Prediction Thread: Melee abilities will be the second most successful patch Mortal has ever had.

[fartbox]

So far nearly every prediction for patch cycles i've made have been correct. This is continuing on my multi year tradition of calling patch reception before it happens.

A couple of predictions to make:

1. Sarducca will be underwhelming, both to the market outside of the game(potential players) and current players. It will produce a very temporary and small influx of players, I don't expect Sarducca to introduce any new wide appeal game loops or new dynamics or to make the ecosystem more competitive.

2. Melee abilities will be the second most popular patch Mortal has ever had. Producing a massive influx of players similar to Ele patch. Because it introduces new dynamics and has potential to upset the status quo of the game of perpetually online zergs controlling every relevant end-game objective in the game.

It doesn't necessarily mean this population will "stick", it only means there will be a ton of initial interest from previous players, current players and players who have never tried the game before.


The only reason I believe melee abilities will be the "Second" instead of "First" is because the sub-gate that exists now that did not exist previously when Ele was released. But if Melee abilities fundamentally change the game enough it could surpass Ele as "first", just over a longer time period.

 

[Embuscade]

So, I don't understand what you're talking about when you say “Patch Ele”? It's not very precise? Do you mean “element”? Can you mean exactly what you're talking about?

Also, yes, you've written a lot of posts, could you make a condensed document of everything you've said? I've read 2 posts in the “general” category, and I have a few easy counter-arguments. You seem to have a very personal view of things, but you yourself are prey to bias, like everyone else, and you use abusive generalities.

If you've ever played MMOs, you must know that teams of Bombers dropping AOEs with huge bursts is the quassie of MMOs. Among others, Ashes of Creation has taken this approach, which I'm against, because the burst, if it annihilates a mass of players or just one via a monumental burst, amounts to the equivalent of Counter Strike gameplay. It's too radical.

What's nice about MO2 is that battles can last a long time, with kitting, parrying, potions (I'm more dubious about this last point), and heal balancing... This is the most complex subject debated on videos games for multiplayers.

 

[fartbox]

Ele patch produced the biggest one month gain in population of any Mortal patch thus far. It had the most interest from the genres demographic. This phenomenon was because it was a potential status quo disruptor by introducing new mechanics/utility. But once population had thoroughly tested it and found it offered little in that department, the ride was over.

Melee abilities will produce that same phenomenon.

Ashes is DOA. Game will be offline 3 years after release(if it ever releases at all). Made all the same mistakes that everyone else did; alienating too much of the demographic. They modeled after dead/dying PVXPVP games instead of looking at the ones that succeeded. Seeing as its already dead and doesn't know it there is no sense in elaborating on its balance/enchanting producing a low TTK environment, because the game already does a great job of alienating solo/casuals players with just the PVE/crafting/boss/objective mechanics before even considering combat, which is something Mortal doesn't do. You can actually do most of Mortal solo, if there wasn't a zerg standing in your way.

Mortal is much closer to being a good game then ashes, I only have enough energy to devote to one game, so its going to be to Mortal.

 

[fartbox]

So, I don't understand what you're talking about when you say “Patch Ele”? It's not very precise? Do you mean “element”? Can you mean exactly what you're talking about?

Also, yes, you've written a lot of posts, could you make a condensed document of everything you've said? I've read 2 posts in the “general” category, and I have a few easy counter-arguments. You seem to have a very personal view of things, but you yourself are prey to bias, like everyone else, and you use abusive generalities.

If you've ever played MMOs, you must know that teams of Bombers dropping AOEs with huge bursts is the quassie of MMOs. Among others, Ashes of Creation has taken this approach, which I'm against, because the burst, if it annihilates a mass of players or just one via a monumental burst, amounts to the equivalent of Counter Strike gameplay. It's too radical.

What's nice about MO2 is that battles can last a long time, with kitting, parrying, potions (I'm more dubious about this last point), and heal balancing... This is the most complex subject debated on videos games for multiplayers.

TTK is less of a concern when you incorporate "escapability". Games like Albion, EVE and OSRS lean heavily on disengage. But when you incorporate tons of disengage, the PvP becomes closer to consensual. In EVE for example, PVP is almost entirely consensual. You have to make grievous errors to get fights you dont want.

Henrik has been adamantly against that. He wants a low disengage environment, its clear, because 75% of the races must fight whatever comes after them and have 0% chance of disengage and elves have lackluster disengage that is immediately neutralized by other elves, unless they are extremely low weight class, which is why dex mage is the only relevant foot solo build right now.



