So can we talk about why we have increased monster stats? Please?

[Varista]

So, I've been wanting to address this topic for quite a while now.. this entire post is going to be rough drafted so bare with me if anything sounds disorganized and if anything offends you I apologize.

So to start, let me preface this topic with this little statement: I am completely neutral about this entire thing. 

With that out of the way, we can start;

If you didn't know, or don't currently know what I'm talking about regarding monster stats, Ultima has increased ultimate mode monster stats. Basically, they upped the EVP and elemental resistances of monsters. I believe the elemental resistances are specifically for Episode 2 monsters only but the EVP boost to all monsters seems to be for every single Episode. I presume the reasoning behind this change was because of a few factors; one of which being that Ultima was basically just another generic server when it first released and what I assume to be a way to differentiate itself from the pack of other generic PSOBB servers they made monsters significantly harder to hit in multiplayer (not in solo mode -- to my knowledge, the EVP boost only affects multiplayer modes). The other reason (I'm just assuming) might be because with the way that you can get every weapon's hit values up to 80% due to donation, there should be some type of drawback behind being able to "casually" (and I say that word very carefully) obtain 80 hit on any weapon you wanted. 

I'm on the fence about this change to be honest. On one hand, you have the really hard to hit monsters as it were. Take a look at Episode 2 multiplayer mode for instance. That Episode in particular already had high EVP enemy stats so if you didn't have maximum ATA stats on your characters (or inherently low maximum stats in ATA on specific characters (cough HUcast cough)) you had a hard enough time hitting them as it was. I'm going to use schthack as an example for this, since it's the easiest one to use. in Schthack, there's no additional EVP monster buff, which inherently keeps the same sort of difficulty early on when you don't have max ATA but when you did get max ATA you were kind of rewarded for it and rewarded for having decent hit weapons (something like 40-50 hit stuff would work great). Like for example, on a max ATA RAmarl on Schthack, with a 40 hit Snow Queen, I could always like 80% of the time freeze that Ill Gill. It was a pretty high chance. If I tried that here, at Ultima, with the same 40 hit Snow Queen, I would have a somewhat 10-20%~ chance. Significantly lower chances at hitting that, and that's a special attack that hits the same enemy twice (potentially). This is also compounded by the fact that this EVP buff honestly basically requires you to have 80 hit on every weapon. Like I don't even think that's an arguable point anymore because if 80 hit truly wasn't necessary with max ATA on Episode 2, people would honestly not be wasting their money adding in extra hit past like 50 hit. But its painfully clear that 80 hit is required for pretty much every weapon you have, especially melee ones (regarding Episode 2, at least).

But then, playing devils advocate here, getting 80 hit on every weapon is seemingly pretty damn easy to achieve now. So when you have all these people running around with 80 hit weapons how do you make the game more interesting without breaking the game? You increase EVP stats... but this is the only argument I could really think of after a few months of really giving it some thought and it doesn't even really come to a reasonable counter-argument or example of why we even have it here in the first place. Like, yeah, we release some pretty ridiculous weapons over our time period. Excluding Dark weapons, Hundred Souls is pretty crazy. Imagine only really needing 50 hit on every Hundred Souls to always hit things on Episode 2 with a special attack. That sounds really dumb on paper when you think about it I guess, having these crazy super powerful weapons ATP wise that can burn through health bars crazy fast, how do you counter? You make it harder to hit enemies. But again, that's really the only issue I find and it's really only with Episode 2 for the most part.

Because when you go into Episode 1 and 4 I don't think you experience the sort of same issue as you do in Episode 2. I think it's painfully clear that Episode 1 and 4 are really easy in comparison to Episode 2. And that would be okay if they didn't add in the EVP boost to Episode 2 because enemies in Episode 2 were already hard to hit without it and definitely without max ATA stats. I feel like the game kind of rewarded you for hitting max stats in Episode 2 by allowing you to somewhat frequently hit enemies with any kind of attack without needing ludicrous amounts of hit on weapons to do so. Now, you hit max stats, and that's like half the issue solved. Now, in addition, you have to add 80 hit to all your weapons and then go into Episode 2 to hit stuff. If you're even missing like 10% hit on anything you've put yourself at a huge disadvantage. 

