Elphame's Arena Feedback

Small recommendations as I am still grinding stuff out.

1st, no spell casting on cave screens is a staple and throw back to when there were lines on cave screens. With things being as they are on EA, I would suggest a removal of this restriction. Sometimes folks may need to heal on this screen and prevention of that really serves no purpose any more.

2nd, I think increased loot over all isn't so bad. One reason is that it's seasonal but the other reason is that if there is a range of stats possible on a drop it really doesn't hurt that much to be able to hope for a slightly better drop than one previously. I'd even counter that increasing said range along with drop rates would feel good as one of the best feelings I had in the beta iterations was being able to swap a piece of gear for an identical piece of gear just because it had +5hp more or something "stupid" but it did feel exciting and good to "upgrade" ever so slightly. I feel I've kind of lost that feel this time around.

3rd, still not sure if I like the fact that M/GM spells are drop only vs buying, but I do believe that if that stays that way then every M/GM spell should get a color assignment at the least to help folks know what is sold in stores vs what isn't.

4th, I am liking the return to faster boss spawns, but I also feel like early game bosses just aren't present enough to matter. I spent days and days before encountering a Targ cause he just was never on the rotation, then suddenly he was a lot(yeah RNG). I'd suggest more lower level bosses. Maybe even more bosses in general. There is a mad dash for them and that's great and all but the selection of them is so tiny. I still support the addition of a Lesser Hives for lower levels on par with Targs. I think it would be beneficial and healthy to break down the caves available and bosses within to equals across certain level ranges. Maybe 1-25 gets 2/3 bosses within caves, 25-50, 50-75, 75-100. This could even be accomplished with multiple bosses in some caves. IC is definitely large enough to accommodate this. Then I'd suggest maybe weighting those bosses for appearances. Lower to mid bosses would appear more often than mid to end game bosses. Artificially create rarity in this way vs a crap drop rate. Effectively create an even bigger rush to find a boss fight in certain areas because since the appearance rarity is high but the drop rate is as well.

That's my take on things early on this 1st version live. I'm enjoying the hell out of it though. Probably more or on par with the height of my Realm enjoyment at the least. Awesome job!

Thoughts on the EJ Change.

As a note: I designed my composition specifically around having one toon use EJ for PVP and was probably one of the few people (if not the only person) on this kind of a composition. So, I have a strong understanding of where the spell stood, where it stands now, and what adjustments I think might be better suited.

First, I would like to state that the previous iteration of EJ (where it only hit the opponent) was probably the single strongest spell in PVP (if the opponent had some /crime). That said, some of its inherent strength was because of the fact that top tier PVP compositions are generally designed with a certain level of stat specificity. More specifically, I expect going in to a high lvl PVP fight to see most compositions to be lacking in Endurance as a part of their base stats. Additionally, I don't expect them to be wearing more then one Endurance ring/ammy and if they are a wizard they will likely not be stacking up on heavy +hp gear. For that reason, I felt like EJ was a meta breaker for PVP (assuming again that they have some level of /crime) and why I decided to build around it. BUT, it also meant my build was a one trick pony that could be beaten…

Within this paradigm, EJ was beatable! If EJ became more popular, the adaptation would be to add more endurance… or be killed. While EJ was first or second round killing most of my enemies, there was at least one two man team that adapted after they saw what EJ could do. I went to about a 50/50 win to loss against them.

Now, it is worth noting that if some fast caster was able to cast EJ with two toons in the first round… that is when things would get out of control and why I think EJ being adjusted is warranted.

Where we are now:

I believe the current change to EJ kills it for the betterment of PVP. In the current "deals damage to everyone" structure, its really only desirable for non-criminals and people who specifically design around abusing EJ (i.e. the change didn't solve the problem).