So my suggestions were geared towards the game towards the rust route. Where escapability is mostly low but it still exists in some capacity. However to offset this the TTK is low, making fighting whatever is attacking you highly incentivized.

In mortal you get too many 0% win conditions. This is why the game is unpopular. People play PVP games to compete, if you hand 0% win conditions out like candy then its going to sour the genres opinion.

You can remove the 0% win conditions by adding more disengage to everyones kit or by lowering the TTK.
You can also ruleset instance to provide "provably fair fights"


All of this is part of the web diagram that Henrik has no interest in seeing and ive illustrated all of these points in my previous posts.

 

[Jackdstripper]

Anyone remember the “spear stance” ability in MO1? it was supposed to be an anti cavalry “spear in the ground” type of ability.

A cool idea on paper, but a total failure in practice. Never worked, and all it did was root the user to the ground for a few seconds and got you killed.

I’ll be getting my popcorn ready….

 

[ElPerro]

Anyone remember the “spear stance” ability in MO1? it was supposed to be an anti cavalry “spear in the ground” type of ability.

A cool idea on paper, but a total failure in practice. Never worked, and all it did was root the user to the ground for a few seconds and got you killed.

I’ll be getting my popcorn ready….

Yeah if theres only 1 thing certain, is that these melee abilities are either gonna be mechanically bad or grossly unbalanced. And the adrenaline system they are supposed to run with sounds very exploitable.

I bet Sarducaa will bring back more players just because its a NA server and alot of high ping players will be curious to see hows its like to play with low ping.

 

[Emdash]

It will be the third bandaid:

First bandaid, early game is impossible = ADD HAVEN.

Second bandaid, full loot makes people sad = ADD SOULBOUND BOOSTS.

Third bandaid, melee combat is fundamentally broken = ADD ABILITIES.

 

[fartbox]

Yeah if theres only 1 thing certain, is that these melee abilities are either gonna be mechanically bad or grossly unbalanced. And the adrenaline system they are supposed to run with sounds very exploitable.

I bet Sarducaa will bring back more players just because its a NA server and alot of high ping players will be curious to see hows its like to play with low ping.

Grossly imbalanced seems great. Everyone having power/agency is not a bad thing. Right now power is strictly relegated to large groups of veterans with lowish ping. You can see when you consolidate power into the hands of just a few that it is bad for population and while it does mirror real life, we have to remember that realism isn't always a good thing. MMOs are virtual and optional, real world is not optional. No one is going to work for 10 hours a days and pay taxes to their lords just to come home and look for opportunities to have virtual lords over them.

Making everyone dangerous would be the best way to increase competition in the game. Right now it is very uncompetitive and very stagnant. We need change.


Lets say for example...what changes for the average player with 2-3 hours of gametime a day if everyone is turned into a monster with a plethora of mobility, utility and easily applicable damage. They are still going to die, especially to large groups. But maybe just maybe they take one of them with them on the way out and maybe just maybe that brings a smile to their face and maybe just maybe that smile keeps them subbed next month.

The only thing that will change is that players who rarely die now will start dying, and they will be upset. That is a good thing imo. These players will never leave the game as long as there is a population for them to abuse. The only way we lose these types of players leave is if the population gets low enough to feel they can get more action in another game. We have witnessed this lately; with many prominent EU players leaving the game for Albion or adjacent games simply because they can get action there and cant find it reliably in Mortal any longer under these circumstances.



Alternatively we just make abilities be utility and disengage in nature. Taking the route that most other devs take when balancing open world; "Pick your fights". But henrik seems to like to force people to fight, i doubt he would want an environment like EVE where people really have total control over who/when/where they fight.


One cocnern that could be raised by turning everyone into a monster: How do we keep pet builds and mounted builds relevant in that environment? You don't; You give everyone access to pets and mounted, without point penatlies. And pets/mounted take a backseat from mainbuilding to more of a utility approach that everyone has access to.

Suddenly the pet market booms, taming becomes a very viable main profession and no more tears from people who hate pets because everyone now has pets and they are less oppressive in the face of everyone being a foot monster.

 

[Emdash]

It will be the third bandaid:

First bandaid, early game is impossible = ADD HAVEN.

Second bandaid, full loot makes people sad = ADD SOULBOUND BOOSTS.

Third bandaid, melee combat is fundamentally broken = ADD ABILITIES.

I forgot to say people afraid of loss = SIEGE WINDOWS.

