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1 hour ago, Fyrewolf5 said:

 


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:

 

Thanks Fyrewolf, this is great info, I didn't realize about the cloaks being boosted to 30%, that's exactly in line with what I meant about revitalizing old gear and adding boosts. As far as the wiki goes it would be great if there was a "Unique to Ultima" section that went over those kinds of changes. 10 million years of playing PSO and my habit is still to check on PSO world, it would be great if there was a way to see this info. I would be happy to help create content (if I had some kind of list of changes to pull from). I see things like new items (combine holy ray with whatever consumable, but there is no info on how/where/when that consumable is available). I think this would greatly help newer players like myself. The info is there in the wiki, just not easily accessible unless you know to look for it.

I'll have to do my own testing and hunt down some of the cloaks to see for myself, but that definitely goes a long way. Was thinking maybe something like non stackable units (if that was possible) that boosted techs might be an interesting approach as well.

And feel free to drop me 10million disk 3s sometime :) 

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12 hours ago, silenthill27 said:

-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.

I decided against such thing...
Since looking up stuff in the drop table it's just as simple as copy pasting the name into the filter, I didn't add any linking for that.

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Cuz of how I made both, they are separate and not that easy (not that hard either tho) to merge with each other so I just didn't feel like it.
If you really want.. I can do what I suggested about linking to the drop table with the name filter set, but that's probably as much as I'd do...

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26 minutes ago, Soly said:

Cuz of how I made both, they are separate and not that easy (not that hard either tho) to merge with each other so I just didn't feel like it.
If you really want.. I can do what I suggested about linking to the drop table with the name filter set, but that's probably as much as I'd do...

I still say make a basic wiki page for players to fill out ourselves. I’d seriously dog the FUCK out of a wiki. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Allow character transfer to ephinea, though currently ephinea's transfer is shutdown for an unspecified amount of time, im sure theres a way to allow players to make game accounts so that they can be moved over between one or the other, so those who want authentic can go to ephinea, and if they wanna play ultima with a different character, they can transfer over. i know it sounds dumb, and i admit some of the details arent spot on, but the general idea of allowing transfer would be nice.

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35 minutes ago, MaskedShardy said:

Allow character transfer to ephinea, though currently ephinea's transfer is shutdown for an unspecified amount of time, im sure theres a way to allow players to make game accounts so that they can be moved over between one or the other, so those who want authentic can go to ephinea, and if they wanna play ultima with a different character, they can transfer over. i know it sounds dumb, and i admit some of the details arent spot on, but the general idea of allowing transfer would be nice.

The main reason this will not work is that this server is entirely independent from Ephinea. We have entirely different staff including owners. There's about 1000000000000 other reasons this will not work. The reason their transfer is shut down is because nothing is stopping me from making an account file with 4 200s all maxed out with the best gear in the game. It will not return.

Edited by Saber +7
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Make it FO only while we're at it.

 

Also, buff burning to deal damage based on mst

Edited by Lemon
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1 hour ago, EDEN said:

 @serverus


Actually though @Lemon, MST based lightning and burning damage would be very cool

Did we decide whether or not this was possible? I feel like it has come up before. 

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54 minutes ago, Dutch Ride said:

Did we decide whether or not this was possible? I feel like it has come up before. 

iirc it is not.  I just felt like throwing out more ideas that won't happen while we're talking about them.

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