A Hill Worth Dying On

[Roekai]

Evasion and Hardcore need to be mandatory.

All creatures and all players should have a 10% (Honestly I'd like something closer to 25% but I realize that is entirely unrealistic) evasion percentage. And, every time you die, you should lose one piece of armor (My preference would be ALL armor) until you recover your tombstone.

Evasion extends combat, putting more of an emphasis of sustainability and the trinity rather than DPS. I consider myself a tank, yet the damage modifications on my gear are mandatory, as I would be gimping myself otherwise. I would like to live in a world where forsaking damage modifications would be a viable construct, a world with evasion. No matter what build you run, one must select the +40% damage mods, and have at least 1 or 2 heavy hitting skills to be viable (to hold aggro as a tank, etc). Evasion ends this trend, or at least mitigates it, by devaluing high damage high cost skills.

Furthermore, there needs to be a more significant penalty to death. If you wipe in a dungeon, there should be incentive to have to fight back, instead of going to Serbule to transmute. Now, nobody wants 1999 Norrath levels of difficulty (except maybe me), but what is the point of hardcore if there are no bonuses? Make it mandatory or give a flat 10% armor, hp, and endo to harcore players, so I have an incentive to fuck myself.

Let the hate begin.

Edit: I love this game, and have been playing since 2016. I love this game, and will play regardless. But this is my only, and has been consistent, criticism.

[Yaffy]

I heard that early versions of the game actually did have a global 10% evasion or so on every monster. A lot of people disliked it and it got removed, so I don't think we'll see it again, at least not for ordinary monsters.

That said, if you want enemies to be tankier why not boost enemy health/armor/damage mitigation instead? Evasion isn't really a great way to boost enemy survivability because:

1: It can be mitigated with a single accuracy boost, which means it doesn't require you to build very much in order to mitigate it. Currently not everyone builds accuracy because not every enemy has evasion, but if every enemy did then everyone would just feel like they have to shoehorn the generic +accuracy mod onto their gear. This would just annoy everyone into spending a mod slot for accuracy at most, or always using an item that boosts accuracy.

2: If you don't have accuracy boosts (Ex. If the evasion cannot be mitigated or it's early game) it makes combat much more random. Now personally you might like or dislike this (I personally dislike it, as I think enemy crits are already a very heavy handed way of implementing randomness that I think needs improvement and don't want more), but the issue is that it encourages people to play very boring and samey builds in order to mitigate the randomness. Evasion makes combos significantly worse, as missing a move in your combo can potentially ruin the entire point of your build until your cooldowns come back, which isn't fun. It would encourage people to make builds where every move is independent of each other which isn't interesting in any way.

I feel like recent patches, such as the one that give enemies significant damage reduction for having high armor do a much better job at trying to weaken "Nuke" builds, without heavily punishing other players, as well as the general boosts to health and armor which encourage more sustainable DPS builds rather than just nuking.




I consider myself a tank, yet the damage modifications on my gear are mandatory, as I would be gimping myself otherwise. I would like to live in a world where forsaking damage modifications would be a viable construct, a world with evasion. No matter what build you run, one must select the +40% damage mods, and have at least 1 or 2 heavy hitting skills to be viable (to hold aggro as a tank, etc). Evasion ends this trend, or at least mitigates it, by devaluing high damage high cost skills.


I would argue that the general design around tanking in Project Gorgon needs a lot of changes in general, but adding evasion to enemies wouldn't help you at all. In fact, having enemies evade your attacks makes things way worse, as an enemy dodging your taunt can completely ruin your ability to tank, as many skills rely on a single ability for most of their taunt. Most tanks are essentially reliant on a nuke to taunt, just that the nuke applies hate rather than damage. If enemies all had evasion, then you would need to spend just as much effort to ensure you don't miss as everyone else.

In fact, if every enemy had unmitigatable evasion, I can confidently say that it would effect tanks negatively far more than any DPS build to the point where tanking could become entirely useless. If a DPS build misses, then at the very least the player can continue to attack despite missing and continue doing their job of doing damage. If you as a tank player misses your taunt, then you will almost certainly be unable to get aggro, making you completely worthless as a tank until your taunt comes off cooldown 10+ seconds later at best or the entire fight at worst.

[cr00cy]

I disagree. Making hardcore mandatory woudl turn off peopel who just wnat to have fun time. In your example - peopel who give up on dungeon after single wipe probbaly wouldn't even bother to start run if they risked loosing they gear.

On top of that, if we make dungeons more risky, it would make gearing up harder, making people feel like they are forced to either craft, or buy gear, just so that they can go to dungeon. So no, mandatory hardcore is bad idea.

I do agree though that peopel who choose to play in hardcore should enjoy soem bonuses, liek increased drop rates for better gear.

While I perosnaly prefer tanky build stoo, and woudl love to see combat time extended, adding global evasion is posisbly worst way to do it. In fact it was done alread - in first iteration of this system every mob had evasion, and I don't recall even single person saying they liked it. Its just too dman frustrating, when you comfortably farm mobs in the area, and then randomly die simply because you had bad roll and missed 2-3 times.

One of arguments many people, myself inculded, made when global evasion was a thing is that its broken system. Its either potent enough to warrant building around, then every build needs accuracy, which limits build diversity, or its not, in which case peopel will ignore it, takign occasional frustration over havign to adjust they builds.

In my opinion, current system, where only certain mobs have evasion is much better. That way they can have enough of it for it to make difference, and peopel who wnat to hunt such monsters will have to adjust they builds accordingly, while those who dont wnt to build evasion can simply avoid them. I perosnaly would love to see this system expanded, givign monsters different 'quirks'. Currently we have two, with evasion and tough mobs, But I really hope we will see more in the future.

I would also love to see mobs with such special 'quirks' to drop special items, to encurage peopel to make specialized builds to hunt them.

Now, back to extendign combat.

Buffing monsters Hp/Armor is simplest solution, as is nerfing dmage players do. Another option would be to make mosnter resistances/weaknesses more impactfull. Maybe add somethign like blocking/parring mechanic, where mob have chance to reduce damge taken by certain amount(similar to evasion, but less frustrating). But oen thign that I storngly belive needs to be done before we buff mobs even futher, is to make players toughter. Rigth now, most defense/sustain options are simply too weak, which is one of reasons people focus on damage so much. For many build goign glass cannon is not 'better' option - its only one. If I see mod that says one of my attack skill will restore like 40-60 hp or armor on my lv 80 gear most of the time I just laugh, because I have around 700 of each, and can lose half of it from single crit.

Healing for 80, or even 100 on 10 sec cd will not help me much.

[Lyndshade]

Evasion and Hardcore need to be mandatory.

All creatures and all players should have a 10% (Honestly I'd like something closer to 25% but I realize that is entirely unrealistic) evasion percentage. And, every time you die, you should lose one piece of armor (My preference would be ALL armor) until you recover your tombstone.

Evasion extends combat, putting more of an emphasis of sustainability and the trinity rather than DPS. I consider myself a tank, yet the damage modifications on my gear are mandatory, as I would be gimping myself otherwise. I would like to live in a world where forsaking damage modifications would be a viable construct, a world with evasion. No matter what build you run, one must select the +40% damage mods, and have at least 1 or 2 heavy hitting skills to be viable (to hold aggro as a tank, etc). Evasion ends this trend, or at least mitigates it, by devaluing high damage high cost skills.

Furthermore, there needs to be a more significant penalty to death. If you wipe in a dungeon, there should be incentive to have to fight back, instead of going to Serbule to transmute. Now, nobody wants 1999 Norrath levels of difficulty (except maybe me), but what is the point of hardcore if there are no bonuses? Make it mandatory or give a flat 10% armor, hp, and endo to harcore players, so I have an incentive to fuck myself.

Let the hate begin.

Edit: I love this game, and have been playing since 2016. I love this game, and will play regardless. But this is my only, and has been consistent, criticism.


You do realize the population of this game is a merely 140-200 right? If they make it into the masochist mode you are looking for the only ones "dying on a hill" are you and about 50 other people who will be left playing it. I do get the sense you will be ok with that though.

Point is business wise and getting people to play your game with this type of mode = instant overlook/uninstall by 99% of people.

[alleryn]

Furthermore, there needs to be a more significant penalty to death. If you wipe in a dungeon, there should be incentive to have to fight back, instead of going to Serbule to transmute. Now, nobody wants 1999 Norrath levels of difficulty (except maybe me), but what is the point of hardcore if there are no bonuses? Make it mandatory or give a flat 10% armor, hp, and endo to harcore players, so I have an incentive to fuck myself.
I don't understand why you need a tactical incentive to play the game in a more fun (imo), more challenging mode. The challenge (or more precisely, the motivation to play carefully/"well" -- the manifestation into a more immersive environment in which death is displeasurable -- is the incentive.

[Roekai]

YAFFY:

I was there when evasion was implemented, and subsequently removed because of all the bitching. But obviously, I still think it was a bad idea to listen to the negative feedback. Of course, the people that were already playing the game sans-evasion were going to bitch (because they had min-maxed into 2 button mash builds which are still, unfortunately, popular today), but anybody that started playing with evasion as a baseline mechanic would have nothing to complain about. The devs put evasion in for a reason, to address a problem, and it worked. If they just stuck to their guns, they might have lost a few subs initially but the overall quality of the game would have improved.

To address your first point, obviously the current system of evasion would have to be overhauled if a flat evasion was installed, so really none of these points bother my arguement.

To address your second point, what is wrong with a slight variance in combat? How does implementing randomness encourage people to play boring and samey builds? As it stands today, everyone plays boring and samey builds (DPS). NOBODY doesn't have all the powerful DPS mods. Boring and samey. By adding variance to combat it would increase the value of low power low damage moves, and non-damage modifications. Also, it wouldn't be hard to code so that even with a miss the combo chain can be completed, as long as you use the skills in the proper order.

And I completely disagree with your point that evasion would negatively effect tanks more than DPS; that, to me, is preposterous. If a DPS build misses on one of its 2 button mashes, it severely decreases output. If a tank with a more balanced skillset (no dominant damage skills) misses, it does not.

