State of the Union - ZH Dreams Edition
Mar 29, 2015 19:07:34 GMT 1
archaxe and Admin Nagash like this
Post by Vex on Mar 29, 2015 19:07:34 GMT 1
I'd like to preface this post by saying that this is a cumulative post of issues that I have seen brought up by the community on a regular basis, and not all opinions are shared by all players, or myself. Much of this will be based upon my experience since the time this shard relaunched, so there may be a bit of bias. The following is a list of both positive and negative thoughts about the shard, and some possible ideas of how to remedy some of the things that are possible concerns, downfalls or short-comings of the shard.
1. Spawns
After having explored a majority of the world, including all but one dungeon so far, I would like to commend the staff team on doing an excellent job with the spawning of the world. No matter what part of the world you're in, there will be something there, so you never have the feeling that you're just in an unimportant part of the world, that has been forgotten. We all expect to see a variety of mobs, and fairly closely spawned areas in dungeons, but in the past many shards have forsaken the wilderness of the world, or only spawned a few outdoor "boss" mobs, while forgetting that the environment and feel of the world matters. Here, I'm happy to see a snake, bear, goat, horse or other random wildlife as I'm running through a forest, far from the nearest dungeon or town. Coming upon brigand camps, or orc forts around the world, I see exactly as I would expect; a band of orcs, occasionally being lead by an orc brute, or a band of brigands inhabiting the camp that is meant to be their home.
2. Loot
Having spent countless hours hunting, and identifying loot from a variety of mobs, ranging from the levels of the apprentice dungeon to the loot dropped by archangels, Tiamat/Glutton, and everything in between, I'm quite satisfied with the level of drops, and feel they are quite appropriate for the mobs that have dropped them. Skill mods are possibly a bit too abundant, but as the shard progresses, few of those items hold much value, so this is not a huge issue. On average I spend between 4-7 hours a day hunting, either solo or with a few friends. In our time hunting, we've found a hand full of level 5+ prots, an ebook, nbook, a good poison weapon, a hand full of stat mods worth mention(+9 or above) and two GM armor pieces. While this may not sound like a lot for the amount of time spent hunting, it's enough to make you feel like there's a reason to hunt. Like you've got a decent chance of finding something worth being excited about. At the same time, the shard isn't being flooded with "top tier" items, like some shards in the past, which I feel is perfect. On some shards in the past, it felt like you were getting items that were game-breaking upgrades with almost every top-tier monster kill, which lead to people getting bored extremely quickly, and losing interest. The balance here feels perfect.
3. Economy
Again, unlike on many previous ZH shards, I feel that the staff team did an excellent job finding the sweet spot here. With the decrease to sell value of items, in made hunting the most profitable way of creating income, thus promoted active playing, instead of just macroing until you were spec 4-5, and not having to worry about getting the money for houses, boats, reags and all the other things you generally need or want when starting on a new shard. At this point on many shards, gold had little to no value, because of how easy it was to obtain. Here, while trading is still a very prevalent form of obtaining items you need, people will still accept gold for items they're trying to get rid of, because it still serves a purpose. In the past, if you asked for a GM Druid item in trade for gold, you'd be laughed at, because no amount of gold was really worth as much as that item. Here, items of that nature will still be sold, even if it's for a fairly high amount of gold.
4. Server Stability
Have we had a little bit of downtime? Sure. We're playing a game that was released before most of our children were born(for those of us who have children), running on a free program to emulate actual gaming servers, on scripts that were originally made around 15 years ago, hosted by someone who loves the game enough to still put the time, effort and money into maintaining this server, for us to play on for free. In the time this server has been relaunched, we've had two significant amounts of downtime. One due to players not having the respect to just play the game that we're being allowed to play, for free, and feeling the need to attempt to ruin it for all of us, and the other due to an unexpected script issue, which was quickly resolved. Only one other ZH shard I've played on could boast this type of stability, and even then, the other one that had similar stability couldn't have survived the amount of DDoS attacks that this shard has withstood, without ever showing a sign that anything was going on at all.
5. Bugs and Abuse
There will be bugs in any game; that's a given. Most of the issues from previous shards have been patched. There will always be flaws, and there will always be those that attempt to locate and exploit those, but Dreams has done a fairly good job of correcting those as he is made aware of them, as I'm sure he will continue to do.
