PT: Vital Combat & Exaltations

#537

As someone who’s put too much money into a divine pet, I don’t feel entitled about my virtual game breaking p2w pet. Do you remember not, the glory of your guide before pet abilities? Before players could stand in lava indefinitely. Pets still function, so long as the player dodges the bullet hell aspect of the game, instead of face tanking damage.

#538

yep, thx.

First, I have to say that I understand what you said, about my pet heal be cutting in half (will heal 50% of the current value), but divine will heals just 30% of what it was.

ok, so they will be nerfed more than me. or do not?

my point is, If I look right, my current pet rare lvl 70 heals 20/s , it does not give me super powers, it’s just “good” but with this update, my pet will heal just 10/s, what is miserable.

but to have the pet like the one I have today I will have to put lvl 90 which just will cost me more than 185K of feed power. (lvl 70 to 90, without calculating the pet needed in fusion…)

it will not decrease the difference between high lvls and novices.

I would prefer puting the pet heal max lvl at 80 which heal 32/s nowadays and it would be ok, less feed power, and fair enouth with everyone

I think that my pet with heal that 10/s will be useless, and to put that to 20/s which start something good, will cost me much more.

so the only one who will have a fair heal is the highest ones…
ok their pet will be nerfed, but mine will desapear.

#539

I’d argue they suffer a lot larger nerf. Also. dont forget this update makes healing faster out of combat. For most midgame dungeons, and some endgame ones, you can usually back out somewhere safe to heal with little focus on dodging. This would put you out of combat and make you heal much faster (even faster than currently, due to the vit buffs)
Even if you don’t back out, provided that you focus on dodging and survival rather than attacking, you should be able to keep your hp up very well. It will probably take a bit of time for the majority of players to get used to though.

#540

It’ll only heal you less often while you’re In Combat.
It’ll be just as powerful as before while you’re Out of Combat.
Overall, sure, your pet might not quite be as powerful as before, but the difference isn’t that gargantuan - if anything, you’ll likely spend less time regenning thanks to the increased vitality (at least, that’s how I experienced it while toying around with a level 60 pet).

#541

When pets came out with Healing, MP Healing and other attributes I really hated that idea. I could understand that it was a money maker for Kabam at the time though. I don’t disagree with DECA’s proposed pet changes. It will be nice to get back to more dodging and skill than just tanking your way through stuff.

**Added after the post: It occurs to me that most of my deaths generally happen because I was a bit bored and started tanking instead of dodging. Damage builds up slowly (slightly faster than healing) and then I make a pretty Tombstone.

I kinda feel a bit of empathy for those the put money into their pets. When you pay for something you expect it to function the way it was advertised.

#542

Shatter I did not need to know that! xD

#543

I barely felt a difference cause half the time I tried to regen was spent on waiting for OoC to kick in… Waiting for myself to get healed up with IC/OoC felt the same as with the current build, maybe even slower on low-vit chars. (Mostly tested the system on Samurai)

#544

gut gud and DODGE, ah I liked this in/out combat thing

#545

I thought I was never going to come back to this game but this update is actually looking spicy. I love the controversy it stirred too.

I haven’t gotten into this game for a while now so I’m a little out of the loop, that being said I want to give my opinion on this update: I love it. Everything about it. From the pet nerf to the exalt system I think it’ll all around make the game funner and more rewarding to play.

It seems that the priest nerf is causing the most concern but even that feels necessary to me. I mean just think about how boring the current best way to run end game dungeons is. As it is now, or at least when I was playing, you could get an ungodly amount of successful lost halls runs done in a day with literally no effort from yourself. I could hop into discord, wait for a run to start, hop on my 6/8 random old-old top geared character and get soulbound with almost no chance at dying. And now you actually have to try, you actually get rewarded for small group sizes, and, most importantly, dying on even a weak undergeared 6/8 has consequences (exalt system). I think that that is amazing

[Woah welcome back Etahn! - Shatter]

#546

Well, this way players can choose whether or not they want to try to get more progress (and thus risk previous progress) towards their dungeon completions. This way, going into the dungeon on a squishier, 0/8 or 4/8 character does not put you in danger of losing the same progress as you would on a full-fledged 8/8. You get to practice, and your ppes don’t limit you to what you can do safely (in terms of progress).