Player A has 2 very high damage (2000) skills and 3 low damage (500) skills = 5,500dmg total
Player B has a balanced 5 skill set (1000dmg) = 5000dmg total

Player A misses a 2000dmg skill, it lowers output to 3,500
Player B misses a 1000dmg skill, it lowers output to 4,000

Even if Player A misses a low damage skill and is @ 5,000
Player B is still @ 4,000 with a miss, but has 170% taunt from damage, so still has a higher aggro/DPS as far as the NPC is concerned.

Basically, mathematically, evasion as a matter of fact negatively impacts people with higher DPS and cost skills, because a miss means a much higher percentage of mods wasted (balanced builds don't stack mods as much), as well as endurance wasted (and they usually have longer cool-downs). So I don't understand your argument.

CR00CY:

You didn't really state anything other than your opinions of what people would think. So here is my opinion of what people would think. People still play EQ to this day; there's a 3 hour long waiting list for the Aradune server, so I think plenty of people are okay with a corpse run.

And, you claim that evasion is frustrating because if you miss 2-3 times, you die; you literally just identified the problem that I am trying to fix. I have a balanced build, and I barely noticed evasion at all. I could miss probably 5-7 times in a row before it became a problem, and the chances of that happening are statistically insignificant. Basically, what I am trying to say is if that missing twice in a row causes you to die that is a flaw in your character design (2-button mash) rather than a flaw in the game. And this is not my opinion, it is the opinion of the developers. You can look up the old threads if you want – the whole reason evasion was implemented in the first place is because the devs didn't like 2 button mash builds and wanted to extend combat. So this is not just something I identified as a problem, the developers also did, and tried (successfully I might add) to address it.

LYNDSHADE:

They banned 50% of the population permanently when the population was only 50-80 people over a perceived slight, so I think they'd be fine with temporarily losing a couple “casual” gamers. The quality of the game matters more in the long run than placating people who already have established themselves.

ALLERYN:

Theres a difference between a challenge and masochism. I want to live in a world where groups have to be careful in dungeons because if you wipe you cant just go back to Serbule; I don't want to live in a world where I have to continuously retrieve my gear because other people are sloppy because they have no consequences, which was ultimately the result of my time playing in hardcore mode.

Edit: spelled Cr00cy "Cr00ky" initially.

Also, for the record, I include myself amongst those who play sloppy because there is no penalty.

[Lyesea]

I like how evasion is broken down into melee, ranged, and magic. I think maybe a 5% flat and then have creatures have strong & weak evasions.

Maybe expand the player side of evasion, I think it's fun to be able to build a "dodge tank/off tank" I think rather than losing the equips, expanding on the broken equip mechanic and being able to have it repaired by a higher level armor patcher/blacksmith kinda like the broken bone mechanic. I'm all for adding higher stakes to combat and trying to open up more opportunities for builds/skill niches.

[Yaffy]

And I completely disagree with your point that evasion would negatively effect tanks more than DPS; that, to me, is preposterous. If a DPS build misses on one of its 2 button mashes, it severely decreases output. If a tank with a more balanced skillset (no dominant damage skills) misses, it does not.


You missed the point I was trying to make. The issue isn't about how much DPS you would lose, it's the fact that holding enemy aggro is significantly less consistent when attacks have a chance to miss, and being able to hold aggro consistently is the most basic task a tank build needs to do in a party.

Basically think of it like this, if a person focused on damage misses, their total damage output will decrease, but they will still be able to continue dealing damage afterwards. The player can continue their role to do damage just fine.
If a tank misses, this means they may be unable to hold aggro due to missing, and this means they cannot tank because their target will not be attacking them. This player is unable to do their role because they missed, and it can be much harder to pick up aggro afterwards.

If you want to see what I mean for yourself, get inflicted by the Lord Sedgewick curse. It gives you -20% accuracy, and you'll find that tanking becomes extremely frustrating because of it. Enemies will run past you to attack your party members simply because at times your taunts miss. This is why tanks should not use the curse despite it offering a global 10% evasion, which would be incredibly useful for mitigating damage. In these cases the amount of damage everyone does typically doesn't matter, as your ability to hold aggro is highly inconsistent when 1/5 of your attacks are ineffective and apply 0 taunt.



Player A has 2 very high damage (2000) skills and 3 low damage (500) skills = 5,500dmg total
Player B has a balanced 5 skill set (1000dmg) = 5000dmg total

Player A misses a 2000dmg skill, it lowers output to 3,500
Player B misses a 1000dmg skill, it lowers output to 4,000

Even if Player A misses a low damage skill and is @ 5,000
Player B is still @ 4,000 with a miss, but has 170% taunt from damage, so still has a higher aggro/DPS as far as the NPC is concerned.

Basically, mathematically, evasion as a matter of fact negatively impacts people with higher DPS and cost skills, because a miss means a much higher percentage of mods wasted (balanced builds don't stack mods as much), as well as endurance wasted (and they usually have longer cool-downs). So I don't understand your argument.


If enemies had 10% evasion, then typically people's effective DPS would go down on average by about 10%, so you are correct in that evasion would affect characters with higher damage more. The example you gave though is not a good example mathematically however, because you're using the best case scenario which happens randomly to try and prove your point. Mathematically if one player does 5500 damage over 5 attacks and another does 5000 damage, then the first player will still do more on average. The only thing that's true is that the first player's damage is more sporadic, but it's still better on average mathematically.

That said, your example also isn't a good representation of a "Tank vs DPS" scenario. In your example the "tank" player only has 10% less damage than the DPS player, which I think is unreasonable to expect. I would argue that a tank build could easily have less than half the damage of a decent DPS build, and in extreme cases less than a fifth if comparing a pure tank to a pure damage build. Your example is less fitting of a "DPS vs Tank" scenario and more like a "Nuke DPS vs Sustained DPS" scenario.

Furthermore, tank players do not have uniform damage/taunt among their skills. As I said, most skills that have taunting abilities only have one or two abilities that actually taunt. This means that representing the tank player with 5 attacks that do the same damage/taunt like your example is very inaccurate, and you are more likely to find tanks where the majority of their taunt is front loaded, hence why evasion diminishes the consistency of tanking heavily. For example on my unarmed build my Infuriating Fist does about 10x more taunt than my other unarmed attacks simply because it's the only unarmed attack that can actually have taunt built on it.

If you play what you consider a tanking build, I would ask you to look at your attacks and figure out how much taunt each of your attacks does. I can almost guarantee that if your build can reliably hold aggro from more DPS focused characters that the majority of your taunt comes from one or two attacks with maybe a third as smaller back up taunt. If this is the case, then your ability to taunt enemies is just as susceptible to enemy evasion as a DPS player whose damage mostly comes from one or two attacks. The main difference is that as a tank, you're punished significantly heavier for missing your "Taunt nuke". Not through the amount of damage you lost, but through your ability to effectively act as a tank for your party.

[Roekai]

I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.

You said that "tank players do not have uniform damage/taunt among their skills" but I do. I can only speak about Sword/Unarmed because those are the only skills I've ever used, but Unarmed gives me "Taunt From Attack Damage +80% when Unarmed is active" on my Ring and Head so that's +160% taunt damage, so I do a total of 260% perceived damage to a normal DPS player's 100%. So you'd have to do more than 2 and 1/2 times my damage to pull aggro from me, without even factoring Infuriating Blow (which I pretty much only use if there is an add, to make sure I can collect the aggro on the add easily, before switching targets back to the primary).

While my example is admittedly poor, I think it delivers the point which you ultimately concluded with in a succinct manner ("If enemies had 10% evasion, then typically people's effective DPS would go down on average by about 10%, so you are correct in that evasion would affect characters with higher damage more"). What you are missing, though, is that DPS builds typically go one or two high cost, high damage skills (i.e. Decapitate, Finishing Blow), so that evasion would disproportionately affect DPS even beyond the flat 10% threshold.

My attacks all taunt the same, 0% (except for the InfBlow which I rarely to never use), and almost all of my skills do between 800 and 1200 damage, so If I miss one its really not a big deal, on to the next. The majority of my taunt, as a matter of fact, does not come from one or two attacks; I don't know what would make you assume this.

And yes, obviously, the Lord Sedgewick curse would impede my ability to tank, because I would miss every 5th attack. But that is clearly a straw man argument, because I am advocating EVERYTHING receives a flat evasion. So, for your scenario to equate to my idea, all of the members of a party would have to have Sedgewick's curse, and again, under that scenario the misses would by far negatively impact the DPS more than me, so it would in fact increase my ability to tank.

I'm sorry if I'm being dense here, but I truly do not understand your argument.

edit: and the fact that my example would be better suited for dps vs dps and create a pivot from nuke dps to sustained dps I think further helps my argument, doesn't hurt it.

[Yaffy]

I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.

You said that "tank players do not have uniform damage/taunt among their skills" but I do. I can only speak about Sword/Unarmed because those are the only skills I've ever used, but Unarmed gives me "Taunt From Attack Damage +80% when Unarmed is active" on my Ring and Head so that's +160% taunt damage, so I do a total of 260% perceived damage to a normal DPS player's 100%. So you'd have to do more than 2 and 1/2 times my damage to pull aggro from me, without even factoring Infuriating Blow (which I pretty much only use if there is an add, to make sure I can collect the aggro on the add easily, before switching targets back to the primary).

While my example is admittedly poor, I think it delivers the point which you ultimately concluded with in a succinct manner ("If enemies had 10% evasion, then typically people's effective DPS would go down on average by about 10%, so you are correct in that evasion would affect characters with higher damage more"). What you are missing, though, is that DPS builds typically go one or two high cost, high damage skills (i.e. Decapitate, Finishing Blow), so that evasion would disproportionately affect DPS even beyond the flat 10% threshold.

