Does anyone agree or disagree?

[Valheita]

Red Kutai

Valheita

Red Kutai

Valheita

Not intending to be rude, but I think this is the clearest way to get my stance across.

Who are you to say what I am to consider entertaining? Maybe I like staring at the screen for periods of time.

You'd have a much harder time convincing me you were trying to be rude, I think; I'm sure I'd never believe you. wink

In that case, books and movies sound much more like your cup-of-tea. And staring contests, perhaps - but those can be mighty challenging. sweatdrop

What seems to be evading me is what you're hoping to get out of a 'game' that involves staring at a screen and (presumably) being rewarded at various intervals. Sounds rather like the Cash Tree feature, actually; but again, no-one considers that a game... whee

Enjoyment.

Consider Oblivion. There's nothing I like better than hunting down and enchanting me a sword that cuts my enemies down in a single hit. But that is, by your gross oversimplification, simply staring at the screen.

Actually, I'd go so far as to suggest that the vast majority of Role-Playing games favour the investment over challenge model.

I do understand a little better what you're getting at, I think - we've had conversations on difficulty before, and I've told you that I'm the sort of player who overlevels in traditional RPGs; that I value the flow of the game, more than the drama of intense battles. In essence, I don't mind breezing through battles because... Well, being too strong for my own good is the kind of expression that appeals to me. redface

And I do walk through zOMG! at CL 10.0 from time to time, to do just that. whee

I suppose it is entirely arguable, in that regard, that area CL caps for instances aren't necessary; in fact, I might agree that it would be perfectly reasonable to remove those caps, on 'Easy' mode if nothing else - or perhaps a 'Free' mode that allows unscaled play at any level? I'd argue it's fair to restrict the 'Free' mode on certain areas - Chapter Ends, for instance - until after they're completed once by-challenge, since those areas were obviously built with a true level cap in mind; but given that, I can't say I'd particularly mind the option, myself. 3nodding

Apologies if I was being dense; do I sound a trifle more reasonable, now? sweatdrop

I'm not sure they need restricting to Easy myself. It's not like you get any loot when you're overlevelled, and chapter ends by their nature restrict overlevelling. You can't go past the 10 for Chapter 1 while beating the EB yet - and when DMS is released it won't be the Chapter End any more. =D

Always reasonable Red, always reasonable. Just not always right =P

[Red Kutai]

Valheita

I'm not sure they need restricting to Easy myself. It's not like you get any loot when you're overlevelled, and chapter ends by their nature restrict overlevelling. You can't go past the 10 for Chapter 1 while beating the EB yet - and when DMS is released it won't be the Chapter End any more. =D

Always reasonable Red, always reasonable. Just not always right =P

Well, if non-challenge play is what you're looking for, 'Easy' would be the first place you'd look, yes? Personally it makes more sense to me if 'Hard' means "hard", whether you're overlevelled or not. But I suppose that could be similarly accomplished by simply having those areas scale fully, yes? To be fair, I'm sure there are players who'd love to face a CL 10.5 OMGWTF, yes? The difference between the three would be the point at which they stop scaling; 'Easy' somewhere around the current maximum, 'Normal' somewhat higher, and 'Hard' scales indefinitely. To be honest, I can see the advantages in such a system, already. 3nodding

And I assure you, I am right about everything; I'm just not always right yet... wink

EDIT: Wait, wait; the end of Chapter 1 is still the end of Chapter 1, even if you add more content afterwards. Buccaneer Boardwalk and Dead Man's Shadow are expansions, which makes them inter-Chapter content - EB is still the end of Chapter 1 whether those areas are released or not, and I believe it's best for the game's storyline if it retains its intended level cap. whee

Also, we sort of missed part of the OP's point:

autocensor

Hmph. A lot of you agree with restrictions but I sorta believe it makes it more difficult to get items too.