6. Forum
As I'm sure most of you can tell, I spend a lot of time on the forums. I enjoy helping people with issues, when they are issues that I can do anything to assist with, and I enjoy debating. Having an active forum, in my opinion, promotes are more close knit community. As we all know, a large part of the time characters are logged in, they are macroing, so it's important to have another way to get in touch with other players, and this forum does a great job of providing that. The only thing I could ask for would be a higher amount of staff presence on the forums, which I will go into later in this post(See part 7. Staff)
7. Staff
I'd like to start this off by saying, "staff are volunteers." They're not paid, they're not rewarded, yet some people feel they are to be at your beckoned call at all times. These people have families, responsibilities and real life obligations. They can not be online at all times, and always there to answer every question and complaint you may have. With that said, I do feel that the staff presence is lacking. There have been times where I, as well as others, have had a rather time sensitive matter(bugged corpse, so we're unable to get loot from a monster we've spent our time killing.. bug abusers using a bug to turn us grey in town to guard-whack us.. etc), only to page and see "14 pages ahead of you." When there's an average of 320 accounts online at a time, and you assume a good number of those are players running 4 clients, you've got probably less than 100 players. Having 14 people ahead of you means there's a good chance pages haven't been answered in quite some time. I've experienced times(more than once), where I've paged in the afternoon(GMT-5), and not had the page answered for 18-20 hours. As stated above, I understand staff has responsibilities outside of babysitting the shard, but I feel there needs to be staff online and available more regularly, in order to keep the shard flowing and functioning smoothly. I fully understand the risk of bringing on new staff members, due to the risk of corruption, but that's why there's lower staff ranks with limited power, to allow the presence to still be there, and questions to be answered "officially", while testing those new staff members ability to handle power in increasing amounts as they prove themselves worth to wield it. The same can be said about the forums. Often players have issues that can be addressed over the forums, and in this day and age, I'm fairly sure we all have smartphones. Staff can have a presence on the forums, being able to answer questions and address player concerns and issues from anywhere they go. I feel that overall the playerbase would be much more happy if they felt that staff at least acknowledged their concerns, and if there's a reason that it is the way it is, and won't be changed, let the players know that. Feeling that your concerns are falling of deaf ears is a very discouraging feeling.
8. Class Balancing
There seems to be a great deal of concern about the class balancing of multiple classes in the game(Bards and thieves mainly, due to those being the classes which have changed on this shard as opposed to many others), so I will break this down into sub sections to address each.
8.1 Thieves
There has been a great deal of concern about the power level of thieves in PvP combat, due to the difficulty of curing the poison by any source outside of consumables, as well as the lack of scaling thieves have from gear. This could possibly be resolved by lowering the base damage of poisons by a small amount, and implementing some sort of scaling of the poison based on the poisoning skill(making hunting in Assassin's items more beneficial, like archery mods are to a PP or ranger), or scaling based on the damage modifier of the weapon which is applying the poison. As to the issue of being able to cure the poison in PvP, perhaps lowering the difficulty slightly to cure with a skill(Such as poisoning skill level when applied to the weapon + 5 difficulty per spec of thief), and the ability to cure from the warrior skill, "Healing" to something similar(Such as healing skill + 5 for each spec), so a spec 4 thief using deadly poison at 135 poisoning would require 155 healing to cure by a non-spec player, but 135 to cure as a spec 4 warrior. The same check could be preformed based on magery, and musicianship for bards(using the songbook) To bring this back into balance, perhaps add a check on the Fishing skill when using a cure fish, so it would not be 100% chance to cure for any player carrying those fish, allowing each class to have a way to cure the poison of a thief(With the exception of thieves themselves, without carrying mage potions, which would still be accessible to all classes.)
8.2 Bards
Bards are currently being forced to cast using mana, instead of the standard form of casting using their stamina. Bards are a dexterity based class, which only gain intelligence from one of their skills. This is exactly opposite of mages, which gain intelligence from all of their skills, except alchemy which gains dexterity. Nobody would ask a mage to cast from dexterity, and in the same sense, it doesn't make sense to ask a bard to cast from intelligence. Bards are currently being forced into macroing one skill, which is currently the easiest to max, in order to gain the stat which they are required to have to use their songbook. The casting costs of these songs are balanced around stamina, and cost roughly 30 mana to cast, as opposed to the average 10-15 which mages are required to pay to cast from an earth book, and are required to have an item to regen mana, where mages simply use a skill. Defensively, mages take a reduced amount of magical damage, in addition to having spell resist, which bards have neither. In the current state, there is no point what-so-ever of playing a bard over a mage.