My attacks all taunt the same, 0% (except for the InfBlow which I rarely to never use), and almost all of my skills do between 800 and 1200 damage, so If I miss one its really not a big deal, on to the next. The majority of my taunt, as a matter of fact, does not come from one or two attacks; I don't know what would make you assume this.

And yes, obviously, the Lord Sedgewick curse would impede my ability to tank, because I would miss every 5th attack. But that is clearly a straw man argument, because I am advocating EVERYTHING receives a flat evasion. So, for your scenario to equate to my idea, all of the members of a party would have to have Sedgewick's curse, and again, under that scenario the misses would by far negatively impact the DPS more than me, so it would in fact increase my ability to tank.

I'm sorry if I'm being dense here, but I truly do not understand your argument.

edit: and the fact that my example would be better suited for dps vs dps and create a pivot from nuke dps to sustained dps I think further helps my argument, doesn't hurt it.

I made those assumptions because you said you played a tank build so I assumed you built a lot of taunt generation, which forces you to focus heavily on specific abilities to taunt (Namely those that have taunt bonuses on them like Infuriating fist).

I think the simplest way to explain why we're not on the same page is because my idea of what constitutes a tank build isn't the same as mine. To me your build sounds less like a tank build and more like a DPS build.

I would definitely say though that if your goal is to try and keep enemy attention on you, you do NOT want the Sedgewick curse on you. No, the argument I made wasn't a strawman, if you have that curse on you it doesn't matter if the rest of your team has the curse or not. You will not be able to tank properly simply because pulling enemies to you becomes heavily luck based and inconsistent. The rest of your party could be doing single digit damage and you still wouldn't be able to tank consistently. There's only one of you and many party members, so every enemy you pull has a good chance to simply bolt past you and attack one of your party members each time you try to pull, and a 20% chance to miss means it's very likely you will be unable to pull aggro due to repeated misses. However, if your idea of a tank doesn't include being able to consistently keep enemy aggro, then I could see why you would think otherwise, but that's when I say you're not a tank anymore.

[Roekai]

I do play a tank build and I do build a lot of taunt generation, but that doesn't require me to focus heavily on specific abilities to taunt, as I detailed previously. I believe you are mistaken here. Unarmed increase the taunt of ALL my abilities by 160%, so I don't understand why you keep saying I need to focus on specific abilities to generate aggro: I do not.


I dont understand how my build sounds like a DPS build when my modifications are designed to hold aggro and replenish health. I mean, I have to use the damage mods on knee kick and bodyslam because my unarmed is limited in that I also use a sword, but for the most part I completely foresake high damage skills, including decapitate and precision pierce. So again, when in a group I am the one receiving damage and maintaining aggro (even in Gaz/FR), which obviously qualifies me as DPS?


I literally tested this about 20 minutes ago and the curse did not affect my ability to hold aggro at all. I intentionally wiped my group without telling them (sorry guys!) so I could test this theory. I will say this though, it totally fucked up the rage loop (if you keep using rage control abilities they never get to use rage attacks, even if the rage control is only -1) on the droaches. So, that is definitely something that I would be losing if evasion was implemented, and I am willing to sacrifice.

[Roekai]

edit: double post

[Yaffy]

I do play a tank build and I do build a lot of taunt generation, but that doesn't require me to focus heavily on specific abilities to taunt, as I detailed previously. I believe you are mistaken here. Unarmed increase the taunt of ALL my abilities by 160%, so I don't understand why you keep saying I need to focus on specific abilities to generate aggro: I do not.


I dont understand how my build sounds like a DPS build when my modifications are designed to hold aggro and replenish health. I mean, I have to use the damage mods on knee kick and bodyslam because my unarmed is limited in that I also use a sword, but for the most part I completely foresake high damage skills, including decapitate and precision pierce. So again, when in a group I am the one receiving damage and maintaining aggro (even in Gaz/FR), which obviously qualifies me as DPS?


I literally tested this about 20 minutes ago and the curse did not affect my ability to hold aggro at all. I intentionally wiped my group without telling them (sorry guys!) so I could test this theory. I will say this though, it totally fucked up the rage loop (if you keep using rage control abilities they never get to use rage attacks, even if the rage control is only -1) on the droaches. So, that is definitely something that I would be losing if evasion was implemented, and I am willing to sacrifice.

I'm sorry to say, but the more I hear about your build the less sense it makes to me.

In my personal experience, when I tank I have to compete with people who start with 5k+ damage nukes constantly, if not more. The idea that you're keeping up with moves that simply hit for 800-1200 without any sort of taunt that doesn't ignore mitigation makes no sense. If you're pulling as a tank, your 800-1200 damage moves shouldn't even hurt the target very much if they have full armor, and if damage is the only way you're taunting then I can't understand how you're keeping up aggro mathematically unless if the rest of your team is heavily under-geared and cannot out damage a player who has not only built a skill combination that doesn't have very high damage potential, but has also spent mod slots on cantrips.

Furthermore, you use Gazluk and Fae Realm as your examples for tanking. Sword has some elemental resistance from finishing blow, but that elemental resists only lasts for a few seconds, while unarmed gives you zero defense against elemental enemies, and elemental resistance is fairly important in Gazluk and incredibly important in the Fae Realm. The only way I could see you lasting that long with your low damage party is if you had incredibly decked out healers/supports yet no well geared DPS to end the fight quickly and inevitably take aggro away from you.

Not only that, but the idea that you tested the Lord Sedgewick curse so quickly AND can claim it didn't affect your ability to hold aggro is incredibly bizarre, as it should at the very least cause 1/5 of your initial pulls and attacks to fail. This accuracy loss also can't be mitigated so it's not like you can make up for it with accuracy boosts, and for many people 20% accuracy loss is INCREDIBLY noticeable. I mean, the start of this thread even started with us mentioning how a large amount of the player base found just 10% evasion incredibly annoying, never mind 20%!
To say that a 20% accuracy loss "Did not affect your ability at all" is extreme to say the least. It was already ridiculous that your party members could not out-aggro a character who only hits for around 1000 per attack, but are you also saying that you were somehow able to keep aggro with not only those low numbers but even with a 20% chance to miss every attack? Even ignoring the high chance where your character completely misses multiple times in succession which guarantees you aren't building aggro, an average 20% DPS reduction to your already low damage should have made everyone easily beat out the extremely low taunt you were already doing.

I'm sorry, but honestly at this point I can't believe what you're saying, as it makes no sense from a mathematical stand point, as well as from my own experience. Either you are stretching the truth out and giving inaccurate/misleading information in order to try and make your argument sound better, or you're outright lying.

[Velaethia]

Evasion and Hardcore need to be mandatory.

All creatures and all players should have a 10% (Honestly I'd like something closer to 25% but I realize that is entirely unrealistic) evasion percentage. And, every time you die, you should lose one piece of armor (My preference would be ALL armor) until you recover your tombstone.

Evasion extends combat, putting more of an emphasis of sustainability and the trinity rather than DPS. I consider myself a tank, yet the damage modifications on my gear are mandatory, as I would be gimping myself otherwise. I would like to live in a world where forsaking damage modifications would be a viable construct, a world with evasion. No matter what build you run, one must select the +40% damage mods, and have at least 1 or 2 heavy hitting skills to be viable (to hold aggro as a tank, etc). Evasion ends this trend, or at least mitigates it, by devaluing high damage high cost skills.

Furthermore, there needs to be a more significant penalty to death. If you wipe in a dungeon, there should be incentive to have to fight back, instead of going to Serbule to transmute. Now, nobody wants 1999 Norrath levels of difficulty (except maybe me), but what is the point of hardcore if there are no bonuses? Make it mandatory or give a flat 10% armor, hp, and endo to harcore players, so I have an incentive to fuck myself.

Let the hate begin.

Edit: I love this game, and have been playing since 2016. I love this game, and will play regardless. But this is my only, and has been consistent, criticism.

I'm gonna go no with the hardcore on an eh? with the evasion one. I prefer choices for different gameplay styles. Not everyone being forced to do the same thing. PG is a prime example of allowing players to play their own way. I like PG because it's one of the few games like it that doesn't have an overly punishing death. I'd like it A LOT less if hardcore was forced on everyone. The evasion one would just be a nuisance but I wouldn't quit over it.

My moral philosophy is do whatever you want as long as it isn't negatively impacting others. Your perma hardcore for all would negatively impact me and others who don't want a frustrating experience. Trust me the game can be frustrating enough without hardcore.

[poulter]

I'm with Yaffy on tanking /evasion as my playing experience matches his position . Note: I use level 80 max crafted gold with augments and fully modded gear. I also build Accuracy into my spec.
I currently run with UA /Psy, Fire /Druid and Hammer /Druid.

As Yaffy states, running with well geared players is problematic if a taunt is missed. During a group fight (2 to 6 players) against FR elites, I usually get 3 or 4 attacks in before the elite dies.
A 'tank' needs to handle from me (I'll use a Hammer /Druid in level 70 max crafted gold gear as an example) a damage profile of:

Mob enrage (all hammer attacks) = 184%

Attack 1 Leaping Smash 884 damage
Attack 2 Latent Charge 1563 direct + 18% from damage mods + 1003 electricity DOT
Attack 3 Rib Shatter 1991 + 56% from damage mods
Attack 4 Seismic Impact 1667 + 118% from damage mods

If the mob is still alive and the 'tank' loses aggro on attack 3 or 4 than I usually get to die from a instant-kill rage attack.
If I survive the initial rage attacks then I often need to cast 2 healing spells to survive.

If I use Pound to Slag then a c. 3.5k hit impacts all mobs within 5 meters.

Using Fire specs is even more problematic .

My experience suggests that most 'tanks' are unable to handle the above.

[cr00cy]

YAFFY:

I was there when evasion was implemented, and subsequently removed because of all the bitching. But obviously, I still think it was a bad idea to listen to the negative feedback. Of course, the people that were already playing the game sans-evasion were going to bitch (because they had min-maxed into 2 button mash builds which are still, unfortunately, popular today), but anybody that started playing with evasion as a baseline mechanic would have nothing to complain about. The devs put evasion in for a reason, to address a problem, and it worked. If they just stuck to their guns, they might have lost a few subs initially but the overall quality of the game would have improved.