 

[fartbox]

After watching Henriks stream yesterday I want to adjust my prediction to: Reckoning expansion will produce the single highest concurrent player count day seen since subscription went mandatory.

Potentially not on patch day itself but shortly after.

Invasions are a very very good choice for sandbox content. It checks all the boxes:

1. Covers large area, spreads rapidly; Making it nearly impossible to gate keep long-term by unsavory individuals.
2. Incentives for solo players, small groups and large groups
3. Challenging new PVE encounter, provides the basis for a new ecosystem. (As the sun is life to plants, PVE is life to sandbox MMOs of which all other forms of life derive from.)
4. Moving towards blue areas, providing avenues and incentives for PUGs to form in blue towns among newer players.

Combat abilities:
Moving away from spin meta is a bandaid the game has to rip off now, it should of ripped off much earlier imo. Its been a hindrance since the early days of mortal. Theres no telling how many potential players we lost to this combat.

The problem isn't necessarily the spinning itself, its the bar to entry. To get good at spin fighting, which is often necessary to land even 1 hit against good players you must first commit hundreds of hours to dueling. This bar to entry is too high for MMO combat and fails to follow the tenants of MMO combat, making it undesirable and alienating.

The tenants to good MMO combat; The most important feature in a sandbox MMO.

1. Easy to pickup
2. Hard to master
3. Tools for many situations

Right now the players simply have no tools. Most builds are completely toothless in the face of many challenges. The build with the most tools right now is a skeletal mage, which is a veteran build requiring significant startup gold and experience to make work. Hopefully after this we can see all players have tools which they can utilize to better deal with challenges they might face in the game.

 

[Emdash]

After watching Henriks stream yesterday I want to adjust my prediction to: Reckoning expansion will produce the single highest concurrent player count day seen since subscription went mandatory.

I'll take that bet

 

[ElPerro]

After watching Henriks stream yesterday I want to adjust my prediction to: Reckoning expansion will produce the single highest concurrent player count day seen since subscription went mandatory.

Potentially not on patch day itself but shortly after.

Invasions are a very very good choice for sandbox content. It checks all the boxes:

1. Covers large area, spreads rapidly; Making it nearly impossible to gate keep long-term by unsavory individuals.
2. Incentives for solo players, small groups and large groups
3. Challenging new PVE encounter, provides the basis for a new ecosystem. (As the sun is life to plants, PVE is life to sandbox MMOs of which all other forms of life derive from.)
4. Moving towards blue areas, providing avenues and incentives for PUGs to form in blue towns among newer players.

Combat abilities:
Moving away from spin meta is a bandaid the game has to rip off now, it should of ripped off much earlier imo. Its been a hindrance since the early days of mortal. Theres no telling how many potential players we lost to this combat.

The problem isn't necessarily the spinning itself, its the bar to entry. To get good at spin fighting, which is often necessary to land even 1 hit against good players you must first commit hundreds of hours to dueling. This bar to entry is too high for MMO combat and fails to follow the tenants of MMO combat, making it undesirable and alienating.

The tenants to good MMO combat; The most important feature in a sandbox MMO.

1. Easy to pickup
2. Hard to master
3. Tools for many situations

Right now the players simply have no tools. Most builds are completely toothless in the face of many challenges. The build with the most tools right now is a skeletal mage, which is a veteran build requiring significant startup gold and experience to make work. Hopefully after this we can see all players have tools which they can utilize to better deal with challenges they might face in the game.

Nah we shouldnt dumb down the combat, might as well just put tab target combat then. One of the key features of Mortal Online was that skill is supposed to matter, thats what separates it from WoW/Runescape MMOs, there are tons of unskilled based mmos out there with way better polish, why would any sane person play this trash compared to them?

The bar for entry is artificially higher because we have first class and second class players. For a NA or 150+ ping player to compete with EUs, you need significally more playtime hours to make up for the ping advantage. If only we had regional servers or continents it would be alot more fair.

 

[fartbox]

Nah we shouldnt dumb down the combat, might as well just put tab target combat then. One of the key features of Mortal Online was that skill is supposed to matter, thats what separates it from WoW/Runescape MMOs, there are tons of unskilled based mmos out there with way better polish, why would any sane person play this trash compared to them?

The bar for entry is artificially higher because we have first class and second class players. For a NA or 150+ ping player to compete with EUs, you need significally more playtime hours to make up for the ping advantage. If only we had regional servers or continents it would be alot more fair.

