Thoughts on state of the game and what could make it more fun (IMO)

[ArcaneConsular]

I read a post about what someone thought about the state of the game and I wanted to give my own opinions. I have 300+ hours in this game and have played for about a year now. This is a game I am invested in. But I want to give my opinion on a few topics. I'm not going to mention all the pros as it would make the post too long

PvE
Complaints
- Respawn rates are too long
- PvE drops are boring
- PvE mob camps are lacking in a variety
- Travel time to get to PvE spots is too long
- Cheesing mobs is way too easy. Whereas fighting mobs fairly is too hard

Suggestions
- Respawn rates should be increased
- PvE mobs should have a rare drop table. The 0.01% chance of getting a cool cosmetic or trophy would make PvE a lot more exciting in fun. Even more items like the lexicon of death. Rare capes. Skill books. Etc
- Add more mob variants. Maybe even rare mobs to make hunting more fun
- Fix cheesing mobs and bosses

PvP
Complaints
- Most players fight using cheap gear which makes kills unrewarding
- There is a lack of PvP hotspots and events which makes most PvP happen outside of town
- The lack of sieges makes guild politics boring and petty
- Zergs and unbalanced PvP are fairly prevalent making fights uninteresting

Suggestions
- Make cheap gear less effective in PvP
- Add different types of arrows. For example, bone arrows are cheap but can not do much damage to players. Whereas steel arrows are more expensive but can hurt players. Right now cheap arrows are too strong against players. Just reduce their armor-piercing
- Add sieging to the game
- Add more small group PvP events and hotspots. I would like something similar (not exactly the same) to hell gates from AO where small groups of players can compete with each other for some loot
- Add world bosses for zergs to fight over

Crafting
Complaints
- Gathering resources is a 95% AFK activity. Press R and do something else. Then come back every 15 minutes and press R again
- Refining and crushing times are too long. Takes about 40 minutes sometimes to crush ore, make coke, make pig iron, make grain steel, make steel
- A lot of items are way easier to just craft by yourself making selling them difficult. Due to how easy it is to level skills just buying materials and crafting them yourself is usually what most players do

Suggestions
- Add alternative ways of gathering that are less afk but more rewarding and risky
- Reduce processing times in half at least
- Allow players to sell packs of gear in the marketplace. Like a full set of plate armor

Taming
Complaints
- Training animals takes a long time
- Animals are both OP and terrible at the same time
- Animals die too much to bugs making it hard to invest in

Suggestions
- The time it takes to train animals should be changed. Right now it is too afk. Make cut it in half but making it less afk and more interactive. Game has too much afk activities and not everyone can run their compute on in the background for 8 hours to level up a bear
- Would be interesting to add rare animal eggs that drop from gathering or PvE. Like a stone lizard egg or something that you can raise to have a cool rare pet

Exploration
Complaints
- Travel time can be needlessly long. It is fun the first few times traveling for a few hours but after a while it gets boring

Suggestions
- Should add more shortcuts and paths in the map. Would make for interesting choke points in battles. Reduce travel time. Add elevators to places like Toxai perhaps. Traveling for 2 hours is fun the first time but gets old after a while seeing the same sights

Social Aspect
Complaints
- Besides using discord there aren't great ways to communicate in game
- There aren't many reasons to be social with players

Suggestions
- Should add taverns and more places to hang out. Games like VR chat are based solely on just hanging out in rooms

 

[C3ncio]

You, i'm not joking, are the first new player that i see making a balancing/complaint post that is not a huge pile of crazy bullshit obviously made without any knowledge of the game at all. And you only have 300 hours you said! I'm not joking, a guy claiming to have 900 hours on MO2 a month ago suggested on Reddit to make Longbows scale with dexterity cause, in his distorted and utterly satanic opinion, Alvarins are underpowered and is more realistic. Yes, he said realistic.

I mean, i don't 100% agree with you but you have made constructive criticism and your ideas are pretty solid my dude, i really, really have to congratulate with you, your head is not there just to separate ears and you obviously have a functioning brain in there.

Only points that i would discuss:
- Most players fight using cheap gear which makes kills unrewarding
That's true, but this will change naturally without any need to push for it by dev side. I remember the early days of MO1 and people was like cave men. It needed around a solid year to see the first steel pieces around. Now, the majority of people still run in bone and dental gear but there is a good amount of players already rocking full steel kits. This will adjust itself with time, give new players time to discover the game, stack some money up and get some confidence in PvP.

