A pretty bad developed System: Necromantic Rituals

[Fearce]

Hello,

I hope that Henrik and the developers read this feedback and think before they bring something into the game that was so loveless and poorly developed.

Why I can allow myself a judgment?
I have invested tens of thousands of gold in Necro Rituals and have dealt with the system behind it.

the leveling process
I don't want to dwell too much on the grind behind it and how much better it could have been if they had put a little more love into the whole process. But the grind for Rituals is so tough that not everyone makes it to 100. To me, it's a single content block that's just there to cover up how poorly this system was designed.
About 1500 rituals are needed to level from 1 to 100. That's about 3000 in gold value alone, plus carcasses. You need about 6 million springbok carcasses as an example. Placing a ritual, filling it and waiting for your undead creature to appear and kill it also takes about 30 seconds. So you need about 12 hours of pure playtime just to fill the rituals. Not included are the very long ways to the merchant and the farming of the animal carcasses.

But what do I actually need rituals for at level 100?
The only things that are determined by your ritual levels are the base hitpoints and damage mitigation of the creature you summon. And this is where everything I want to complain about starts.

There are exactly 3 attributes you can influence in this (one would think complex) system:

Hitpoints, damage mitigation and damage

The hitpoints and damage mitigation are first influenced by your ritual level. With level 100 you double the base hitpoints of a summoned creature. 50 points in ritual are then 50% increase and so on. If you are not gonna raise the rituals to 100 the damage mitigation of your pets are that bad that you can not be called combat pets at all. Even with 100 they are worse than regular tamed pets.

Second and the only other thing that determines the hitpoints of your creature are the secondary carcasses.
And here it gets really trivial and without much theorycrafting you quickly find out that it has to do with the animal level or the strength of the creature.
A chicken for example delivers almost no hitpoints / decreasing hitpoints as an example, whereas creatures that are difficult to kill alone increase them.

Ok and the third variable is damage. And here it becomes most funny because this is only influenced by jewels. And its just as stupid as the scaling of the HP! Based on the tierlevel of the jewels the damage increases.

I have not yet dealt with artifacts. Because they are simply too expensive and are not worthwhile in any ritual.

Summary: For the strongest Battlepet you need only a handful of carcasses of your chicken, bear, wolf etc. and combine them with carcasses of the creature that is strongest in Mortal Online 2 or has the most hitpoints. As a jewel you also add the highest and that's it.
For mounts, the same is absolutely true, except that here you don't even need jewels because they only increase the damage.

@Henrik and the developers

I am disappointed and angry to have spent so much time and gold on such an alpha content update. Where are all the variables that you have in other professions?? Because that's what it is for me a profession to create creatures from corpse parts!

Why can't I combine a horse with a terrorbird and increase its riding speed?
Why can't I combine a horse with a bear to increase its carrying capacity?
Why can't I give a minotaur armor or a weapon during the ritual?
Why can't I combine a bear with a minotaur so that the bear gets the knockup attack that the minotaur has?
Why can't I cross a bear with a Clothos Maiden Queen so that it gets a ranged attack?

There are countless combinations possible that would make any player's heart beat faster. How great would it be to try these combinations!

But no, this crafting system is the worst I've seen in Mortal Online so far. On top of that it is buggy.

A serious question: Does the developer of this system still work for you? Did an apprentice develop this?
The data behind the system can be worked out by any 5 year old in a week. I would have dismissed the developer behind it probably already 3x.

It's a shame to bring such an unfinished system into this game and advertise it as a content update.

If you need help. I can develop the idea of such a system for you in a few days. With combinations of all creatures in Nave and what variables they get when combining with other creatures. Stop putting such unfinished things into the game and hiding them behind a grindy content block.

 

[Tashka]

The answer to all your questions is probably: "it would be a balancing nightmare and SV are terrible at balancing as it is".

 

[Rhias]

In MO1 different carcass unlocked different attacks. Are you sure that this is not the case in MO2?

 

[Fearce]

In MO1 different carcass unlocked different attacks. Are you sure that this is not the case in MO2?

Yes 100%
And I also see no argument in saying because its a problem for SV to balance it. We do not need an unfinished system in the game. In Mortal Online 1 it took years to get content updates but we could feel that Henrik and the devs put some love into developing them.

 

[bbihah]

In MO1 different carcass unlocked different attacks. Are you sure that this is not the case in MO2?

Won't see anything like this until the underlying system that does things like that for all pets are in. So beastmastery update.

 

[Calcal]

The fact of the matter is that SV (yet again) shipped an incomplete system, poorly thought out, poorly balanced and poorly implemented.