Insane argument full of misinformation. You insulted the skillcap of OSRS, when it in fact has the highest skill cap in the MMO world. We define skillcap by APM. The higher the APM, the harder it is to be in the top 0.1% of the game. OSRS has the hardest 0.1% threshold in the market because it has the highest APM(its not close). It even has a large esport community both third party and studio organized with cash prizes offered by Jagex themselves.

Mortal is essentially a game of bowling, where the players spin before throwing the ball. Just because it increased the difficulty of throwing the ball, doesn't mean its pragmatic to do so. It also doesn't make it more popular or impressive then regular bowling.

Mortal is the least competitive PvP MMO on the market. The fights almost always come down to Numbers>Build>Ping>Gear and not individual skill.

Have you ever asked why that is? Because the combat facilitates it, the ruleset facilitates it. There is no room for skillcap to grow in this game because its squashed by numbers, ping, gear and builds.

People play these types of games to be competitive and the combat and the rulest in mortal actively prevents people from being competitive. That's why people aren't playing mortal, thats why people are playing mortals competitors. Because they can be competitive in those games. The last remaining 1000 players in mortal aren't interested in skill cap, they aren't interested in competition. They just want to kill other players by any means necessary and you coming in here and trying to pretend like we play some super competitive game is very cringe and disengenous. You must either not play the game or you must be so heavily invested in zerg gameplay that it threatens your interests to allow a competitive environment to flourish.

Which I understand. The last 1000 players or so that we have left are almost all in a zerg guild/alliance. So trying to convince them to undermine their interests is insane on my part but the thing i can tell you is that without changing Mortals combat, it will eventually run out of funding and be shut down. You'll end up being forced into those other games that you despise anyway. No studio can survive on 2k subs a month. The overhead for this MMO has to be near a million a year. Even with a small support team and only 5devs. They need a minimum of 7k subs to meet that breakeven point.

Do you think mortal has 7k subs right now?

We need to convince players that are playing in mortals competitors to play our game, we don't need to convince people heavily invested in the current status quo to be happy about it.

 

[Embuscade]

I searched the web, but I couldn't find any OSRS Esport content that convinced me that this game's competitive scene was difficult to access and based on APMs like Starcraft 2.

Please source your words with lots of different sources.

And just because you think you're right, doesn't mean you have to post lame meme's and behave badly.

 

[fartbox]

I searched the web, but I couldn't find any OSRS Esport content that convinced me that this game's competitive scene was difficult to access and based on APMs like Starcraft 2.

Please source your words with lots of different sources.

And just because you think you're right, doesn't mean you have to post lame meme's and behave badly.

Cope more chump. Your triple feint is like 6 actions over 2 seconds. Try clicking with 100% accuracy 12-18+ actions in 0.4s . And a misclick=dead or missed kill. And best yet OSRS combat is not sensitive to ping.

Mortal skill cap is outpinging your opponent and then exceling them while 4 of your friends hold. It's not trendy, it's not skillful and no one outside mortal thinks it looks cool.

No one in Mortal except maybe razer could hang in OSRS, you would get dunked without numbers,ping and gear to hide behind. Most of you are old, slow and the thought of acting quickly intimidates you. Your time is over. Abilities are coming to Mortal; Cleaves, debuffs, movement, disengage.

You've been hiding behind a simple meta for too long. It's time for a different Mortal and I don't think you're going to like it.
The time of the old man zerg is over. A new era is coming to Mortal.

And color me surprised that 95% of the defenders of the current meta and current status quo are all euros in massive guilds. I mean I could get it if Mortal had enough EU's to fill a server. but the combat is still so bad that most EU's in the genre are playing other games despite knowing they have an advantage here. There's no future in this. The market voted, this combat is out and so are you.

 

[Embuscade]

I've been watching and reading about pvp in this game for a little over 2 hours (I asked you to diversify your sources, but you didn't). )
It's really weird and not pleasant to watch compared to a MOBA or RTS game, maybe it's more complex, more clicks or apms, but in reality it's really boring to watch this game, it's as boring as Eve Online's pvp and multi account management.

