Use the Mastery System to Phase Out Trinkets:

Emdash

Well-known member
Sep 22, 2021
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Cross post from MO2 Reddit.

Now that there is a mastery system, and upon thinking about it, I am not as upset as I was, does it not make more sense to focus on using that as the soulbound buff system opposed to relying on RNG loot drops for l33t bonuses? I think what a lot of us want is a semblance of balance in the game, and the further it goes away from that, the less likely it is that any of us are going to play again.

In this case, it seems to make sense because anyone can reach the right mastery, and if they wanna spec their build, they can do it with masteries. I don't agree with 22% damage bonus or whatever, but, you know, maybe adjust the highest of the high, end-tree buffs to be pretty nice.

I would also suggest removing the clade reset penalty if you haven't already. I never got C20 because I respecced a lot. If you're going to let people respec mastery, you should let them respec clade.

This way, people who are super committed to the game can get the buffs they want and it won't be stuff people can RMT. You can ostensibly do it off bandits. Just put in the work.
__________

That being said, I have massive suggestion fatigue. Most people probably don't care how I feel, but I have put effort into this, actually thinking about it. It's not like I chose a time of day to focus on MO, but I think about stuff. I can't help it. The effort I chose to put in was actually passing the ideas on. Some people think my ideas are nuts, but I'd say most of them aren't. I think people see words and focus on them and they don't understand the 'core' of my idea. Who knows.

SO, I did mofo. I did Reddit. I did Steam. I never did Discord, you guys can have that lol. FOR NOW, I gave what I could. Dunno what else to say. I know SV might believe the game is succeeding or on the right track, but I just can't agree. It's summer! There should be an influx. There is some reason why that isn't happening.
 
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Rahz

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Jul 19, 2022
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With the introduction of the Mastery system I am now 100% convinced that noone in SV has any idea on how to balance this game. This Mastery system just makes the rock-paper-scissor like balance even more extreme. NOONE wants to fight Thursars in melee (so Thursar players dont get their intended gameplay and just wobble after their opponents) Noone can catch skelemages on foot but that also doesnt matter since they are just gonna be killed by mounted builds with again no real counterplay. With even more dmg lancers will now reliably ONE SHOT rat-mages, human mages are just busted( yay heavy armor, towershield, still somehow a mage) and fighting pets is also only doable with some builds.
Pretty sure mage duels still end in a few seconds coz both mages will just kill the opponent with their pets lol.
And we dont talk about Archery, its only good to kill naked noobs or again rat-mages. Trinkets were already busted before (100% slash res on endgame thursars, loads of armor weight on human mages,+22% dmg so nothing but heavy armor is viable) and now SV is like " lets add another layer of the EXACT SAME STUFF on top of it"
If they wanna create endgame content just make the different Empires mean something and use them to force the biggest guilds to fight one another. That should be the endgame. Grinding for clades and then grinding for the mastery is just another timesink.
 
May 4, 2024
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With the introduction of the Mastery system I am now 100% convinced that noone in SV has any idea on how to balance this game. This Mastery system just makes the rock-paper-scissor like balance even more extreme. NOONE wants to fight Thursars in melee (so Thursar players dont get their intended gameplay and just wobble after their opponents) Noone can catch skelemages on foot but that also doesnt matter since they are just gonna be killed by mounted builds with again no real counterplay. With even more dmg lancers will now reliably ONE SHOT rat-mages, human mages are just busted( yay heavy armor, towershield, still somehow a mage) and fighting pets is also only doable with some builds.
Pretty sure mage duels still end in a few seconds coz both mages will just kill the opponent with their pets lol.
And we dont talk about Archery, its only good to kill naked noobs or again rat-mages. Trinkets were already busted before (100% slash res on endgame thursars, loads of armor weight on human mages,+22% dmg so nothing but heavy armor is viable) and now SV is like " lets add another layer of the EXACT SAME STUFF on top of it"
If they wanna create endgame content just make the different Empires mean something and use them to force the biggest guilds to fight one another. That should be the endgame. Grinding for clades and then grinding for the mastery is just another timesink.
I would like to see unique options in the mastery tree rather than buffs we already have access.

