Vargrym
03-18-2019, 11:09 AM
Hello,
let me begin by stating, for the record, that I adore this server and everything it stands for.
However, we have been, over a considerable period of time, taking notes of various things that could use improvements, some more desperately than others. Please do not interpret our criticisms as vile or derogatory in nature, we simply wish to see the server become the absolute pinnacle of the game that we all love, as it clearly does have the potential to do so. Apologies for the extremely lengthy post, but we tried to be as thorough as possible.
Let's get into it:
1) Overall improvements and needed additions to the game.
There is a fairly large amount of much desired and useful features which streamline and enhance the game experience that were found in the newer versions of the game which Origin has yet to implement, as well as some potential unique ones particularly suited to this server. Things such as:
The Consignment NPC and its function in each town, making the process selling and purchasing items much less complicated.
One additional movable skill bar - PLEASE implement this. It makes a world of difference for classes that have a whole plethora of skills to use. So many of us miss having one more skill bar on top of the Space bar for additional buffs, skills and items that we simply could not fit into the F1-F4 bars or the Space bar because there are simply far too many to place in a manner that's also convenient for seemless usage in play.
Being able to set the lead position of a Party to another member without having to disband and form a new Party altogether.
Union Party - this was a fairly late addition but albeit a very useful one especially for communication purposes when it comes to events such as Fortress War, job affairs and large scale unique hunts.
Crafting and the items associated with it - That includes the Flag of War, Flag of Iron wall, the Ram and the Catapult which would all be interesting additions to Fortress Wars and another layer of strategy to consider.
The Red Dragon Fellow - I have no idea why this Fellow's entire set of idle and attacking animations have been changed, but frankly not only does it look much worse than it did before, but since the "click box" of the Dragon has not been adjusted unlike its animations, players often end up clicking on the Fellow without meaning to, since it appears to be sitting on the ground but its click box remains in its original position above it when the Dragon would float above the character. This makes it really frustrating to use when playing, since clicking on it by mistake all the time instead of the monster the player at hand means to target is extremely annoying and can even have fatal consequences if the monster is an Elite in the Forgotten World or such. I would therefore suggest bringing its original set of animations back, and if that cannot be done for whatever reason, adjusting the click box at least would help greatly.
The NPCs and their names showing up on the Map - this is purely for the sake of convenience since it saves time for the players looking for a specific NPC to accept a quest from. All the later additions of the game have had this - even the map of Alexandria in Origin itself does (obviously that city has not been implemented yet, but its map can still be accessed). It would likely be easy to implement and would go a long way to make the game easier to navigate.
Fire and Ice Temple - Implementing the rather shallow 140 cap areas as job temples within Origin was a stroke of genius, not a single complaint about that. But the Temples need more of a purpose than simply hosting one single Trader NPC and a unique that is far too much of a drag to kill for little reward (yes, even after the added Coins and the chance for Sabakkun's jewel to drop...). Players of both sides of the professions should be enticed to fight each other over these Uniques (much as it was with the god uniques in the egyptian job temple), but there simply is not enough of an incentive to do so. Making both Salamander and Undine give a fairly large amount of Job Experience upon death would be one way to go about it, perhaps an increased SoX drop chance would not hurt as well. If there is a considerable incentive to kill these uniques, then Sylph and Gnome could be added as well. As it is now, few people bother killing even the two elementals we have available at present.
Guild - Quite a few key features within the guild menu are missing here which would be rather useful to have available, such as the ability to view a member's last logout time, his or her current whereabouts, their positions, etc.
2) Balancing and Skills
It is a well known fact that certain classes and especially buffs associated with them are still far too overtuned, while others remain almost entirely redundant to even bother using at all. There is certainly more that could be done, but here's a list of the biggest offenders and our suggestions for potential fixes to address them:
Warrior Screens - these, combined with other buffs such as Fences, Pain Quota Bless Spell, Tambours, Snow Shield, whatever the case may be, serve to make a character nearly completely invincible to any non-absoluteness damage. This is fine as it requires timing and strategy to use properly. The problem, however, is that they can be used far, FAR too frequently, especially since there are so many Warrior class characters running around these days (for this very reason). The cooldown on the Screens needs to be increased considerably, perhaps even to the 10 minutes as it was done in the official game.
