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Like many people mentioned this many times before. There's always negative nancy's out there who will NEVER be satisfy, and will always complain about the littlest of things.
I'm not looking forward to this update, sure it has a lot of good things like making the game not run like crap, some stuff that i don't like much but can live with. However the additional damage rework kills it for me, is basically if you have a +15 or over you can enjoy it if you don't sucks to be you. That combined with the extra cores for more damage and the possibility of +15 runes being sold (KR said it wasn't for KR but other markets) kills the update for me, I'll probably be logging in a lot less now, once update comes I'll see how it actually does but most likely will move to something else
I'm happy with how devcat is making the game more interesting and QOL for us. Also happy they listened to us and scrapped the no animation repair and hp thing. Honestly we'll have to wait and see, once it hits NA though there's no turning back. I'm sure we won't get exclusive things for us either.
They are removing the animation thing for pots/repair kits? But...the entire reason nobody bothers to use those in most raids is because of the animation...
They are removing the animation thing for pots/repair kits? But...the entire reason nobody bothers to use those in most raids is because of the animation...
Or because people don't know how to wait until the boss is attacking someone else before trying to use them.
Focus on dodging until the boss goes after someone else. When you see it using an extended attack pattern on someone else, that's your opportunity to use a potion or repair. It's not rocket science.
I'm glad that they're reversing the instant repair and instant potion. We don't need the game holding our hands when we want to drink a potion or repair our gear.
They are removing the animation thing for pots/repair kits? But...the entire reason nobody bothers to use those in most raids is because of the animation...
Or because people don't know how to wait until the boss is attacking someone else before trying to use them.
Focus on dodging until the boss goes after someone else. When you see it using an extended attack pattern on someone else, that's your opportunity to use a potion or repair. It's not rocket science.
I'm glad that they're reversing the instant repair and instant potion. We don't need the game holding our hands when we want to drink a potion or repair our gear.
You misunderstand. Yes, of course you can find gaps to use repair kits/drink pots. But the cost:benefit ratio is not favourable. You are still rendering yourself vulnerable for several key seconds and the boss AI is programmed to prioritize players using those items. Even in the best case scenario, its not unusual to see the boss finish an attack then charge across the map to go after you.
People only drink pots in Nifleheim/Neam (Not counting s2 maps, etc) due to perma death. This is largely because you get a portion of HP back when you are ressed + most pots heal too little compared to the damage bosses do. The people who need to drink pots/repair armor the most often are the players with the least experience and weakest gear (assuming a normal raid). But there is no point in these players guzzling superior HP pots in a s2 or s3 raid if it takes 2-3 pots to heal one attack's worth of HP. That's why most players just use the "free" heal from being ressed and not bother with pots. No point repairing armor if the next boss attack is going to break another piece of armor.
For the players whom drinking pots/repairing armor may make a sufficient difference to matter...they are also the ones who are going to be dodging most of the time so they won't need to anyway. For example lets say you have 13k+ DEF (which requires really good s3 gear, not counting temp buffs or def stacking) and s3 raid bosses hit you for less than 1k damage. Yea, you can drink a potion after every hit to negate the damage you just took, but even if you don't, you probably won't die anyway, so why bother? At that point, the DPS loss from stopping to drink pots/repair armor is far more important than worrying about dying.
Unless there's perma death, you wont get players drinking pots regularly in a raid just because its easier to get ressed which is a free heal. It's not like there is a shortage of feathers unless you are soloing or two manning raids anyway.
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
Even in Nifleheim, it is VERY common to see players refusing to drink pots and dying several times. You can scream "git gud" at players all you want, but the potion system is just flawed and actively discourages people from drinking pots.
Hell, next time you do s3 raids, try telling your party to drink potions/use repair kits. Make it clear you are not joking. Most parties (especially if its a random party) will respond by either ignoring or laughing at you. That reaction should tell you all you need to know.
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes. So we just get no potion revamp instead.
You misunderstand. Yes, of course you can find gaps to use repair kits/drink pots. But the cost:benefit ratio is not favourable. You are still rendering yourself vulnerable for several key seconds and the boss AI is programmed to prioritize players using those items. Even in the best case scenario, its not unusual to see the boss finish an attack then charge across the map to go after you.
