Ein Lacher has been a great way of showing people what Vindictus is really about.
But what do you need to do to keep players in the game and playing the game?
Let's talk about Warframe for a little bit.
Warframe is a MMO3PS that does away with all the traditional MMO stuff. Everyone has the means to deal damage and what makes you different from others are the skills that your "character" employs. It also doesn't lock you into a character choice. You can change characters out as you desire. And your main forms of damage dealing are kept and transferred around freely.
To put this another way, say you have a +13 Terminus weapon on Kai. You can freely change that into a +13 pillar, change to your Karok, and then play Karok for as much as you want and changing again whenever you want.
How does this help? One of the main things that really veteran players quit this game for is that their character becomes stale and it becomes pointless to try and improve your equipment. But they are stuck with one character and can't go on to create a new one because the cost of a new weapon is extortionately incredulous.
So they are stuck with one character, get bored after a long while, and quit. Only to poke their heads back in the game every so often but still not finding it really worthwhile because the same issues that was there before with no progression and no improvement and singular character gameplay still remains.
That's one way you could change the "one dimensionality" of the game and allow people to play what they want. Allow them to swap like for like weapons freely between characters on their own account. Just weapons, not armor or accessories, mind you.
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But really looking at it, the central issue of Vindictus is the weapon and the impossibility of obtaining a really good endgame weapon. Level 90 weapon crafting has helped a lot but it literally did nothing to account for one of the main things. That main thing being attack speed. For many characters attack speed is what makes or breaks them and hitting certain amounts of attack speed is the difference between playing comfortable or dying while trying to attack or just not attacking at all because you're too slow. It is also the difference between achieving optimal damage output against endgame bosses or dealing thousands of damage per hit below what you could be doing.
The issue is compounded when you look at the enhancement rates and the punishment for trying to enhance past +10. Your weapon is destroyed. It can be restored once. And then it's gone. Nevermind that you generally need to obtain at least +13 or higher to feel comfortable with the weapon. And then supplement that weapon with hundreds of dollars of runes and thousands of hours of farming for enchants on your accessories and armor.
The fix is a simple one that will still be profitable for Nexon if not even more profitable. It will also give players an incentive to play while knowing that so long as they play they will improve their gear. And it will give endgame players a reason to continue playing the game in the way of new characters.
-Remove item destruction upon enhancement past +10.
-It is not destroyed, it just loses a portion of max durability. Say, 20 durability for failing +11. 22 durability for failing +12. etc.
-The ONLY way to enhance past +10 is to obtain an incredibly rare item from raids. Let's call this really rare drop "Super Iced Strawberry Brandy."
-This item is what Ferghus demands to try and do an enhance past +10.
-If it fails, durability is lost. Your weapon remains.
-You can only restore max durability with durability potions from the Supply Shop (cash shop).
-Super Iced Strawberry Brandy (SISB) has a time limit of 24 hours and it cannot be traded to another account.
-If you get it, you must use it or it's gone. If you get it on your main character but you have maxed +15 you can put it in Shared Storage and give it to another character you have.
-SISB is used up when Ferghus tries the enhance. If the enhance fails, your durability goes down, the item remains at whatever enhance it is, does not break, the SISB is gone.
-There exists a Cash Shop item which prevents the using up of SISB. Call it something like "Second Bottle of SISB" or whatever. You buy it, you use it like a rune.
-If you use the Second Bottle, the main SISB is not used up if the enhance fails. If the enhance fails, you still lose durability, you lose the Second Bottle. Your weapon remains, the SISB remains. You can attempt again.
-To ensure 100% success rate of the SISB you must expend NX for the Second Bottle and you must expend NX for durability potions to keep your weapon going.
-But at no point will you ever risk the destruction and loss of your primary ability to play the game (your weapon).
How will this help Nexon?
You have to
expend NX to get Enhance Runes to get to +10.
You have to play the game to get SISB.
You have to
expend NX to get Second Bottle and Durability Potions. Increase Durability Potions a bit in price. Put the Second Bottle at 25k NX.
Money is sure to roll in to Nexon.
How this helps Nexon AND the players.
