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5 hours ago, Saber +7 said:

Other servers have done/tried this with varying success. I really wish there were a perfect way to this. Not only do FOs DMC essentially every cast, but when you get good enough gear you DMC yourself and if there's a few people using demons on the same target it will happen too. Really quite annoying.

yeah it really makes running a force kinda lame, buffs and heals only... lol here's hoping they manage to remove it. gotta wonder why sega even made it that way?

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34 minutes ago, kitemay said:

yeah it really makes running a force kinda lame, buffs and heals only... lol here's hoping they manage to remove it. gotta wonder why sega even made it that way?

Because this game was made when dial-up internet was the standard, it came out on the dreamcast originally. Damage cancel exists because each person's client is off doing their own stuff, doing all their own calculations for damage and monster ai and the like, and you send only the bare minimum of data to the other players about things. With how the monster packet gets synced, it's nearly impossible to remove damage cancel from the game, not without completely rewriting the netcode to make the server handle calculations and override the players or something like that. Heck, the game doesn't even send other player's true position all that often, it only does it when it absolutely needs to like when they attack so your client knows where to render a bullet from, hence why people sometimes get stuck on a corner and then warp forward after a few seconds or them doing an attack. Other servers have tried to do band-aid fixes, but they are not a miracle cure and have their own drawbacks that arise from it; damage cancel is basically built into the game, actually truely removing it would be very difficult to do.

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22 hours ago, Dutch Ride said:

Damn the staff is on FIRE today

Lol, nah... is just that there is no other answer, sadly.
Even worse with the fact that the project is in some sort of hiatus atm.

Whenever I get back to it, news about it should come back in the dev topic whatever I had.

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Hello! I just joined the server about a week or two ago, and thats also when I started heavily getting into Blue Burst (played on GC). Ive also been watching people from other servers play BB and noticed that they can switch the recovery/technique shop into a shop that sells all of the items mags need. This would be a huge help, as it is a huge hassle to have to search for monomates and monofluids of all things on my level 120 Hunter, just to feed my mag in the way I would like. Like I said, I'm new to this server, so ifĀ this is already a thing, feel free to tell me, and be on your way. Thanks for reading regardless!Ā 

Edited by TheMaskedGuide
Realized that this is a comment, not a post
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1 hour ago, TheMaskedGuide said:

Hello! I just joined the server about a week or two ago, and thats also when I started heavily getting into Blue Burst (played on GC). Ive also been watching people from other servers play BB and noticed that they can switch the recovery/technique shop into a shop that sells all of the items mags need. This would be a huge help, as it is a huge hassle to have to search for monomates and monofluids of all things on my level 120 Hunter, just to feed my mag in the way I would like. Like I said, I'm new to this server, so ifĀ this is already a thing, feel free to tell me, and be on your way. Thanks for reading regardless!Ā 

Switching the actual shop requires a huge amount of manual labor (there are something stupid like 4 million permutations that would have to be edited by hand).Ā  It was discussed and concluded that since Soly is working on new server software, it will be a feature in that when it is released (where it'll be easier to implement and maintain).Ā  However, in the meantime, there is an Episode 2 solo mode quest called Lemon's Shop that sells all mag consumables all the time.

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On 2019-01-12 at 3:37 PM, kitemay said:

yeah it really makes running a force kinda lame, buffs and heals only... lol here's hoping they manage to remove it. gotta wonder why sega even made it that way?