I think you're the one that misunderstood here. Notice how I said "extended attack pattern." This implies that the boss is locking itself into an attack that will last long enough for you to drink one or two potions and/or repair. I'll agree that it's not unusual for a boss to go after someone that's repairing/drinking potions as that's how their AI is programmed, but as long as you memorize the boss's attacks, you'd be surprised what you can get away with behind their backs. You shouldn't have to worry about them coming after your as long as you play your cards right.
People only drink pots in Nifleheim/Neam (Not counting s2 maps, etc) due to perma death. This is largely because you get a portion of HP back when you are ressed + most pots heal too little compared to the damage bosses do. The people who need to drink pots/repair armor the most often are the players with the least experience and weakest gear (assuming a normal raid). But there is no point in these players guzzling superior HP pots in a s2 or s3 raid if it takes 2-3 pots to heal one attack's worth of HP. That's why most players just use the "free" heal from being ressed and not bother with pots. No point repairing armor if the next boss attack is going to break another piece of armor.
For the players whom drinking pots/repairing armor may make a sufficient difference to matter...they are also the ones who are going to be dodging most of the time so they won't need to anyway. For example lets say you have 13k+ DEF (which requires really good s3 gear, not counting temp buffs or def stacking) and s3 raid bosses hit you for less than 1k damage. Yea, you can drink a potion after every hit to negate the damage you just took, but even if you don't, you probably won't die anyway, so why bother? At that point, the DPS loss from stopping to drink pots/repair armor is far more important than worrying about dying.
I'm gonna pull this whole part and make a few counterpoints.
You mention that most of the people who drink pots are the one's with the least experience and weakest gear. This can be true for some niche cases, but I disagree and say that it can also be the mark of an experienced and tactful player. I'll support this point by going off of your example. You say that a player with 13k+ def can easily erase the damage they take in an S3 raid boss by taking a moment to pot after every hit. You argue that the player will have lower dps if they do this which is an absolute truth backed by sound logic. Stopping to pot after every hit = less damage being done to the boss.
BUT
This assumes that the player in question is potting after every hit they take. An intelligent player will instead notice where they stack up against a boss and create a mental HP threshold that they try to keep themselves above & only pot when they go below it. I personally like to keep my HP just high enough to where I won't die the next time I get hit. Yes my DPS may suffer slightly because I took an extra 4 seconds to heal up, but keeping myself away from death is preventing me from lowering the party's dps. You say that most people would rather die and get their HP restored to half through a rez? This is just sloppy play and a sign of selfish people that only care about their DPS and not the group as a whole. They're the one's that make the run take longer overall. I'll put your logic against mine & you tell me which one results in more dps lost.
DPS lost from a drinking potion every so often?
OR
(DPS lost from being dead & waiting for a rez + DPS lost from another party member having to stop and revive you).
Sound logic speaks for iteself tyvm. And let's be honest, how often are you immediately revived in a pug? While I make it a priority to revive someone asap, most of the time you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs b/c everyone is too focused on "getting that big dps number." Gimme a break. This is a cancerous mentality imo & I wish this game could go back to its roots where people didn't care about dps but rather working together to conquer tough bosses.
Unless there's perma death, you wont get players drinking pots regularly in a raid just because its easier to get ressed which is a free heal. It's not like there is a shortage of feathers unless you are soloing or two manning raids anyway.
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
Again with the whole focus on DPS. The whole benefit of Merc pots was that they could be used without an animation & we don't need the normal potions gaining that benefit. You say that without the animation, players would have a reason to drink pots. So by that statement, there's no reason to use them as long as an animation exists? Uh.. How about preventing your death so you don't lower other party member's dps by making someone come rez you?
Even in Nifleheim, it is VERY common to see players refusing to drink pots and dying several times. You can scream "git gud" at players all you want, but the potion system is just flawed and actively discourages people from drinking pots.
I don't see how it actively discourages people from drinking unless you're referring to this whole "loss of dps," argument. Again, see my logic compared to yours about dps loss in a party.
Hell, next time you do s3 raids, try telling your party to drink potions/use repair kits. Make it clear you are not joking. Most parties (especially if its a random party) will respond by either ignoring or laughing at you. That reaction should tell you all you need to know.