 

I think ultimately my point is this: I don't feel like for whatever reason the EVP boost to monsters was implemented by, it's kind of pigeon holding people into having to get 80 hit on everything. To be honest, I'd like to spend a lot less of my money on 80 hit and leave my weapons at more like 40-50 hit and then only have to worry about getting my stats maxed out. I shouldn't need 80 hit on everything to be able to operate under a reasonable level in Episode 2. I say Episode 2 specifically because it's the only Episode that this argument applies to for the most part. Maybe we could remove the EVP boost on Episode 2 monsters and that way it wont be so difficult on us who don't have 80 hit on everything? Or maybe remove the EVP boost altogether.. because honestly... as far as I can tell, there's no really much of a point in having it anymore...

[Auli'i]

Patiently waits for Saith's reply to the topic

[griffeni]

7 minutes ago, Auli'i said:

Patiently waits for Saith's reply to the topic

patiently waits for drama*

[Biza]

20 minutes ago, griffeni said:

patiently waits for drama*

Spoiler

 

 

[McLaughlin86]

The term is pigeon hole, not hold. I know, grammar is a minute detail in such a topic, but if that wasn't a typo and you used that term in person one day someone is gonna call you a fucking idiot, so I'm just helping you out.

Anyways, the game's balanced like garbage in the first place so I really don't care. The only sort of annoying thing is trying to melee on a fucking FO on ep2.

[MadOrNah]

1 hour ago, Auroboro said:

So, I've been wanting to address this topic for quite a while now.. this entire post is going to be rough drafted so bare with me if anything sounds disorganized and if anything offends you I apologize.

So to start, let me preface this topic with this little statement: I am completely neutral about this entire thing. 

With that out of the way, we can start;

If you didn't know, or don't currently know what I'm talking about regarding monster stats, Ultima has increased ultimate mode monster stats. Basically, they upped the EVP and elemental resistances of monsters. I believe the elemental resistances are specifically for Episode 2 monsters only but the EVP boost to all monsters seems to be for every single Episode. I presume the reasoning behind this change was because of a few factors; one of which being that Ultima was basically just another generic server when it first released and what I assume to be a way to differentiate itself from the pack of other generic PSOBB servers they made monsters significantly harder to hit in multiplayer (not in solo mode -- to my knowledge, the EVP boost only affects multiplayer modes). The other reason (I'm just assuming) might be because with the way that you can get every weapon's hit values up to 80% due to donation, there should be some type of drawback behind being able to "casually" (and I say that word very carefully) obtain 80 hit on any weapon you wanted. 

I'm on the fence about this change to be honest. On one hand, you have the really hard to hit monsters as it were. Take a look at Episode 2 multiplayer mode for instance. That Episode in particular already had high EVP enemy stats so if you didn't have maximum ATA stats on your characters (or inherently low maximum stats in ATA on specific characters (cough HUcast cough)) you had a hard enough time hitting them as it was. I'm going to use schthack as an example for this, since it's the easiest one to use. in Schthack, there's no additional EVP monster buff, which inherently keeps the same sort of difficulty early on when you don't have max ATA but when you did get max ATA you were kind of rewarded for it and rewarded for having decent hit weapons (something like 40-50 hit stuff would work great). Like for example, on a max ATA RAmarl on Schthack, with a 40 hit Snow Queen, I could always like 80% of the time freeze that Ill Gill. It was a pretty high chance. If I tried that here, at Ultima, with the same 40 hit Snow Queen, I would have a somewhat 10-20%~ chance. Significantly lower chances at hitting that, and that's a special attack that hits the same enemy twice (potentially). This is also compounded by the fact that this EVP buff honestly basically requires you to have 80 hit on every weapon. Like I don't even think that's an arguable point anymore because if 80 hit truly wasn't necessary with max ATA on Episode 2, people would honestly not be wasting their money adding in extra hit past like 50 hit. But its painfully clear that 80 hit is required for pretty much every weapon you have, especially melee ones (regarding Episode 2, at least).