We do agree that not profiting from wiping out underleveled enemies is acceptable, yes? sweatdrop

[Valheita]

Red Kutai

Valheita

I'm not sure they need restricting to Easy myself. It's not like you get any loot when you're overlevelled, and chapter ends by their nature restrict overlevelling. You can't go past the 10 for Chapter 1 while beating the EB yet - and when DMS is released it won't be the Chapter End any more. =D

Always reasonable Red, always reasonable. Just not always right =P

Well, if non-challenge play is what you're looking for, 'Easy' would be the first place you'd look, yes? Personally it makes more sense to me if 'Hard' means "hard", whether you're overlevelled or not. But I suppose that could be similarly accomplished by simply having those areas scale fully, yes? To be fair, I'm sure there are players who'd love to face a CL 10.5 OMGWTF, yes? The difference between the three would be the point at which they stop scaling; 'Easy' somewhere around the current maximum, 'Normal' somewhat higher, and 'Hard' scales indefinitely. To be honest, I can see the advantages in such a system, already. 3nodding

And I assure you, I am right about everything; I'm just not always right yet... wink

EDIT: Wait, wait; the end of Chapter 1 is still the end of Chapter 1, even if you add more content afterwards. Buccaneer Boardwalk and Dead Man's Shadow are expansions, which makes them inter-Chapter content - EB is still the end of Chapter 1 whether those areas are released or not, and I believe it's best for the game's storyline if it retains its intended level cap. whee

Also, we sort of missed part of the OP's point:

autocensor

Hmph. A lot of you agree with restrictions but I sorta believe it makes it more difficult to get items too.

We do agree that not profiting from wiping out underleveled enemies is acceptable, yes? sweatdrop

That would be a good system - were it that scaling actually worked that way. Unfortunately, the monsters scale with area as well as C.L. So the later bosses will always be more of a challenge than earlier ones. With the exception of KKD. For some reason, she's weaker than the OMGWTF.

Duneslam for example will have approximately twice the health of an equivalently levelled KKD or OMGWTF. And the Great Stone Coatl is approximately double Duneslam.

Chapters don't mean anything now though, It's just the "end of current content" type deal.

Hmm. Did sorta miss that didn't we. sweatdrop

[timo4142]

Red Kutai

Valheita

Memory Haunts You

autocensor

Joodoo

**** no.

Hmph. A lot of you agree with restrictions but I sorta believe it makes it more difficult to get items too.

Exactly. The fact that it all shouldn't be too easy, is kind of the point. 3nodding
A game needs to be a bit of a challenge, after all.

Does it?

If you want to appeal to the majority of people who seek to play games... Yes, yes it does. whee

Winning is more meaningful with a challenge. The gameplay itself is more dramatic. Apart from those users like yourself and mine, who enjoy the game primarily as an expressive outlet, it certainly is the case that challenge increases the value of gameplay. And so long as you're reasonably careful to ensure that that challenge doesn't significantly obstruct players' ability to express themselves, all's well.

Are you aiming to assert that the game would be more fun if it posed no challenge at all? I do a few things pretty regularly that pose no significant challenge (walking and breathing spring to mind), and they're not things that I - nor many others - generally regard as 'fun'... sweatdrop

Wow from what you said on that post made that definitely true.

[Kayi Laa]

autocensor

Since you're having trouble with enemies and want to raise your CL to compensate, it probably means you're not properly equipped (or your crew isn't) to deal with the enemies of a given area.

As it stands, the game, as a whole, is generally considered far, far too easy. Everything short of EB is painfully simple to beat, and even EB is a breeze if your crew works together even halfway decently. Let me share with you something I recently posted in another thread of someone having trouble with earlier areas of the game...

Here's the standard guide to everything short of EB-
(and this guide actually works fairly well for EB too...)

Newbie's Quick-Guide to all of zOMG

3 attacks, 1 bandage, 2 buffs, 2 support.
Be sure to learn how to RAAAAAAGE your buffs.
Make sure a crew always has Divinity and Armors (Buff checks rock!)
Bandage often.

Support ring options:
More healing? - Wish. (Crew heal only, bandage yourself, then wish the crew, rage gives it AoE!)
More drops/Luck? - Fortune's Favor or Fitness (integrity if you have it...)
Tougher area? - MEAT (rage it!)
Defib if you really, really want.