Your weapon won't get destroyed, you won't feel like you just wasted 5 months of playing to lose your weapon. THIS singular reason of weapon loss makes people rage quit this game more than you would think. People at around level 70 or so often get their first +10 weapon. A few months later they feel the itch to get a better weapon, enhance, and their weapon blows up. The feeling destroys you and you quit playing the game. You have no way to do damage, you do not want to go back to a level 40 weapon and have to get carried in raids again for another year until you can get another +10 weapon.
Players will stay and play the game for that chance to enhance with the SISB raid drop.
Players playing the game proves the game has a healthy population, making other players want to stay and play the game and interact.
More players playing and raiding and getting SISB.
More players spending NX on Second Bottle and Durability Potions to keep their enhancements going and their weapon to +15.
They will keep playing because they don't lose their weapon, and they know that so long as they keep playing and keep raiding and getting better they will eventually be able to increase their weapon.
Really lucky players or players with +15 already and feel like their character is getting stale? Feels like they can't do anything anymore? Or maybe they just have a few characters or one other characters that they would really like to learn to play but can't because of the "no good weapon to use" reason? Well, now they won't feel so bad about doing raids on their main character, then going onto their second character and leveling that one up to also do raids. Why? Because they know that if they put some NX in first to get a nice +10, they can eventually keep raiding and get a +15 so long as they work at it. Leading back to, players playing the game, players playing causes more players to keep playing to interact and to achieve a goal they want, more players stays and play, Second Bottle, Enhance Runes, and Durability Potions, all being bought.
There is no losing here. Nexon will gain in population, in NX income. Players will gain in weapons being maintained and the game allowing you to always improve and always get new characters without feeling like the RNG is going to cheat the hell out of your hard work.
Game goes on to gain a greater population than it ever had before, people stay and play, Vindictus becomes great again. Make Vindictus great again, please.
And before you go around naysaying that this kind of setup won't work. Just look at Warframe. You lose NOTHING in Warframe. You can only ever gain. You can't destroy your weapon. You can't blow up your mods with RNG. You can only increase effectiveness and increase damage output. You got tired of playing your Loki frame? Go level up all of your frames. Now you can play whichever one you want. Go play Excalibur for a while. Get bored of him, level up a nice Lex Prime, try out Mesa. Done with Mesa? Go play Equinox. Got bored of Equinox? Go play Excalibur again. Main just a few frames if you want, main them all. Who cares? YOU CAN NEVER GO DOWN while playing the game. Your progress extends in only one direction. That's Warframe. No RNG.
And how popular and how big is Warframe? A hell of a lot more populated and more played than Vindictus. Meaning much more income as well, I guarantee it.
Adopt this kind of method for Vindictus, and you will see it grow. Thank you for your attention.
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Kommentare
You can't un**** this game by making it even easier to gear up, making it easy to gear up is one of the reasons we're already here.
Your example of dropping dura instead of booming will just lead to stupid players dropping their dura to zero without backup or means (or desire) to buy dura pots and quitting. You're not going to fix stupid, your example merely taxes it.
I think one of the big reasons why this game loses players is because once you get geared you run out of things to do and there aren't a lot of challenges left.
Raids right now are trivial. None of them are really a challenge bar Neamhain; they start, some people get clapped occasionally and then the raid ends 5-15 minutes after you start it. I think adding Neamhain is a good addition to the game. I hope they add more obscenely difficult raids like that but I'd prefer if they made them less stat dependant. Kinda like Keaghan on his release. The guy has 3k defense. That raid took a while cause he had a ton of health, had a lot of different combos/attacks and hit like a train. More raids like that would be pretty nice.
Even though I vehemently hate RIFT these days, its skill trees up to level 60 are still my favorite implementation of customisation in a MMO. Imagine if Vindictus only had 4 classes, but each had 12 weapons and you could distribute skill points into any combination of 3 of those weapons at once to build a cohesive fighting style. Then when you find a combination you like, save it so you can switch to it on the fly even in the middle of a dungeon. This kept the game endlessly fresh even while leveling only 1 class. And people were finding weird combinations for niche situations even years after some content update.