I think it's a bit arrogant of you to claim that only people that had 2-button builds complained about evasion. And that new players would have nothing to complain about. In fact, I made new character back then, and global evasion was more noticeable on it, simply because I had less tools to deal with it.




To address your second point, what is wrong with a slight variance in combat? How does implementing randomness encourage people to play boring and samey builds? As it stands today, everyone plays boring and samey builds (DPS). NOBODY doesn't have all the powerful DPS mods. Boring and samey. By adding variance to combat it would increase the value of low power low damage moves, and non-damage modifications. Also, it wouldn't be hard to code so that even with a miss the combo chain can be completed, as long as you use the skills in the proper order.


Again, a bit arrogant of you to claim that. Not everyone has the same build, I myself have 3 different variations of the same skill combination (wolf/unarmed), and most of my builds aim for balanced distribution of mods. And even if someone wants to have build around one, or two skills, why not? I have no problem if someone can achieve insane damage on single skills, as long as they have to sacrifice a lot to achieve it, and/or its effect of combining several skills. Global evasion hurts these people the most.

Problem with evasion is that it has a much higher impact on bursty type builds than on sutaine dones.

Beside that, as I mentioned in my first post, if evasion is high then everyone is forced to build around it, then we are back to the same situation where everyone is would migrate towards build that have best tools to deal with evasion, or, what would be even worse, to rebalance every skill to be able to deal with evasion, leading to less variety between skills.

And, of course, that would require time from developers, tiem that could be spent doing more important things.


And I completely disagree with your point that evasion would negatively affect tanks more than DPS; that, to me, is preposterous. If a DPS build misses on one of its 2 button mashes, it severely decreases output. If a tank with a more balanced skillset (no dominant damage skills) misses, it does not.

Player A has 2 very high damage (2000) skills and 3 low damage (500) skills = 5,500dmg total
Player B has a balanced 5 skill set (1000dmg) = 5000dmg total

Player Hoever, ifA misses a 2000dmg skill, it lowers output to 3,500
Player B misses a 1000dmg skill, it lowers output to 4,000

Even if Player A misses a low damage skill and is @ 5,000
Player B is still @ 4,000 with a miss, but has 170% taunt from damage, so still has a higher aggro/DPS as far as the NPC is concerned.

Basically, mathematically, evasion as a matter of fact negatively impacts people with higher DPS and cost skills, because a miss means a much higher percentage of mods wasted (balanced builds don't stack mods as much), as well as endurance wasted (and they usually have longer cool-downs). So I don't understand your argument.


The more I read your arguments, the more I'm convinced you simply hate one particular playstyle, and want it removed from the game for some reason. You keep saying that dps builds only use 2 skills, which is simply not true. Many builds use multiple skills, and while yes, there are few specific builds that reach insane bursts with just one or two skills, they often require some setup, and/or sacrifice a lot of survivability to achieve it.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Alos, in your example, you ignore a few important things.

1)Not every skill has the same tools. Some are designed about being more burst-oriented, having long cd's on they damaging skills (like BC), or having little to no defensive tools forcing them to focus on killing mobs quickly, rather than trying to outlast them (warden, wolf)

2)Not every ability has the same impact. Missing Basic attack when you really need this combat refresh and/or armor set proc can make the difference between life and death. Missing a regular basic attack in most cases is nothing important.

Missing your only Aoe skill when you are fighting multiple mobs and are low on hp usually means death. Same as missing cc when the mob you fight will call some friends.

Missing 1,2, or even 5 out of 8-10 damagining skills I usually use on my most used dps build(wolf/unarmed) wouldn't affect me too much Some would cost me more dps loss than others, but ultimately, it wouldn't matter too much, aside from some specific situations.

Missing Taunt on tank build could make the difference between keeping aggro, and losing it.


CR00CY:

You didn't really state anything other than your opinions of what people would think. So here is my opinion of what people would think. People still play EQ to this day; there's a 3 hour long waiting list for the Aradune server, so I think plenty of people are okay with a corpse run.

And, you claim that evasion is frustrating because if you miss 2-3 times, you die; you literally just identified the problem that I am trying to fix. I have a balanced build, and I barely noticed evasion at all. I could miss probably 5-7 times in a row before it became a problem, and the chances of that happening are statistically insignificant. Basically, what I am trying to say is if that missing twice in a row causes you to die that is a flaw in your character design (2-button mash) rather than a flaw in the game.

And this is not my opinion, it is the opinion of the developers. You can look up the old threads if you want – the whole reason evasion was implemented in the first place is because the devs didn't like 2 button mash builds and wanted to extend combat. So this is not just something I identified as a problem, the developers also did, and tried (successfully I might add) to address it.


Ok, I agree that if someone would die just because they missed one or two hits, then they either need to change their build, or upgrade their gear. And I'm fully aware that devs want to extend the duration of combat - notion I fully agree with, as I stated in my first post.

I simply don't think evasion is the best way to do it. At least not in its current form, as total damage mitigation.

One way to implement it, for it to be a much healthier mechanic, is to make it reduce damage, by say 50%. Then we could add another monster tag, or 'quirk' as I called it in my 1st post ('Nimble' or something like that). Mobs with this tag would avoid all damage when their evasion triggered.


I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.

You said that "tank players do not have uniform damage/taunt among their skills" but I do. I can only speak about Sword/Unarmed because those are the only skills I've ever used


Ok, this statement makes any argument you make about balance of combat very hard to take seriously. I'll give you a benefit of the doubt, and assume you meant you never played any other skills in high-level zones, but even then - if your experience is so limited, how can you possibly know what other people build. Only 2-button builds I can recall being used recently are sulk+crushing attack, and I think there was something with Druid and cosmic strike. There was something with dangerous enchantments too, I recall a post describing someone achieving some crazy damage on Hammer epic attack, but it required lengthy setup.

And all those builds got nerfed.

Nowadays, I don't think there is a single dps build that can get away with using only 2 abilities.

I played many skills - Wolf, Unarmed, Warden, Shield, BC, AH to name only those I use regularly, but I played enough of other skills to at least have a vague idea of how they work.

And from my experience, I can safely say that evasion affects some builds much more than others. It would make life much harder for skills that have long cooldowns, or high power costs.

TL; DR

I'm all for extending the duration of combat, but not global evasion(in its current form) is a bad way to do it.

It would hurt some builds much more than others, and force everyone to build around it.

Mandatory Hardcore is just bad idea, there is absolutely zero reason to do it.

[Roekai]

Yaffy,

First let me open by apologizing for being abrasive AF. We are definitely getting hostile and I can recognize its my fault. My bad, fella.

As far as tanking in Gaz/Fae goes, I usually organize pugs (since my guild died after I left a few years back), so yes, most of the time people are not doing nearly as much damage as some of your high end guild mates probably do, which inevitably makes it easier for me to hold aggro. There is no way I could hold aggro with people popping off 5k dmg nukes. But thats kind of a dick move though, isn't it? In most games if not all games I've played part of being a DPS class is managing your DPS so that you don't intentionally steal aggro from the tank. So, there is no way I could hold aggro with top level DPS unleashing full tilt, but in my opinion that is the fault of the DPS not the tank. You wait until the creature is at low health to finish it off, not opening combat...or atleast thats how I learned to play DPS as a Wizard in EQ.

And yes, I tested the lord segewick curse last night, and no it didnt affect my ability to tank. You can believe me or not, it doesnt really matter to me. Again, however, I was much better equipped than the majority of my group, which, you are right, plays a huge factor. And I body pull, tellling my group to wait until I get a few hits in to start attacking to establish aggro, much the same way I learned to do in EQ as a warrior.

But you are right, if I grouped with you and your friends and you tried to steal aggro, you certainly would. I just dont have that issue normally, of people actively trying to steal aggro.

What doesn't make sense mathematically, by the by. I love mathematical arguments because there is no room for opinion – if you can prove me wrong mathematically I'll happily eat a crow pie knowing that I grew as a person and learned something new.

Vela,

I have no problem with the rejection of hardcore by non-hardcore players; I get it. I dont like it, but I get it. Would you object to giving hardcore players some type of experience advantage, or speed boost, or some incentive to play hardcore? I think that is a fair way to meet in the middle, no?

Poulter,

Basically the same thing as Yaffy. In most games DPS can easily steal aggro from the tank if they aren't careful.

If I'm in a situation where a glass cannon is pulling aggro, ill just simply ask that they lay off a bit. Like you said, a FR elite usually dies in 4 or 5 cycles, so whats another 1 or 2 cycles really its not a lot of time espcially considering we arent going to die.

But yes, you are right. If a dps build wants to steal aggro they can.

Cr00ky,

basically I think we disagree ideologically; I think that evasion would create more diversity among builds, you think it would create a new meta. You dont have a problem with burst damage, I obviously do (in the sense that only mages or rogues or whatever should be doing it, not tanks and cc and everyone else too).
Your response was so extensive and coherent it would take me a while to unpack and reply to it so I'll do that later. But yeah you guys all bring up going points and yes I am an asshole.

I just want combat to be extended and roles to be more defined. Maybe people don't even want that. The more I think I know the more I apparently dont.

edit:

Cr00cy:

Okay, I wasn't being nearly specific enough by what I meant when I said 2-button builds, and the miscommunication is my fault obviously because you can only read what I write not my intentions. What I mean by 2-button build is people who invest all of their modification into a few damaging skills. I said 2-button because each skill usually has 2 (or 3) skills that do high amounts of damage (i.e. decapitate, finishing blow, bodyslam, knee kick, in my case).

Everybody has to invest in damage modifications to some degree. Who is not going to take a 40% flat increase in damage over Heart Pierce healing you for 40hp? Even I use the mods; I would be severely negatively impacting my ability to tank if I didn't, because it would drastically decrease my ability to hold aggro (by 40%, lol).