-There is a lack of.. (PvP hotspots, sieges and so on)
Again, this is true, but this is a beta. Yes, you read that right, it's a beta. We have less than 30% of the content MO1 had and a good 50% of what we have is bugged or not yet polished. This will change. Give them some time. SV is a like a homemade pastry shop, it's slow, make lots of errors and customers are so few that we all know each other but in the end, the product get surprisingly good, even with some problem here and there. Again, just have patience, things will get better.

-Zergs and unbalanced PvP are fairly prevalent making fights uninteresting
This will not change. There is literally NOTHING devs can do to avoid this without distorting the game and imposing limits that wouldn't fit the game. I mean, you can solve this, but the solution is worst than the problem. At least you will tolerate them more with time. Your solution to add worldbosses so zergs can fight them will just attract more and more zergs making the situation even worse. Conversely, we need more content for small groups: right now guilds have no reason to not stick together and just mow everything in their path. Wanna do a spider queen? Yeah you need at least 10 people. Wanna do mino dungeon in a reasonably time? You need at least 20 people. If more content for small groups is present you will start to see smaller groups roaming or traveling with an objective that is not griefing some solo player. But again, don't fool yourself: zergs will always exists in every sandbox PvP game, no matter what.

- Travel time can be needlessly long. It is fun the first few times traveling for a few hours but after a while it gets boring
This... i don't know. I mean, i like this new map more than MO1 map for various reasons and one of them is because it's bigger and take long time to travel from city to city. When i was playing MO1 i was constantly, and i mean constantly, traveling from a place to another in a matter of few minutes, gathering whatever i wanted, basically having every resource in the map at my disposal. That was convenient indeed, but boring like hell. Now, i would like to have Desert horses but they are way too far from where i live, it's not worth the travel for me. But some time, some brave tamer come around my place and sell some Desert Horse in the pet broker and i'm happy to buy some. I would NEVER have done this on MO1, i had no reason to waste gold in a resource that i could just go and get myself without any problem. I personally love that takes lots of time to travel now, it forces people to invest more in the market and this is a good thing for the economy and, of course, for the game.

About the rest, i agree with you and i support your ideas, especially the rare drops from mobs, this could be the solution for the stupid Red Cape Of Speedhacking, remove that stupid body and put the red cape as a random rare drop from something, everyone will benefit and speedhackers will fuck themselves.

Again congratz. Keep your brain working, we need more people like you in this community.

 

[CherryKush]

I would also add under the PVE section that there be rare gatherables that are not on static spawn locations. They need to be random and have a chance to spawn anywhere (perhaps within a biome). This would make traveling much more fun if you were to come across one of these rare materials. I agree with with you OP, it's that chance at getting something rare that makes games fun and exciting to play. (fingers crossed we see something like this on the roadmap)

 

[finegamingconnoisseur]

- Most players fight using cheap gear which makes kills unrewarding

- Make cheap gear less effective in PvP

From my experience, cheap gear is already very weak. I wear light armour and a murderer wearing plate and armed with 2h sword downed me in 4 hits (not counting the mercy kill final hit).

Making cheap gear even weaker would make light armoured players close to one or two shot killable. Not sure how that would make kills more rewarding. Why nerf something that is already so weak?

 

[CrgHck]

From my experience, cheap gear is already very weak. I wear light armour and a murderer wearing plate and armed with 2h sword downed me in 4 hits (not counting the mercy kill final hit).

Making cheap gear even weaker would make light armoured players close to one or two shot killable. Not sure how that would make kills more rewarding. Why nerf something that is already so weak?

Cheap plate. Light armor is useless and hard to make worse

 

[ArcaneConsular]

Cheap plate. Light armor is useless and hard to make worse

Yeah I've been thinking about wearing plate or at least some plate as a mage

 

[CistaCista]

Now, i would like to have Desert horses but they are way too far from where i live, it's not worth the travel for me. But some time, some brave tamer come around my place and sell some Desert Horse in the pet broker and i'm happy to buy some. I would NEVER have done this on MO1, i had no reason to waste gold in a resource that i could just go and get myself without any problem. I personally love that takes lots of time to travel now, it forces people to invest more in the market and this is a good thing for the economy and, of course, for the game.

This is the gold. This is one thing that sets this game apart from anything but EVE atm.

 

[ArcaneConsular]

This is the gold. This is one thing that sets this game apart from anything but EVE atm.