Be sure to bring strong attacks! Hack and Slash rule! But Guns Guns Guns isn't too bad either early on. 3nodding

[Red Kutai]

Valheita

Red Kutai

Valheita

I'm not sure they need restricting to Easy myself. It's not like you get any loot when you're overlevelled, and chapter ends by their nature restrict overlevelling. You can't go past the 10 for Chapter 1 while beating the EB yet - and when DMS is released it won't be the Chapter End any more. =D

Always reasonable Red, always reasonable. Just not always right =P

Well, if non-challenge play is what you're looking for, 'Easy' would be the first place you'd look, yes? Personally it makes more sense to me if 'Hard' means "hard", whether you're overlevelled or not. But I suppose that could be similarly accomplished by simply having those areas scale fully, yes? To be fair, I'm sure there are players who'd love to face a CL 10.5 OMGWTF, yes? The difference between the three would be the point at which they stop scaling; 'Easy' somewhere around the current maximum, 'Normal' somewhat higher, and 'Hard' scales indefinitely. To be honest, I can see the advantages in such a system, already. 3nodding

And I assure you, I am right about everything; I'm just not always right yet... wink

EDIT: Wait, wait; the end of Chapter 1 is still the end of Chapter 1, even if you add more content afterwards. Buccaneer Boardwalk and Dead Man's Shadow are expansions, which makes them inter-Chapter content - EB is still the end of Chapter 1 whether those areas are released or not, and I believe it's best for the game's storyline if it retains its intended level cap. whee

Also, we sort of missed part of the OP's point:

autocensor

Hmph. A lot of you agree with restrictions but I sorta believe it makes it more difficult to get items too.

We do agree that not profiting from wiping out underleveled enemies is acceptable, yes? sweatdrop

That would be a good system - were it that scaling actually worked that way. Unfortunately, the monsters scale with area as well as C.L. So the later bosses will always be more of a challenge than earlier ones. With the exception of KKD. For some reason, she's weaker than the OMGWTF.

Duneslam for example will have approximately twice the health of an equivalently levelled KKD or OMGWTF. And the Great Stone Coatl is approximately double Duneslam.

Chapters don't mean anything now though, It's just the "end of current content" type deal.

Hmm. Did sorta miss that didn't we. sweatdrop

Which is still pretty natural. In RPGs I'm familiar with, bosses do get more difficult as the storyline progresses - either because the AI gets cleverer, they get relatively more resilient, or they gain newer, more devastating abilities. Often this is an unpredictable scaling (because a boss is given an ability that winds up more devastating than initially realised), but an upward correlation does seem pretty common, in my experience.

I suppose we could argue that there are more interesting ways that they could scale in that matter (rather than just extra Health and damage), but that seems like an entire discussion to-itself.

And Chapters mean the same thing they always have; we're just not getting any more of them, explicitly. Why would that affect the meaning and intent that the first Chapter End had, when it was created?

[timo4142]

It seems like it can be difficult to keep a good crew but is recruiting the best crew matter? cheese_whine

[Bksh]

KooHoo-P

I'm certain you're referring to instances that have a level cap. And I disagree with you because the bosses and monsters in those instances have a set level, and they set you to the ideal level for that instance to be most fair.

It'd be pointless to do papa saw at 10.0 because you wouldn't get any gold or orbs.

If you're getting dazed often then you need a better crew.

This.

[Mighty Ninja Jake]

Yeah, I disagree for the same reasons everyone else said.

[DrQuint]

Mighty Ninja Jake

Yeah, I disagree for the same reasons everyone else said.

Quite a few went around the issue and agreed with it.


Personally, I'd never ask for the cap to be removed. While tempting, the game currently doesn't have the ability to scale the the difficulty along with CL scaling. A Cl 10.5 OMGWTF is actually a very feeble monster and that CL 10 players dispatch with not too much effort. Several instances are easier to beat by scaling below the usual level as well, Coliseum being a very obvious offender. Go to any dev meet and try to convince JK really hard to spawn the instance bosses the same way he does sharks, and you'll see what I mean.

