Hello,

It would be nice to get a discussion going on a few subjects and see what others think. Firstly I would like to talk about the current situation with the seasonal servers and them merging with Pharos etc.

As seen by the current numbers Atlas has done a lot worse in terms of active players and activity in general, Titan peaked around 210 players and held a concurrent player count of over 100 for quite a long time (I cannot be exact but it was 100+ for at least one month). Atlas on the other hand is 29 days in and on a Saturday at prime time there is 35 players online.

This just shows a massive disinterest in this season which I think is due to the fact that people know it will eventually be merged with Pharos OR Elysium. I really think this should've been made a permanent server AFTER the season and reduced the EXP to whatever you feel fit OR it should have been made a permanent server from the start.
A big reason for this is, even if you play 12h+ a day on the seasonal server when you transfer to one of the other servers you will still never be able to compete/fight against the people on said server.

I would suggest making this seasonal permanent in the end OR releasing a new permanent server.

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My second point is gathering, currently you have added a lot of random annoying things to gathering and put every gathering spawn with monsters, now the reason these things where added was to "deter" botting I assume but currently it just hurts manual gatherers, let me explain.

A lot of games have tried to add things/systems in game to "catch"/"deter" botters but none of them have worked. You can check out Tibia's and Runescapes history of this, in the end they both went down the same road of backend systems/bot detection systems.

Currently we have gathering spots and close to all of them have monsters and/or mana stealing monsters, this does NOTHING against botters as they do not care about something being annoying, using stamina, boring etc, while a manual "Main" character these are things that will make it not worth gathering, E.G if I have stamina I would not go gathering due to needing to kill monsters and wasting stamina to gain pots which ONLY help for hunting.

I think these very basic systems which are made to hurt botters only hurt manual players and should be removed. There are a lot of these annoying features in game but I will hit on those next.

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The third thing is more about having systems to "deter" botters but only make it so botting is more "worth".

The systems I'm talking about are, the exhaust system. Currently if you spam your spells and get exhaust it makes your exhaust that little bit longer, meaning if you don't have perfect timing you lose time. I would just completely remove this as this just promotes botting/macro usage massively.

The second system is the increased cost in manas (GP/MP ratio) this also promotes the use of bots, having to spam mana potions is an annoying issue as the smaller the potion the more efficient it is to use, this means just by using mana flasks you are at a massive disadvantage against someone who uses mana vials/shots. Again this is something I would change and make all potions have the same MP/GP ratio, this would not effect PVP due to the reduce efficiency in PVP.

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My fourth point is the solo player aspect and the huge gap between certain classes. Currently in my opinion the solo class exp/h list goes as follows.

Pyromancer -> Paladin -> Barbarian --------------> Warlock/Shaman/Rogue/Marksman

The gap between the top 3 and the bottom 4 is HUGE and nothing has been done to remedy this situation. There are a few things which could be done to help the situation and I DON'T mean just give everyone a AOE and make all classes feel even more of the same. I would suggest making more creatures like Lince Ghosts(They should get a EXP boost) and keep the single target classes single target.

You could also just add a 50% PVE ONLY damage increase to Rock thrust/Deathblow/Leathal Ambush/Dexterous shot. This would close the gap a small amount and make it so hunting high HP high EXP creatures the best option for the single target classes, this would also need some spawns adding and some new monsters creating targetting the single target classes.

I hate the way the staff seem to be going is just add AOE for all classes and be done with it.

These are all the points I can think of right now.
Hopefully we will be able to get some sort of discussion going and some staff input on the current direction of the game and what they think about the points mentioned.

You made some very solid points.


Gathering
Gathering as well as brewing could even be removed entirely. Instead pots would be sellable by a npc. At the moment the botters are sadly required to supply everyone enough products which is a bad thing. Without them one would have to spend several hours a month gathering and brewing. A task nobody likes and which is not rewarding at all.

One could introduce quests to allow for better pots than ampoules from the npc. They could perhaps have a higher percentage benefit as well next to longer duration to compensate for the benefit of high brewing skill. Potions such as experience and luck could be locked behind a quest as well. Luck should never be buyable for money only though. It should maintain a rarity and same could be said for experience potions.

An added benefit is that you add an other money sink since the cash doesn't flows between the players, but goes to the npcs. Making items on the market cost a bit less, since less money is available, and thus more available to newer players.

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Detering botter systems
As a noob spell spammer I agree with the exhaust. I 'poof' a lot and see many others never poofing.

Without botting I wouldhave disagreed and supported the mana:gold ratio becoming worse, but if indeed a lot of people are botting it's not a good system to have

I strongly agree on all the subjects.. This game is very bot sensitive and yet all the features disturb the manual players the most. A bot dont care if it runs out of stamina, it dont care if it has to walk across zezenia lands to get something, a bot dont care whats in its way as long as its running and doing what its used for.

For the most efficient playstyle you do offside things like gathering/fishing/brewing whenever youre off stamina. Whenever i play for a couple hours in a day, i sometimes dont even finish my stamina.