Bless Spell - This is a tricky one, as overnerfing it could potentially make certain classes nearly unviable as it had happened in certain other cases. However, the way it works now is problematic. Oftentimes when a single Party has 4 or more characters with a secondary Cleric class, they are able to operate while being under the effect of Bless Spell constantly. The "fix" to this implemented elsewhere has been to make Bless Spell cancel the second that the user switches to a weapon other than the Cleric Rod. It was effective, yes, but it also made classes such as Int focused Warlocks and Wizards far too vulnerable being unable to utilize it. Therefore our suggestion would be the following: Once Bless Spell is used, it works the same way as it does currently - the entire Party gains the buff. However, the moment that the user of it switches to a different weapon, the Bless Spell cancels for EVERYONE in the Party EXCEPT the user. This would add more importance to the role of a dedicated Cleric healer and buffer within the Party, no longer working the way that everyone can just Bless and then switch to another weapon and do whatever they please while the entire party remains buffed, while still being a viable skill to use in solo play. Bards cannot keep buffing the entire party while using another weapon entirely, and Clerics shouldn't be either.
Snow Shield - we believe that the increased cooldown time upon usage is unnecessary and hindrance to Chinese builds which already aren't doing that well in the face of the mighty Europeans. 1 minute was fine, but 2 minutes just seems like overkill, especially when a Snow Shield user dies while being overpowered while the Snow Shield skill is active. That then makes the character almost entirely useless for nearly 4 minutes as an Int Spear or Sword/Shield class can get one-shot by a lot of common attacks without it. Perhaps the percentage of the MP absorption could be lowered slightly on each skill to balance this, or (and this would be ideal) the counter on the cooldown resets upon death (so that when a user of the skill dies while having it active, they don't have to wait another 4 minutes to activate it again but only 2 or preferably 1 as it used to be). I don't quite understand why Snow Shield's cooldown has been increased while the Warrior Skins who are defensive measures for an already defensively tanky build get to keep theirs.
Life Turnover - Since Dagger Desperate has finally received a much needed slight nerf, this is the biggest offender on the list right under it. The Wizard class in general deal way, way too much damage already even without this skill. With it it just becomes absolutely ridiculous. I'm not suggesting that the Wizard class needs to get nerfed into the ground as it has been in certain places, no. It needs to remain viable. However, it is simply far too powerful in its current state. Either Life Turnover needs more drawbacks with it (like lowering defenses along with the halved HP), or the damage boost needs to be toned down significantly. Perhaps its cast time could be lowered slightly to make using it faster to help balance the lowered boost slightly - the faster casting time would actually make Wizard at least a little bit less unviable in 1v1 fights, while the lowered damage would make them less absurdly overpowered in Party play. This is one where I'll admit I do not see a clear solution that would please everyone, but the Wizard damage absolutely needs to be looked into and adjusted.
Warlock Debuffs - Yes, the ever so dreaded debuffs cannot go without a mention, either. However, we would suggest that the debuffs / statuses in itself do not require any change, but the ways to counteract them do. In other incarnations of the game, people used to rely on the so-called pill bug which has been removed here (which is a good thing, as it was, after all, an unintended bug). However, the cooldown timer on the Purificaion Pills is absolutely ridiculous. Every non-Cleric character will easily get overwhelmed in seconds as they only have the ability to remove ONE single status every 20 seconds. That's just not reasonable in the least. The Purification Pills need to be adjusted - either have them cure at least 2 or 3 statuses at a time, or lower the cooldown time from 20 seconds to 5, or perhaps even 3 seconds. Maybe a combination of both. Another mention needs to go to the Chinese Recovery skills, which in theory should serve as a defensive mechanism against Warlocks, but they fail to do so for one simple reason: they take much, much too long to cast. During the time it takes to use either of the cure skills for status removal, the opponent has ample chances to disrupt the skill from being used mid-cast via Stun, Knock Back, Knock Down, whatever the case may be. The casting time of the Chinese Cure skill should be made instant to make it on par with the Cleric Integrity and Innocent skills and to actually make Chinese characters stand any sort of chance against most Warlock opponents in a one on one fight.