But combat obviously needs to be extended (all sides I think agree on this, most importantly the developers) and so I am ideologically at odds with people who max/min into glass cannons, and yes, want people who use high damage high cost skills to be punished with evasion.

Would you guys be more receptive to a straight up Nerf of damage across all classes, by eliminating most of the damage mods on the high damage skills, rather than evasion? I think evasion is more fair because it still allows for high bursts of damage, whereas a Nerf is, to me, a more significant gimp to DPS.

Do you even agree with me on the fact that there should be more defined roles, in addition to the extension of combat? Or are we fundamentally at odds?

As far as what you wrote about a new character and global evasion, you missed my point. What I mean is that you played and started a character when there was no evasion, so obviously starting a new toon with evasion is going to be harder than your original baseline. Someone who has no original baseline will have nothing to object to, because there will be literally, in their mind, nothing to object to.
I applaud the fact that you have build diversity; I only have 2 (Group and Solo) so I tip my hat to you sir. But I disagree with you that evasion would create a new meta; by devaluing the skills like decapitate and finishing blow that almost every swordsman uses under the current rules, there would be more diversity among builds. That is just my opinion though, and I can provide no statistical evidence to back it up.

I like your idea to reduce evasion to 50% mitigation. I like that you are willing to compromise, and I am not infallable. Maybe your idea would be the best of both worlds. I don't know, but I would like to see something. And even if there is nothing, I thoroughly enjoy the game the way it is. So I guess whatever.

[Roekai]

like in a group people don't even ask if there is a healer or what anyone even does half the time is just mish mash half-hazard smashing through mobs like a wrecking ball. again though, maybe that's only cause I run pugs mostly.

[drivendawn]

I don't want everyone to be in hard core mode but I wouldn't mind some sort of weakness after being killed. I mean a little incentive to not die a lot is all. However if it doesn't happen I can deal. lol

[cr00cy]

Roekai

Yes, i think we have to agree to disagree on the subject of evasion. In my opinion, global evasion would just create new meta - peopel will just start stackign accuracy over burst damage. Thats why I prefer current system, where only certain mobs have evasion, and would prefer it expanded. That way people who want to hunt those mobs will need to adjust they build, but said build might be not optimal to hunt other kind of mobs.

Also, I don't want to 'remove' any builds. If someon want to build they swordsma for burst, let them. If tehy wnat to build it for dps, let them. If they want to puild it for tanking/rage control, or any other way - let them.

As long as any single build isn't cleary superior choice, I'll have no problem with it.

[Roekai]

if they removed accuracy mods, and there was no way to mitigate the evasion, do you think there would be a new meta then? is there always a new meta? is there no point of striving for game balance?

edit; my entire argument is based around the fact that there is a clear superior choice as the game exists, which is burst damage. I dare you to find people who, on their primary build, do not use all of the highly damaging modifications. In my experience, these people are exceptions that prove the rule.

edit 2; fuck, even I use the damage mods on finishing blow and knee kick (although to be fair I am limited in my modification selection with unarmed). I guarantee there is some type of game data that shows popularity of specific modifications over time and I would LOVE to see them release that data, because I believe it would articulate my point better than I ever could in words.

edit 3; and I have a problem with each skill being able to do everthing. I think each class should have a few options to select from, but I don't want to see Sword/FireMagic healers and I feel the same way about literally every single skill being able to do burst damage. That should be reserved for Fire Mages and Battle Chem and ALSO be punished with evasion.

edit 4; https://youtu.be/_FNzL5nW_u4?t=16

[Lyesea]

Honestly I kill things faster with a poison/trauma dot build since I dont have to burn armor down to use my burst. Only 50 tho so take that as you will.

[poulter]

Currently, the builds that can kill a mob in under 10 seconds (i.e. with 3 or 4 attacks) whether in a group or solo - to minimise rage hits /extreme regeneration rates - offer high success /survivability.
Until this alters, player build strategy will not change. Damage output will be prioritised.

Citan has employed various techniques to change player behaviour e.g. mob: evasion, resistance types, thick armour, increased health, damage reflection, health regeneration, immunity, etc. (& also reducing player health and armour).
All have had an impact and players have adapted their builds e.g. by carrying multiple sets of gear.
No single approach provides a solution as a player in Red gear (c. 27 mods) has a very different damage profile to a player in max-crafted gold gear (c. 60 mods).

Given the above (damage output is king), it is relatively unimportant whether player health and armour is at 500 or 800, whether healing is part of the build, etc.

However, as early Lab and GK demonstrated (chained hook shots - for those who remember), the longer a fight takes, the more players start defining /specialising builds into tanks /pullers, healers, crowd control, DPS, etc.
Players also start mandating aggro /damage output control, use of buffs, carrying resses and optimising builds.

Personally, I think the game is much more forgiving nowadays, money is easier to get, getting 'carried' in dungeons is very common and overall player preparation has reduced (e.g. many people running DC don't bring fire resistance pots anymore and rely upon AOE heals only. Many also don't bring a ress).

TLDR: High damage output builds provide greater rewards, survival and success rates at the moment.

[Celerity]

if they removed accuracy mods, and there was no way to mitigate the evasion, do you think there would be a new meta then? is there always a new meta? is there no point of striving for game balance?

Firstly there's always a meta unless everything in the entire game is perfectly balanced, which isn't possible, even then, there would still be different metas for different situations. In this situation, cc would be devalued since you wouldn't be able to rely on it always hitting the target, same thing with debuffs if you're a sword, druid, psychology etc. player. Power would also become more important so everyone would be using cloth instead of only the majority of people. Self buffs and kiting would be unaffected so things like staff, archery and fire magic would become comparatively even stronger.
I personally think ranged already has too much of an advantage over melee in this game because of kiting, and those 3 skills are already some of the most meta skills in the game right now so I think you would just throw balance even further off and see yet more nimble geared staff/archery or staff/fire players. Also worth noting is that the harder you make content, the less viable weaker builds become and so you would probably end up pushing more people to the meta either way.

I also personally hate the idea of having rng so important in the fight, I don't mind a bit of rng but if that rng means I can miss my stun right as I need to be saved from the next enemy hit or I miss my long cooldown cc like freezing mist for battle chemistry then it would just end up being infuriating and I would feel like sometimes I was just powerless to actually win in a fight if rng was against me.

Even if it was mitigatable with accuracy, at high levels this would mean adding maybe 1 generic mod somewhere on your armour + belt and so would be insignificant, yet at low levels would be a gigantic pain in the ass. I really think the length of combat is only an issue at higher levels once people have fully optimised builds, lower levels really don't need any more pain.


I dare you to find people who, on their primary build, do not use all of the highly damaging modifications. In my experience, these people are exceptions that prove the rule.

I think that's just a byproduct of how the game functions, you have to get the mobs hp down to 0 in order to kill it and more damage allows you to do that faster. In the situation that the healing/mitigation mods and damage mods were perfectly balanced, most players would still pick the damage mods since that would result in shorter fights even if both had the same capabilities. I think how this is normally balanced in MMOs is by tanky/healing specs allowing you to achieve more, e.g. solo higher level or harder mobs, but at the cost of it taking longer. I think this is already somewhat true in this game but it's just a fact that it's relatively unimportant to be able to solo difficult mobs since that's not how you earn money or experience quickly. In a group it's supposed to be about filling roles and each person gets the same reward so it doesn't matter there, but much of the game is solo. This is where this game really shines to me however, since you can be a tank all you want in a group and be useful there, then switch builds to a more dps focused one for when you want to solo.

Even if you had 90% evasion on every mob, picking the damage mods would still be the best choice for the shortest fights, there just wouldn't be as much of a difference between the kill times. If you really wanted to kill burst damage, you would put damage reflecting on every mob, but then just prepare to see the new meta become dot builds or yet more people going staff for that 0 mod investment mitigation and I'm really not sure why you want to stop people from playing burst damage builds in the first place.

[cr00cy]

I think one of reasosn why people prefer high burst builds nodays is because of how deadly monsters are. This is not only because of how much damge they deal (rage crits are still devastating, even after they were nerfed), but how fragile players are. Flat mitigation is in many cases next to useless, % mitigation is still rare, and only few selected build scan make good use of evasion. Armor is nice, but its hard to maitian it in longer fight. If you don't have damage inmunity(shield/staff), or really crazy sustained healing (druid, and maybe priest? I dont know much about later) you have very little way of suriving longer fights.

Roekai - meta will always exist, there will always be builds/set ups thata re more effective than other. Now it migth be burst builds, if we introduced significat evasion, then everyeon woudl satrt adding accuracy. There would still be burst builds, its just that they would be les sbursty because they would add accuracy.

If accuracy woudl be removed - it would be really dump idea, because if there is random mechanic having significant impact on gameplay there must be soem way to build around it. If its just "spread damge over multiple skills and hope one of them hits" then its very bad desing. This might lead to dps builds, or more tanky builds becoming meta, but it would lead to a lot of frustration too.

Meta always exist (for those unaware, META measn Most Effective Tactic Aviable). If it becomes to stale, its good idea for developer to try and change it, but imo it should be through indirect menas, for example, introuducing new type of enemy that offers good rewards, but requires different tactic(manties were good example once upon a time. They dropped good rewards, but they dmg reflection prevented peopel from bringign high-burst builds).

As for balnce - it cna be strived for, but never achived. Only way to achive perfect balance woudl be to make every skill in game have identicla set of skills, with identical damage/healing, power costs and cooldowns - and I think nobody would want that.

I totally agree that there should be some specialization, and no skill shoudl be able to do eevrything. Thankfully, I don't think there is such skill in game right now. Some are better than others at certain things (Staff and Shield being primary tanking skills as far as I know), some skills, or properites are more desirable than others (fire damage, especially dot's are good to have rigth now since they make dealing with trolls much easier).

going back to burst dmage being more popular - thats normal. Mayority of peopel will always look for build with shortest kill times, if allowed. But, like I said, I don't think this si only reason such build sare so popular right now. Nerfign them, directly or indirectly, might make people migrate to other builds. This might be more dps-focused builds, or mitigation build,s or sustain builds - who knows.