This part was unnecessary and I'm just gonna chalk it up to you being cocky thinking you had a sound argument that couldn't be debated. I'll admit that I do have a "git good," mentality about things here, but that's because back when I started Vin, you had to git good to even play the game. Then again, I'll gladly wear my git gud mentality over the mentality of a snarky elitist whose only concern is their DPS.
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes. So we just get no potion revamp instead.
FINALLY something I can provide some constrictive feedback for. I will agree that there were better ways that the potion system could have been revamped. Back before the Ignition update, all we had were Regular HP pots and Fine Hp pots at the same values that they're at now. (450/750 respectively). Back then, players only had about ~2500-3000 HP at max level thus making the impact of a potion much more valuable. It would seem that when they scaled everyone's HP during the Ignition update, they didn't scale up the potion's restoration values to compensate. With this in mind there's a few ideas in my mind that would help out.
1. Scale up the Regular/Fine/Superior Pots from 450/750/1100 to 750/1500/3500.
2. Make the current potions % based instead: 20%, 45%, and 65% heals on each potion respectively
3. Time to introduce Exquisite HP potions & Fine Life Erg Crystals!
Now to actually answer the question this thread asks... Am I looking forward to the rise update. For the most part yes. I'm just not a fan of the changes that are geared towards the game babying the player.
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
[...]
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes.
There are other simple solutions. For example, the new reward system based on damage dealt could instead be based on the player's number of deaths. The planned reward system
40%+ dmg dealt, +1 core
80%+ dmg dealt, +2 cores
less than 3% dmg dealt, only 1 core rewarded
could be changed to
no deaths, +1 core
two deaths, -1 core
four or more deaths, only 1 core rewarded
Potting is now incentivized. DPS is still incentivized by competition and not wanting to spend 15 minutes in one battle. Armor enhancement is incentivized, encouraging rune sales. This also avoids a situation where a player might say, "Hey, I only have a +12, I'm not gonna join that party with a +18/19/20 player and risk getting only 1 core." (Although personally, I think rewarding only 1 core for less than 3% probably won't actually be an issue for players who are making an effort, and it's a good deterrent against bringing alts for cores.) No need to redesign pots or boss AI. No need to remove animations.
They are removing the animation thing for pots/repair kits? But...the entire reason nobody bothers to use those in most raids is because of the animation...
I'm glad that they're reversing the instant repair and instant potion. We don't need the game holding our hands when we want to drink a potion or repair our gear.
I might have missed it, but where did you hear that they're canceling the removal of pot animations? The second director's note only mentioned keeping the repair animation.
I might have missed it, but where did you hear that they're canceling the removal of pot animations? The second director's note only mentioned keeping the repair animation.
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
[...]
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes.
There are other simple solutions. For example, the new reward system based on damage dealt could instead be based on the player's number of deaths. The planned reward system
40%+ dmg dealt, +1 core
80%+ dmg dealt, +2 cores
less than 3% dmg dealt, only 1 core rewarded
could be changed to
no deaths, +1 core
two deaths, -1 core
four or more deaths, only 1 core rewarded
Potting is now incentivized. DPS is still incentivized by competition and not wanting to spend 15 minutes in one battle. Armor enhancement is incentivized, encouraging rune sales. This also avoids a situation where a player might say, "Hey, I only have a +12, I'm not gonna join that party with a +18/19/20 player and risk getting only 1 core." (Although personally, I think rewarding only 1 core for less than 3% probably won't actually be an issue for players who are making an effort, and it's a good deterrent against bringing alts for cores.) No need to redesign pots or boss AI. No need to remove animations.
Back in the day, there was no damage %s at end of battle, and you were often judged primarily on your ability to stick the boss while not dying (gear was also on a relatively even playing field, but that's another discussion). I am a fan of anything that promotes this mentality, as to me a player's skill is more important than the stat-crutches that we've probably gotten too accustomed to.
Then again, this recent update has pretty much dashed any hope of anything going in that direction. Enjoy oneshotting Chrom friends!
For a director who states he wants to get more people playing and fewer people leaving, this update has so much wrong with it.
Enhancement is the least fun, least engaging, most stressful, most disliked part of Vindictus. It always has been. Its only competitor is enchantment. For players who make it to max level, enhancement is one of the leading of not the leading reason why they quit. It's a bit of a problem for the maintenance and growth of your game when its two primary means of progression are also the primary means of making spending players quit. The problem is that enhancement is too demanding and too punishing. In the pursuit of becoming stronger, you can lose everything. It seems the new "solution" to this problem is to make enhancement impossibly demanding while not only keeping the same crushing punishments for failure, but making them more frequent. How does this help Vindictus at all?