I'm not against the map being large my point is more that a lot of the mountain ranges should have paths through them. I mainly play in MK and having to go all the way around a mountain and back basically doubling the travel time is silly. Could make it interesting have dangerous paths that are like. Well now you have a choice right? Do you want to risk taking the fast route that gankers might be stalking or do you want to take the long safer way?

 

[adrelik]

Some great balanced and reasonable points @ArcaneConsular and also agree with a lot of what @C3ncio said.

"-Zergs and unbalanced PvP are fairly prevalent making fights uninteresting
This will not change. There is literally NOTHING devs can do to avoid this without distorting the game and imposing limits that wouldn't fit the game."

I don't agree that nothing can be done... What about a certain zone in the map that is extremely dense rocks/trees which means horses can't cross it, houses can't be built and it's very difficult to see any great distance. Such an area could encourage small groups on foot to fight it out and make it hard for zergs to roll through on horseback and wipe everyone out. Use the terrain to discourage zergs rather than artificial limits

 

[Turbizzler]

While there is a huge amount of tripe in here, from the same people that have been complaining about the game since the start of beta (Why are you still here?) There are a few valid points.

My main issues with the game at the moment is that the beta felt more alive. We engaged on a almost daily basis in fights ranging from 5v5 right up to 100+ v 100+ and for the vast majority of the time it ran smooth as butter.

The largest fight we have been in since release is probably around 40 v 40 and it was a slide show. Even smaller fights deteriate into laggy messes. That is if you can find them. I am not sure if everyone is just hiding on alt servers or if the population figures are fudged but there is just no one around. I stick to main 99% of my play time unless there is a nasty queue of over 3-400 and I just can not find groups out there looking for fights.

There just seemed to be more activity in beta.

PvP is around the place, been finding it somewhat easily. Mino dungeon, Risar dungeon, spider caves and Tindrem sewers are the main hot spots at the moment. If you feel like getting zerged, go to Fabernum, OdinsSeed and the other guilds there, won't leave their walls without 30+ people.

Sometimes you just have to jump between main and an alt server, since people shift around servers to take advantage of the most dead, to get some easy farm in.

 

[Kuthara]

PvP is around the place, been finding it somewhat easily. Mino dungeon, Risar dungeon, spider caves and Tindrem sewers are the main hot spots at the moment. If you feel like getting zerged, go to Fabernum, OdinsSeed and the other guilds there, won't leave their walls without 30+ people.

Sometimes you just have to jump between main and an alt server, since people shift around servers to take advantage of the most dead, to get some easy farm in.

It is out there for sure, but no where near as much as in beta.

 

[adrelik]

While there is a huge amount of tripe in here, from the same people that have been complaining about the game since the start of beta (Why are you still here?) There are a few valid points.

OP put together quite a detailed post including what he thought was wrong and how to fix it and imo it didn't come across as a whinge at all. Just replying that it's "tripe" doesn't add anything

I'm a new player, help me out and explain what is actually wrong with his points?

 

[Kuthara]

OP put together quite a detailed post including what he thought was wrong and how to fix it and imo it didn't come across as a whinge at all. Just replying that it's "tripe" doesn't add anything

I'm a new player, help me out and explain what is actually wrong with his points?

I will be honest. Thought I was replying to the other thread. I withdraw my tripe statement and will send over to there

 

[Myta]

This... i don't know. I mean, i like this new map more than MO1 map for various reasons and one of them is because it's bigger and take long time to travel from city to city. When i was playing MO1 i was constantly, and i mean constantly, traveling from a place to another in a matter of few minutes, gathering whatever i wanted, basically having every resource in the map at my disposal. That was convenient indeed, but boring like hell. Now, i would like to have Desert horses but they are way too far from where i live, it's not worth the travel for me. But some time, some brave tamer come around my place and sell some Desert Horse in the pet broker and i'm happy to buy some. I would NEVER have done this on MO1, i had no reason to waste gold in a resource that i could just go and get myself without any problem. I personally love that takes lots of time to travel now, it forces people to invest more in the market and this is a good thing for the economy and, of course, for the game.

The general aspect that you mention is good. It feels good that you cant just jump from city to city at any time, that you can access all ressources and spawns at any time, that there are localized markets.

The problem are not the global distances, but the local ones. Besides the graveyards at the cities, there is usually nothing close, everything takes a few minutes to ride and is horrible to reach on foot. Keep the cities seperated thats fine, keep special points of interested (like desert horse spawn) seperated, thats also fine. But there should also be content besides graveyards that can be accessed without so much travel time.