But, as I said multiple times already, and will continue saying - if we want combat to last longer, not only players aveagre time-to-kill needs to go down, but time-to-die needs to go up too.

There is one more thign to consider, and that is progression. Slower killing would mean slowel leveling of combat skills(which might not be that bad of a thing), slower aqusition of certain mats (skins/organs/meat), and as aresult slower leveling of certain craftign skills (which, in certain cases, is a lot slower than leveling combat skills already).

[Roekai]

Lysea:

I respect that you are using a poison/trauma dot build, and I hope you keep up with it. But in groups you will notice that you will not be contributing much damage, because everyone else will be bursting the mob to death before your dots can shine in terms of power cost to damage inflicted. Or at least this was my experience when I went trauma with sword. I have subsequently switched to rage control, and have found much better success, with both soloing and especially in groups.


Poulter:

I agree with every word of your last post, particularly the TLDR.


Celerity:

Under the system of evasion as I imagine it, only damage would be evaded, not spell effects. So, CC and debuffing would not be devalued, rather quite the opposite.

Power becoming more important would just mean more of a reliance on low cost, lower power skills, rather than a complete dependence on cloth. I can tell you right now that I have absolutely no problem managing my power using heavy armor, because I largely use skills that have excellent damage to power cost ratios, and further improve those with cost effective modifications. Parry, Riposte, Punch, Jab, Infuriating Blow, Finishing Blow, they all have extremely low power costs and I basically can sustain myself in combat with decent food indefinitely. So I reject the everyone wearing cloth argument.

Why do you think evasion would make kiting easier for ranged players? As far as I can tell, it would more negatively affect ranged players than melee players for 2 reasons.

One: Non-kiting players would also gain the benefit evasion; someone kiting a mob is not being hit by the mob, so they would only suffer misses on their opponent, their opponent would not suffer misses on them.

Two: Ranged players (especially players that kite) tend to focus more on DPS. And, as I think we have already established, evasion more negatively effects players who focus on DPS statistically speaking.

And, again, with regards to missing your stun you would only miss the damage associated with the stun, not the stun. Only the damage is evaded, not the magical affects of an attack. I think this clarification should squelch some of your fears about prevalence of RNG.
And as I have already stated, I would not want there to be mitigation of evasion with accuracy in any way (except possibly in the case of very specific, very sought after, very hard to obtain magic items)

Cr00cy:

A flat evasion would cut the damage of monsters by whatever percent the evasion was set at. So if we set evasion at 10%, obviously mosters would do 10% less damage. Evasion cuts damage on both sides, extending the fight. With an extended fight, you have the need for healers (who can repair both the armor and the health of their companions), crowd control (for repops and adds, since you can just burn through shit), and tanks (to keep the dps alive during the extended fights).

How can you say that accuracy being removed would be a dumb idea? The whole point of evasion being implemented is for the “mechanic to have significant impact on gameplay.” Why would you want to include a loop-hole around the mechanic designed to fix a problem. And once more, the developers consider the lack of power management and the short span of combat to be a problem; so I dont want to hear any complaning about the loss of a concept that the developers themselves are trying to eliminate.

Adding 10% evasion is not “spreading damage over multiple skills and hoping one of them hits” because statistically 9/10 of them are going to hit. To say that you would hope to get 1/10 is just not mathematically accurate in any sense.

And I don't want perfect balance, I dont want perfect balance at all; I was merely trying to show the flaws in a previous argument with my rhetorical question.

You yourself admit “burst damage being more popular” and “that its normal.” You also said “average time-to-kill needs to go down” and “time to die needs to go up.” Again, explain to me how evasion doesn't dress all of these issues?

Slower leveling could easily be adjusted by increasing experience gained by monsters or decreasing the amount of experience to level combat skills. This to me is a non-issue.

[Roekai]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=50&v=Ax9YbdMLpi4&feature=emb_logo

[Niqesse]

First my thought to making Hardcore mandatory:
Since it can take a long time to get all the mods you want with transmutation i´m against it. I don´t want the risk of losing a piece of gear i spent so much time (and if crafted resources) becouse i wiped with a random grp and can´t get back to the corpse.

As for evasion:
First i compare my 2 main builds in DC from my experience running the dungeon. The first build is a fire/BC AoE build where the dmg of all abilitys is similar and a lycan/psy build that uses 2/3 other abilitys to strenghten 2 abilitys that hit hard, but with barley any other sources of dmg.
For the fire/BC build it doesn´t make much difference even when 1 or 2 attacks get evaded but for the lycan/psy build it is a huge problem since the whole build is made around those 2 stong attacks with a 30 sec cooldown. So if 1 of those attacks don´t hit it is a big problem for me, since it is very hard to take mobs down without them. If there is a global evasion that build would be dead for me since the risk of not making dmg is too high. Becouse of that i like it that some enemies have evasion and others don´t since it allows different builds to shine against different opponents. So i think it is better to add evasion to some mobs like they did in FR.

As for evasion only evading dmg. I´m against it since in my oppinion the best part abbout evasion is, that you can evade effects like stuns or DoTs (or mobs evade yours). That makes the fight more interesting and can make the difference between life and death. And what about "You Were Adopted"? Since it needs the mob to be hit by "Psychoanalyze" or "Tell Me About Your Mother". Is it always counted as hit since the effect is applied or is it only counted as hit if it does dmg?

[Mbaums]

... And what about "You Were Adopted"? Since it needs the mob to be hit by "Psychoanalyze" or "Tell Me About Your Mother". Is it always counted as hit since the effect is applied or is it only counted as hit if it does dmg?

What would happen would be the value of stuns would go through the roof. Players would adapt by simply dropping the monsters avoidance with stun's flat foot debuff. Builds that have 2 stuns would be viewed as great for group play as few fights would go smoothly with it.

I'm in the camp that thinks OP is judging balance with a full max enchanted yellow set as his reference, and content is aimed at the red moded group. He might have said otherwise but I honestly can't be bothered to read all of his posts because I'm so disgusted by the idea of the world becoming the Rahu Sewers. I do like when a dungeon has monsters with different vulnerabilities but I think the global-avoidance rule that is being suggested makes for interesting discussion but nothing more.

[Roekai]

There would be no stun flat foot debuff. You admittedly said you didn't read all of what I wrote, so I'll get the pertinent text.

"And as I have already stated, I would not want there to be mitigation of evasion with accuracy in any way (except possibly in the case of very specific, very sought after, very hard to obtain magic items)"

Yes I do wear a full set of yellow level 70 gear but its not crafted and not max enchanted, and its not max level. So I'm short 14 mods and they aren't top level. But yes, I am relatively elite.

My argument is primarily based on group play, however. Really, the my ultimate fantasy would be more of an emphasis on the trinity, and I think evasion can provide that, which is why I am so stubbornly insistent on it.

What measures would you take to address the fact that, as Poulter put it, "Currently, the builds that can kill a mob in under 10 seconds (i.e. with 3 or 4 attacks) whether in a group or solo - to minimise rage hits /extreme regeneration rates - offer high success /survivability.
Until this alters, player build strategy will not change. Damage output will be prioritized" if you take evasion completely off the table?

[Celerity]

Under the system of evasion as I imagine it, only damage would be evaded, not spell effects. So, CC and debuffing would not be devalued, rather quite the opposite.

Would this also include tank rage? If it did include it then it may alleviate some of Yaffy's concerns with tanking. Also what about combat refreshes from basic attacks and combo stuff like +x damage to core attacks?

I was talking based off how evasion currently works in game. If a basilisk, for example, evades my electrify it both doesn't take damage and doesn't get stunned.

If the mob still took the cc effect then it would be better yes, I still wouldn't like it for being rng and would actually just rather see a straight nerf to the damage of epic attacks.


Power becoming more important would just mean more of a reliance on low cost, lower power skills, rather than a complete dependence on cloth. I can tell you right now that I have absolutely no problem managing my power using heavy armor, because I largely use skills that have excellent damage to power cost ratios, and further improve those with cost effective modifications. Parry, Riposte, Punch, Jab, Infuriating Blow, Finishing Blow, they all have extremely low power costs and I basically can sustain myself in combat with decent food indefinitely. So I reject the everyone wearing cloth argument.

That may be true for your specific build, but for me using hammer/ment even if I don't use my nukes and I'm using best food in the game + flower + max power mods I still have to use dig deep and my basic attacks during some group combat just for power regen. Even mentalism has some pretty high power cost abilities. I'm not complaining btw, I just think this means the power situation is already in the correct spot for my specific build. If I started missing my attacks then I could see myself getting serious power issues just from using small attacks alone and I think it would force me into cloth armour which would be a serious blow to my survivalability with how much I rely on the leather combat refresh heal.

The moment I use pound to slag it takes ~160 power which is about 1/3 of my total power. You're right that if that misses then I may be screwed in a fight so your aim of nerfing burst damage would be achieved, but again I would much rather just see a straight nerf to the damage rather than an rng fix. In all honesty I would probably just keep using the exact same build but just get frustrated if my attack misses, that's what I already do in dc minus the frustration since I'm far above the mobs level anyway so it doesn't really matter if my attacks miss. And in fact I don't see it ever mattering as long as you have an augmented and transmuted build, since the mobs should always be weaker than you, meaning you can accomodate the rng more. This could change in the future if content specifically designed for full max-enchanted builds comes out, but at the moment I just see it as another punish for less well geared players.


Why do you think evasion would make kiting easier for ranged players? As far as I can tell, it would more negatively affect ranged players than melee players for 2 reasons.

One: Non-kiting players would also gain the benefit evasion; someone kiting a mob is not being hit by the mob, so they would only suffer misses on their opponent, their opponent would not suffer misses on them.