I mean, you can't really see the collisions, the impact, it's not flamboyant, where Mortal Online 2 is more to my liking, but it's mainly the simplicity and hardness of the hand-to-hand combat that gets on my nerves, it's not a simple Soul-like where you spend your time escaping or chopping hubris from good equipment, there are standars in Mortal Online 2, and the pvp melee gameplay is unique, and consists mainly of perceiving which side the strike is going to be given in less than 0.2s

As for the skills, I don't know, give your skills some appeal, look at these 2 wikis, impregnate yourself and try to formulate balanced skills according to what you perceive as good, and explain the reasons why.

https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/Category:Gameplay_elements https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Mechanics

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

 

[fartbox]

I've been watching and reading about pvp in this game for a little over 2 hours (I asked you to diversify your sources, but you didn't). )
It's really weird and not pleasant to watch compared to a MOBA or RTS game, maybe it's more complex, more clicks or apms, but in reality it's really boring to watch this game, it's as boring as Eve Online's pvp and multi account management.

I mean, you can't really see the collisions, the impact, it's not flamboyant, where Mortal Online 2 is more to my liking, but it's mainly the simplicity and hardness of the hand-to-hand combat that gets on my nerves, it's not a simple Soul-like where you spend your time escaping or chopping hubris from good equipment, there are standars in Mortal Online 2, and the pvp melee gameplay is unique, and consists mainly of perceiving which side the strike is going to be given in less than 0.2s

As for the skills, I don't know, give your skills some appeal, look at these 2 wikis, impregnate yourself and try to formulate balanced skills according to what you perceive as good, and explain the reasons why.

https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/Category:Gameplay_elements https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Mechanics

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Sick bro. That's why a random pvp vid from that game has six figure views. And the bigger videos get half a mil. And thats why the best mortal pvp vids get 2k views. The spin POV from mortal vids is aids too. Spinning bowling ball analogy again. Its uncanny, different isn't always better. If a 20 year old 2D game is outperforming you then your system is clearly not competitive.

I don't need to look a league wiki to know that players don't have any tools in Mortal. There's no way to express skill cap in this game because you aren't given a way. That's why numbers feel so oppressive in this game.

But we should be modeling combat after darkfall anyway because that was the only MMO with FPS perspective that ever properly balanced open world. The other games arent as relevant as darkfall in these comparisons.

Combat was one of the areas that darkfall exceled while it lacked everywhere else.

 

[Embuscade]

Splitting, weakening, movement, disengagement.

Give me an attribution for each of these words, after all, it's your idea of genius, show us what you can do.

And as far as OSRS is concerned, can you explain to me the main mechanics you need to master and what they do? It seems pretty elementary, well, there doesn't seem to be much diversity of choice.

 

[fartbox]

Splitting, weakening, movement, disengagement.

Give me an attribution for each of these words, after all, it's your idea of genius, show us what you can do.

And as far as OSRS is concerned, can you explain to me the main mechanics you need to master and what they do? It seems pretty elementary, well, there doesn't seem to be much diversity of choice.

OSRS meta is "

Switching armor sets quickly and applying damage. The combat triangle is as follows: Mage>Melee>Ranged. You try to use the attack style that is going to be the most effective against your opponent.

Theres also a mitigation system. Similar to mortals parry system. You can activate a protection to each damage type but only 1 protection can be active at each time. An icon is displayed over your head to indicate which style you are protected against. It is essentially a parry in mortal except that it doesn't reduce the damage to 0, just by 60%. The video I linked is just 2 attack styles and no prayers, it's not even the highest skill cap method of PKing in that game. Because they aren't using protection prayers or ranged.

But most importantly. OSRS PVP is a guaranteed 1v1 unless you go to specific multi combat areas. That combat system will NOT work in mortal. I just wanted to illustrate a MMO with a higher skillcap then Mortal. Though Mortal does have a high skillcap, it's just not a good one.

 

[Embuscade]

Okay, well, does it use shortcuts? I get the impression that it doesn't and that the mouse is only used to click on items, and I can see the idea of the concept, the items change to fall on the aspect of the most effective attack in relation to the existing enemy's clothing, with the idea of maximizing/optimizing damage, so you're constantly switching from one outfit to another.

And here you're making a PVP MMO comparison, except that PVP has never been very successful in MMOs, the majority of big MMOs are almost full PVE, and the social dimension takes up an enormous amount of space, GTA5 and all its streamers and multi-servers being a case in point, when “GTA6 ONLINE” was released 1 year later, it would have been one of the most played titles in the world I imagine (this is an extrapolation, but I don't think I'm wrong, before this kind of “communities” were found on Arma3 and modded servers, or Maybe Halo 3 ? Or Half-life 2 and garry's mod).

And you still haven't answered my question, create a proof of concept of your skill ideas, that's what we want to see, critical concepts to improve.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)