The first category, non-criminals, are going to be people who don't PVP. This camp of people might want EJ because it protects them from PKers (and it does still do that for them) but at the cost of having to learn GM Sorcery. That is a large cost to pay given the limitations on build points. If it were me, I would just suck it up and take the couple deaths from getting jumped on my way to 100 rather then commiting all those build points in to Sorcery. There are just better options out there that won't gimp my toons leveling efficiency.

The second category, abusers of EJ, looks like (in my mind/in theory) high Endurance + decent Dex two man compositions. This team would probably be throwing 40+ build points in to GM EJ and rolling around with AoFW/AoE + 2 RoEs and as much of the highest +HP gear they can find. I would probably build this for the luls but frankly the grind to get to lvl 100 on a gimped sorcery build was annoying enough to do once (with 1 toon)… Maybe next season.

The third Category, the suicide pact. This is the build I'm stuck with now. I can kill you but at the cost of my own life. Jump me and we're both drinking the Kool-aid because frankly I don't have any other way to beat you.

A proposal for more EJ change:

First, I think EJ needed a power adjustment in general. A flat X% less damage is one way to approach it. Scaling damage based on how much /crime the player has is another.

Second, The mana cost. The current cost per cast is 150 mana. In the spells current form, I think this needs to be scaled up. If the spell does damage to everyone, then it needs to be scaled up or (I think) the Heavy Endurance + Dex build will just stack more +hp gear and less +mana gear and thus can more effectively abuse it.

Third, If EJ is going to do damage to friendly parties, I do think it needs to do maybe 50-75% damage to friendly parties because the opponent is getting a free round while you are just setting everyones health to X% of their whole. You basically lose a round for trying to use the spell.

Alright. I'm going to stop there. I'm getting sick of thinking about all my wasted build points while I fight high lvl NPCs that summon monsters and I think… sure would be nice to have been able to learn banishment.

Regen should affect mana regen, perhaps in battle.

Okay. Generally, I'm loving what you've done with the EA server. However…

1) NPC Thieves. We discussed this in beta, and it's still a problem. Too damn many. One screen in FoD today, I killed a thief, came out of combat to another thief, killed that one, and came out of combat to a third thief. If I'm not in Thieves Hole, this shouldn't happen. I was trying to find a boss and all I wound up doing was clearing a path for the player who got the kill.

2) Plate of Insulation and Dragonscale Plate are supposed to be good armor. The hp and cold resist/fire resist are good, but the AR!!! I think I've found four so far and none of them had even a 50 AR, so as armor, they're worse than Iron Plate. Why?

Is the EA formula for mana working as intended? Here are my findings for a level 100 AIEW:

Naked: 25 INT/ 153 SDM / 276 mana
Add AoI with +25 mana…
1 item: 28 INT/ 171 SDM/ 304 mana (up 25 from the ammy, up 3 for gaining 3 in INT)
Add first RoI with +12 mana…
2 items: 30 INT/ 183 SDM / 318 mana (up 12 from the ring, up 2 for gaining 2 in INT)
Add second RoI with +12 mana…
3 items: 31 INT/ 189 SDM / 331 mana (up 12 from the ring, up 1 for gaining 1 in INT)

Really? Each point you gain in INT gives you only 1 more point of mana at level 100? Really?

I only played the Realm in 1998 / 1999 when I was a 12 year old (who got appointed guild leader & never got past level 111), and had to quit when my family moved overseas. So my knowledge of the game is very limited. I had been really enjoying the new server, but could not fathom how others were progressing so quickly. I tried turning up the speed but couldn't stand the game looking so ridiculous. As the grind became more and more apparent, and people kept expressing the need to play multiple characters, I lost interest. I never want to level multiple characters, and don't particularly enjoy it in online worlds… generally speaking it takes away from potential human interactions, or is a result of the lack of said human interactions. Multiple toons - nice option, not nice requirement IMHO.