I meant comparatively. As I see it there's basically 4 main ways to play:

1. Build mitigation and face tank such as unarmed, shield, staff, cow, bc with extra skin etc.

2. Use crowd control to avoid damage such as roots, stuns, fears etc.

3. Kite with ranged attacks, easier when using movement speed buffs or slows on enemies

4. Just build damage and hope to kill the mob before it kills you

Now obviously people use a combination of these, but my idea was with how evasion currently works, and that would make all of them harder because you would have damage decreased in all cases, but then additionally 2 would be affected more if cc had a chance to miss, and 4 becomes less likely to work the longer combat goes on. Therefore, I meant that 1 and 3 would become better methods by comparison. Just as a sidenote, I believe ranged to be superior simply because they have the option of 3 at all, which they can use in conjuction with the others and don't seem to have any other downside really.

Also maybe I missed something but I don't think you ever said that the evasion would apply to players too?

In the case of evasion applying to both mobs and players, even with cc effects not being evaded, cc would still be devalued (assuming the evasion is unmitigatable from stuns) just from elongating fights because of the diminishing returns on cc; a 3 second stun is much more impactful in a 10 second fight than a 3 second stun and a 1 second stun is in a 20 second fight. Take the fight even longer and it gets even worse, as after that the stun does nothing until 60 seconds have passed. Kiting may cause a power concern in a long fight, but this is incredibly build specific I think, and in the case of mitigation, I see only benefit from making fights longer, unless you have a very front-loaded mitigation ability on a long cooldown. As far as I'm aware nothing like that exists, blocking stance, deflective spin and elemental ward are probably the closest to this but they actually have fairly short cooldowns and I see them used more than once in some group combat pulls already.

The above is exaggerated, since a 10% evasion rate would only cause a 10 second fight previously to last 11 seconds on average now, so the impact would actually be quite minimal, but I think it's interesting to think about regardless. In fact, it makes me wonder if this change would actually significantly affect anything at all.

My final thoughts are that I actually don't mind it too much, still not the solution I want to see just because of rng and I'm not convinced it will stop players from using nukes and stacking damage mods since if the relative balance of power is maintained, i.e. same evasion rate on both players and mobs, then the exact same strategy should still work on average, and with a bit of rng allowance from top tier gear I imagine it would be the same situation as now, whereas lesser geared players will simply suffer from rng as well as people in general would be annoyed by it. We could then talk about having a higher rate of evasion on the mob than on the player but to be perfectly honest I think mob damage is already too high and that would be a bad idea.

[Cleo]

There would be no stun flat foot debuff.

"And as I have already stated, I would not want there to be mitigation of evasion with accuracy in any way

This sounds absolutely horrible. Having a bunch of my attacks miss on a regular basis would not be fun. Half this game is about crafting armor to make different cool builds. If you make all the builds the same by making nothing hit with consistency, then that eliminates the motivation to make that armor or those builds. Everything is gonna miss all the time so everything is basically the same. Combos become pointless. Synergies become pointless. Half the combat system becomes pointless.

Also, I just don't like it. If the skill says it is supposed to do something, I want it to do it when I press the button. I don't want it to maybe happen when I press the button. You might as well just label all the skills "sometimes does some damage." Blech.

This sounds infuriating, not fun.

[Mikhaila]

I'm curious to see how Citan likes the results of the HP increase to mobs. It was immediately noticable on some mobs because the strategy that use to kill them still has them swinging at you with hps left. Fights are just a bit longer, take a bit more power. Multiple mobs are just that much harder.

[Roekai]

This sounds absolutely horrible. Having a bunch of my attacks miss on a regular basis would not be fun. Half this game is about crafting armor to make different cool builds. If you make all the builds the same by making nothing hit with consistency, then that eliminates the motivation to make that armor or those builds. Everything is gonna miss all the time so everything is basically the same. Combos become pointless. Synergies become pointless. Half the combat system becomes pointless.

Point 1: 10% Evasion is having one of your attacks miss once in a while, not "a bunch of your attacks missing on a regular basis." If you missed 5 (2 is a pair, 3-4 is a few, so I guess 5+ is a bunch) or more attacks in a row, on a regular basis, you would be a statistical anomaly.

Point 2: We already established within this thread, pretty much unanimously, that there is ALREADY a meta (burst dps) that "eliminates the motivation to make other armor or builds." That is the whole point of this thread. You are missing the entire point of this thread.

Point 3: I already addressed the fact that combos chains would still work, and all synergies would remain exactly as they are.

Point 4: I would LOVE to hear the explanation behind the statement missing one in ten attacks (and only the damage, not the effects) would render "half the combat system pointless."

You should honestly have some type of evidence or thought behind an argument when you present it.

Edit: One of the people who doesn't even agree with me ideologically admits "The above is exaggerated, since a 10% evasion rate would only cause a 10 second fight previously to last 11 seconds on average now, so the impact would actually be quite minimal, but I think it's interesting to think about regardless. In fact, it makes me wonder if this change would actually significantly affect anything at all."

TLDR: You are wrong.

and to Celerity:

The reason I advocated for evasion over a flat damage nerf to DPS is that burst damage would still be possible. With a flat nerf to DPS then burst damage would be eliminated, rather than nerfed. But I could be wrong here. Increasing hit points, lowering damage, increasing the mitigation factor/regeneration rate of armor, could all be considered, I suppose. I still have yet to hear a really convincing argument against evasion. But then again, I am a dense asshole, so it could be that too.

[Cleo]

Point 1: 10% Evasion is having one of your attacks miss once in a while, not "a bunch of your attacks missing on a regular basis." If you missed 5 (2 is a pair, 3-4 is a few, so I guess 5+ is a bunch) or more attacks in a row, on a regular basis, you would be a statistical anomaly.

A 1 in 10 chance is not the same thing as 1 in 10 attacks. Every attack has a 10% chance of failing regardless of the ones before or after it failing or missing. The probability of an individual attack failing never changes.

Adding probabilities together is not that simple. If I have a combo that takes 2 attacks to complete, it is not a 10% chance the combo will fail. It is a 19% chance it will fail. If it requires 3 attacks to complete, it is 27.1% chance it will fail. P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B)

If it is a synergy that takes one attack to make 2 or three others do an effect or increase the damage, and that is the attack that fails, it has not messed up one attack, it has messed up all the attacks.

You are oversimplifying your statistics.

Also, I don't care about the statistics. I don't play games to do math. I play them to have fun.

I care about whether the buttons I press do what they say they will do. When they do not do what they say they will do, many people find that annoying.

I am one of them. I'm not going to use anything that combos or has a synergy because the odds of my combo or synergy getting messed up are pretty good, so they are pointless. Might as well not be in the game.


Point 2: We already established within this thread, pretty much unanimously, that there is ALREADY a meta (burst dps) that "eliminates the motivation to make other armor or builds." That is the whole point of this thread. You are missing the entire point of this thread.

I'm not missing the point of the thread. I read the thread. I read your posts. I read everyone else's posts. You have an outcome you wish to achieve, and have already decided that

A) Everyone should have to play the way you want them to because you say so

and

B) Your solution is the only way that the outcome you want to achieve can be achieved.

I find that arrogant, condescending, patronizing and narcissistic.

Every MMO ever made has a META. Of all the games I have played, this one has the least adherence to META. People play all kinds of builds. They might be using builds that are bursty, but there are a bunch of those, and there are a bunch of variants to those. Burst with tankiness. Burst with healing. Burst with utility. Also, not everyone is using burst. I don't. I don't like the long cooldowns on the epics. I see plenty of people using other types of build besides burst. The people who do use burst, don't always use burst everywhere. They use it to fight late game stuff. Elites. Bosses. You want to attach an evasion % to everything, everywhere, with no mitigation possibilities because you don't want people to use burst on elites and bosses?

Why do you care what other people are doing? How is it affecting you? And why do want to introduce a change that affects EVERYONE because people are doing stuff that you have decided is "not the right way to play". Making burst not META won't stop there from being a META. You just want a different META.

A global game change will lead to a global meta change. Diverse changes will lead to diverse meta changes. People have told you that several times already and you have ignored them.

Also, I don't care what "everyone in the thread" agrees. That is like 5 people. Also, not all of them agreed. I didn't. The fact that I disagree with you doesn't make my opinion less valid than yours.


Point 3: I already addressed the fact that combos chains would still work, and all synergies would remain exactly as they are.

Where? Maybe I missed it in your walls of text, but all I see you saying is that CC and debuffs could work regardless of evasion. That isn't how they work now, if the attack is evaded, the cc is evaded. So you want the whole combat system rewritten to conform to your master plan? Of adding evasion to everything. Which many people have already told you they don't like and don't want.

Changing them would not make them stay the same.


Point 4: I would LOVE to hear the explanation behind the statement missing one in ten attacks would render "half the combat system pointless."

Your evasion makes all the combos and synergies unreliable. Making things unreliable makes people stop using them. Which makes them pointless. Maybe you would dump a bunch of time and effort into making maxed out armor for a combo that isn't going to work a bunch of the time, but a lot of people won't.



You should honestly have some type of evidence or thought behind an argument when you present it.

What evidence do you have that your mass evasion changes will do what you want? Your only thought is you want what you want, and don't give a flip what anyone else wants.

TLDR: Your a troll.

[Roekai]

No, do not want "the whole combat system rewritten to conform to my master plan?"

edit: my "master plan" is simply caring about the game @ an autistic level. https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?634-What-skills-build-are-you-guys-using-and-how-is-it-working-out/page4&highlight=evasion

I merely want the mechanic that Citan installed to fix a problem that Citan identified, back. These are not original ideas or opinions. I want a move back to the past, when there was evasion.

You keep complaining about evasion of damage ruining combos and synergy, when I have stated that nothing but damage would be affected under the version of evasion I am advocating for (which is a relatively minor tweak from the original version of evasion).


REPEAT: COMBOS, SNYERGIES, TAUNTS, ROOTS, CCs: WOULD NOT BE EFFECTED. ONLY DAMAGE.


edit: Originally I was not clearly advocating for only damage, but over the course of the discussion objections were raised, so I pivoted to allowing combos, synergies, taunts, roots, and CCs, once valid objections were made. This may have been more clear in my mind than in my posts, lol.