Which means that, by removing the auto-scale and allowing people to beat instances at any level with the instance going up, devs would also need to rebalance the stat scaling on every single monster. I have better things to ask Swarf to do.

[Red Kutai]

DrQuint

Mighty Ninja Jake

Yeah, I disagree for the same reasons everyone else said.

Quite a few went around the issue and agreed with it.


Personally, I'd never ask for the cap to be removed. While tempting, the game currently doesn't have the ability to scale the the difficulty along with CL scaling. A Cl 10.5 OMGWTF is actually a very feeble monster and that CL 10 players dispatch with not too much effort. Several instances are easier to beat by scaling below the usual level as well, Coliseum being a very obvious offender. Go to any dev meet and try to convince JK really hard to spawn the instance bosses the same way he does sharks, and you'll see what I mean.

Which means that, by removing the auto-scale and allowing people to beat instances at any level with the instance going up, devs would also need to rebalance the stat scaling on every single monster. I have better things to ask Swarf to do.

Don't all scaling stats scale linearly? The relationship between Health and Damage is constant, and the relationship between Accuracy and Dodge is presumed to be so as well. There's admittedly a minute difference in difficulty, making up-scaled enemies easier (simply because 0.5 is a bigger portion of 3.0, than it is of 10.0), but even then the issues aren't particularly extreme, and could be adjusted for reasonably.

The game doesn't utilise complicated scaling; everything should be roughly relative, at any given point. The reason bosses seem to be defeated so quickly at dev meets would be the increased number of players attacking (thus actually making it quicker) and the absence of the rest of the instance - even inside their instances, at proper scale, bosses themselves don't last that long; the fact simply becomes compounded more noticeably when there 2 or 3 times as many players attacking them.

To be honest, though, I don't know why under-leveling would make an instance easier in any way - why is it that the Coliseum functions that way, you think?

[Silk Kanishk]

Personally, I enjoy having the choice of whether to simply breeze by an area or under-level and fight animated as not all my time on Zomg is spent gaming.

I just wish it would be possible to increase your level without having to return to the null as it might actually motivate me to do it more often. confused

[DrQuint]

Red Kutai

DrQuint

Mighty Ninja Jake

Yeah, I disagree for the same reasons everyone else said.

Quite a few went around the issue and agreed with it.


Personally, I'd never ask for the cap to be removed. While tempting, the game currently doesn't have the ability to scale the the difficulty along with CL scaling. A Cl 10.5 OMGWTF is actually a very feeble monster and that CL 10 players dispatch with not too much effort. Several instances are easier to beat by scaling below the usual level as well, Coliseum being a very obvious offender. Go to any dev meet and try to convince JK really hard to spawn the instance bosses the same way he does sharks, and you'll see what I mean.

Which means that, by removing the auto-scale and allowing people to beat instances at any level with the instance going up, devs would also need to rebalance the stat scaling on every single monster. I have better things to ask Swarf to do.

Don't all scaling stats scale linearly? The relationship between Health and Damage is constant, and the relationship between Accuracy and Dodge is presumed to be so as well. There's admittedly a minute difference in difficulty, making up-scaled enemies easier (simply because 0.5 is a bigger portion of 3.0, than it is of 10.0), but even then the issues aren't particularly extreme, and could be adjusted for reasonably.

The game doesn't utilise complicated scaling; everything should be roughly relative, at any given point. The reason bosses seem to be defeated so quickly at dev meets would be the increased number of players attacking (thus actually making it quicker) and the absence of the rest of the instance - even inside their instances, at proper scale, bosses themselves don't last that long; the fact simply becomes compounded more noticeably when there 2 or 3 times as many players attacking them.

To be honest, though, I don't know why under-leveling would make an instance easier in any way - why is it that the Coliseum functions that way, you think?

I am aware that all stats scale linearly, but it still goes against proof. Bosses DO die quickly in a seemingly independent way from number of players, or maybe I'm led to believe so. KKD in particular loses vastly noticeable chunks of health with each individual attack.

Actually, I should just test this out. OMGWTF is a good guinea pig for this. Running DMP and checking his stats for both Cl 2.0 and Cl 3.0, or whatever the limit was. Now, either the HP is 1.5 as large on the latter, and I'm wrong, or it gains increments of X hp per Cl on top of a Y Hp base. Same test for damage average at same level/same buff status.