After some thought I not only realised I would never make it to 100 before the server was deleted (I am a newb after all!) but far worse and more important to me that the social interactions, guilds, and such fun of old are gone. Probably not as much of a thing for those of you who have stuck around or returned often… or have friends to play with. I've been away so long that I have no damned idea what all the acronyms in chat are for. I understand that this is an old gem, not well known, and even more aware of how incredibly often online worlds have little to no social interaction, do not consider them, and very rarely account for such things with game mechanics.

I love the Realm and am delighted to see folks still having fun, just can't do the grind now that I've no guild or anyone to talk to, nothing to do when chilling taking a break from hunting. Also thought I would mention that changing to native 1920 1080p desktop resolution in fullscreen always cuts off important parts of the UI like character / NPC names and health…. any solution to this? Happy Realming all!

Loving the EA server, like many have said it's one of the most enjoyable and fresh Realm experiences I've ever played. I love the rat race (no pun intended) and ephemeral nature of the seasonal servers.

Giving my feedback thus far, as an Elf Thief crossing into level 30:

* Having 6 strength and trying to carry any bit of gear is still difficult without running into the 65% encumbrance penalty. I'm stacking mostly the leathers and still dealing with 5-6 stone weight per piece. Maybe BoS/BoC help with this at later levels?

* I like the idea of randomized range of armor rating and damage on weapons. However, randomizing the weight is just frustrating. Not to mention it has zero correlation to the actual effects themselves. I can have an insanely heavy 6+ stone armor piece with less stats than a 4-ish stone piece of the same type. Why? It feels more like a chore to micromanage the gear weights (see above).

* Player pickpocketing at higher amounts is great. However, it's a bit rough on the PvE side where monsters in South Havenwood (a newbie zone) can make off with your gold 500-1k at a time. I think mobs need to have pickpocket amount limits based on their level, I can see new players getting discouraged.

* Myst at low levels feels worthless. I'm an Elf Thief with 14 int, fam med and prof myst… but it's rare for me to land any meaningful hold (on mobs without any resist). I know mobs have higher levels and perhaps the -1% effectiveness per level against them is the cause. I think that's good for PvP but I think should be re-considered for PvE. It feels like why bother with myst at all for the lower levels.

* As others have said, I wish the hybrid gear was more balanced. Feels worthless to bother with the leggings, either go +hp or +mp gear pieces.

* Improve the bounty loot tables. Both times I got a GOLD bounty I was excited… and opened it for a plain myth sword that I found dozens of in the last hours. Meanwhile a low level mobs in South Havenwood dropped a yellow enchanted dagger and broad sword. Judging from others it seems the bounties are pretty lackluster.

* Drop chance seems to be disproportionate on certain things. I've been killing all of the NPCs and trolls/ogres in South Havenwood… have tons of broad swords, 2handers, clubs, and several daggers. Short swords and throwers seem to rarely drop from thieves. I can imagine that's frustrating for new players trying to get some of these weapon types and grinding those monsters.

EA has been a fun change of pace for sure. But I do have a few observations.

Spells.

• I think spellbook and/or skill prices need adjusted. It costs more gold to buy a spell than a tempered steel weapon. Excessively more considering you've got to pay to obtain the skillbook AND the spell. Whereas you can buy an axe and use it with 0 skill.
• Can we please remove or fix junk spells? Hold monster is effectively useless, as is cornucopia, enchant, perm, acid cloud, mind blast, cold steel, flame blade, electric charge, venom, arctic grasp, fire grasp, venomous touch, rust, mass rust and unlock. I suppose these haven't been outright removed because they'd make the spell list seem barren… Because it is barren. These spells being included without working do more than just confuse players, they ruin drop tables.
• Can we adjust mana costs on spells to be consistent? Fireball is a master level spell which costs as much as GM Electric Fury.(115) Invul is a GM level spell that costs 100, Faery Queen is a GM level spell that costs 80. None of this makes sense.
• Can we get SOME sort of spells to use when at 0 mana? Maybe make GM'ing a school drop all fam spells of that school to 0 mana cost?