But then, playing devils advocate here, getting 80 hit on every weapon is seemingly pretty damn easy to achieve now. So when you have all these people running around with 80 hit weapons how do you make the game more interesting without breaking the game? You increase EVP stats... but this is the only argument I could really think of after a few months of really giving it some thought and it doesn't even really come to a reasonable counter-argument or example of why we even have it here in the first place. Like, yeah, we release some pretty ridiculous weapons over our time period. Excluding Dark weapons, Hundred Souls is pretty crazy. Imagine only really needing 50 hit on every Hundred Souls to always hit things on Episode 2 with a special attack. That sounds really dumb on paper when you think about it I guess, having these crazy super powerful weapons ATP wise that can burn through health bars crazy fast, how do you counter? You make it harder to hit enemies. But again, that's really the only issue I find and it's really only with Episode 2 for the most part.

Because when you go into Episode 1 and 4 I don't think you experience the sort of same issue as you do in Episode 2. I think it's painfully clear that Episode 1 and 4 are really easy in comparison to Episode 2. And that would be okay if they didn't add in the EVP boost to Episode 2 because enemies in Episode 2 were already hard to hit without it and definitely without max ATA stats. I feel like the game kind of rewarded you for hitting max stats in Episode 2 by allowing you to somewhat frequently hit enemies with any kind of attack without needing ludicrous amounts of hit on weapons to do so. Now, you hit max stats, and that's like half the issue solved. Now, in addition, you have to add 80 hit to all your weapons and then go into Episode 2 to hit stuff. If you're even missing like 10% hit on anything you've put yourself at a huge disadvantage. 

 

I think ultimately my point is this: I don't feel like for whatever reason the EVP boost to monsters was implemented by, it's kind of pigeon holding people into having to get 80 hit on everything. To be honest, I'd like to spend a lot less of my money on 80 hit and leave my weapons at more like 40-50 hit and then only have to worry about getting my stats maxed out. I shouldn't need 80 hit on everything to be able to operate under a reasonable level in Episode 2. I say Episode 2 specifically because it's the only Episode that this argument applies to for the most part. Maybe we could remove the EVP boost on Episode 2 monsters and that way it wont be so difficult on us who don't have 80 hit on everything? Or maybe remove the EVP boost altogether.. because honestly... as far as I can tell, there's no really much of a point in having it anymore...

 

 

2 minutes ago, McLaughlin86 said:

The term is pigeon hole, not hold. I know, grammar is a minute detail in such a topic, but if that wasn't a typo and you used that term in person one day someone is gonna call you a fucking idiot, so I'm just helping you out.

Anyways, the game's balanced like garbage in the first place so I really don't care. The only sort of annoying thing is trying to melee on a fucking FO on ep2.

 

 

I hope you're both ready for Saith's five-page response, with a bunch of snarky remarks.

[McLaughlin86]

1 minute ago, MadOrNah said:

 

 

I hope you're both ready for Saith's five-page response, with a bunch of snarky remarks.

I'm not going to read it because I'm blissfully ignorant (v:

[MadOrNah]

Just now, McLaughlin86 said:

I'm not going to read it because I'm blissfully ignorant (v:

same.

I hope he posts a tl:dr version.

[Fyrewolf5]

Auroboro, would you actually like me to destroy this point for point, or should I just lock this drama-bait and save you the embarrasment?

[Soly]

1 hour ago, Auroboro said:

if anything offends you I apologize.

It sounds more like "I'm gonna make drama and I don't care about you".

1 hour ago, Auroboro said:

So to start, let me preface this topic with this little statement: I am completely neutral about this entire thing. 

Spoiler

I know this kind of posts coming from you, so I won't get into it too much.

To answer your main concern:
Long ago people wanted a harder game because it was "too easy", or something like that, so Larva gave them that.
He can probably explain it better since he's the one who did it, but that's what I gather from it, keep in mind he also increased the character max stats.

About your neutral "donation" aimed post
I didn't put much thought into reading your wall of text but no, the change was not about donations.
I don't even know if donations were a thing by the time this change happened (only Larva would be able to answer that, I think).