Curse Explosion - This skill simply doesn't appear to be working as intended. It always deals the exact same, negligible damage to an opponent regardless of what state they're in, instead of accumulating damage as it is supposed to be doing. Int Warlocks could certainly use another pure damage dealing skill aside from the basic Blood Flower and Death Flower, so a fix to make this skill work as it should would aid the build greatly.
Offering - The philosophy of this skill is very simple: high risk, high reward. Unfortunately there are ways to make it no risk and all the reward when used by an Int Warlock Cleric build, who can simply Stun an opponent and then easily finish the fight unscathed in a single hit if they have a great Cleric Rod. Even the most resilient, tanky builds such as a full Str Warrior with an amazing Robe set can be shot down in a single hit from a really great Light Staff. I'm honestly not sure what could be done here to not make the skill unviable, but it does need some sort of a tone down, or increase the casting time slightly beyond the time it takes for a character to get out of the Stunned condition.
Pain Quota and its Chinese counterparts - This will be a controversial one to be sure. But we believe this skill needs to be toned down ever so slightly, as do the Warrior Fences. One of the biggest omnipresent issues in Origin is that the party buffs are much too powerful, and the damage of characters is too low, resulting in very lenghty stalemates of players hitting each other for laughable damage, not being able to kill almost anyone. This would already be neutered to a certain extent with the aforementioned Bless Spell adjust, but these skills could also use some looking into and perhaps a slight nerf to the damage distribution percentages.
The Chinese Str oriented classes - these are the clear victims of what the previous point laid out. These are classes built on being able to eat a lot of damage, but cannot dish out an overwhelming amount of it themselves. The problem is that with they way things work currently, classes like Blade and Bow are incapable of killing nearly anyone and are of virtually no use in group conflicts (aside from the knock back of Pacheon). Glaive is sliiiightly better off here, but not by much at all. There is no clear solution here - perhaps a combination of the suggested adjustments laid out above - but the classes themselves could use some help. With the removal of the ability to use Snow Shield for pure Str classes (which I wholeheartedly agree with and support as the skill was never meant for them), they are not quite the godly tanks they used to be, and this should be balanced out by having them deal more damage. Simply making the Blade/Glaive/Bow weapons more potent would be one possibility, but perhaps adjusting the skills and critical percentages (especially on Pacheon) would go a long way to aid them and bring them up to par with the other classes as well.
Cleric Resurrection Skills - As it stands a Cleric has three ways to resurrect his/her allies - the basic Resurrection, Group Resurrection, and Reverse Immolation, the so-called "black" resurrection. These are more or less fine as they currently are, but a slightly increased casting time on the basic Resurrection (just like the Chinese Recovery version) and an increased cooldown on the Group Resurrection and Reverse Immolation would certainly be helpful, as with so many players using European builds these days (for reasons outlined above) with a secondary Cleric class, it often becomes absolutely impossible to truly kill off an opposing team of several parties as they are able to keep resurrecting everyone constantly, ressing another player the moment they exit untouchable status with the insta-cast basic ress, or sneaking up and using the group resurrection on everyone fairly frequently.
As a final note I can't go without mentioning the omnipresent bug throughout the game's entire history that no one has ever managed to fix apparently - the knock down bug caused by the Turn Rising skill of Warriors. I'm sure everyone is familiar with this one as it has persisted for over a decade ever since the European class became a thing, but to sum it up briefly at times if the skill knocks a player down in the middle of using a skill, the player will keep using said skill even while knocked down (and then goes on to ignore all future knock downs entirely and will continue to be able to use skills during them), while a further effect then causes the affected player to always face the Warrior who knocked them down before, no matter what, which looks really silly while running in a different direction or fighting someone else afterwards. This remains in effect until one of the players teleports out of the area. This may already be asking too much, but we'd love to see this annoying bug finally fixed in a version of the game, if it can be done.
Then there's the whole separate chapter of suggestions regarding the Job Conflict, but most of those have already been listed in the separate thread by Spartacuz, so I will not make this already overbearingly lengthy post any longer by repeating that here and refer you to his thread instead.
If I missed anything, or if anybody else has something to add to the changes I proposed here, feel free to do so below.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through our list of suggestions and we hold out hope that you might consider some iteration of them, whatever form it might take. May the server live and prosper for as long as possible, and may it keep improving at a decent pace as it has been doing throughout its fairly brief existence.
let me begin by stating, for the record, that I adore this server and everything it stands for.