Ritualism vs Taming/Dominaiton:

Taming/Domination:

-Taming and domination require more skill point investment about 2x the sp amount of rituals. Higher skill point investment

-Taming and domination have a bit of grind. The books are easy to get. The grind is from 70-100, but relatively easy (though grindy)

-Taming and domination have "stronger" pets. Full stats, resistances, hp, damage

-Taming allows trading pets.

-The gold sink is negligible.

Ritualism:

- Ritualism needs 200 skill point investment.

-Needs a 1% drop rate book OR grind 50 carved bones from PVP hotspots to then access LVL 1 ritualism

-From 1 to 100 ritualism you need to perform exactly 1564 rituals. That's 14073 XP at 9xp per ritual.

-Not counting the massive amounts of carcass needed, you have to spend 3128g in ritual circles and candles which can only be bought in PVP contested areas.

-You can only do 1 ritual every 30 seconds or so because once you set down a table you can't put another one down in close proximity. That's 13 hours of just placing circles and summoning "pets."

-Side note, SV said that permanent tables were not included because of the nav mesh in houses. I'm calling BS on that, we've been leveling inside houses anyway. The reason they haven't implemented permanent circles is to force the gold sink, and make it inconvenient to level up so fewer people find out that the system is paper thin and NOT WORTH the effort.

-With a low ritualism level, the resulting pets, have between 28%-38% of the health of a living version. Higher ritualism and using a secondary carcass can get pet hp can be higher but it varies with the pet. For example, trolls never reach even a third of the living troll hp and get none of the resistances.

-Pet damage is also significantly lower.

-Pet resistances are null.

Comparing Taming/Domination and Ritualism directly

SKILL POINTS: 400sp VS 200sp
GOLD COST: 200g VS 3128g + carcasses + carved bones or (or buying the book for 25000g)
TIME SINK: 8 hours of looking at bush pig anuses VS 13hours of rituals + days of hunting carcass and transporting tables.
Pet hp: Taming pets 100% damage hp and resistances, VS Gimped pets that can't match up.

Which begs the question, why implement an underdeveloped unbalanced game mechanic? The simple answer is to pad the game and say they have new content. Put literal shit in the game and figure it out later.


SV your lack of transparency, integrity, and respect for your player base is incredible. I was told by MO1 vets that this is the company's culture, and now I know it firsthand.

@Herius, @Robmo. Is anyone going to comment? Is this what the game's development going to continue to be, half-cooked systems that demand huge investments and have little payoff?

 

[Hodo]

In MO1 different carcass unlocked different attacks. Are you sure that this is not the case in MO2?

Without Beast Mastery we dont know what attacks most creatures have right now.

 

[Deleted member 44]

100% agree on all points. The artificats alone should give a massive buff and it simply doesn't.

I've heard that we are having such issues with the 'new' content as it's just imported content from the first game. I've heard that you can even see the death knight, shade, etc in the game files. I've also heard that the reason we are not on UE5 already is that blueprint import does not work from UE3 to UE5 and first has to be imported to UE4.

 

[Fearce]

Just did some more testing yesterday and also brought another tupilak to level 125. Just using very expensive materials, mainly boss materials. Around 400-500 gold worth of the stuff I used. But guess what:

Same hitpoints than the others i created.
Same damage mitigation!
Same damage!

There is absolutely NO variety in the game. It is all the same and does not look like somebody really spend time and love to develop it.

It hits like a wet noodle and in my eyes has absolutely no use in PVP any more. The way how SV adds stuff to the game and nerfs it right after to the ground is terrible. It seems like they have absolutely no clue of how to develop something like this.

@Robmo @Herius Why do you guys not work WITH the community? Obviously there are a lot of people want to help and actually can!

PS: This is a video from another necromancer dealing with this:

 

[Calcal]

100% agree on all points. The artifacts alone should give a massive buff, and it simply doesn't.

I've heard that we are having such issues with the 'new' content as it's just imported content from the first game. I've heard that you can even see the death knight, shade, etc in the game files. I've also heard that the reason we are not on UE5 already is that blueprint import does not work from UE3 to UE5 and first has to be imported to UE4.

You know SV messed up when I agree with Schmerrick.

Come SV, do something about it, say something beyond we're nerfing celeanos (the only viable ritualism pet). And don't say we'll fix it with beastmastery. The pets are a flaming bag of dog poo. Make them at the very least decent, they take a LOT of work to get.

 

[Deleted member 44]

You know SV messed up when I agree with Schmerrick.