Unfortunately that kind of game design changes the game at its very root and you can't just take it and tack it onto an ancient game like Vindictus.
At every point there were arguments such as the above.
"It was so much harder to get equipment back then."
At every point of that there were people like you saying that that's just how it is.
And at every point of that we bled players out that we never got back in.
I remember when Elcuhlus drop was 800m and was required for everything. If not more. I remember being among the first to go into Glas and just getting destroyed. Hell, I remember when it was still just Lann and Fiona.
Do you want a return to those days?
How about when S2 drops were 200m each and +10 level weapons were 1bil+?
No?
At every point Nexon has lost players because people simply can't progress their gear to the next level easily. Nexon was still money grubbing with RNG Ferghus and enhancement runes. And they've made concessions with AP restore, level 90 equipment, and now they've added in orange on demand with bravery seals.
And even with all this we are still bleeding players out of Vindictus. Just this time last year I could go to the message boards and see boats up that I would have to fight to join because they filled up quickly. Now I see no one hosting raids in Quick Battle and when I do host I literally alt tab and browse youtube for a bit before even checking back in and the party still hasn't filled up with Quick Battle. Players are leaving this game, players are not coming to this game. And I will tell you right now without hesitation that they leave because their weapons are blown up and they can't replace it easily or they leave because they're stuck playing one character they've been playing for several years now and it's too hard to get a new character going with new equipment. The suggestion I made fixes that. And in fixing that we can hope to get players, new and old, to this game again.
But here... hell you sink in all of your gold, runes, stones, elixirs and all you have to show off is a +0~2 weapon with 5 durability, not to mention higih change of just pure destruction of said weapon at only +9.
We really dont need easyer way to obtain weapons (it is quite easy with seal shop already) but as OP said, it's no longer slow paced game where you could deal with having 10~15 speed and dont bother about enchanting, right now you MUST have atleast 50+ speed just to be on LOW geared side.
Brynn should be revamped to similary, where once scrolls fails it only reduces durability and gives extra low chanse of succes (0.2% per fail).
Ofcourse succes rate would be adjusted that mechanic (probably reducing it to single digit or less of succes at high +)
Those 2 changes alone would make this game playable for free players.
Devs could revamp old raids aswell (like what they did with 16~4 man raids) stats get buffed according to strongest player, maybe add new moves and ofcourse updated drop (if not, what's the point right ?).
I don't have and have never had more than 50 speed on any of my characters, and one of them is a Delia. Never had more than 40 until I tried 11 and 12 with the event runes semi-recently. I do just fine and always have. It really is incredibly easy to gear a character now, including alts. You get free gear all the way through level 80 and by the time you actually need to get your own gear, you'll probably have enough seals to do so (or at least get most of it done).
Everyone that thinks it isn't incredibly easy to gear characters is talking about getting stats that are unnecessary for everything but Neamhain (or golds in Ein Lacher I guess). And then at that point yes, min-maxing is basically impossible without incredible luck or dropping tons of money. So it is a problem when people reach a rather easy end-game, and then think, "Well there's still room to grow, may as well try for it," and get punished because their weapon booms. Then they get discouraged and quit either for good or for a while.
What's craziest to me is that games like this and Blade & Soul here in the west offer so many different classes to experience but have made it extremely painful to actually experience them. It seems that devs have some sort of complex here in thinking that it's better to make players sink tons of time into one character rather than giving incentive to spread it across multiple characters and still be invested while also increasing the variety of play that is seen and giving them more experiences to stick around for. BnS is finally giving us some of the changes that Asian regions have seen, but Vindi is stuck in the past. It's bad enough having to level all your chars up to 90--soon to be 95--but to go through the pain of blowing up gear and losing all of your progress on them is even more ridiculous.
TERA, BnS, and BDO are all grindfests as well, but at least they don't render weeks or months of worth useless in a few seconds. BDO does get ridiculous at its highest tier of gear, but it's system is still not as bad as the one here. There need to be more in game events and rewards going on at all times like in Asia or this system needs to be revamped. Getting new feathers for seals does not negate the frustration of still watching those days of grinding explode.
im waiting on the day all my grinding was wasted and im tempted to uninstall this game, maybe i will push through i dunno. i guess we will find out
Since i play on EU servers ,speed means far more than on PRE version, since we need fast reactions to keep our combo bonus and to do that we need high ats.