However, we have been, over a considerable period of time, taking notes of various things that could use improvements, some more desperately than others. Please do not interpret our criticisms as vile or derogatory in nature, we simply wish to see the server become the absolute pinnacle of the game that we all love, as it clearly does have the potential to do so. Apologies for the extremely lengthy post, but we tried to be as thorough as possible.
Let's get into it:
1) Overall improvements and needed additions to the game.
There is a fairly large amount of much desired and useful features which streamline and enhance the game experience that were found in the newer versions of the game which Origin has yet to implement, as well as some potential unique ones particularly suited to this server. Things such as:
The Consignment NPC and its function in each town, making the process selling and purchasing items much less complicated.
One additional movable skill bar - PLEASE implement this. It makes a world of difference for classes that have a whole plethora of skills to use. So many of us miss having one more skill bar on top of the Space bar for additional buffs, skills and items that we simply could not fit into the F1-F4 bars or the Space bar because there are simply far too many to place in a manner that's also convenient for seemless usage in play.
Being able to set the lead position of a Party to another member without having to disband and form a new Party altogether.
Union Party - this was a fairly late addition but albeit a very useful one especially for communication purposes when it comes to events such as Fortress War, job affairs and large scale unique hunts.
Crafting and the items associated with it - That includes the Flag of War, Flag of Iron wall, the Ram and the Catapult which would all be interesting additions to Fortress Wars and another layer of strategy to consider.
The Red Dragon Fellow - I have no idea why this Fellow's entire set of idle and attacking animations have been changed, but frankly not only does it look much worse than it did before, but since the "click box" of the Dragon has not been adjusted unlike its animations, players often end up clicking on the Fellow without meaning to, since it appears to be sitting on the ground but its click box remains in its original position above it when the Dragon would float above the character. This makes it really frustrating to use when playing, since clicking on it by mistake all the time instead of the monster the player at hand means to target is extremely annoying and can even have fatal consequences if the monster is an Elite in the Forgotten World or such. I would therefore suggest bringing its original set of animations back, and if that cannot be done for whatever reason, adjusting the click box at least would help greatly.
The NPCs and their names showing up on the Map - this is purely for the sake of convenience since it saves time for the players looking for a specific NPC to accept a quest from. All the later additions of the game have had this - even the map of Alexandria in Origin itself does (obviously that city has not been implemented yet, but its map can still be accessed). It would likely be easy to implement and would go a long way to make the game easier to navigate.
Fire and Ice Temple - Implementing the rather shallow 140 cap areas as job temples within Origin was a stroke of genius, not a single complaint about that. But the Temples need more of a purpose than simply hosting one single Trader NPC and a unique that is far too much of a drag to kill for little reward (yes, even after the added Coins and the chance for Sabakkun's jewel to drop...). Players of both sides of the professions should be enticed to fight each other over these Uniques (much as it was with the god uniques in the egyptian job temple), but there simply is not enough of an incentive to do so. Making both Salamander and Undine give a fairly large amount of Job Experience upon death would be one way to go about it, perhaps an increased SoX drop chance would not hurt as well. If there is a considerable incentive to kill these uniques, then Sylph and Gnome could be added as well. As it is now, few people bother killing even the two elementals we have available at present.
Guild - Quite a few key features within the guild menu are missing here which would be rather useful to have available, such as the ability to view a member's last logout time, his or her current whereabouts, their positions, etc.
2) Balancing and Skills
It is a well known fact that certain classes and especially buffs associated with them are still far too overtuned, while others remain almost entirely redundant to even bother using at all. There is certainly more that could be done, but here's a list of the biggest offenders and our suggestions for potential fixes to address them:
Warrior Screens - these, combined with other buffs such as Fences, Pain Quota Bless Spell, Tambours, Snow Shield, whatever the case may be, serve to make a character nearly completely invincible to any non-absoluteness damage. This is fine as it requires timing and strategy to use properly. The problem, however, is that they can be used far, FAR too frequently, especially since there are so many Warrior class characters running around these days (for this very reason). The cooldown on the Screens needs to be increased considerably, perhaps even to the 10 minutes as it was done in the official game.
