, but 3/4 or something like that would fit better, most of the time they don't need to heal then after fighting, and it prevents them from getting overpowered to people.

Agility is indeed a bit to weak, but it isn't necesarry to change (yet)

Wp-score is a good rank for individual ranks, but I think it might be changed to win percentage, since it is for individual ranks, and not for clanranks

Spamming shouldn't be rules out, you still have a chance to compete for top20 without sittings hours after the pc, and those who work hard may be higher ranked then those who don't.

Sponsering system from you won't work, sponsering will always stay, no matter what, it's a part of the game, and as long as it doesn't get to bad, we shouldn't bother.

Your toprank idea is brilliant I say, we should deffinitly use it.

Endurance should stay at what it is, it's part of the endgame, go up 10 levels in the last 2 days to jump in clansize, we really shouldn't remove it, if you want to play for the topranks, you also have to option to not put it in endurcance, but most people just enjoy the leveling and we shouldn't remove it.

Battle system and alchemist ideas should also be implemented to the game, would get some annoyings things out.

Wars system shouldn't be changed to your idea, maybe another idea would be good, but I don't think your idea is better then the one there is now.

Overall, very nice ideas.

Zoid

Jul 3 2009, 10:29 PM Post #19

Coppersmith

Posts:: 78
Group:: Members
Member: #234
Joined:: Jul 1, 2009

Another note on the trader thing. Cerber was highest current ranking, BUT he put far fewer points into endurance than Cloud or Sub. Cloud was strong enough to put 20 levels (he ended with 950 max endurance) into stamina, so he had been saving them since level 64 and still was very high in current ranking.

CLouD7

Jul 4 2009, 05:01 PM Post #20

Woodcarver

Posts:: 58
Group:: Members
Member: #93
Joined:: Dec 25, 2008

"Spamming:
This used to be unpleasant when I played before, but now it's gotten downright ridiculous. We no longer have to F5 the market all day long to buy a decent charm, but it's no coincidence that the top 2 players were horrendous spammers."

iam considered as a spammer 0_0

"The vast majority of the spamming is done by someone of high level to someone of not quite as high level"

dude that is wrong spamming is done to kill higher level to get more exp

y would sum1 wanna spam lower level, that would be waste of time and exp

"Alchemy:
With the new alchemist skill, you can pretty much kill anyone as long as your charms aren't horrible. The problem is that if your targets come online and potion up as well, you're screwed."

well in the first 2 months people dont take big potions . uv still got a chance to beat them if they pot up to kill u offensively. i think the alchemist skill is perfect the way it is. its not like i benefit much from it cuz i took potions in the last days of the rounds but still its fun and now people train in the start and then increase alchemist skill and get to higher level it has given a new way to play the game. if u are able to buy potions over and over again then DAMN people are gonna spam the living hell out of people who are higher level

"Wars:
I've always thought that it's dumb that you PEACE a clan to hurt them. This also makes the final warpoint rankings fairly meaningless, since you aren't really in control of it (if nobody has a mutual with you, you aren't winning warpoints). Also, 9 wars is too many. I was in a 1 man clan and wasn't even in the top 20 levels for a while and when I declared war on UC and JL, they had the space to declare back. Who you war with should be a pretty strategic decision, and it's just not right now."

i was scaring u back then lolz XD

"End of Round:"

yes it should be totally random that a round can end anytime on the last day. the round wasnt even ended even at 23:00 hours so it was obvious that itll end within the last hour that wasnt fun at all. i think gambitto came 10th cuz of that which further more reduced the fun for me -_-

"Another note on the trader thing. Cerber was highest current ranking, BUT he put far fewer points into endurance than Cloud or Sub. Cloud was strong enough to put 20 levels (he ended with 950 max endurance) into stamina, so he had been saving them since level 64 and still was very high in current ranking."

dude i was level 84 he was around 75 . i had 30 more attributes than him lol

Edited by CLouD7, Jul 4 2009, 05:23 PM.

1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)


Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Suggestions · Next Topic »