• DWish and DV are decidedly broken. I literally crit with Dwish at GM nec GM Med (AIEW) for 18 whole damage. I've had DV hit targets for 60. DV is an absolute joke of a spell at the moment.

  Gear.

• As has been mentioned hybrid gear is basically useless. 2 dedicated HP or MP pieces does more than 3 hybrid pieces. I vote to make hybrid pieces much better, and rarer.
• Weight fluctuations are too much. I can have a TL shirt with worse stats that weighs as much as 3 other TL shirts combined. It's a bit excessive.
• Can we make fashion driven gear such as baldrics, robes and skirts weigh 0? In EA they do nothing as the AR doesn't ever really apply and chanted variants do not drop. Leveling a thrower is great until you're given a baldric that does nothing and puts you over 65% carry cap and gets you wrecked.
• Decrease lower tier gear drops and increase higher tier gear drops. Lower tier gear rains. And even if it doesn't everyone gives TL and myth away for free to newbies all the time. 9/10 times it gets left on the ground. There's no reason for low tier gear to drop so often.
• Bring back life leech for claws…. Or give them a hell of a buff. The only Dex based Melee weapon that sees limited play is the life leech, and even that is very limited. Daggers especially with randomization have no use over throwing daggers. Same with claws, but they have even worse damage for some reason. If they're going to have the lowest damage in the game, give them some sort of perk to using them.
• If Wrath EA and BC can exist, why don't we have a better option for every other weapon type?
• Casters need "something" to use as a weapon. A "stat stick" would be great. Otherwise useless melee weapons that add +mana and +mana regen or something. I get that we don't really want +MDM/SDM gear here. But it doesn't mean there's nothing we can do about caster weapons.

• Brig back OG headwear. A Hood of Shifting would be a life changer for a thrower. NMH would be really great for pvp.

  Party composition.

• I feel as though the 2 man party really limits character design and party comp. It feels very Outriders to me where DPS is such a driving force that you go DPS or go home. Simply upping the group to 3 would let you have party roles like Tank, DPS and support. More importantly this would let you level a character that doesn't "come online" or serve their purpose effectively for many levels. It would encourage build diversity. This is a problem for users who actually want to play with a friend or god forbid friend(s). It really sucks to see a character who is making a specific build because points are so limited actually slow down another player.

  EA core design.

• This content does not seem very balanced around wizzies in general. A KK on the upper end can have over 20k HP. Even with a nice curse, 189 SDM and crits every round, a wiz would likely run out of mana (assuming he was also literally invulnerable) before he solo'd it. So badly that I'm fairly certain 2 wizzies may meet the same fate more often than not. Larger groups of soft targets would be a good fix for this. I see packs of Daemons, Devils and other hard targets, I'd like to see packs of liches, furies and the like also.
• We need GOOD enemies. The only place to use Dwish or DV effectively is against? Guardians? Wardens in FoD maybe? We need paladins and other good aligned enemies to help with adjusting alignment for certain bosses at the least.
• I'm fine with not being able to teleport to various places, but, I feel like we shouldn't have to trek to WL every time we want to learn a warrior skill. Add a vendor to EL to sell warrior skills ( which, how is throwing a war skill still?) or give the option for the EL and WL gatekeepers to "direct" you to the other gate.
• Guardians and Wardens currently have no loot table.
• Not being able to regen mana in the cloud after combat ends gives casters a distinct disadvantage in pvp. Coming out of a fight with no mana to get jumped and have to watch your murder happen live is no fun.
• If Crafting is to be removed completely can we get rid of their inclusion in loot tables and lock shops that sell those skills like the one in Kurz?

Previous post edited to add new information and format for clarity.