I dont even bother with armor/accesorie upgrading with this system (weapon alone consumes all of my gold+haha), i know i WILL break it at brynn or feghus at one point without using runes...
And now that we will be part of NA services, saying goodbye to alot of what game has to offer (NX selling was legal and getting runes meant farming and buying from nx sellers)
5 Days remaining, will see how it will play out.
They REALLY enjoyed the combat - but their concerns were that
"If we invest 1,000$ into this character - what does this game give to me in return?"
- High stats
- Costumes
"How is the social aspect of the game?"
- Game has a few core players but maintaining new/returning players that don't pay as much as you might have always proved difficult for this game.
-Huge time sink + demotivating enhancement system = less player base.
"I don't want to play by myself and if my non-whale can't play with me, this game it doesn't deserve my money."
-okay sorry dude
However we have to understand that they need to make $$ some how and this is the route they've chosen.
Our words mean all to them if we aren't the ones contributing the most/significant portion of the $.
If you can imagine the statistics for Vindi - It goes like this.
The low player base puts the financial burden on the whales. You spending 5$ this month and next month is nothing compared to the guy who dropped 500+$ for that rare costume. Even 10 of you wouldn't amount to that much, 100 even. Now you're getting higher and higher into whales:regular player $ ratios.
I'd wager its 1 whale : 750 regular players in terms of $ spent.
So, if you want them to do anything to this game to benefit the regular player base - you have to do your part in convincing their investors/whales to hold out on their spending for the game until the game improves for all of us.
However - this game is so old now. The moment the $$ drops below a $ threshold nexon is more likley to drop the game at this stage in its long lifespan.
Why am I telling you this? Because it means that the only players who stayed in Vindi are the ones who won the real end-game raid (Ferghus). It also confirms the theory that Ferghus\Brynn scared the rest away. Back in post-Arisha days, when EU was at its peak, there was an equal representation of over-geared players and casually geared players. It was also the reason why 'FFA vs. Restrictions' was such a heated debate back in those days. But now? All the casually geared players have left. Restrictions vs. FFA are not even a thing anymore because only over-geared players are left (so there's nothing to restrict).
By just looking at the demographic of the game you can tell what was the reason for the mass exodus from Vindi and what type of players were affected by it the most. Of course there might be other reasons such as Black Desert and Blade&Soul coming out, lower performance with each update, getting bored and so on... Yet none of these reasons explain why the majority of players who are left have +12-+15 weapons and fully scrolled S3 sets. It just can't be a coincidence.
Gearing is hard, gearing is easy. To each their own. But you can't deny the fact that gear progression plays a major role in retaining\attracting players.
Even with this event handing out 10-15 coupons and premium enhancement runes the population of logins in Steam does not even reach what it was years ago.
In those intermediate years we dealt with boats that were so laggy it would sometimes take upwards of 45 minutes to fill up a boat. And then the boat would crash upon launching. Yet population in the game was still more than it is now. Let's also not forget the mailbox glitch that was with us for years. Glitches like that, the horrible lag and connectivity issues, and a silent management team. Yet players still came to Vindictus more than there are players right now.
It was also in those years that even more people would use the client itself instead of depending on Steam (a number of people came to Steam to avoid the Nexon Launcher). So the population is skewed even more towards Steam and yet it isn't up to what it was years ago.
If you think retaining players isn't an issue then you're blind to the practically empty Quick Battles and you're blind to the fact that even with Nexon giving out two of the greatest items we can have for trying to gear up past +10 and even with Vindictus opening up endgame stats more than ever before, we still can't keep players long enough for many to even develop veteran levels of game knowledge. It's literally only the veteran players that are staying (though most have already gone). While new players join the game and have no idea how to play or what to do, inevitably giving up as well when they realize they can't progress their gear.
I'm a little excited to see what will come of Saturday.