[Roekai]

To CLEO:

A 6% evasion is not that high. Certainly not high enough to quit over. But a bunch of the feedback wasn't reacting to the gameplay, it was just reacting to the concept of evasion. I even saw signs of forum brigading (where a group of players collaborate to bitch about the same topic).

Forum brigading isn't always bad. Sometimes it's a good thing, bringing to my attention something that I just hadn't given a lot of priority or thought to. But the response to evasion was pretty much the opposite of useful. A lot of people made VERY exaggerated claims, on the forums and via in-game feedback, about how much they were being evaded. (I do have logs...) Some people claimed that I had ruined the game, as if this were the first experiment I've ever run. This experiment is actually pretty tame!"

-CITAN

edit: a bunch of edits to just get it more smaller and to the point each time and less about citan that doesn't really belong here

[Cleo]

To CLEO:

A 6% evasion is not that high. Certainly not high enough to quit over. But a bunch of the feedback wasn't reacting to the gameplay, it was just reacting to the concept of evasion. I even saw signs of forum brigading (where a group of players collaborate to bitch about the same topic).

Forum brigading isn't always bad. Sometimes it's a good thing, bringing to my attention something that I just hadn't given a lot of priority or thought to. But the response to evasion was pretty much the opposite of useful. A lot of people made VERY exaggerated claims, on the forums and via in-game feedback, about how much they were being evaded. (I do have logs...) Some people claimed that I had ruined the game, as if this were the first experiment I've ever run. This experiment is actually pretty tame!"

-CITAN

edit: a bunch of edits to just get it more smaller and to the point each time and less about citan that doesn't really belong here

So your argument is that I should not disagree with you because they added a 6% evasion to the game in the past and everyone hated it and mobbed the forums to complain?

I don't think that makes the point you think it does.

[Roekai]

My argument is that evasion is "actually pretty tame" and not my "master plan" to render "half the combat system pointless."

"It makes me wonder if this change would actually significantly affect anything at all."

[Cleo]

My argument is that evasion is "actually pretty tame" and not my "master plan" to render "half the combat system pointless."

"It makes me wonder if this change would actually significantly affect anything at all."

Then why add it? To annoy people who don't like evasion? If it isn't going to affect anything, then it isn't going to achieve your goal.


If your goal is to guide people away from using a META, why not add a bunch of different late game dungeons and bosses that have different mechanics. If your goal is to get away from everyone using burst, then add a bunch of different late game duneons and bosses that burst doesn't work on. Add a dungeon filled with medium level mobs that require steady damage and healing and power regen. Or add a boss that gets enraged by large damage hits and has to be worn down using smaller damage hits. Or by specific elemental types of damage. Add areas with varying requirements that require diversity of playstyle. That will move people away from going straight burst. People can pick and choose which content they want to gear for. Or combo up with other players to make their current gear useful.

I'm not disagreeing with your goal. I'm disagreeing with your solution. Other people have already said this stuff earlier.

Evasion is annoying.

[Roekai]

I would add it because "Currently, the builds that can kill a mob in under 10 seconds (i.e. with 3 or 4 attacks) whether in a group or solo - to minimise rage hits /extreme regeneration rates - offer high success /survivability. Until this alters, player build strategy will not change. Damage output will be prioritised." -Poulter (Note: He uses level 80 max crafted gold with augments and fully modded gear. He also builds Accuracy into his spec. He currently runs with UA /Psy, Fire /Druid and Hammer /Druid.)

And, as I have pointed out before, because "[The Game Developer] has employed various techniques to change [this specific] behavior." -Poulter

And, since the "Problem with evasion is that it has a much higher impact on bursty type builds than on sutaine dones" (-Cr00cy), I believe it would be an "actually pretty tame" (-Citan) way to make sure that there is "the motivation to make that armor or those builds" (-You) so that "People play all kinds of builds" instead of "Burst with tankiness. Burst with healing. Burst with utility."

edit: Furthermore, "I don't want everyone to be in hard core mode but I wouldn't mind some sort of weakness after being killed. I mean a little incentive to not die a lot is all" (-Drivendawn)

[Cleo]

I would add it because "Currently, the builds that can kill a mob in under 10 seconds (i.e. with 3 or 4 attacks) whether in a group or solo - to minimise rage hits /extreme regeneration rates - offer high success /survivability. Until this alters, player build strategy will not change. Damage output will be prioritised." -Poulter (Note: He uses level 80 max crafted gold with augments and fully modded gear. He also builds Accuracy into his spec. He currently runs with UA /Psy, Fire /Druid and Hammer /Druid.)

And, as I have pointed out before, because "[The Game Developer] has employed various techniques to change [this specific] behavior." -Poulter

And, since the "Problem with evasion is that it has a much higher impact on bursty type builds than on sutaine dones" (-Cr00cy), I believe it would be an "actually pretty tame" (-Citan) way to make sure that there is "the motivation to make that armor or those builds" (-You) so that "People play all kinds of builds" instead of "Burst with tankiness. Burst with healing. Burst with utility."

edit: Furthermore, "I don't want everyone to be in hard core mode but I wouldn't mind some sort of weakness after being killed. I mean a little incentive to not die a lot is all" (-Drivendawn)

I never said it wouldn’t discourage people from using burst. It probably would. It would also discourage a lot of other stuff, and be annoying. RNG is annoying. It’s also frustrating. It isn’t fun.

I didn’t say that everyone was using burst, either. You’re leaving out half of what I said. What I meant was that there is not just one META burst build that everyone was using. Even the people using burst are using a variety of skill lines and a variety of complementary skill lines. This isn’t like some games where everyone always takes the same class with the same exact skills to do the same exact thing. People use almost all the skill lines in a variety of different combinations with a variety of different skills. There isn’t any cookie cutter build everyone must play to be viable.

Why do you care what people do, anyway? This isn’t a PvP game. Balance is only important insofar as all the skills should be good to play and see use in the game. So long as that is happening, what difference does it make to you what people choose to focus on. It doesn’t affect you. If your looking for content that doesn’t exist so you can do a specific kind of gameplay, ask for that. Why do you need to demand that things other people aren’t going to like be rammed down everyone’a throat? What is the point?

There is an even simpler way to make people stop using burst. Nerf the burst skills. I don’t recommend that either, but it would work. I think it is better to add bribes in the form of fun content that encourages variety to get people to change their behavior. There would be less complaints with that approach.

Or you could do what Citan is already doing and raise health. That makes burst less useful because you go on long cool downs before the mob is dead. Mobs having higher health is not annoying RNG evasion. I like that approach.

TLDR: Evasion is annoying. People are going to complain. There are other ways to achieve the same goal. Better ways.

[poulter]

Evasion is annoying, but there is a place for it as long as it is selectively applied, so that players can plan and accommodate it. It is just another tool to add variety to the game. (Damage Reflect from manticores is a decent example of selected use).
By the way, my maximum run of consecutively missed attacks (caused by mob evasion) in FR is 7 - and I was using a +12 Accuracy belt.

Build types:
Players will continue to adapt builds as the game evolves (next nerf will probably be to stun builds).
Personally, I carry 3 or 4 full gear sets most of the time and change them out to suit the mob type or group composition.

I have moved away from pure 'nuke' builds (e.g. Fire /Priest, Hammer /Ment, Archery /Ment) and started using x /Druid in groups as most players currently focus on damage only builds and it adds greater team value.

I avoid the immunity /'I WIN' button staff builds as I find them unsatisfying as they are too linear /constrictive for my taste.

My favourite for group play remains the Unarmed /Psychology Triple stun build - damage output of a stun-locked mob is nearly zero.

The point of the above is that:
The game evolves so players need to adapt to Citan's vision
Most combos and builds are viable - let's hope they remain so
Evasion isn't a game breaker
Sharing and discussing, whilst respecting different opinions, is highly desirable and should be encouraged

[cr00cy]

Ok, I made another wall of text of post, but relaized I'm basicly repeating what I, and other people already said. So this will be (probbaly) my final post in this threat.

Roekai
So, going all the way back to orginal post, you made 2 statments/propositions - introducing global evasion as a way to extend combat, and making hardcore mode mandatory.

1)In my opinion, Hardocre mode should always remain as option. Not everyone want challenge, some people want more relaxed gameplay. Hoever, some kind of reward for Hardocre palyers would be welcome - for example, higher drop chance of better gear or rare items.

2) Evasion. In my opinion, evasion, as it currently works, shouldn't be applied globally. It's random nature would affect burst builds more than any other, and coudl make some skills that have fewer damge optiosn less viable. On top of that, it would lead to frustration, since missing.

If evasion would be changed to only prevent damge, and not break combos/buffs, it would still be frustrating, and would only enchance one of its main problems - fact it would affect burst oriented builds more than others.

Problem with evasion, as randomly occuring total dmage mitigation, is that it will eitehr be so small that it will be barley noticable, and thus havign little no impact on gameplay, or beign high enough to have significant impact on gameplay, and they you'll need soem way to counter it, or game will be unplayable. It's aslo hard to balance, as even small change can move it between 'mildly annoying' and 'game-breaking'.

And it always will be frustrating.

In order to extend duration of combat in healthy way, I belive number adjustmnets are the way to go. Making mobs toughter and/or reducign player damge is much healthier approach, that will affect every type of builds the same way (or at least difference be less than in case of evasion). At the same time, I strongly belive that defensive optiosn for players should be improved too, and/or monster damage should go down.

Lastly, I honestly can't understand why you are so frustrated by burst builds. By you own words, you play only sowrd/unarmed tanky build. Why would you care what other peopel play?

A lot of your suggestions seems to come from assuption that every skill combination has the same tools that sword and unarmed, which is not true.

Only random defensive mechanic that, in my opion, could be introduced globally, and don't be extremally frustrating, would be partial damage reduction, as I mentioned in one of my replays.

Lastly, i would liek to thank you for startign this post. Even though we disagree on the subject, I belive such discussion was needed. Hopefully, it will give Citan some ideas on how to bance game in the future.

Cheers.

[Roekai]

cheers mate