Even if we solve the problem of people quitting prior to level 30, in this state people would quit at 80 instead. Once you see that unscalable gear wall before you, why continue? "You spent how much money to get +17?" It seems the basic problem that RISE is attacking is that Vindictus does not offer enough bait to get new players hooked into its circular and alienating monetization scheme. But 30 or 80 - it doesn't matter, you're still not getting new players to a high enough level to start caring to the point where they will spend money. This update does little to fix that and much to worsen it. Once they start selling 13-15 runes, and they will, we'll have reached the point where we are now paying to lose more often than we lost when it was free. And once we as customers accept this and buy into it, we show that we are not to be respected as consumers and are comfortable with being exploited through the most basic of profit-inflating schemes.
Maybe that's what we want. Only sales numbers will tell the answer to that, and I do not know the future. What I do know is that if Vindictus' problem is that it cannot get new players to spend money on it, making our money buy even less than it is now is not the winning long-term solution.
More personally, the saddest part of this update is that it will turn Vindictus into something I can no longer enjoy. After so many years upon years, I will have to say goodbye! So, I guess you can say I am not excited for the RISE update. I see far more falling than rising.
I think you're the one that misunderstood here. Notice how I said "extended attack pattern." This implies that the boss is locking itself into an attack that will last long enough for you to drink one or two potions and/or repair. I'll agree that it's not unusual for a boss to go after someone that's repairing/drinking potions as that's how their AI is programmed, but as long as you memorize the boss's attacks, you'd be surprised what you can get away with behind their backs. You shouldn't have to worry about them coming after your as long as you play your cards right.
Cost benefit ratio still too low, which is why pretty much nobody does this. Most people will pick the optimal choice in any situation...the fact that most people don't drink pots outside of nif/neam means it's not optimal to drink pots.
This assumes that the player in question is potting after every hit they take. An intelligent player will instead notice where they stack up against a boss and create a mental HP threshold that they try to keep themselves above & only pot when they go below it. I personally like to keep my HP just high enough to where I won't die the next time I get hit. Yes my DPS may suffer slightly because I took an extra 4 seconds to heal up, but keeping myself away from death is preventing me from lowering the party's dps. You say that most people would rather die and get their HP restored to half through a rez? This is just sloppy play and a sign of selfish people that only care about their DPS and not the group as a whole. They're the one's that make the run take longer overall. I'll put your logic against mine & you tell me which one results in more dps lost.
DPS lost from a drinking potion every so often?
OR
(DPS lost from being dead & waiting for a rez + DPS lost from another party member having to stop and revive you).
I wasn't suggesting that players should pot after every hit, that was an example used to compare hp restored via one pot at the level where one pot would be able to negate one hit from the boss (roughly).
Whether you consider it sloppy or not, the fact is that outside of perma death raids, pretty much everyone would rather die for a free heal than drink pots. Feel free to convince players ingame that it is sloppy, I can all but guarantee that you will be ignored.
It's actually faster to get ressed for what is roughly a 50% hp heal (don't remember the exact numbers off hand) rather than drink multiple pots, each of which must be timed when the boss is "busy" and not focused on you. Even if we are comparing 1 feather to 1 pot, the only time the party would lose DPS is if the person being ressed does lower DPS than the person using the feather.
Sound logic speaks for iteself tyvm. And let's be honest, how often are you immediately revived in a pug? While I make it a priority to revive someone asap, most of the time you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs b/c everyone is too focused on "getting that big dps number." Gimme a break. This is a cancerous mentality imo & I wish this game could go back to its roots where people didn't care about dps but rather working together to conquer tough bosses.
It varies a lot per party obviously, but the system encourages revives more than drinking pots outside of nif/neam. If the rest of the party is content with not ressing anyone, well that's their issue really, they are the ones who have to fight the boss for longer. In my experience, its usually not a problem to get ressed within a few seconds.