Lol yea even doing Zalure sometimes completely heals an entire group of monsters lmao, funny sometimes I donā€™t even bother debuffing when Iā€™m dual boxing.Ā 

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Hard to put together worthwhile suggestions without knowledge of what can and can't be done on the admin end, but my own thoughts:

-Forces seem really weak compared to other classes, I understand the limitations behind the game with damage cancel, but maybe it's still worth looking into alternate solutions

-Even without taking damage cancel into consideration, technique damage is generally pretty low on bossesĀ  (with a few exceptions) to the point where if you want to be competitive you are playing as a gimped ranger, or stuck debuffing (which is largely unneeded when every room is 3 rangers with dark meteor anyway). Maybe something like boss resistances can be tweaked (idk if this would unbalance everyone else), at least to the point where force isn't a meme.Ā 

-Unique force weapons, maybe some of the lower tier endlessly unused force items could get a pass at customization and buffing, not to the moon, but maybe the lower tier stuff could see some damage buffs, psycho bridge as an example seems great for maximizing force damage, but obtaining that is a pipe dream. psycho wand is a nice damage boost, but hard to obtain, maybe stuff like alive aquh could see a buff in the vein of glide divine v00. Or an equivelent to snow queen/spread needle weapon for reliable CC outside of spamming rabarta. Just more tools in the kit.Ā Force damage is pretty laughable outside of ep4

-Change the item wiki to add drop tables, I want to look up an item on the wiki and see who/what/where it drops for what ID. Crowdsource filling in the info.

-An option to vote/kick people from room

-A way to "recycle" shitty rares. Every 20 gae bolgs I get can be traded in for 1pd (or similar)

-Burning rangers default music every zone

Edited by silenthill27
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1 hour ago, silenthill27 said:


-Forces seem really weak compared to other classes, I understand the limitations behind the game with damage cancel, but maybe it's still worth looking into alternate solutions

-Unique force weapons, maybe some of the lower tier endlessly unused force items could get a pass at customization and buffing, not to the moon, but maybe the lower tier stuff could see some damage buffs, psycho bridge as an example seems great for maximizing force damage, but obtaining that is a pipe dream. psycho wand is a nice damage boost, but hard to obtain, maybe stuff like alive aquh could see a buff in the vein of glide divine v00. Or an equivelent to snow queen/spread needle weapon for reliable CC outside of spamming rabarta. Just more tools in the kit.Ā Force damage is pretty laughable outside of ep4
Ā 

-Burning rangers default music every zone

As per your first two points, I was in that boat just the other day. Until a bud suggested I get my hands on a Banana Cannon, a unique item to this server. Boy let me tell you... get a Banana Cannon. Why? Cuz it's not combo locked, it has rifle range, has the horizontal lock-on capacity of nearly a Yasminkov 7000V, and each shot fired can hit up to 10 (!!!) enemies at a time in a massive AoE. The special attack is max tier Blizzard (freezing enemies lowers EVP by 35%! So this gun reliably boosts FULL PARTY ATA when used right), and with a V501 to give ups to special attack triggers, you can definitely freeze even ultimate mobs, though it may take a few shots to do so, you'll be freezing at a higher rate than Rabarta 30. Add in the fact that Rabarta spells have a freeze tolerance build up and enemies can resist getting frozen by repeated Rabarta casts, and, well, just get one of these guns. It will change your life, seriously. Get a DEX mag, v101 (heavenly/battle with extra stats), v501 to make its freeze trigger more, a SMARTLINK to make up for non-RA ranged attacks, and whatever else you want to tack on I guess. It will help you level up tremendously. The Banana Cannon is a FO ONLY gun. Consider that you're probably just gonna spam Rafoie and Rabarta all day anyway... this gun lets you do that without needing to rely on Fluids, and you can simply rely on TP to cast Resta S/D J/Z. There ARE a few times, in Ultima quests with 30 enemies at a time, that maybe tossing out a Rabarta first or a Rafoie (to drop Gees or Canabin or Canadines to the ground) will be in your interest, too. Or a Gifoie to clear traps if you're using a trap/search.Ā 

And, that last bit? Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes, Lord Almighty, all the yes. Put Burning Rangers in everything at all times. Even real life.