Okay, main post time:

I don’t feel I have much more detailed feedback to give beyond what’s already been said, and I’d prefer not to argue the minutia since I’m not the greatest at the exact science of balancing. Instead, I thought I would focus on the general theme of the pet nerf, and whether or not we need it.

IMO, we need the pet nerf. There is a huge disconnect these days between the players who flood and then facetank event bosses and the players who unironically carry vit rings in their inventory so they can hide behind the obstacles in the Stheno fight to regenerate their hp a little faster. Remember that players with no pet, a common pet or an uncommon pet really can’t tank any shots and stay in combat. To them, their heal stat basically just serves to lower the amount of time they spend regenerating hp, and so a system where their vit gets doubled when OOC would help them quite a lot. I also know from trying to introduce irl friends to this game that it is very hard for them to feel like they’re contributing to the fight when they have to spend most of it hiding and another player just tanks everything and kills the boss before they can get in soulbound (this applies to both event bosses and glands dungeon bosses alike). If this game is going to survive, we need a pet nerf so that it’s more friendly for newer players.

In addition, the pet nerf is already here, if in a very indirect sense. Lately, new lategame content has evolved to just go around pets healing 90 hp/sec, through the use of instakills (abandoned mineshaft, nest), status effect spam (Xolotl, nest to an extent, or anywhere with sick/quiet/silenced/pet stasis), damage so high that pets can’t heal fast enough (LH, void) or the straight up removal of pets (heroic dungeons). These tactics work, and I can guarantee that they will continue to be applied as a band-aid of sorts for the pet issue unless a comprehensive fix (like vital combat) is found. I don’t know about you, but I would rather see changes that fix the issue of new player/veteran player disparities and keep the game challenging for both, rather than relying on cheap shot mechanics like instakills to simulate challenge.

I do hope to see some sort of compensation for divine pet owners who spent large amounts of money on their pets, but I do also recognize that (as outlined in this post) DECA has no obligation to provide such compensation. Regardless, I firmly believe that this is the direction the game needs to go, and DECA should put in a pet nerf of some form.

I will also briefly speak to the issue of increased encounter difficulty with the vital combat system; I was there for the Great Pet Bug of 2017. I remember my (then rare) pet suddenly healing me for way, way less than before, and feeling like all the work I had put in to getting it there was for nothing. I remember standing in the godlands, flashing red next to some rocks and hoping that someone with a tome or seal would come by and heal me since my rare pet had previously meant that I did not have to worry about dodging. As such, I did not know how to dodge properly, and sucked at the game when my pet could no longer support me.

Over the next few days, I got much better at dodging. I learned patience as my pet slowly regenerated my health behind barriers, and I felt myself getting much, much better at the game than I ever had been previously as my skill and risk assessment abilities improved. After the pet bug was fixed, I returned to my usual pet, and my skill dropped noticeably again, never to go back to it’s full pet-bug-glory.

I know that these changes feel like the end of the world and the urge to quit may be strong. But please, give it some time. You will improve with practice, and as a great orator once said,

#547

I had only just started and had an uncommon, but I remember a lot of people complaining about it

I always just assumed they did it on purpose to test the community’s reaction to a direct pet nerf and then “fixed” it when it was overwhelming negative

#548

I figured the same back then (and still do today). It was especially interesting that maxed divines were apparently unaffected by the changes.

#549

Time to carry one life pot and drink it right before boss dies!
it’s a funny

#550

The issue is exactly what @isalea said though.

Retooling older bosses will take away from new game development.