Again with the whole focus on DPS. The whole benefit of Merc pots was that they could be used without an animation & we don't need the normal potions gaining that benefit. You say that without the animation, players would have a reason to drink pots. So by that statement, there's no reason to use them as long as an animation exists? Uh.. How about preventing your death so you don't lower other party member's dps by making someone come rez you?
The majority of the playerbase obviously doesn't agree with you on this point, or drinking pots outside of nif/neam would be the norm (which it is not).
I don't see how it actively discourages people from drinking unless you're referring to this whole "loss of dps," argument. Again, see my logic compared to yours about dps loss in a party.
Next time you do raids, ask the people in your party why they aren't drinking pots and are dying.
This part was unnecessary and I'm just gonna chalk it up to you being cocky thinking you had a sound argument that couldn't be debated. I'll admit that I do have a "git good," mentality about things here, but that's because back when I started Vin, you had to git good to even play the game. Then again, I'll gladly wear my git gud mentality over the mentality of a snarky elitist whose only concern is their DPS.
I was trying to illustrate that the majority's views are very different from yours. The majority doesn't believe in drinking pots outside of nif/neam and will react very badly to any attempt by a party member trying to get them to do so.
The point I was trying to make was that most players don't believe it's the optimal choice to drink pots outside of perma death raids, and removing the animation would have helped to change that.
1. Scale up the Regular/Fine/Superior Pots from 450/750/1100 to 750/1500/3500.
2. Make the current potions % based instead: 20%, 45%, and 65% heals on each potion respectively
3. Time to introduce Exquisite HP potions & Fine Life Erg Crystals!
You could make potions heal more, but most people still would not drink pots outside of perma death raids simply because getting ressed = free heal. As long as most players do not believe that it is in their best interest to drink pots outside of perma death raids, they will not do so. You can either lower the bar to drink pots (make it easier, such as removing the animation) and/or make it necessary to drink pots (introduce perma death to all raids, remove the free heal, etc), but the latter is likely to result in massive backlash as most players will not be able to adapt. Derpcat simply went with the easiest option available, which was to make things easier for everyone. But because they wanted to mitigate backlash from +20 and other dumb stuff, they backpedaled on this and in the end, we get nothing that fixes the issue because derpcat won't spend substantial time/money on revamping pots.
Edit : Just saw that repair animations are still being removed, so thats a good thing IMHO.
Now to actually answer the question this thread asks... Am I looking forward to the rise update. For the most part yes. I'm just not a fan of the changes that are geared towards the game babying the player.
[/quote]
Unfortunately, the game population has shifted so that the average player is willing to do a lot less than the initial "hardcore" playerbase. Making the game easier is probably necessary to try and get new players to stay. I remember back when roch/drags was end game, people actually put in effort to figure out how to do roch breaks. Even when s2 was out, people put in effort to figure out how to do things like bark/kraken efficiently. But now, most new players struggle with something like panth even if they have level 90 gear and they won't touch practice mode with a ten foot long pole.. It's a whole different player base now. I've pretty much given up on trying to get new players to end game because the vast majority will simply give up because the game is "too hard".
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
[...]
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes.
There are other simple solutions. For example, the new reward system based on damage dealt could instead be based on the player's number of deaths. The planned reward system
40%+ dmg dealt, +1 core
80%+ dmg dealt, +2 cores
less than 3% dmg dealt, only 1 core rewarded
could be changed to
no deaths, +1 core
two deaths, -1 core
four or more deaths, only 1 core rewarded
Potting is now incentivized. DPS is still incentivized by competition and not wanting to spend 15 minutes in one battle. Armor enhancement is incentivized, encouraging rune sales. This also avoids a situation where a player might say, "Hey, I only have a +12, I'm not gonna join that party with a +18/19/20 player and risk getting only 1 core." (Although personally, I think rewarding only 1 core for less than 3% probably won't actually be an issue for players who are making an effort, and it's a good deterrent against bringing alts for cores.) No need to redesign pots or boss AI. No need to remove animations.
I once played a MMO where you had repair fees after every battle and the amount of damage you took affected the repair fees. This feature was quickly scrapped in closed beta because many players became scared of engaging the enemy for fear of increasing their repair fees. Most parties would definately see a huge decrease in DPS and clear times if players were scored based on number of deaths (not to mention this would obviously be biased towards certain characters, just like how ein lacher gold is).
Kommentare
Side note: I am very excited.