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1 minute ago, DiosGX said:

As per your first two points, I was in that boat just the other day. Until a bud suggested I get my hands on a Banana Cannon, a unique item to this server. Boy let me tell you... get a Banana Cannon. Why? Cuz it's not combo locked, it has rifle range, has the horizontal lock-on capacity of nearly a Yasminkov 7000V, and each shot fired can hit up to 10 (!!!) enemies at a time in a massive AoE. The special attack is max tier Blizzard (freezing enemies lowers EVP by 35%! So this gun reliably boosts FULL PARTY ATA when used right), and with a V501 to give ups to special attack triggers, you can definitely freeze even ultimate mobs, though it may take a few shots to do so, you'll be freezing at a higher rate than Rabarta 30. Add in the fact that Rabarta spells have a freeze tolerance build up and enemies can resist getting frozen by repeated Rabarta casts, and, well, just get one of these guns. It will change your life, seriously. Get a DEX mag, v101 (heavenly/battle with extra stats), v501 to make its freeze trigger more, a SMARTLINK to make up for non-RA ranged attacks, and whatever else you want to tack on I guess. It will help you level up tremendously. The Banana Cannon is a FO ONLY gun. Consider that you're probably just gonna spam Rafoie and Rabarta all day anyway... this gun lets you do that without needing to rely on Fluids, and you can simply rely on TP to cast Resta S/D J/Z. There ARE a few times, in Ultima quests with 30 enemies at a time, that maybe tossing out a Rabarta first or a Rafoie (to drop Gees or Canabin or Canadines to the ground) will be in your interest, too. Or a Gifoie to clear traps if you're using a trap/search.Ā 

And, that last bit? Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes, Lord Almighty, all the yes. Put Burning Rangers in everything at all times. Even real life.

Yeah for sure that's a good gun, it just sucks (and it's not ultima gms fault, its sonicteam) that a force can't effectively play AS a force in the spellcaster sense, you're just essentially being turned into a ranger, and IMO that's a shame

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Just pretend that Banana Cannons only work on FO cuz it's a maaaagical guuun, fueled by magic. I mean, it's firing solid state rounds, not photons. Where are all those rockets coming from?!

Magic. Just lie to yourself better. ;p

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If I remember correctly, this is a difficult thing to balance since magic is based on mst which uses a really weird formula to calculate damage.Ā  @Fyrewolf5Ā would know what that formula is.Ā  But in essence the summit moon style weapons were an attempt to fix this.Ā  A Fo can deal a huge amount of spell damage if correctly geared, but this isn't as easy or simple to do as on a RA or HU.

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8 minutes ago, Lemon said:

If I remember correctly, this is a difficult thing to balance since magic is based on mst which uses a really weird formula to calculate damage.Ā  @Fyrewolf5Ā would know what that formula is.Ā  But in essence the summit moon style weapons were an attempt to fix this.Ā  A Fo can deal a huge amount of spell damage if correctly geared, but this isn't as easy or simple to do as on a RA or HU.

Technique damage formula:
{[(MSTĀ +Ā TBP)/5] x (1.0 +Ā CBĀ +Ā WBĀ +Ā MB)} x (1 -Ā RES)

TBP: Technique Base Power

CB: Class Bonus

WB: Weapon Bonus

MB: Merge Bonus

RES: Resistance

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2 hours ago, silenthill27 said:

Yeah for sure that's a good gun, it just sucks (and it's not ultima gms fault, its sonicteam) that a force can't effectively play AS a force in the spellcaster sense, you're just essentially being turned into a ranger, and IMO that's a shame

Ā 

2 hours ago, Lemon said:

If I remember correctly, this is a difficult thing to balance since magic is based on mst which uses a really weird formula to calculate damage.Ā  @Fyrewolf5Ā would know what that formula is.Ā  But in essence the summit moon style weapons were an attempt to fix this.Ā  A Fo can deal a huge amount of spell damage if correctly geared, but this isn't as easy or simple to do as on a RA or HU.


