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.