Come SV, do something about it, say something beyond we're nerfing celeanos (the only viable ritualism pet). And don't say we'll fix it with beastmastery. The pets are a flaming bag of dog poo. Make them at the very least decent, they take a LOT of work to get.

I appreciate the compliment, however I don't know why you guys always say that. I make posts/comments, whatever you want to call it with the best interest of the game and balance in mind. I have played every build in the game and created every viable build/race in the game. My comments might see strange to some, but I have every desire to see the game suceed.

I would like to see them have some type of scaling system added to gems. For example, with no gem damage would be like -15%. An amethyst would yield 0% and the best gems up from amethyst would increase damage to from ~0-10%+0~5%.

There should be no naturally debuff to damage taken. It's an undead creature, if anything logic should say that it would take less damage naturally. I would like to see the artifacts drastically decreasing damage taken given how rare they are to obtain.

 

[Philthie]

How many accounts does a person need to have to play every viable build/race in the game? 2?

 

[Tzone]

Yeah Ill confim that shmerrik plays fatmage, and has more footfighters then mounted accounts.

 

[Lumos]

Ritualism is weak outside of clearly unintentionally overpowered pets like the Celaeno, and modifiers are off across the board. Even if investing an artifact, a maxed-out undead pet will always have less damage output, less hp, less speed and less damage negation than the living counterpart - apart from in the case of horses, which can be made slower but with more hp than the living version.

This alongside the complete lack of adjustability of any stat other than hp and damage when choosing your secondary carcass and gem makes Rituals feel very uninteresting and lackluster. I hope to see stats and modifiers adjusted across the board, as well as having the ability to actually adjust the summoned pets in more ways than two (plus artifacts) down the line as individualised statistics are added with either beastmastery, breeding, or both.

For anyone out there currently considering Rituals; yes it is worth having, but it is also far, far more work-intensive and expensive than having live pets. The primary draw currently lies in the lower primary point cost, the ability to raise some viable pets that cannot at the moment be controlled with taming ordomination, and the ability to have a max level mount and combat pet simultaneously. Tupilaks are also not bad combat pets, but they do struggle with their middling damage negation, upper mid tier hp and poor damage output against good armor.

 

[Calcal]

The fact of the matter is that SV (yet again) shipped an incomplete system, poorly thought out, poorly balanced and poorly implemented.

Ritualism vs Taming/Dominaiton:

Taming/Domination:

-Taming and domination require more skill point investment about 2x the sp amount of rituals. Higher skill point investment

-Taming and domination have a bit of grind. The books are easy to get. The grind is from 70-100, but relatively easy (though grindy)

-Taming and domination have "stronger" pets. Full stats, resistances, hp, damage

-Taming allows trading pets.

-The gold sink is negligible.

Ritualism:

- Ritualism needs 200 skill point investment.

-Needs a 1% drop rate book OR grind 50 carved bones from PVP hotspots to then access LVL 1 ritualism

-From 1 to 100 ritualism you need to perform exactly 1564 rituals. That's 14073 XP at 9xp per ritual.

-Not counting the massive amounts of carcass needed, you have to spend 3128g in ritual circles and candles which can only be bought in PVP contested areas.

-You can only do 1 ritual every 30 seconds or so because once you set down a table you can't put another one down in close proximity. That's 13 hours of just placing circles and summoning "pets."

-Side note, SV said that permanent tables were not included because of the nav mesh in houses. I'm calling BS on that, we've been leveling inside houses anyway. The reason they haven't implemented permanent circles is to force the gold sink, and make it inconvenient to level up so fewer people find out that the system is paper thin and NOT WORTH the effort.

-With a low ritualism level, the resulting pets, have between 28%-38% of the health of a living version. Higher ritualism and using a secondary carcass can get pet hp can be higher but it varies with the pet. For example, trolls never reach even a third of the living troll hp and get none of the resistances.

-Pet damage is also significantly lower.

-Pet resistances are null.

Comparing Taming/Domination and Ritualism directly

SKILL POINTS: 400sp VS 200sp
GOLD COST: 200g VS 3128g + carcasses + carved bones or (or buying the book for 25000g)
TIME SINK: 8 hours of looking at bush pig anuses VS 13hours of rituals + days of hunting carcass and transporting tables.
Pet hp: Taming pets 100% damage hp and resistances, VS Gimped pets that can't match up.

Which begs the question, why implement an underdeveloped unbalanced game mechanic? The simple answer is to pad the game and say they have new content. Put literal shit in the game and figure it out later.


SV your lack of transparency, integrity, and respect for your player base is incredible. I was told by MO1 vets that this is the company's culture, and now I know it firsthand.