The formula is pretty much as was already stated, ((MST+TechPwr) / 5) x (boosts) x (resists), which if you examine it you will see that MST is the least important component, and the most important are the Boosts and Monster Resists (even techpower gains per spell level are much higher than mst gains; e.g. devil/technique is stronger than god/mind does for all spells, until maxing of course). If there were something I would consider tweaking more, it would be the enemy resists in the game, as those are almost exclusively the realm of forces (nobody uses Burning or Tempest specials seriously). When I do changes to things, I'm trying to stay in the realm of what pso already is, I'm not trying to alter it so much that it becomes a different game. It all needs to fit together in the larger scheme so that it's like it could have always been there. In that regard, the game itself was already biased against magic. There are too many instances where you find that enemies have 90+ in all resistances, have specific negative ai reactions to being hit with magic, or other such things. It was never intended for forces to be able to play full black mage through the game and be able to use techniques for all enemies (trying to do olga with only techniques is one of the most painful things haha). In 1p mode they did change some of the resistances to lean more toward that regard since if you are playing 1p you clearly aren't online, but this is an online game first and foremost, so I really don't have any intention of stepping any more away from the base game design in regards to techs.

However, I think techs are actually in a pretty good place overall right now. While Psycho Bridge is incredibly difficult to get, it also is incredibly powerful and puts you at really dangerously fast clears in comparison to other classes in a solo setting. Remember that magic is wider aoe and more targets than conventional weapons, cannot miss, and can stunlock enemies. It is meant to be weaker damage to compensate for its inherent advantages. While the ultra-low end is potentially a little lacking, the mid-range got a very significant boost when I upped all the Elemental Cloak boosts to 30% element from 10% (Ignition Cloak, Congeal Cloak, Tempest Cloak. I did not boost Select Cloak, as it would be too similar to MG+). I did a lot of testing on various forces when I wanted to implement this change, and it would pretty consistently shave off 1 spellcast from all mobs whether using pwand + 3seals, or pwand + hylian, or pbridge + hylian, etc. There is also the newer Stellar Shard item which makes two things forces like, the Quasar Staff (60% rf/gz 120%barta) and the Neutron Skin (+250mst armor), and stellar shard itself was a drop most suitable to be hunted with a force, as they are quite a bit more flexible dealing with the awkward nature of ep4 enemies/environments than hunters and rangers, and are more consistent on the boss due to their non-fluctuating tech damage. Glide v00 and Alis' Resolve also make using si- techs to supplement a team much more appealing as well, as that is more beneficial to a team than spamming ra- techs usually, giving some leeway to using techs in a team.

Overall techniques can do well in about half of the game (all of ep4, half of ep1). For the rest, forces will be required to use weapons too. Magic is only meant to supplement weapons, not replace them. We've introduced a buttload of gear aimed at forces that help them out on that side as well. Things like 100souls, Lindcray, Blood Sword, Banana Cannon, Sacred Bow, Slicer of Vengeance, Boomerang, Kiss of Death, Ultima Reaper, Sil Dragon Slayer, Stealth Sword, Master Sword, Rage de Glace, Samba Fiesta, Fury of the Beast, many of the Halloween Costumes, Godric's Cloak, etc. There are a lot of things out there to help forces and quite a lot that are exclusive or specifically designed to help them out. For a long time one of their biggest issues was specific bosses more than anything else, but things like dragons, worms, vol opt, gryphon, falz, and olga are less of an issue than they used to be due to the increased toolkit they have now.