Now some of my own opinion:
Lately I have been expressing my desire to nerf things all around, dark weapons, OP new items, character stats could probably go back to normal and monster stats reduced too
Why? Because there is not much headroom for changes if we wanted to, I wish I could increase monster HP past 32767 but is not possible atm, same with any other stat... although HP is the most important, at least for bosses.

With that said, any bit of drama and I'll lock this down  

[Fyrewolf5]

I'm probably not post the point for point refutation I wrote up. Instead I'll just definitively show with pictures that the myth of needing 80hit weapons for episode 2 is complete and utter bullshit.

Since Hucast has access to freeze traps, as well as a blizzard/arrest activation bonus in ultimate, I chose to show this on a non-cast hunter. Did it 3 times to show that it's not just a random fluke. ZERO hit weapons can be used in seabed, on the highest evp enemies in the game.

[flamingdratini]

1 hour ago, Soly said:

It sounds more like "I'm gonna make drama and I don't care about you".

  Reveal hidden contents

I know this kind of posts coming from you, so I won't get into it too much.

To answer your main concern:
Long ago people wanted a harder game because it was "too easy", or something like that, so Larva gave them that.
He can probably explain it better since he's the one who did it, but that's what I gather from it, keep in mind he also increased the character max stats.

About your neutral "donation" aimed post
I didn't put much thought into reading your wall of text but no, the change was not about donations.
I don't even know if donations were a thing by the time this change happened (only Larva would be able to answer that, I think).

Now some of my own opinion:
Lately I have been expressing my desire to nerf things all around, dark weapons, OP new items, character stats could probably go back to normal and monster stats reduced too
Why? Because there is not much headroom for changes if we wanted to, I wish I could increase monster HP past 32767 but is not possible atm, same with any other stat... although HP is the most important, at least for bosses.

With that said, any bit of drama and I'll lock this down  

Hey Soly just out of curiosity, lets say the changes you wanted were made (chara stats went to normal monster stats went to normal and op items were nerfed) wouldn't that a. make it easier for newer players (such as myself) to get into the game and b. give you a bigger ceiling to make more content? theoretically (i dont know anything about the programming or the work needed, this is just an attempt to make this make sense in my head), couldn't everything be reverted back to normal levels and then a "ultimate 2.0" be made which, not only has everything significantly harder and buffed, but you could also have special ultima versions of weapons drop that are stronger to cope with the higher difficulty (which could be made even harder than ultimate is now)? 

Edited April 12, 2017 by flamingdratini

[Soly]

@flamingdratini

Afaik low levels (aka Normal) don't have changes or are not as substantial as Ultimate, so not really, to start with, it would be the same (or nearly the same).

Regarding the idea of "Ultimate 2.0" or anything of that kind, is complicated, I cannot just put a new difficulty in, however I could (I'm actually currently looking into it) dynamically change the monster stats so you might be able to get a "higher difficulty" if you wanted to, however there is really no way to do "special items" for that difficulty.

[griffeni]

7 minutes ago, flamingdratini said:

Hey Soly just out of curiosity, lets say the changes you wanted were made (chara stats went to normal monster stats went to normal and op items were nerfed) wouldn't that a. make it easier for newer players (such as myself) to get into the game and b. give you a bigger ceiling to make more content? theoretically (i dont know anything about the programming or the work needed, this is just an attempt to make this make sense in my head), couldn't everything be reverted back to normal levels and then a "ultimate 2.0" be made which, not only has everything significantly harder and buffed, but you could also have special ultima versions of weapons drop that are stronger to cope with the higher difficulty (which could be made even harder than ultimate is now)? 

there was something like that a long time ago called crack mode where things were buffed even further but it had some bugs and people were using it to dupe but i would love to see that mode make its way back without the duping glitch in it

[Soly]

1 minute ago, griffeni said:

there was something like that a long time ago called crack mode where things were buffed even further but it had some bugs and people were using it to dupe but i would love to see that mode make its way back without the duping glitch in it

That was just a plain bad "design" of the system... I still remember when I figured out why people were on both ... pretty lame tbh.
That's why I am looking into a "dynamic monster stat change". This would fix the crack mode, but it would require so many server changes that probably would be made only in the new server.