Playing several different characters to level 100, I've noticed some pvp issues:
(1) It's impossible to win a fight if your opponent has a wrath/executioner weapon unless you have one yourself. These items are way too strong compared to a good obsidianite weapon. The listed damage on the wrath/EA is often 4x the damage of the next best weapon. It should be 2x stronger at most. Double damage is still a huge buff.
(2) It is often too much of an advantage to be the aggressor in PvP. The aggressor, being prepared, always enters the fight with full health, full mana, no encumbrance penalty, and a full list of spell buffs. The defender, due to the nature of being jumped, often enters the fight at partial health, partial mana, carrying excessive loot, and without the required spell buffs. The fight is often over before it even started, even if the two teams would be otherwise well matched. This is not a problem per-se, since being jumped at a disadvantage is part of pvp. However, my next point…
(3) A well geared level 100 duo is virtually untouchable in pvp. They can roam the lands, monopolizing boss spawns and killing other players without any real risk to themselves. There needs to be more options for other players to defend themselves. I like the /crime idea, and the high damage of Elphame's Justice as punishment. However, any player can simply clear their /crime with no consequence by killing their own character with another one of their own characters. This process only takes a minute, and then the murderer can go back to the battlefield to murder more players with impunity. The /crime record needs to persist beyond death. Maybe your /crime decreases by some amount every 24 hours? This would make players think twice about jumping another player because then they'll be vulnerable to Elphame's Justice for a while.
(4) There should be increased grace provided to single players who are jumped by a duo. Even if the single player is level 100, fighting two level 100's is still very unbalanced. Maybe the penalties (exp/gold) lost in pvp should be scaled by the sum of player levels? For example, ExpAndInsuranceLossFactor = min(1, (your level + your teammate level) / (opponent #1 level + opponent #2 level))
(5) Dispel magic is too strong in pvp. This 5 mana spell can strip 8 buffs costing 300 mana in a single cast. This wouldn't be such a problem if being dispelled didn't mean immediate death of a caster to a warrior wielding a Wrath/Executioner Axe. One solution is to give dispel magic a "quota" of dispel power. Each cast, dispel magic can remove buffs up to this quota in mana cost. For example, if a 100 strength dispel magic strips off invulnerability (which costs 100 mana), then it can't dispel anything else. But if the 100 strength dispel strips off shift (which costs 50 mana), then the dispel has 50 power remaining to dispel other buffs. Whenever dispel has less power remaining than a buff cost, there would be reduced chance of success. A 30 power dispel only has 30% chance to dispel a buff costing 100 mana. It would be awesome if the caster could choose how much mana to spend on dispel, and this determines the quota. However, this is probably too much to ask. Instead, I suggest increasing the cost of dispel magic (maybe 40 mana?) and then setting the dispel quota based on the caster's spell damage modifier. Maybe 25 quota at 0 SDM and 125 quota at 189 SDM. Also related to dispel magic, there's a bug that causes the combat log to display incorrect information: https://realmserver.com/forum/bug-reports/dispel-magic-has-been-bugged-forever-please-fix

Somehow different dungeons are staying locked, I can only guess that someone went in closed the sarc and then tp'd out after killing boss. The problem being that the dungeon stays locked, ie Thieves Hole and Imp City have been locked for 2 days now. I gather FuFu's was locked but DevGrumpy had opened it while I was afk, just don't know how he knew and fixed it so fast. My suggestion would be to have some kind of monitor that would watch for no action over a time period in a dungeon and auto reset it. Just a thought, but would like TH and IC to be opened.

Most of what I was going to say has been said. I do want to say this comes off as areas of improvement and hopefully is taken as it is meant which is as constructive. This is all also in consideration of the server having a temporary and short lifespan, while my opinion on a lot of these topics would change if it was not such a temporary/short lived server. I joined a little bit late, but in general I had a good time and think this is a good idea and good first public implementation and want to say thanks for giving some of that old time feels again.

XP:
XP rate was horrible outside of the anniversary even with a noble citizen account. I could not see myself playing a season again without either a buff to this or a lot of improvements/increases to a character's power level. With no enchants, weak gear, limited party size and limited build points I imagine the characters are no where near the power level most are accustomed to as they felt super weak to me and I have basically been gone for 20 years so the Realm is still pretty fresh again for me. However, I remember hold/mass hold being a huge part of leveling back in the Sierra days but that was not brought back to any of its old glory for the EA server as myst is so bad on both EA and FF right now.