@Herius, @Robmo. Is anyone going to comment? Is this what the game's development going to continue to be, half-cooked systems that demand huge investments and have little payoff?

@Herius I saw you were looking at this thread, that's a good start!

Based on the above ritualism pets should be:

-Low-level ritualism = risen pet is significantly worse than living counterparts in all respects.
-Max lvl ritualism + basic recipe = risen pets should be 70%-80% with living pets in all respects
-Max lvl ritualism + complex recipe (gem and secondary carcass) = risen pet should be equal to living pet counterpart and up to 105%-110% of the living counterpart with high-tier gems and artifacts.

Making artifacts more readily available would be a good start too.

The tupilak is another matter, I think HP and resistances should be reverted to pre-nerf. The damage it does now should be buffed by about 10-20% of the current state.

 

[Fearce]

@Herius I saw you were looking at this thread, that's a good start!
Based on the above ritualism pets should be:
Low level ritualism = risen pet is significantly worse than living counterparts in all respects.
Max lvl ritualism + basic recipe = risen pets should be 80%-90 with living pets in all respects
Max lvl ritualism + complex recipe (gem and secondary carcass) = risen pet should be equal to living pet counterpart up to 105%-110% (hp, damage) of the living counterpart.

My question is, how could SV f*ck this up so badly?

The tupilak is another matter, I think HP and resistances should be reverted to pre-nerf. The damage it does now should be buffed by about 10-20% of the current state.

That would be a good start. Ritualism is so hard to level that you should be able to see a big difference when doing this with just 1 point in it compared to 100 points in it. Risen pets at 100 ritual level should have some benefits and should not be worse than living ones. I would be totally fine with 100% the same stats (Damage, Damage Mitigation, HP and speed) as the living pet with 100 ritual level. And on top put some variables into it like the secondary carcass is adding a 1-25% hp increase based on the tier level of the carcass you use. While for horses the gems should add a speed increase based on the tier level of the gem you use. Don't make it broken. But maybe adamants add 10%, ruber 8% and it goes down to 2% for amethyst.

We could work on the system over time adding some special variables when beast mastery gets in the game, like cross-breeding your corpses with others to create special pets. Terrorbird could add a poison attack or clothos maiden could add range. Also possible would be minotaur and combine them with weapons or armor.

We are also in need of better pathing/movement when it comes to pets. Tupilaks for example are so slow that they can not even stay followed when you 2-speed with a horse (And its huge plus they got minotaur hoofs!). I do understand that these pets should not outrun people on 3-speed horses but this is a whole different topic. It would be nice to have at least a system where the pet sticks the controller in follow mode! Right now it is unreliable, clunky and not fun to enjoy running around with them. And we do not need any more immersion in the game. What we need are working systems so that people can enjoy the game, riding around without the need to look back on horseback searching for their pet all the damn time. This is not immersive, this is just simply not enjoyable and awful.

We need a baseline for many different topics in the game before working on content upgrades and putting more half-baked stuff in the game. And as you can see you got quite some people interested in helping you to make this a great game for everybody. So please do not ignore us.

 

[Jasa]

100% agree on all points. The artificats alone should give a massive buff and it simply doesn't.

The Gems should be a Multiplier, not an additive.

The point of it being a Gold Sink is spot on. The only people who can farm this out either have a guild backing them, had a bankroll of money prior or is a Portal Mage and has the ability to farm this gold. The PVP zone being the only place to level it is also a way of giving RPK and hostile players more content since they can roll in and just delete any mage going for tables.

In my opinion, Ritualism is fine with its leveling system and how it is balanced out in that way, it has so many advantages over a Tamer/Dominator as of right now that I am angry that those things were not buffed. We effectively have All of necromancy to play around with, yet Tamers and Dominators need to invest more for a worse time. Not cash money.

Now on the other side, its rather depressing that Ritualism as of right now is just slot in the best animal carcass across the board rather than treating it sort of like alchemy. Will the Perma tables have more slots for regular pets? Possibly. Will Tupa's be the only pet that has multiple slots to fill in? I certainly hope not.

If balance was something SV cared about, mages would be able to cast spells while getting killed. Humans would fill a niche rather than being pure utility outside of combat. Mages would not have been limited to 2kg Other than Veela*, Tephra would be accessible in other parts of the world (Continents or Islands). Steel would be just as easy to get via mining as it is farming Risars. Clade would be accessible for mages as easily as it is for Footfighters. Armor would give more Stamina Pen then it does right now, Reflect & Purify would be bumped up to 80+ Skill requirement to cast. Having more skill in a spell school would buff magic, EQ would have not been given a black opal as a requirement to cast ontop of Pyrite.