Or because people don't know how to wait until the boss is attacking someone else before trying to use them.
Focus on dodging until the boss goes after someone else. When you see it using an extended attack pattern on someone else, that's your opportunity to use a potion or repair. It's not rocket science.
I'm glad that they're reversing the instant repair and instant potion. We don't need the game holding our hands when we want to drink a potion or repair our gear.
You misunderstand. Yes, of course you can find gaps to use repair kits/drink pots. But the cost:benefit ratio is not favourable. You are still rendering yourself vulnerable for several key seconds and the boss AI is programmed to prioritize players using those items. Even in the best case scenario, its not unusual to see the boss finish an attack then charge across the map to go after you.
People only drink pots in Nifleheim/Neam (Not counting s2 maps, etc) due to perma death. This is largely because you get a portion of HP back when you are ressed + most pots heal too little compared to the damage bosses do. The people who need to drink pots/repair armor the most often are the players with the least experience and weakest gear (assuming a normal raid). But there is no point in these players guzzling superior HP pots in a s2 or s3 raid if it takes 2-3 pots to heal one attack's worth of HP. That's why most players just use the "free" heal from being ressed and not bother with pots. No point repairing armor if the next boss attack is going to break another piece of armor.
For the players whom drinking pots/repairing armor may make a sufficient difference to matter...they are also the ones who are going to be dodging most of the time so they won't need to anyway. For example lets say you have 13k+ DEF (which requires really good s3 gear, not counting temp buffs or def stacking) and s3 raid bosses hit you for less than 1k damage. Yea, you can drink a potion after every hit to negate the damage you just took, but even if you don't, you probably won't die anyway, so why bother? At that point, the DPS loss from stopping to drink pots/repair armor is far more important than worrying about dying.
Unless there's perma death, you wont get players drinking pots regularly in a raid just because its easier to get ressed which is a free heal. It's not like there is a shortage of feathers unless you are soloing or two manning raids anyway.
Without the animation, there would actually be a reason for players to drink pots even without perma death, simply because it doesnt reduce your DPS and won't get you killed. It was probably the easiest solution to the problem without spending hours re-designing pots and boss AI.
Even in Nifleheim, it is VERY common to see players refusing to drink pots and dying several times. You can scream "git gud" at players all you want, but the potion system is just flawed and actively discourages people from drinking pots.
Hell, next time you do s3 raids, try telling your party to drink potions/use repair kits. Make it clear you are not joking. Most parties (especially if its a random party) will respond by either ignoring or laughing at you. That reaction should tell you all you need to know.
Theres definately plenty of "better" ways to revamp the potion system other than removing the animation, but derpcat only gets creative when they are trying to sell more runes. So we just get no potion revamp instead.
I think you're the one that misunderstood here. Notice how I said "extended attack pattern." This implies that the boss is locking itself into an attack that will last long enough for you to drink one or two potions and/or repair. I'll agree that it's not unusual for a boss to go after someone that's repairing/drinking potions as that's how their AI is programmed, but as long as you memorize the boss's attacks, you'd be surprised what you can get away with behind their backs. You shouldn't have to worry about them coming after your as long as you play your cards right.
I'm gonna pull this whole part and make a few counterpoints.
You mention that most of the people who drink pots are the one's with the least experience and weakest gear. This can be true for some niche cases, but I disagree and say that it can also be the mark of an experienced and tactful player. I'll support this point by going off of your example. You say that a player with 13k+ def can easily erase the damage they take in an S3 raid boss by taking a moment to pot after every hit. You argue that the player will have lower dps if they do this which is an absolute truth backed by sound logic. Stopping to pot after every hit = less damage being done to the boss.
BUT
This assumes that the player in question is potting after every hit they take. An intelligent player will instead notice where they stack up against a boss and create a mental HP threshold that they try to keep themselves above & only pot when they go below it. I personally like to keep my HP just high enough to where I won't die the next time I get hit. Yes my DPS may suffer slightly because I took an extra 4 seconds to heal up, but keeping myself away from death is preventing me from lowering the party's dps. You say that most people would rather die and get their HP restored to half through a rez? This is just sloppy play and a sign of selfish people that only care about their DPS and not the group as a whole. They're the one's that make the run take longer overall. I'll put your logic against mine & you tell me which one results in more dps lost.