#551

I’m just looking for changes that will:

  • Make early game more welcoming for new players
  • Reduce the inherent disparity between new and veteran players (not counting skill)
  • Have the game reward skill in a much greater way than it does now

I’m not especially attached to a particular method for doing this; I just want it to happen. A pet nerf seems like the best way, and IC/OoC is the only one that I have actually been able to test for myself.

#552

I’m not the only one who suspected that, then. I had a rare level pet back then; it took me a moment to realize something was up, but Even with the loss of healing, I just shrugged it off.

As for this:

I had read an old article speculating this, the conclusion of which boiled it down to a likely mathematical discrepancy in the coding. I don’t think that was done on purpose. I’ll see if I can find it.

Edit: I found the thread I was looking for. There were a few good speculations, but I liked Nevov’s stab at it:

#553

Scary how far back you went

What exactly are you implying there? - Book

You already said you went back and read the old stuff, I just didn’t realize how thorough you were. @XBookwyrmX

:wink::+1: -Book @Platformz

#554

I love IC/OC, but I am skeptical about the new HP changes. I think the group size they encourage is way too small. With the current formula vs new formula i get this graph

image
image.png786x489 22.5 KB

This is: Time to complete = HP / Group DPS
All factors are taken into account in this graph, an arbitrary group dps that is consistent between prod and testing, a monster w/ 75% HP in testing, buffs properly scaled, etc. (the shape of the graph does not change w/ increases to either HP or group DPS). For all HP and DPS values the most efficient group size will always be 10 players, and you are harshly punished for going over that value. In this example I used voids HP and an average group dps of 2k. A group of 10 will be able to complete the encounter in 14 seconds while 65 will take 50, over 3x as long (of course this time value makes a lot of perfect world assumptions and ignores time wasting phases, so it wont be 3x in reality, but its still maybe too much of a discrepency).

Math

If you are curious:

x = Number of players
HP = Base HP (400000 for graph)
avgDPS = Average dps of player in group (2000 for graph)

Prod:
T = (HP + .2HP * x) / (avgDPS * x)

Testing:
T = .75 * HP (1 + .01(x-1)^2) / (avgDPS * x)

#555

I think the main reason DECA decided to implement the exaltation is due to how stale the game is over the last few years. For me, personally, I have obtained all of my favourite white bags and it makes realm boring without any kind of visible progress or goal. Just think of it like a pet or some small stat bonuses that you can just gain just by normally playing. You don’t have to focus on grinding each of the endgame dungeons but you can just think of it as an addition to the loot, you don’t need to sacrifice anything for the sake of exaltation, you just need to play normally and there will be some progress. Currently, there are no reasons for me to run endgame dungeon such as nests and lost halls when I already have my whitebags, this might motivate someone like me to do the dungeon. I haven’t played in the last few months but this exaltation might bring me back. Having an endgame progesss is not to be achieved in a day or a week, just like the pet, many people were complaining about howmuch fame and feedpower you need to get a fully maxed divine pet. You need to spent countless hours to add a small progress on your pet but realistically speaking, you wont get it fully maxed out. I personally have a 90/90 divine pet but I don’t plan on going for 100/100 because I know my limits and I’m still happy with my pet. You don’t just see the end of all exaltation where you already get all +5 stats across all characters, you still get undeniable progress even when you have +2 stats on some character. You don’t need to get +5 if you don’t want to, +3 stats won’t be hard to pull off and you can aim for that if you don’t plan on grinding the hard way.

#556

Honestly, most people already saw the pet nerf incoming. It’s inevitable and fully broken. It’s been forecasted since its release. There was no way in hell the current pet is supposed to be in Rotmg. If you paid money to your pet without expecting some nerfs, you are a goddamn mad man. A fully maxed divine pet heals 90 hp per second, you can tank most endgame dungeons by sitting unless you got shotgunned to death. What does this mean? healing classes are useless for maxed divine pet users, hp pots are useless, vit and wis are useless, dodging is useless and you can roam around the middle of godlands without ever thinking you’ll be less than 70% hp. The pet thing motivates people to tank rather than dodge which was suppossed to be the whole point of the game, this is a bullet hell game.