[Carding]

Sorry I actually rush read your proposal, and I didn't mean to sound overly critical, but I would hate for us to repeat mistakes that really screwed up IN, it's hard sometimes for people to see why ideas that sound good can go badly wrong but when you've seen it happen you really want to avoid it...

I think removing the ability to hunt for gear that can be used to PvP is a mistake, IN1 didn't only die because of the high end gear (although this certain was a problem) but the overall inconvenience and cost of participation in the PvP system, and a big part of that was taking away all the vanq and invul drops. Hunting gear should be in competition with crafted gear, both take effort to acquire, create a competitive market and give players with different play styles ways to equip themselves which increases participation and reduces the pain of dying for inexperienced fighters.

The part I rush read way too fast is that actually I do agree with you about weapon damage needing more reliability (and perhaps a slightly higher average damage per time interval on average) , also I do not in fact like tactics bonuses on weapons at all, it wasn't this way on IN and you are correct - weapons without the tactics become useless because the PvP is tweaked based on having tactics (especially tournies), I am not 100% sure what the solution is and I'm massively hungover today, but I'm sure there is a better way to approach it.

Gang and Habibi, as experienced PvPers, do you think the system would work better if the overall hit rates of all weapons were improved at the cost of nerfing and/or removing tactics bonuses? This would mean that the maximum chance to hit would be the same (unless tweaked for other reasons) but that the reliance on +tactics weapons would diminish and the effectiveness non-+tactics weapons would be better which may increase the pace of 1 vs 1 PvP and perhaps make taking the chance to swing a weapon in world/group PvP a little more worthwhile...

That's a first draft hungover version of what I'm thinking...

[Habibi Jones]

Sorry I actually rush read your proposal, and I didn't mean to sound overly critical, but I would hate for us to repeat mistakes that really screwed up IN, it's hard sometimes for people to see why ideas that sound good can go badly wrong but when you've seen it happen you really want to avoid it...

I think removing the ability to hunt for gear that can be used to PvP is a mistake, IN1 didn't only die because of the high end gear (although this certain was a problem) but the overall inconvenience and cost of participation in the PvP system, and a big part of that was taking away all the vanq and invul drops. Hunting gear should be in competition with crafted gear, both take effort to acquire, create a competitive market and give players with different play styles ways to equip themselves which increases participation and reduces the pain of dying for inexperienced fighters.

The part I rush read way too fast is that actually I do agree with you about weapon damage needing more reliability (and perhaps a slightly higher average damage per time interval on average) , also I do not in fact like tactics bonuses on weapons at all, it wasn't this way on IN and you are correct - weapons without the tactics become useless because the PvP is tweaked based on having tactics (especially tournies), I am not 100% sure what the solution is and I'm massively hungover today, but I'm sure there is a better way to approach it.

Gang and Habibi, as experienced PvPers, do you think the system would work better if the overall hit rates of all weapons were improved at the cost of nerfing and/or removing tactics bonuses? This would mean that the maximum chance to hit would be the same (unless tweaked for other reasons) but that the reliance on +tactics weapons would diminish and the effectiveness non-+tactics weapons would be better which may increase the pace of 1 vs 1 PvP and perhaps make taking the chance to swing a weapon in world/group PvP a little more worthwhile...

That's a first draft hungover version of what I'm thinking...

Yeah I agree 100% that hunting drops should be in competition with craftables. The thing is, there is really no competition now because the server is flooded with loot table stuff Making the +tac weapons drop way way way less would actually create some competition between craftables and drops, that was the point Keeping the +tactics at a "rare" drop rate, and adding craftable non +tac weapons would create that competition you're referring to.

I agree with the aims of your suggestion about increasing the hit rates of all weapons, however I don't agree with the execution. If you use weapons a lot, which I'm sure you do, then you will notice that with any weapon whether it be a kryss or halberd, you can hit for 1 damage. Increasing the hit rate (hits/swings) of weapons wouldn't really be the right solution IMO.
A better solution, IMO, would be to get rid of these 1 damage hits. Just make each weapon have a reasonable min and max damage, that seems to be the best option in my brain. As of now it seems that all weapon rates are balanced upon +25 tactics instead of +0. Just my thoughts.

Perhaps exceptional crafted weapons could have +5 tactics? Just an idea.

:thumbsup:

[Carding]

There is a big problem in what you suggest though, if +tactic weapons are rare only the strongest will use them and it will only make them stronger. I think the fact that smithing is extremely slow to train also affects the current balance of loot items and craftables. Unless it is made easier I am not in favour of making weapons and such more difficult to accumulate for players who prefer to do hunting rather than macro endlessly to be able to craft them.

I think perhaps we agree in principle but your approach is that crafting and hunting should both be useful so nerf the hunting drops but my approach is more that the hunting drops are mostly fine and we just need more crafting options (but not too many at once, these things are always best approached one step at a time).

There was a time on IN1 where the very best players would use perhaps vanqs and invul (no +acc.) or high end craftables like blackrock, and weak players would use verite/blood rock and force/power weapons, the difference was minimal in performance and new players stood a great chance of competing and thanks to the high drop rates and mining yields a death for a new PvPer would be no more than 20k, perhaps even significantly less. This was a time when PvP was rife and a lot of new people, including myself and many of my friends got involved and learned to fight and have fun without having to grind our lives away to replace our stuff each time we inevitably died to the more established and experienced PvPers.