I don't understand your points.

Any naked player with low HP will get one shot, trinkets or builds change nothing about this.

If you have an issue with lances, block down.

There is no such thing as 100% resistance to damage. A Thursar in Mercenary Plate Armor (Oghmium/Iron Fur) while using a 9% slash amulet still takes around 15 damage from a Oghmium sword. You can even check the calculator, damage caps seem to happen around 92% mitigation. If you want to make any argument, it would be that swords need a reduction in slash damage.
 

Rahz

Active member
Jul 19, 2022
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I would like to see unique options in the mastery tree rather than buffs we already have access.

I don't understand your points.

Any naked player with low HP will get one shot, trinkets or builds change nothing about this.

If you have an issue with lances, block down.

There is no such thing as 100% resistance to damage. A Thursar in Mercenary Plate Armor (Oghmium/Iron Fur) while using a 9% slash amulet still takes around 15 damage from a Oghmium sword. You can even check the calculator, damage caps seem to happen around 92% mitigation. If you want to make any argument, it would be that swords need a reduction in slash damage.
Im not talking about naked players with low HP but about mages in mage armor. Blocking down doesnt help if your horse is mercied since it wont make you magically get a chance to really fight back. If you're dismounted in a mounted fight you already lost if your opponent doesnt do something stupid.
So 15dmg from an Oghmium blade isnt too much mitigation? How much dmg would a steel sword do? 92% dmg reduction is still insane.
Overall Oghmium is a little overtuned imo, meaning you pretty much need Oghmium to fight someone with Oghmium. But Oghmium isnt the only thing thats unbalanced. If someone has a meta-potion, HoT food and bandages footfights take even longer.
For mages that means killing a single well-prepared fighter will take you a lot, if not all of your Mana. And if youre out of mana, theres really little a mage can do. Going in melee against a foot fighter isnt really an option if you want to win the fight. The only option for a mage to kill a well geared footie is pets since pet attacks dont cost Mana. So my point is that damage mitigation and non-magic healing is too much. The mastery system will not help with that but only make it worse. Giving people more damage doesnt solve the issue, its just nerfing the already useless light armors even more.
 
Last edited:
May 4, 2024
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Im not talking about naked players with low HP but about mages in mage armor. Blocking down doesnt help if your horse is mercied since it wont make you magically get a chance to really fight back. If you're dismounted in a mounted fight you already lost if your opponent doesnt do something stupid.
So 15dmg from an Oghmium blade isnt too much mitigation? How much dmg would a steel sword do? 92% dmg reduction is still insane.
Overall Oghmium is a little overtuned imo, meaning you pretty much need Oghmium to fight someone with Oghmium. But Oghmium isnt the only thing thats unbalanced. If someone has a meta-potion, HoT food and bandages footfights take even longer.
For mages that means killing a single well-prepared fighter will take you a lot, if not all of your Mana. And if youre out of mana, theres really little a mage can do. Going in melee against a foot fighter isnt really an option if you want to win the fight. The only option for a mage to kill a well geared footie is pets since pet attacks dont cost Mana. So my point is that damage mitigation and non-magic healing is too much. The mastery system will not help with that but only make it worse. Giving people more damage doesnt solve the issue, its just nerfing the already useless light armors even more.
I don't agree at all.

Mage armor is basically naked. I'm not going to comment on the rest of what you said. I hope you don't take this the wrong way but we are playing different games. You want low investment to beat and compete with high investment. Never going to happen.
 

Rahz

Active member
Jul 19, 2022
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I don't agree at all.