Bless Spell - This is a tricky one, as overnerfing it could potentially make certain classes nearly unviable as it had happened in certain other cases. However, the way it works now is problematic. Oftentimes when a single Party has 4 or more characters with a secondary Cleric class, they are able to operate while being under the effect of Bless Spell constantly. The "fix" to this implemented elsewhere has been to make Bless Spell cancel the second that the user switches to a weapon other than the Cleric Rod. It was effective, yes, but it also made classes such as Int focused Warlocks and Wizards far too vulnerable being unable to utilize it. Therefore our suggestion would be the following: Once Bless Spell is used, it works the same way as it does currently - the entire Party gains the buff. However, the moment that the user of it switches to a different weapon, the Bless Spell cancels for EVERYONE in the Party EXCEPT the user. This would add more importance to the role of a dedicated Cleric healer and buffer within the Party, no longer working the way that everyone can just Bless and then switch to another weapon and do whatever they please while the entire party remains buffed, while still being a viable skill to use in solo play. Bards cannot keep buffing the entire party while using another weapon entirely, and Clerics shouldn't be either.
Snow Shield - we believe that the increased cooldown time upon usage is unnecessary and hindrance to Chinese builds which already aren't doing that well in the face of the mighty Europeans. 1 minute was fine, but 2 minutes just seems like overkill, especially when a Snow Shield user dies while being overpowered while the Snow Shield skill is active. That then makes the character almost entirely useless for nearly 4 minutes as an Int Spear or Sword/Shield class can get one-shot by a lot of common attacks without it. Perhaps the percentage of the MP absorption could be lowered slightly on each skill to balance this, or (and this would be ideal) the counter on the cooldown resets upon death (so that when a user of the skill dies while having it active, they don't have to wait another 4 minutes to activate it again but only 2 or preferably 1 as it used to be). I don't quite understand why Snow Shield's cooldown has been increased while the Warrior Skins who are defensive measures for an already defensively tanky build get to keep theirs.
Life Turnover - Since Dagger Desperate has finally received a much needed slight nerf, this is the biggest offender on the list right under it. The Wizard class in general deal way, way too much damage already even without this skill. With it it just becomes absolutely ridiculous. I'm not suggesting that the Wizard class needs to get nerfed into the ground as it has been in certain places, no. It needs to remain viable. However, it is simply far too powerful in its current state. Either Life Turnover needs more drawbacks with it (like lowering defenses along with the halved HP), or the damage boost needs to be toned down significantly. Perhaps its cast time could be lowered slightly to make using it faster to help balance the lowered boost slightly - the faster casting time would actually make Wizard at least a little bit less unviable in 1v1 fights, while the lowered damage would make them less absurdly overpowered in Party play. This is one where I'll admit I do not see a clear solution that would please everyone, but the Wizard damage absolutely needs to be looked into and adjusted.
Warlock Debuffs - Yes, the ever so dreaded debuffs cannot go without a mention, either. However, we would suggest that the debuffs / statuses in itself do not require any change, but the ways to counteract them do. In other incarnations of the game, people used to rely on the so-called pill bug which has been removed here (which is a good thing, as it was, after all, an unintended bug). However, the cooldown timer on the Purificaion Pills is absolutely ridiculous. Every non-Cleric character will easily get overwhelmed in seconds as they only have the ability to remove ONE single status every 20 seconds. That's just not reasonable in the least. The Purification Pills need to be adjusted - either have them cure at least 2 or 3 statuses at a time, or lower the cooldown time from 20 seconds to 5, or perhaps even 3 seconds. Maybe a combination of both. Another mention needs to go to the Chinese Recovery skills, which in theory should serve as a defensive mechanism against Warlocks, but they fail to do so for one simple reason: they take much, much too long to cast. During the time it takes to use either of the cure skills for status removal, the opponent has ample chances to disrupt the skill from being used mid-cast via Stun, Knock Back, Knock Down, whatever the case may be. The casting time of the Chinese Cure skill should be made instant to make it on par with the Cleric Integrity and Innocent skills and to actually make Chinese characters stand any sort of chance against most Warlock opponents in a one on one fight.