DPS lost from a drinking potion every so often?
OR
(DPS lost from being dead & waiting for a rez + DPS lost from another party member having to stop and revive you).
Sound logic speaks for iteself tyvm. And let's be honest, how often are you immediately revived in a pug? While I make it a priority to revive someone asap, most of the time you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs b/c everyone is too focused on "getting that big dps number." Gimme a break. This is a cancerous mentality imo & I wish this game could go back to its roots where people didn't care about dps but rather working together to conquer tough bosses.
See my above point about this sloppy playstyle.
Again with the whole focus on DPS. The whole benefit of Merc pots was that they could be used without an animation & we don't need the normal potions gaining that benefit. You say that without the animation, players would have a reason to drink pots. So by that statement, there's no reason to use them as long as an animation exists? Uh.. How about preventing your death so you don't lower other party member's dps by making someone come rez you?
I don't see how it actively discourages people from drinking unless you're referring to this whole "loss of dps," argument. Again, see my logic compared to yours about dps loss in a party.
This part was unnecessary and I'm just gonna chalk it up to you being cocky thinking you had a sound argument that couldn't be debated. I'll admit that I do have a "git good," mentality about things here, but that's because back when I started Vin, you had to git good to even play the game. Then again, I'll gladly wear my git gud mentality over the mentality of a snarky elitist whose only concern is their DPS.
FINALLY something I can provide some constrictive feedback for. I will agree that there were better ways that the potion system could have been revamped. Back before the Ignition update, all we had were Regular HP pots and Fine Hp pots at the same values that they're at now. (450/750 respectively). Back then, players only had about ~2500-3000 HP at max level thus making the impact of a potion much more valuable. It would seem that when they scaled everyone's HP during the Ignition update, they didn't scale up the potion's restoration values to compensate. With this in mind there's a few ideas in my mind that would help out.
1. Scale up the Regular/Fine/Superior Pots from 450/750/1100 to 750/1500/3500.
2. Make the current potions % based instead: 20%, 45%, and 65% heals on each potion respectively
3. Time to introduce Exquisite HP potions & Fine Life Erg Crystals!
There are other simple solutions. For example, the new reward system based on damage dealt could instead be based on the player's number of deaths. The planned reward system
- 40%+ dmg dealt, +1 core
- 80%+ dmg dealt, +2 cores
- less than 3% dmg dealt, only 1 core rewarded
could be changed toPotting is now incentivized. DPS is still incentivized by competition and not wanting to spend 15 minutes in one battle. Armor enhancement is incentivized, encouraging rune sales. This also avoids a situation where a player might say, "Hey, I only have a +12, I'm not gonna join that party with a +18/19/20 player and risk getting only 1 core." (Although personally, I think rewarding only 1 core for less than 3% probably won't actually be an issue for players who are making an effort, and it's a good deterrent against bringing alts for cores.) No need to redesign pots or boss AI. No need to remove animations.
I might have missed it, but where did you hear that they're canceling the removal of pot animations? The second director's note only mentioned keeping the repair animation.
Well you see....
Back in the day, there was no damage %s at end of battle, and you were often judged primarily on your ability to stick the boss while not dying (gear was also on a relatively even playing field, but that's another discussion). I am a fan of anything that promotes this mentality, as to me a player's skill is more important than the stat-crutches that we've probably gotten too accustomed to.
Then again, this recent update has pretty much dashed any hope of anything going in that direction. Enjoy oneshotting Chrom friends!
Enhancement is the least fun, least engaging, most stressful, most disliked part of Vindictus. It always has been. Its only competitor is enchantment. For players who make it to max level, enhancement is one of the leading of not the leading reason why they quit. It's a bit of a problem for the maintenance and growth of your game when its two primary means of progression are also the primary means of making spending players quit. The problem is that enhancement is too demanding and too punishing. In the pursuit of becoming stronger, you can lose everything. It seems the new "solution" to this problem is to make enhancement impossibly demanding while not only keeping the same crushing punishments for failure, but making them more frequent. How does this help Vindictus at all?