In conclusion, I'm very happy with this shard, but definitely see some things that could be improved upon. Some can be very easy, quick fixes, while others would be far more time consuming and long-term goals. I don't write this to criticize, but to try to help improve. This very well may be the last successful shard of it's kind, and I very much want to see it thrive and grow. Just like with flowers, they must be watered and nurtured; you must pull away the dead petals and weeds to allow it to grow. I point out the weaknesses here in hopes that they can be corrected, and this shard can continue growing larger and stronger for a long time to come. I thank you all for taking the time to read this post, and welcome any other opinions and concerns that anyone may have.
1. Spawns
After having explored a majority of the world, including all but one dungeon so far, I would like to commend the staff team on doing an excellent job with the spawning of the world. No matter what part of the world you're in, there will be something there, so you never have the feeling that you're just in an unimportant part of the world, that has been forgotten. We all expect to see a variety of mobs, and fairly closely spawned areas in dungeons, but in the past many shards have forsaken the wilderness of the world, or only spawned a few outdoor "boss" mobs, while forgetting that the environment and feel of the world matters. Here, I'm happy to see a snake, bear, goat, horse or other random wildlife as I'm running through a forest, far from the nearest dungeon or town. Coming upon brigand camps, or orc forts around the world, I see exactly as I would expect; a band of orcs, occasionally being lead by an orc brute, or a band of brigands inhabiting the camp that is meant to be their home.
2. Loot
Having spent countless hours hunting, and identifying loot from a variety of mobs, ranging from the levels of the apprentice dungeon to the loot dropped by archangels, Tiamat/Glutton, and everything in between, I'm quite satisfied with the level of drops, and feel they are quite appropriate for the mobs that have dropped them. Skill mods are possibly a bit too abundant, but as the shard progresses, few of those items hold much value, so this is not a huge issue. On average I spend between 4-7 hours a day hunting, either solo or with a few friends. In our time hunting, we've found a hand full of level 5+ prots, an ebook, nbook, a good poison weapon, a hand full of stat mods worth mention(+9 or above) and two GM armor pieces. While this may not sound like a lot for the amount of time spent hunting, it's enough to make you feel like there's a reason to hunt. Like you've got a decent chance of finding something worth being excited about. At the same time, the shard isn't being flooded with "top tier" items, like some shards in the past, which I feel is perfect. On some shards in the past, it felt like you were getting items that were game-breaking upgrades with almost every top-tier monster kill, which lead to people getting bored extremely quickly, and losing interest. The balance here feels perfect.
3. Economy
Again, unlike on many previous ZH shards, I feel that the staff team did an excellent job finding the sweet spot here. With the decrease to sell value of items, in made hunting the most profitable way of creating income, thus promoted active playing, instead of just macroing until you were spec 4-5, and not having to worry about getting the money for houses, boats, reags and all the other things you generally need or want when starting on a new shard. At this point on many shards, gold had little to no value, because of how easy it was to obtain. Here, while trading is still a very prevalent form of obtaining items you need, people will still accept gold for items they're trying to get rid of, because it still serves a purpose. In the past, if you asked for a GM Druid item in trade for gold, you'd be laughed at, because no amount of gold was really worth as much as that item. Here, items of that nature will still be sold, even if it's for a fairly high amount of gold.
4. Server Stability
Have we had a little bit of downtime? Sure. We're playing a game that was released before most of our children were born(for those of us who have children), running on a free program to emulate actual gaming servers, on scripts that were originally made around 15 years ago, hosted by someone who loves the game enough to still put the time, effort and money into maintaining this server, for us to play on for free. In the time this server has been relaunched, we've had two significant amounts of downtime. One due to players not having the respect to just play the game that we're being allowed to play, for free, and feeling the need to attempt to ruin it for all of us, and the other due to an unexpected script issue, which was quickly resolved. Only one other ZH shard I've played on could boast this type of stability, and even then, the other one that had similar stability couldn't have survived the amount of DDoS attacks that this shard has withstood, without ever showing a sign that anything was going on at all.
5. Bugs and Abuse
There will be bugs in any game; that's a given. Most of the issues from previous shards have been patched. There will always be flaws, and there will always be those that attempt to locate and exploit those, but Dreams has done a fairly good job of correcting those as he is made aware of them, as I'm sure he will continue to do.