 

[C3ncio]

The general aspect that you mention is good. It feels good that you cant just jump from city to city at any time, that you can access all ressources and spawns at any time, that there are localized markets.

The problem are not the global distances, but the local ones. Besides the graveyards at the cities, there is usually nothing close, everything takes a few minutes to ride and is horrible to reach on foot. Keep the cities seperated thats fine, keep special points of interested (like desert horse spawn) seperated, thats also fine. But there should also be content besides graveyards that can be accessed without so much travel time.

Don't worry about that, Henrik already stated multiple times during his weekly streams that more Points Of Interests will be added overtime, they are monitoring the "farming situation" and add spots accordingly to not ruin game economy. A new system for dynamic spawns is work in progress and, when this steps will be finalized local points of interests will get way better!
We just need to wait, i know SV is not fast at all but, since it's already WIP, complaining about this it is only useful to demoralize ourselves.

Some great balanced and reasonable points @ArcaneConsular and also agree with a lot of what @C3ncio said.

"-Zergs and unbalanced PvP are fairly prevalent making fights uninteresting
This will not change. There is literally NOTHING devs can do to avoid this without distorting the game and imposing limits that wouldn't fit the game."

I don't agree that nothing can be done... What about a certain zone in the map that is extremely dense rocks/trees which means horses can't cross it, houses can't be built and it's very difficult to see any great distance. Such an area could encourage small groups on foot to fight it out and make it hard for zergs to roll through on horseback and wipe everyone out. Use the terrain to discourage zergs rather than artificial limits

I hope you are right my friend but i played far too many sandbox games and open world PvP to trust this. Zergs in this kind of games always have an advantage, it's part of the sandbox nature. You can make areas where only groups of 5 can enter but the rest of them will just wait outside and send another group when the first one is done, and than another, and another one. In the end, they will outnumber you anyway.
I hope to be wrong btw, maybe there is a solution that no one have already thought of, but i'm pretty skeptical.

 

[Emdash]

dood is right, you can't nerf zergs without nerfing the game. They already nerfed zergs or so they thought and we got worse gameplay. :/ Different flavor zergs haha. If you dislike getting zerged that much, a pvp game with no limitations is not for you. I honestly enjoy it. Not actually getting zerged, but knowing it could happen, trying to survive and maybe get a horse kill or something. People who run around super deep... like in MO if you are running around 10 deep mounted that's just insane IMO. It's actually not efficient, 2 5s could probably take on most groups that are moving around. I've seen LoD around JC on diff instances, so they could all just spawn in if necessary. There's a lot of weird stuff going on, but just learn to take the zergs. If you balance the game to make zerging harder, you're gonna end up with a trash group pvp. They've already made it bad enough.

I mean, some of us are small groups and just gotta take the L, but in terms of medium to large sized guilds, it's troop allocation, and if you allocate your troops poorly you get rekt... well once siege n stuff is in, ahem. I still say making killing FASTER and EASIER is better anti zerg than making it harder to kill. Then the skill players just mop (they might lose in the end, but they whittle, and in the end the zerg gets defeated), dudes can bang each other on accident w/ friendly fire (more risk wildly swinging,) if everyone is more tanky, it's harder to fight a zerg because the whole zerg is more tanky, too, and they have healers etc. I ain't mad tho... just gonna keep doin' wild stuff til I'm bored, then if I'm that bored, I guess I'll quit

 

[Salohcin]

Please make it solid black behind the compass, a bit hard to see wehen in bright areas. Add way to scale font.

 

[Doom and Gloom]

Good points, crafting and taming is quite spot on. PvE I really agree with the fact that the mobs are way too difficult if you actually fight fair, if you just kite using MA they can't do anything to you. This is ridiculous, and even though kiting was removed their difficulty needs to go down, or at least slow their attack speed and let them have hilt hits and run out of stamina and stop speedhacking in general. Some classes like mage cannot fight any PvE enemies alone, and MM fighting just causes them to reset way too often as cannot circle around.

I also hope something could be done about zergs and the stupid gatekeeping mentality this game has, but also doubtful.

About exploration and distances, they just need to add more stuff to find, especially to water, otherwise it is good that the distances are so vast that it matters where you are currently for resource access.

Also there ARE quite a many hidden shortcuts in the game, many not on the online map either, just go looking at the mountains mate : )