Returning player see combat system is destroyed

Zenek

I'm old player and I remember Vindictus when it was released. When combat system was something new and impressive. When fight was maybe slower than right now, but was much more dynamic - everything was important.

But right now I'm back to the game and I can not belive how the entire combat system is DESTROYED. My first impresion was the content got just nerfed. But I started look at details and not. After searching I guess I found the reasons and that is Rise: Revolution Update

Changes to Hit-Knock-Down

You will not be knocked down as frequently (excluding Royal Raids and Redeemers battles)
Multiple hits in a short amount of time can still knock you down
Normal monsters can no longer knock you down
For a short period after being hit, you will not take any additional damage

What the hell?! How something like this can be on server from 3 years and community sit quiet? It completly destroyed combat system of the game. Normal monsters are now doing nothing and bosses can not even use combo because only first hit matter.

assassin56

I’ve also been a long time player for this game (played when Evie released), and yes I can definitely agree that the game has definitely transformed into something else. I wouldn’t say that the combat system is destroyed, but the amount of power creep over the years has shifted the way raids feel and flow. Everything is a LOT faster than it used to be, so naturally they had to nerf being knocked down to avoid faster bosses being too “difficult”. In doing so though, I’m pretty sure that influenced changes like perfect block mechanics and red moves (which are undodgable/unblockable) that we see today in many of the raids. Not to mention bosses are doing a lot more damage because they keep releasing new gear for everyone to grind over and over again. Though if that wasn’t bad enough, the developers put in a minimum damage requirement in the game for raids (you have to do at least 7% damage to the boss in order to get any loot). So instead of everyone taking the time to work together, learn boss patterns and come up with strategies, the raids basically are meant to be played like you already know the boss patterns and attacks beforehand. Because essentially they’ve turned this game into a DPS contest between other players… at least that’s how it feels like it to me when I party with certain players. If they just remove extra loot for doing 40%? (I don’t remember exactly) or more damage to the boss then this game would actually be headed in the right direction again haha.

As for normal monsters, we used to have 4 minibosses for Ben Chenner Entrance. The Koreans apparently thought it was too difficult with the new Season 3 mechanics with the debuff that gets worse over time if you don’t kill the miniboss quickly enough, so they cut about half the minibosses from those regions. They eventually even removed the debuff! For a playerbase that likes cheap OHKO gimmicks (Redeemers), they sure don’t like gimmicks that were easier to deal with lol. I’m sure that the no knockdown change was added in somewhere but for some reason I don’t recall it.

I’ve voiced my opinions over these topics plenty of times with my guild and I’m sure many of us on here have our grievances to express, but ultimately this matter is probably out of our hands since Nexon primarily listens to the Asian playerbase. They have the most say over what kind of content gets released since they provide Nexon with the most revenue. Although weirdly enough they couldn’t stop Rise from being released, so we were probably doomed from the start. Nexon is probably too busy making more raids and redeemers since it’s probably easier to make a boss in a small arena than to actually make fleshed out dungeons with nice scenery and interesting puzzles. And given Nexon’s long track record of greediness and lack of innovation, I think it’s safe to assume this game is not getting any major combat mechanic changes anytime soon.

Zeroheart

Have you seen the ridiculous thing they called "Counter Force". You may have heard of being gear wall from raid cause of attack requirements but this new stat literally makes it harder for the player to beat the raid even though they might have +15 gear. "Counter Force" is stat like balance they determines if you can output all that damage you can do. The strangest thing is that Counter Force or CF is based on the accessories (Rings, Belts and Earrings) being 1- 20 enhancements .
"Well I have a lot of stones...what it does not use stones? It uses materials from non raid levels and dismantled power fragments? The drop rate of them are horrible too?! WHY THE HELL IS THERE RNG WHILE ENHANCING? IT WANTS HOW MUCH GOLD AFTER +15!??! "

I believe the DEVs knew this was a bad idea since they keep giving crappy coupons and a quest to get +15 rings

What is even worse, they removed NPC crafting and some armor sets for 90 and below gear, The armor sets were pretty nice and fashionable in this game instead being recolored crap like other MMO but nope if you want specific armor sets you need to learn a profession which takes forever to gets material normally and raise proficiency. But guess what in the future updates
Player: "Hmm my friend want me to craft some end game gear for him, I will buy the materials off the Market Place"
Nexon: "I see you crafting gear for other players"
Player: "Well yes, since I can possibly make it 3 stars or higher and the cost is lower than using Diana..."
Nexon: "YoU R BeiNG USeFUl !? JKASKJFHKASJF"
Player: " What?! ...Hey the gear I made for a friend is bound to me!!"
Nexon: "Yes. Binded material will make Bounded gear right away!"
Player: "But why? Materials like shard are hard to come by and to unbind things will cost NX to unbind!"
Nexon: " I did a thing again! " (crawls away thinking how to milk the player even more.)

Also there are "Taxes" in game, so when selling stuff on Market Place or sending money through Mail COD, some shady power takes a cut. Unless you bribe I mean buy a premium market place voucher.

Bounty

Yes the older players are well aware of all this crap including the new fatigue system. If you have played this game before rise there are a lot of things to **** and moan about and it has made it next to impossible to get new players interested into the game meaning eventually everything good must come to an end.

Really started when they brought a new lead programmer who doesn't know his foot from his ass. -_- They wanted to make the game like every other MMO when it came to pot mechanics and bullshit.

Let's just keep throwing more and more barriers into the game regarding damage output when royal raids and other raids for that matter only last a couple of minutes and yes I cannot stand counter force.

Talk about more and more gold sinks.

Kazaanh

Just recently came back from long few years break to Vindictus.

And this game is no longer same. We are playing in group of 3 with friends, brand new character level 1 and doing some season 1 maps.

And those maps are just, go from A > B, literaly 0 challenge. There is no hard mode ( because it was apparently removed so we can't have challenge while doing bosses ) , bosses lasts in current game like 1-3 seconds. You don't even have a time to pull out combos or learn how to play your character.

We expected getting into ( Red ruins famous red gnoll of death ) to have extra fun. And that guy had like 3 bars of HP and he died in seconds . . .

Now we are in Ainle maps, and its literaly same . . .

You are showered with good OP items + tons of buffs+ along nerfes that happened in Rise: Revolution update make whole season 1 terrible new player experience. I get it Devs want to rush players through old content ASAP to 90+ raids etc. But most of fun was doing these low level battles/raids and learning the game.

Sorry, but we already got bored. This is not a good way to attract new players, streamlining old content and making it shorter is fine but altering difficulty so much? Honestly if the Devs kept the original Hard mode + scaling Boss HP depending on numbers of players it would be enough to fix most of player complains. Hero mode for all battles would be also nice feature.

btw I quit Vindictus when s2ep launched. So my memories are quite fun, and its so sad to see them relieved in this way. Rushing through same maps from A>B is also boring, there is no challenge. Might as well make Season 1 maps to autocomplete and skip battles. But i heard Season 2 maps are also same.

tl;dr maps/boss difficulty is so low it made us bored and quit