6. Forum
As I'm sure most of you can tell, I spend a lot of time on the forums. I enjoy helping people with issues, when they are issues that I can do anything to assist with, and I enjoy debating. Having an active forum, in my opinion, promotes are more close knit community. As we all know, a large part of the time characters are logged in, they are macroing, so it's important to have another way to get in touch with other players, and this forum does a great job of providing that. The only thing I could ask for would be a higher amount of staff presence on the forums, which I will go into later in this post(See part 7. Staff)
7. Staff
I'd like to start this off by saying, "staff are volunteers." They're not paid, they're not rewarded, yet some people feel they are to be at your beckoned call at all times. These people have families, responsibilities and real life obligations. They can not be online at all times, and always there to answer every question and complaint you may have. With that said, I do feel that the staff presence is lacking. There have been times where I, as well as others, have had a rather time sensitive matter(bugged corpse, so we're unable to get loot from a monster we've spent our time killing.. bug abusers using a bug to turn us grey in town to guard-whack us.. etc), only to page and see "14 pages ahead of you." When there's an average of 320 accounts online at a time, and you assume a good number of those are players running 4 clients, you've got probably less than 100 players. Having 14 people ahead of you means there's a good chance pages haven't been answered in quite some time. I've experienced times(more than once), where I've paged in the afternoon(GMT-5), and not had the page answered for 18-20 hours. As stated above, I understand staff has responsibilities outside of babysitting the shard, but I feel there needs to be staff online and available more regularly, in order to keep the shard flowing and functioning smoothly. I fully understand the risk of bringing on new staff members, due to the risk of corruption, but that's why there's lower staff ranks with limited power, to allow the presence to still be there, and questions to be answered "officially", while testing those new staff members ability to handle power in increasing amounts as they prove themselves worth to wield it. The same can be said about the forums. Often players have issues that can be addressed over the forums, and in this day and age, I'm fairly sure we all have smartphones. Staff can have a presence on the forums, being able to answer questions and address player concerns and issues from anywhere they go. I feel that overall the playerbase would be much more happy if they felt that staff at least acknowledged their concerns, and if there's a reason that it is the way it is, and won't be changed, let the players know that. Feeling that your concerns are falling of deaf ears is a very discouraging feeling.
8. Class Balancing
There seems to be a great deal of concern about the class balancing of multiple classes in the game(Bards and thieves mainly, due to those being the classes which have changed on this shard as opposed to many others), so I will break this down into sub sections to address each.
8.1 Thieves
There has been a great deal of concern about the power level of thieves in PvP combat, due to the difficulty of curing the poison by any source outside of consumables, as well as the lack of scaling thieves have from gear. This could possibly be resolved by lowering the base damage of poisons by a small amount, and implementing some sort of scaling of the poison based on the poisoning skill(making hunting in Assassin's items more beneficial, like archery mods are to a PP or ranger), or scaling based on the damage modifier of the weapon which is applying the poison. As to the issue of being able to cure the poison in PvP, perhaps lowering the difficulty slightly to cure with a skill(Such as poisoning skill level when applied to the weapon + 5 difficulty per spec of thief), and the ability to cure from the warrior skill, "Healing" to something similar(Such as healing skill + 5 for each spec), so a spec 4 thief using deadly poison at 135 poisoning would require 155 healing to cure by a non-spec player, but 135 to cure as a spec 4 warrior. The same check could be preformed based on magery, and musicianship for bards(using the songbook) To bring this back into balance, perhaps add a check on the Fishing skill when using a cure fish, so it would not be 100% chance to cure for any player carrying those fish, allowing each class to have a way to cure the poison of a thief(With the exception of thieves themselves, without carrying mage potions, which would still be accessible to all classes.)
8.2 Bards
Bards are currently being forced to cast using mana, instead of the standard form of casting using their stamina. Bards are a dexterity based class, which only gain intelligence from one of their skills. This is exactly opposite of mages, which gain intelligence from all of their skills, except alchemy which gains dexterity. Nobody would ask a mage to cast from dexterity, and in the same sense, it doesn't make sense to ask a bard to cast from intelligence. Bards are currently being forced into macroing one skill, which is currently the easiest to max, in order to gain the stat which they are required to have to use their songbook. The casting costs of these songs are balanced around stamina, and cost roughly 30 mana to cast, as opposed to the average 10-15 which mages are required to pay to cast from an earth book, and are required to have an item to regen mana, where mages simply use a skill. Defensively, mages take a reduced amount of magical damage, in addition to having spell resist, which bards have neither. In the current state, there is no point what-so-ever of playing a bard over a mage.
In conclusion, I'm very happy with this shard, but definitely see some things that could be improved upon. Some can be very easy, quick fixes, while others would be far more time consuming and long-term goals. I don't write this to criticize, but to try to help improve. This very well may be the last successful shard of it's kind, and I very much want to see it thrive and grow. Just like with flowers, they must be watered and nurtured; you must pull away the dead petals and weeds to allow it to grow. I point out the weaknesses here in hopes that they can be corrected, and this shard can continue growing larger and stronger for a long time to come. I thank you all for taking the time to read this post, and welcome any other opinions and concerns that anyone may have.