Also, just an aside from this rationale: One of the "old tricks in the book" to make any instance easier is have rings 1 CL above your average levels, with Buffs dragging the Cl down at the same time. Monsters scale down while your damage/heal output scales up.
Even disregarding that, I have no idea why the hell CL 2.5 coliseum runs feel easier than Cl 10.0 ones, but people who did it tend to agree. Could be a case of mass... uh... mass delusion? If anything, they should feel harder, were that other method of scaling to be true.

[Valheita]

Red Kutai

Valheita

Red Kutai

Valheita

I'm not sure they need restricting to Easy myself. It's not like you get any loot when you're overlevelled, and chapter ends by their nature restrict overlevelling. You can't go past the 10 for Chapter 1 while beating the EB yet - and when DMS is released it won't be the Chapter End any more. =D

Always reasonable Red, always reasonable. Just not always right =P

Well, if non-challenge play is what you're looking for, 'Easy' would be the first place you'd look, yes? Personally it makes more sense to me if 'Hard' means "hard", whether you're overlevelled or not. But I suppose that could be similarly accomplished by simply having those areas scale fully, yes? To be fair, I'm sure there are players who'd love to face a CL 10.5 OMGWTF, yes? The difference between the three would be the point at which they stop scaling; 'Easy' somewhere around the current maximum, 'Normal' somewhat higher, and 'Hard' scales indefinitely. To be honest, I can see the advantages in such a system, already. 3nodding

And I assure you, I am right about everything; I'm just not always right yet... wink

EDIT: Wait, wait; the end of Chapter 1 is still the end of Chapter 1, even if you add more content afterwards. Buccaneer Boardwalk and Dead Man's Shadow are expansions, which makes them inter-Chapter content - EB is still the end of Chapter 1 whether those areas are released or not, and I believe it's best for the game's storyline if it retains its intended level cap. whee

Also, we sort of missed part of the OP's point:

autocensor

Hmph. A lot of you agree with restrictions but I sorta believe it makes it more difficult to get items too.

We do agree that not profiting from wiping out underleveled enemies is acceptable, yes? sweatdrop

That would be a good system - were it that scaling actually worked that way. Unfortunately, the monsters scale with area as well as C.L. So the later bosses will always be more of a challenge than earlier ones. With the exception of KKD. For some reason, she's weaker than the OMGWTF.

Duneslam for example will have approximately twice the health of an equivalently levelled KKD or OMGWTF. And the Great Stone Coatl is approximately double Duneslam.

Chapters don't mean anything now though, It's just the "end of current content" type deal.

Hmm. Did sorta miss that didn't we. sweatdrop

Which is still pretty natural. In RPGs I'm familiar with, bosses do get more difficult as the storyline progresses - either because the AI gets cleverer, they get relatively more resilient, or they gain newer, more devastating abilities. Often this is an unpredictable scaling (because a boss is given an ability that winds up more devastating than initially realised), but an upward correlation does seem pretty common, in my experience.

I suppose we could argue that there are more interesting ways that they could scale in that matter (rather than just extra Health and damage), but that seems like an entire discussion to-itself.

And Chapters mean the same thing they always have; we're just not getting any more of them, explicitly. Why would that affect the meaning and intent that the first Chapter End had, when it was created?

Oh yes, it's standard. I'm just pointing out that if you want challenge, then EB will always be harder than KKD or She-Wolf regardless of level.

Because they were intended to be story arcs. We don't have story arcs now, the game is progressing in pages instead.

@DrQuint: Thard's research indicates it's a linear scaling.

[timo4142]

qazxedcv1

Take a defense buff ring like potlid, improb sphere, teflon, etc. (not turtle though) a healing ring like bandage (for solo) or diagnose (for crews) and possibly meat. Meat is good.

Well apparently, I find meat the strongest of the defensive rings since it extends your HP and you shouldn't go alone to fight on hard, because you'll get your a** whooped by going alone and facing something on hard.