Even if we solve the problem of people quitting prior to level 30, in this state people would quit at 80 instead. Once you see that unscalable gear wall before you, why continue? "You spent how much money to get +17?" It seems the basic problem that RISE is attacking is that Vindictus does not offer enough bait to get new players hooked into its circular and alienating monetization scheme. But 30 or 80 - it doesn't matter, you're still not getting new players to a high enough level to start caring to the point where they will spend money. This update does little to fix that and much to worsen it. Once they start selling 13-15 runes, and they will, we'll have reached the point where we are now paying to lose more often than we lost when it was free. And once we as customers accept this and buy into it, we show that we are not to be respected as consumers and are comfortable with being exploited through the most basic of profit-inflating schemes.
Maybe that's what we want. Only sales numbers will tell the answer to that, and I do not know the future. What I do know is that if Vindictus' problem is that it cannot get new players to spend money on it, making our money buy even less than it is now is not the winning long-term solution.
More personally, the saddest part of this update is that it will turn Vindictus into something I can no longer enjoy. After so many years upon years, I will have to say goodbye! So, I guess you can say I am not excited for the RISE update. I see far more falling than rising.
Cost benefit ratio still too low, which is why pretty much nobody does this. Most people will pick the optimal choice in any situation...the fact that most people don't drink pots outside of nif/neam means it's not optimal to drink pots.
I wasn't suggesting that players should pot after every hit, that was an example used to compare hp restored via one pot at the level where one pot would be able to negate one hit from the boss (roughly).
Whether you consider it sloppy or not, the fact is that outside of perma death raids, pretty much everyone would rather die for a free heal than drink pots. Feel free to convince players ingame that it is sloppy, I can all but guarantee that you will be ignored.
It's actually faster to get ressed for what is roughly a 50% hp heal (don't remember the exact numbers off hand) rather than drink multiple pots, each of which must be timed when the boss is "busy" and not focused on you. Even if we are comparing 1 feather to 1 pot, the only time the party would lose DPS is if the person being ressed does lower DPS than the person using the feather.
It varies a lot per party obviously, but the system encourages revives more than drinking pots outside of nif/neam. If the rest of the party is content with not ressing anyone, well that's their issue really, they are the ones who have to fight the boss for longer. In my experience, its usually not a problem to get ressed within a few seconds.
The majority of the playerbase obviously doesn't agree with you on this point, or drinking pots outside of nif/neam would be the norm (which it is not).
Next time you do raids, ask the people in your party why they aren't drinking pots and are dying.
I was trying to illustrate that the majority's views are very different from yours. The majority doesn't believe in drinking pots outside of nif/neam and will react very badly to any attempt by a party member trying to get them to do so.
The point I was trying to make was that most players don't believe it's the optimal choice to drink pots outside of perma death raids, and removing the animation would have helped to change that.
You could make potions heal more, but most people still would not drink pots outside of perma death raids simply because getting ressed = free heal. As long as most players do not believe that it is in their best interest to drink pots outside of perma death raids, they will not do so. You can either lower the bar to drink pots (make it easier, such as removing the animation) and/or make it necessary to drink pots (introduce perma death to all raids, remove the free heal, etc), but the latter is likely to result in massive backlash as most players will not be able to adapt. Derpcat simply went with the easiest option available, which was to make things easier for everyone. But because they wanted to mitigate backlash from +20 and other dumb stuff, they backpedaled on this and in the end, we get nothing that fixes the issue because derpcat won't spend substantial time/money on revamping pots.
Edit : Just saw that repair animations are still being removed, so thats a good thing IMHO.
Unfortunately, the game population has shifted so that the average player is willing to do a lot less than the initial "hardcore" playerbase. Making the game easier is probably necessary to try and get new players to stay. I remember back when roch/drags was end game, people actually put in effort to figure out how to do roch breaks. Even when s2 was out, people put in effort to figure out how to do things like bark/kraken efficiently. But now, most new players struggle with something like panth even if they have level 90 gear and they won't touch practice mode with a ten foot long pole.. It's a whole different player base now. I've pretty much given up on trying to get new players to end game because the vast majority will simply give up because the game is "too hard".
I once played a MMO where you had repair fees after every battle and the amount of damage you took affected the repair fees. This feature was quickly scrapped in closed beta because many players became scared of engaging the enemy for fear of increasing their repair fees. Most parties would definately see a huge decrease in DPS and clear times if players were scored based on number of deaths (not to mention this would obviously be biased towards certain characters, just like how ein lacher gold is).