 

[Fearce]

The Gems should be a Multiplier, not an additive.

The point of it being a Gold Sink is spot on. The only people who can farm this out either have a guild backing them, had a bankroll of money prior or is a Portal Mage and has the ability to farm this gold. The PVP zone being the only place to level it is also a way of giving RPK and hostile players more content since they can roll in and just delete any mage going for tables.

In my opinion, Ritualism is fine with its leveling system and how it is balanced out in that way, it has so many advantages over a Tamer/Dominator as of right now that I am angry that those things were not buffed. We effectively have All of necromancy to play around with, yet Tamers and Dominators need to invest more for a worse time. Not cash money.

Now on the other side, its rather depressing that Ritualism as of right now is just slot in the best animal carcass across the board rather than treating it sort of like alchemy. Will the Perma tables have more slots for regular pets? Possibly. Will Tupa's be the only pet that has multiple slots to fill in? I certainly hope not.

If balance was something SV cared about, mages would be able to cast spells while getting killed. Humans would fill a niche rather than being pure utility outside of combat. Mages would not have been limited to 2kg Other than Veela*, Tephra would be accessible in other parts of the world (Continents or Islands). Steel would be just as easy to get via mining as it is farming Risars. Clade would be accessible for mages as easily as it is for Footfighters. Armor would give more Stamina Pen then it does right now, Reflect & Purify would be bumped up to 80+ Skill requirement to cast. Having more skill in a spell school would buff magic, EQ would have not been given a black opal as a requirement to cast ontop of Pyrite.

I'm ok with the leveling system if the huge amount of gold and time you spend in it would be of any benefit. But right now there is one nerf hitting the other while the foundation of the system is horsepoo. They are working on the wrong side and not making this system better. It is not about nerfing it to the ground it is about bringing variety in the game and make it functional and enjoying.

I like the idea of gems being a multiplier.

 

[Domtomsen]

Ritualism weaker then taming? Have none of you guys played a tamer recently? We have done a lot of testing with ritual pets now. And if you use high quality gems and the right carcasses, then ritual pets are a LOOOOT stronger then normal pets.
They take less dmg because they have resistance which makes them somewhat easier to heal but have lower HP pools then living counterparts.
My lvl 101 terrorbird, the highest i can bring with a horse, does around 19 dmg to a full steel thursar. Our ritualist took that dmg up to around 35.
He probably used a diamond as gem. sure thats expensive. But always keep in mind that can train his Bird up to lvl 125 AND can have a lvl 125 horse!!!!
Ohhh and he technically only needs 200 primaries for that? Instead of the 400 to 600 for taming. You can be a MA/Footfighter thursar and bring a freaking full lvl Bird and Horse. just for fun.

I do get that Ritual needs to be stronger because its a lot mor time/money investement and you cant really make any money off of it. But its just such a freaking lot that you get just for 200 primaries.

 

[bbihah]

Ritualism weaker then taming? Have none of you guys played a tamer recently? We have done a lot of testing with ritual pets now. And if you use high quality gems and the right carcasses, then ritual pets are a LOOOOT stronger then normal pets.
They take less dmg because they have resistance which makes them somewhat easier to heal but have lower HP pools then living counterparts.
My lvl 101 terrorbird, the highest i can bring with a horse, does around 19 dmg to a full steel thursar. Our ritualist took that dmg up to around 35.
He probably used a diamond as gem. sure thats expensive. But always keep in mind that can train his Bird up to lvl 125 AND can have a lvl 125 horse!!!!
Ohhh and he technically only needs 200 primaries for that? Instead of the 400 to 600 for taming. You can be a MA/Footfighter thursar and bring a freaking full lvl Bird and Horse. just for fun.

I do get that Ritual needs to be stronger because its a lot mor time/money investement and you cant really make any money off of it. But its just such a freaking lot that you get just for 200 primaries.

Risen pets always have worse defenses than the living ones.
Can't bring them into or even near towns.

Even with a adamant damage is lower than a living version, Sometimes the damage type changes though. Could be risen terror birds do blunt damage instead of piercing or slashing.

Once beast mastery is in, undead pets only get 1 baseline attack and the special attack. Making living ones better AND flexible from the get go.
Ritual pets however can put other special attacks depending on the modifier. Ex, turtle with a charge attack. Will however gimp the turtle statwise vs best modifier but its doable and works fine.

Plenty of downsides for just a couple advantages.