Loot:
The boxes may as well have not even existed. I hope more dropped, but in three weeks I was only made aware of one single box dropping.

I really liked the randomization, but the ranges between tiers were too overlapping. A yellow 2h Enchanted Mythril weapon vs yellow 2h Obsidian sword - the Obs had 5 extra top end damage, weighed more, and cost about 3-4x to repair. This sort of situation was common so even when you did find an increased tier it was too common to not want to use it as the tradeoff was not worth it.. I think having weapons overlap in the top and bottom 20% of ranges would make more sense, then increase rarity reduces weight for yellow, then red/purple have a chance at extra enchants would be a cool way to go to make them worth it.

Also, repair bills felt too high. I liked the insurance costs as if I died I am okay with a good sized penalt, but repair bills on top of everything else felt too much for times when I was not doing things wrong. Maybe drop those about 20%.

Hybrid gear was really underwhelming. Made more sense for a wizzie to just skip hybrid and go pure mana to have enough mana to kill things then pump up HP with pure hp gear.

Top end named gear was really good, just tough to break into when joining late. Good thing the community here is great!

Mana regen:
Either allow for a percentage to regen during battle or in the post-battle screen, or refill mana to 50%-75% or so when leaving combat if your mana was lower than this. Wizzies had a tough go in a lot of areas, this would help a good bit.

Spells/skills:
I liked having master/gm be drop only. Though, I swear Great Shield's drop rate was broken though. I came across one copy in about three weeks, that's it. Every other Thaum spellbook I had copies and copies and copies, just not for Greater Shield. Maybe I was told wrong and it's not good align characters (nymph/faery/sylvan namely) that drop them, but it took about 8 hours or so of farming nymph/faery/sylvan before I found one and that was the only one I found. So, hope I was told wrong, but please look into that one for the next server :)

If someone specs into Elem/Necro and cast the weapon buffs (venom for example) these need to work. BP are precious on this server, so spending some to get the spells for personal increase/buffs should be allowed, especially since you also need to get some meditation skill with the mana regen mechanic which results in a lot of non-core skills being invested in all for nothing. I don't think they should be able to be casted on the weapon, but think maybe if you could case F/I/V/E on oneself and have it like shift with say 100 or 200 charges per cast. Really would have made a throwing thief kind of keep up with an ASGW if the thief could use those weapon buffs.

This ties to loot as well, but bring back crafting, old school crafting, with Beral having the mats. Let people craft up to Obsidian with randomized loot and a chance at being enchanted. Keep adamantium as drop only (or don't and let us craft that too?).

Classes:
Wars were definitely king this round. The biggest challenge I had was around an 80% miss rate against furies/bloody mary. Wish i was exaggerating that but I ended up parsing and found this to be true.

Wizzies had a rough go. Not enough damage compared to the mana pool and mana costs. Myst is horrible on both servers, but on EA it would have been nice to have the myst resistance removed on mobs at least, especially considering the cost.

Thief was strong early and felt weaker after around level 65ish. best throwing weapon I found was a stinger though, never could find or even hear of an enchanted one so that could be where my opinion comes in.

Adv existed, or so I'm told…. Really, limited BP and poor gear optimization did not seem to help Adv at all so it felt pointless to make one.

PVP:
I hear it existed. Felt like trying to focus/force people into PVP was a wasted effort though. I joined a little bit late, and as a result there was only one time I got jumped. This was by some dudes that looked pretty geared while I was still new so just fled and didn't get bothered by anyone else at any other point. The only other PVP notification I saw was someone killed themselves., which was pretty funny.

Silvers:
Minor thing but it would be cool to have silvers be web account pooled instead of single game account. Having around 100-140 silvers on a few accounts that I can't spend now.