Mage armor is basically naked. I'm not going to comment on the rest of what you said. I hope you don't take this the wrong way but we are playing different games. You want low investment to beat and compete with high investment. Never going to happen.
What are you smoking? Low investment to beat high investment? Absolute bullshit. Im arguing that some investments should also be worthwhile and not just outclassed by others. 10k+ Gold magespells, 70g armor, 400g armored pet, 20g reags and you can still get killed in seconds not because of "low investment" but because of zergs and the game not being balanced. Investing in pots and HoT food should be a good move but it shouldnt provide so much healing that you can outheal a mages entire manabar.
"low investment" gameplay in my mind would be bank bombing or getting your equipment supplied by guilds just to roam around the nearest town looking for solos to kill, which are probably the easiest and most profitable ways to play the game.
The endgame has nothing to do with "investment" and you know it just as well as anyone else or do you really think people are buying the good trinkets for legit farmed 20k gold? Or the spiritism stuff? Or are mining for Oghmium? The "investment" is called RMT.
 

Emdash

Well-known member
Sep 22, 2021
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It's not really worth arguing over anymore.

I think the beauty of MO1 was that it had a level of sweat like around GK area, but the majority of the game was pick up and play.

You either had cron/ogh or you didn't. You either had 100+ pots or you didn't. Sometimes they would make it out of their areas, but in general it didn't go *too* far.

If you compare that with trinkets, once you get it back to ID it, you can take it anywhere. It effectively raises the level of investment outright.

That + guards pushing 'content' further and further out of town, the game just doesn't have the same appeal. The community cannot agree on anything, that I've seen, and even if we do kind of agree on something (like I make a post and everyone is like YES,) it's highly unlikely it gets changed. People seem to be majority anti-trinkets now that they realize how they have negatively impacted the game.

Took awhile, like a lot of things, but they do know now. However, all those people who RMT'd or farmed for 10,000 hours to get the most OP trinkets are never gonna give them up. MO is just a different game. I really like their engine. The proof that it's bad, imo, is simple: there aren't as many people playing as should be if it were good or even decent.

I think I am OK with moving on haha. More or less...
 

MolagAmur

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Jul 15, 2020
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With the introduction of the Mastery system I am now 100% convinced that noone in SV has any idea on how to balance this game. This Mastery system just makes the rock-paper-scissor like balance even more extreme. NOONE wants to fight Thursars in melee (so Thursar players dont get their intended gameplay and just wobble after their opponents) Noone can catch skelemages on foot but that also doesnt matter since they are just gonna be killed by mounted builds with again no real counterplay. With even more dmg lancers will now reliably ONE SHOT rat-mages, human mages are just busted( yay heavy armor, towershield, still somehow a mage) and fighting pets is also only doable with some builds.
Pretty sure mage duels still end in a few seconds coz both mages will just kill the opponent with their pets lol.
And we dont talk about Archery, its only good to kill naked noobs or again rat-mages. Trinkets were already busted before (100% slash res on endgame thursars, loads of armor weight on human mages,+22% dmg so nothing but heavy armor is viable) and now SV is like " lets add another layer of the EXACT SAME STUFF on top of it"
If they wanna create endgame content just make the different Empires mean something and use them to force the biggest guilds to fight one another. That should be the endgame. Grinding for clades and then grinding for the mastery is just another timesink.
Yep, the real endgame should be guilds fighting each other with purpose instead of just for "fun". Zerg guilds just team up and end up getting bored because there is nobody to fight...and players feel they have to join the zergs to play the game because its such a zerg-friendly game. Its a lose lose kinda situation.

SV could do a lot for the game with the factions and giving a large incentive to be fighting opposing factions. When they first announced different faction reputations...I think a lot of us had much higher expectations on how well it would impact the endgame politics. There hasn't been a single interesting war that I've personally seen in MO2 history though. Its just zergs hoarding materials and camping dungeons while doing the occasional siege because of some forced drama.
 
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azezal

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Mar 27, 2024
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Delete trinkets and keep mastery or delete mastery and keep trinkets. Not both.