Much later many changes similar in nature to the ones you suggest (nerfing loot tables and a vanq/invul wipe) and introduction of craftables to "replace" lead to gear being more expensive, generally less available and ultimately more boring for players who don't like crafting to accumulate. This, together with a number of other mistakes such as the idea "the best stuff should be really rare" (which means it just makes the strongest stronger) really killed the PvP system, making it inaccessible and difficult to replace losses, frustrating for the weak, poor or new PvPers and boring for the strong and rich who had fewer and fewer to fight.

Like I said, ideas that sound good can pan out really badly.

You misunderstood my suggestion about tactics, that was independent of changes to narrow the band of damage from weapons. In otherwords, make the suggested changes to damage, and then phase out or nerf the accuracy bonuses on +tactic weapons whilst boosting general hit rate. Essentially then making all weapons a little more reliable, and narrowing the difference between the top (+tactic) weapons and other weapons whilst still preserving overall balance (which as you pointed out is currently mostly balanced around +tactic weapons).

[Venos]

Change tactics bonus to be +1, +2, +3, +4 and +5.

Make no bonus accuracy weapons craft able with smithy, colored ingots plus a special ingredient(crafted by a scribe maybe).

Decrease the price and effectiveness(to the point that they equal but do not exceed a vanq of similar type) of custom weapons.

Fiddle with fail rates on crafting armors. They are quite high and make it hard to set prices and estimate amount of ingots needed. Chance for exceptional should be the same for all pieces of armor to avoid having stacks of exceptional gorgets and gloves.

Reduce the amount of ore types by about 6(take out the ugly and low end ones). Make iron faster/easier to mine.

[Carding]

Change tactics bonus to be +1, +2, +3, +4 and +5.

Make no bonus accuracy weapons craft able with smithy, colored ingots plus a special ingredient(crafted by a scribe maybe).

Decrease the price and effectiveness(to the point that they equal but do not exceed a vanq of similar type) of custom weapons.

Fiddle with fail rates on crafting armors. They are quite high and make it hard to set prices and estimate amount of ingots needed. Chance for exceptional should be the same for all pieces of armor to avoid having stacks of exceptional gorgets and gloves.

Reduce the amount of ore types by about 6(take out the ugly and low end ones). Make iron faster/easier to mine.

Allowing a bit of quibling over details (e.g. I think scribes have enough impact already without being involved in weapon making) I very much like this approach. This way hunters still have business, smiths have less of a hard time getting things made, and lots of gear for everyone to use to smash each other up with and have a good time.

Also there are definitely too many ingot types, this is a very good point and was also true on IN after the invul/vanq wipe was followed with adding new armour (dwarven, fire, wizard, aqua etc.) things were better without them...

[Venos]

Allowing a bit of quibling over details (e.g. I think scribes have enough impact already without being involved in weapon making) I very much like this approach. This way hunters still have business, smiths have less of a hard time getting things made, and lots of gear for everyone to use to smash each other up with and have a good time.

Also there are definitely too many ingot types, this is a very good point and was also true on IN after the invul/vanq wipe was followed with adding new armour (dwarven, fire, wizard, aqua etc.) things were better without them...

If not scribe then what? Hehe. Alchemy? Carpentry? Anyway its more about not letting it be pure smith focused. It could be a drop from a quest. Preferably one which could be done in many places to avoid it being camped by pk's.

[Venos]

The same weapon crafting could be made for bowcrafting as well. Here its just high end boards and another ingredient.

[Carding]

I would stay away from overly difficult weapon recipes, since that then implies they will be overly strong and then again we head towards the IN1 problem...

Perhaps a carpentry item for weapons would make sense, after all most of them require handles and so on. I wouldn't suggest adding requirements to bowcraft because unlike smithing (which has armour etc.) bowcraft only does bows...

The only reason I say not scribe is the ease with which scribe can be AFK trained (even I am doing it and I am very lazy) and the importance (scrolls are totally vital to PvP all ready) means they already have a lot going for them...

[Venos]

Well i was thinking the extra ingredient should be cheap and easy to make if it was crafted. Its more so that another craft gets involved. Without it just being a requirement like for custom weapons.

On the bowcrafting i meant that a bowcrafter should be able to craft bows of force, power, vanq etc similar to a smith making melee weapons. Otherwise archery weapons would be far more expensive than melee weapons since they would be exclusively from drops.

[Ramza]

Well i was thinking the extra ingredient should be cheap and easy to make if it was crafted. Its more so that another craft gets involved. Without it just being a requirement like for custom weapons.

On the bowcrafting i meant that a bowcrafter should be able to craft bows of force, power, vanq etc similar to a smith making melee weapons. Otherwise archery weapons would be far more expensive than melee weapons since they would be exclusively from drops.

I think bowcraft needs some love anyway. It's not super useful at this point. I dunno if bows needs to do more damage, but they don't seem incredibly useful.

[Carding]

Okay, well in that case I pretty much agree with what you are saying. From what I've seen archery is not used overly much except in shooting certain monsters in PvM, is this because the weapons are too rare or simply that it isn't seen as very useful right now?

[Ramza]

I'd like to see bows shooting while you are moving. I think that would make them a lot more useful in PvM and PvP, but with the damage they do now, I don't see it as being overpowered. Could be wrong there, I haven't used a heavy X bow of vanq at this point.