Curse Explosion - This skill simply doesn't appear to be working as intended. It always deals the exact same, negligible damage to an opponent regardless of what state they're in, instead of accumulating damage as it is supposed to be doing. Int Warlocks could certainly use another pure damage dealing skill aside from the basic Blood Flower and Death Flower, so a fix to make this skill work as it should would aid the build greatly.
Offering - The philosophy of this skill is very simple: high risk, high reward. Unfortunately there are ways to make it no risk and all the reward when used by an Int Warlock Cleric build, who can simply Stun an opponent and then easily finish the fight unscathed in a single hit if they have a great Cleric Rod. Even the most resilient, tanky builds such as a full Str Warrior with an amazing Robe set can be shot down in a single hit from a really great Light Staff. I'm honestly not sure what could be done here to not make the skill unviable, but it does need some sort of a tone down, or increase the casting time slightly beyond the time it takes for a character to get out of the Stunned condition.
Pain Quota and its Chinese counterparts - This will be a controversial one to be sure. But we believe this skill needs to be toned down ever so slightly, as do the Warrior Fences. One of the biggest omnipresent issues in Origin is that the party buffs are much too powerful, and the damage of characters is too low, resulting in very lenghty stalemates of players hitting each other for laughable damage, not being able to kill almost anyone. This would already be neutered to a certain extent with the aforementioned Bless Spell adjust, but these skills could also use some looking into and perhaps a slight nerf to the damage distribution percentages.
The Chinese Str oriented classes - these are the clear victims of what the previous point laid out. These are classes built on being able to eat a lot of damage, but cannot dish out an overwhelming amount of it themselves. The problem is that with they way things work currently, classes like Blade and Bow are incapable of killing nearly anyone and are of virtually no use in group conflicts (aside from the knock back of Pacheon). Glaive is sliiiightly better off here, but not by much at all. There is no clear solution here - perhaps a combination of the suggested adjustments laid out above - but the classes themselves could use some help. With the removal of the ability to use Snow Shield for pure Str classes (which I wholeheartedly agree with and support as the skill was never meant for them), they are not quite the godly tanks they used to be, and this should be balanced out by having them deal more damage. Simply making the Blade/Glaive/Bow weapons more potent would be one possibility, but perhaps adjusting the skills and critical percentages (especially on Pacheon) would go a long way to aid them and bring them up to par with the other classes as well.
Cleric Resurrection Skills - As it stands a Cleric has three ways to resurrect his/her allies - the basic Resurrection, Group Resurrection, and Reverse Immolation, the so-called "black" resurrection. These are more or less fine as they currently are, but a slightly increased casting time on the basic Resurrection (just like the Chinese Recovery version) and an increased cooldown on the Group Resurrection and Reverse Immolation would certainly be helpful, as with so many players using European builds these days (for reasons outlined above) with a secondary Cleric class, it often becomes absolutely impossible to truly kill off an opposing team of several parties as they are able to keep resurrecting everyone constantly, ressing another player the moment they exit untouchable status with the insta-cast basic ress, or sneaking up and using the group resurrection on everyone fairly frequently.
As a final note I can't go without mentioning the omnipresent bug throughout the game's entire history that no one has ever managed to fix apparently - the knock down bug caused by the Turn Rising skill of Warriors. I'm sure everyone is familiar with this one as it has persisted for over a decade ever since the European class became a thing, but to sum it up briefly at times if the skill knocks a player down in the middle of using a skill, the player will keep using said skill even while knocked down (and then goes on to ignore all future knock downs entirely and will continue to be able to use skills during them), while a further effect then causes the affected player to always face the Warrior who knocked them down before, no matter what, which looks really silly while running in a different direction or fighting someone else afterwards. This remains in effect until one of the players teleports out of the area. This may already be asking too much, but we'd love to see this annoying bug finally fixed in a version of the game, if it can be done.
Then there's the whole separate chapter of suggestions regarding the Job Conflict, but most of those have already been listed in the separate thread by Spartacuz, so I will not make this already overbearingly lengthy post any longer by repeating that here and refer you to his thread instead.
If I missed anything, or if anybody else has something to add to the changes I proposed here, feel free to do so below.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through our list of suggestions and we hold out hope that you might consider some iteration of them, whatever form it might take. May the server live and prosper for as long as possible, and may it keep improving at a decent pace as it has been doing throughout its fairly brief existence.