When played competently and utilizing their entire arsenal, forces are an extremely powerful class. With high buffs to increase their own atp up (fomar s30 has more atp than racast without shifta) and high debuffs to weaken enemies (jellen 30 makes things only tickle), and near limitless healing ability, they are nearly unkillable at high levels. They can do 'good enough' physical damage for the most part with many different weapons, and they're also able to do useful things like aoe stun lilys, or detonate all traps in the room, or kill enemies beyond render range, or first-frame megid kill, or other things with magic besides the obvious ultra-wide high-target aoe damage/clear. In the arguably highest-tier area of the game (Ep2 Tower), forces are one of the most damaging classes, often outshining racast and racaseal, using things like bringer's rifle and samba fiesta and slicer of fanatic to great effect, greatly increasing everyone's output vs ill gills and epsilons, and simply keeping del lily's on lockdown easily. In challenge mode, forces can be incredibly powerful characters to bring along, not just for the smallest of shifta but also for their high damage output. In battle mode forces pretty much decimate all other characters with ease. In normal-vhard of all areas, forces are the undisputed kings. That last one illustrates how dangerous it can be to buff techs too much in this game, if forces are able to actually clear very well, then they will clear the entire room from miles away before anyone else can even reach the enemies at all.

I'd would even argue that the most capable class in the entire game is Fomar. Even though they are extremely underplayed, fomar is one of the potentially best classes; if they are a good player and have decent gear, they are perfectly competent at doing anything you could possibly throw at them in the game. They only have 44 less atp than Ramarl, the typical 'solo' class, but have access to better buffs, debuffs and heals. With Godric's Cloak on, they surpass the ata of a hucast. They may not have dark meteor, but they are perfectly capable of doing 'good enough' physical aoe damage, 'good enough' magical aoe damage, strong demons, and will be able to handle pretty much any situation they find themselves in, solo or in teams. Of course there are classes that might excel at certain situations over him, I'm just saying he's more than competent in the most situations of all.

Regardless, all forces are not classes to be underestimated just because the game is biased against magic. While going full black mage has some places where it struggles, and going full white mage can be boring and have a lot of downtime, the game is extremely generous in catering towards playing a versatile and competent red mage style, where you can do a good bit of everything well depending on what is needed. While they may not be as flashy as other classes, or put out quite as high numbers flying across the screen, there is a point you can reach where you can say they really do 'good enough' and don't lag behind other classes significantly at specific tasks, and it's at that point where their versatility shines.



Sorry for the wall of text there, now as some quick answers for your other questions:
Unique Force Weapons - adding in unique things to the game is difficult/impossible. We can't add new mechanics into the game, we have to use what already exists in new ways. Something like the 'bait launcher' you described before would be impossible to do.
Wiki Linking to the Drop Table - I really like this idea.
Vote Kick Option - Maybe in the new Aselia server software
Recycling bad rares - Difficult to do in a way that is balanced. Even old teampoints system, people would just sacrifice hundreds of 1/2 drop 9star rares. Bad rares are going to exist, just throw them away or hand them off to some newbies.
Burning Rangers Music Everywhere - this is easily doable by either editing your own files, or I can give you a few hundred burning rangers music disks, which allow you to play the music anywhere. Since burning rangers is already in the game properly looped(HEARTS.ogg), you wouldn't need to do any audio editing, you could simply make tons of copies and rename+overwrite the files for each area. However, it probably would not play properly in ep4 areas if you simply renamed it, as they do their dynamic loop differently and require specially made multistream files to play properly, so if you want to meet up and get music disks let me know.

For Freezing, you can also practice instant freeze timings. It's a difficult trick to pull off, but enemies have specific points in their animations where they become 100% vulnerable to freezing with any level gi-/ra-barta. These are generally at the beginning and end of animations, or right as an animation is about to change. The most common one would be right after a monster spawns and is about to activate/aggro/awaken/etc. This trick does require extreme precision and is not easy to do, typically if you are having an off day it's not even worth it to try in a serious game, but with good practice it can be another tool in your arsenal on any fleshy character. It's difficult to describe some of the points where it's possible. Times like right as a delbiter starts/ends charging or stomping, or right as a sinow starts punching, or right after they have finished the second punch and are going back to ready position, or similar times right at start and end of slapper enemy attacks (it's kind of like a dark souls 1 parry, not while they are telegraphing but right as they actually start swinging forward). Basically, when an animation changes/shifts there is usually a vulnerable timing, but it's not always the easiest or most practical thing to hit.
Here's a video with many examples of it working:

Ā 

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