At time when i have all day to play, i dont do ANYTHING else but wait for my hunt to start because i lose stamina whenever i do different stuff. This does not include fishing. Ofcourse you can decide to lure monsters away but everything is so based on ANTI BOT while it doesnt even hurt the bots. If i want to gather four leafs, i have to kill ev ery leprechaun, when i gather sugar beets im almost constantly 8 boxed because of the amount of monsters, when i gather desert flower i need to kill lions and be mana drained 24/7 because of stupid raging curses and if i dont use mana's i lose HP.

I think they should introduce a gather island with many different gatherables but without monsters. To detect a botter you only have to increase the GM's activity.

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This game is VERY clicking tensive and i think this game could be 100% more player friendly if they adjust the exhaust system, mana/gp ratio, brewing system and boring fishing skill.
I still dont understand that a mana flask is way more gp/mana than a vial which the only difference is a 100 clicks to reach the same end, meaning its disturbing manual players AGAIN.

The list can go on with MANY things but i think Mernz already listed one of the most important ones.
ALSO, if the staff actually showed some good intentions towards its playerbase, people would give more love and ideas towards the game. As right now, everything just gets ignored.

Very solid points, principally with the classes. I personally love the gathering system, usually i stay gathering onions while I am watching anime on my phone, it's not a boring thing to do when you are doing it with other things. Maybe the sollution would be removing the creatures and other stuff, but make the collect longer i don't know... something to make it easyer to do manually but slower?? To garantee that you can do it like a secondary action but with safety from creatures and players?..

About the gap i tottally agree, i will make a topic about it about the shaman especifically. I understand the concept of "characters" with strong aoe and "strong single target" and "support", but the shaman are lacking attack power or more support buffs. I know that stone skin and bravery are great buffs but on higher lvls shaman should have more party buffs to make it more appealing to call a shaman to a party instead of another damage dealer.

After playing THREE different classes and watching my paladin friend I've came to the conlusion that it's just not worth to play anything other than Pyromancer/Paladin/Barbarian in terms of PVE and I will tell you why.

First of all a Pyromancer hits around the same if not more each combo as a Shaman/Warlock but they have the ability to deal that damage to countless monsters (Mana per combo no longer counts, if a Pyromancer hits 2 or more monsters their combo costs less).

A paladin which is a "TANK" is able to "Wall Box" gathering 5 monsters and using their cleave spell, Their cleave is on a 2 second cooldown meaning they can do it twice to every combo a shaman/warlock can do. A level 271 with 92 skills hits 570~ to EACH monster per 2 seconds (If you wall box thats 2,850 per 2 seconds OR 5,700 per 4 seconds).

So just by looking at those two situations you can clearly see there is a HUGE imbalance in the classes. But a recent addition to the game was Bestiary this compounds the situation even more, let me explain.

The best places to hunt for the AOE classes are the lower HP monsters meaning most of the time to boost everything on said monsters it's around 12-16 coins and because they are able to kill multiple at once, they will not only get their money back for the coins but also able to gain profit.

Now we have the single target classes Rogue/Marksman/Shaman/Warlock, their best EXP places (Which are around half the exp of the AOE classes) is High HP/High EXP monsters, this means that their kills per hour are low and so is their loot, that on top of the fact that High EXP monsters are significantly more coins PER boost.

This makes a situation where the AOE classes can ALWAYS use the boosts when hunting to get even MORE EXP/LOOT, while the single target classes can almost NEVER boost unless they're willing to take a loss.

In comparison a AOE class can boost Dracos/Ice Demons etc for a total of 12 coins (1,063,992 GP) while making considerably more EXP and PROFIT (after costs paid, including coins).

While the "GOOD" EXP places for single target classes are:-
Lince Ghosts for a total of 39 coins (3,457,974 GP)
Soul Devourers for a total of 30 coins (2,659,980 GP)
Boulder Throwers for a total of 36 coins (3,191,976 GP)
Unholy Dreadlord for a total of 39 coins (3,457,974 GP)

All while the solo classes get less exp and would be LUCKY to get even HALF the cost of just the coins back nevermind the supplies used.

I think issues like these need to be addressed as a priority, there are many ways this can be achieved but it seems like nothing is being done OR even tested to see if peoples suggestions can work.

(I would gladly spend time on a test server just randomly testing things to strike some sort of balance)

Hello, Zezenians!

For years we have seen same discussion about AOE classes x Main Single target classes. The conclusions will be always around damage, i mean some classes need a PVE buff in their damage to equalize the others.
So i suggest a buff, to be clear only in pve damage, in some spells:

Warlock: Cross of Annihilation +33% and Deathblow +50%
Shaman: Hailstorm +33% and Rock Thrust +50%
Marksman: Dexterous Shot +25% and Hellish Volley +33%
Rogue: Lethal Ambush +25% and Hellish Volley +33%

About buffs %, that will need a calculate, but i think something between 33-50% for mages spells and 25-33% for rangers spells solve the problem.

Would be nice to get some input from the staff members are they are the ones who can make/discuss changes.
Is there a chance to make Atlas permanent with a option to transfer to Pharos/Elysium for X amount of days after the seasonal has finished.

still no staff input??

BUMP

Been around for almost 10 years and its ALWAYS sad watching players with real interest do a real effort to solve problems... just to be completely ignored by the staff.