Hello everyone, I just wanted to make this post/ idea collecting thread so that something positive may come out of it:
I've been playing Vindictus since 2009 and gaming as whole for many years prior to that, and the one thing I learned and have seen time and time again is that if there's a rift between new/ experienced players and no means of bridging the gap any game will suffer because they don't have the chance to see what the game could be and a chance to interact with experienced players for help/ questions or just a social experience. However, a solution to that would be what a few games I've played before have done well is to make weekly raid with very fun/ interesting mechanics that aren't purely gear based, but team work and all level of players interact to complete each boss in the raid and there's cooking bosses such as gathering food to summon the boss and then they trap him and so on, anything could be an interesting mechanic that all players can do level and gear regardless so that everyone is working together.
Also, I think a big reason to most new players not sticking with the game is because of the intensity and not a very clear direction on how these players can become better and know what they should try and be following to get better and enjoy the classes/ game-play. However, from personal experience I've always hated and stayed away from games that punished players for just playing/ trying to progress and advanced such as the Wilderness in Runescape in 2007 and such, I hated it because I didn't want to lose all the stuff I worked for, and I quit when I died then because no one likes losing things/ being punished for playing. Moreover, that transitions into Vindi's enhancing/ gearing process, I hate the fact that we can break our items from two very crucial aspects of gearing that you need to do in order even try to be relevant in-game. However, before people get upset and say it's always been like that and that's how the game/ economy is balance and built on; I'm 100% for a redesign on gear breaking where players are still punished and have to put time and energy and try to get better in order to progress without the severe animosity that comes with the chance of breaking items/ being punished, it's just not a good selling point to a games health in the slightest. Furthermore, there's many games out there that have a system of solid and consistent progression through time and effort but without the annoyance of; 'What if my items break and if it does, I'm done', that's personal experience over the near decade of playing Vindi, I've quit, but come back because I've put a lot of effort into it and I enjoy the game, but some aspects could be polished and severely cleaned up.
Therefore, I leave you all with the question of what do you think about a redesigned system or something along those lines and a new method of players of all levels and gear to interact and get loot/ mats/ chance at a fashion maybe or dyes, anything but that's up to the design team. Lastly, what are your ideas if you don't agree with mine or would like to improve/ build upon my ideas. Thank you for reading and I hope to hear from all sorts of players and levels because a wide pool of information and data would be the best to show the game designer that the player base is for this and it has a nice percentile of working because a lot of different players have given feedback.
~Cheers
Comments
Kinda sad Hero mode didn't do much for s1 raid in the end.
Might think more, but the game only gets activities when there's box sales happening.
The problem is that the raids run like ass half the time, causing them to take too long, and the padded stats for lowbies don't mean anything because they have no ap investment. It's awful when the level 90 slots are filled by people who got rushed to endgame and have 80~ crit and 130 crit damage and don't even come close to taking advantage of the uncap in there. It's a good attempt at a normalized stats game mode I'd say, just population and performance issues ruin it.
The only other point I could pick out of that wall was that the gearing system in Vindictus is bad. Yeah, it is. Ideas for remaking it get spitballed around lots of threads here, the stickied AP restoration one being the most recent. Dig around a bit and you'll find some very sensible ideas players have come up with.
edit:
To reiterate some of the ideas from other threads that I liked:
1. Add a new challenge oath or change Season of Macha to be a "no resurrections" run, applicable in all raids from season 2 and onwards. Clearing raids with this oath would give an ancient coin, which could be traded into a permanent ancient coin shop for scrolls or unstable runes. Up to the devs to choose what would be fair. The scrolls would be nice but combined with our current seal shop that would leave hardly any options for making big gold gains aside from selling equipment.
2. Make unbinds obtainable in game outside of events. We should not have to pay to contribute finished items to the in game economy, nor should we be limited to doing so only when events provide us with the means. This change is for the sake of having more gear floating around so players who aren't terribly lucky can save up and buy enchanted gear without having to compete with people who are buying them for mass enhancement purposes.
3. I forget.
Thank you for posting, everyone. Keep it up!
To me, the great thing about Vindictus is the player interaction is built into the combat without feeling contrived like the MMO holy-trinity setup. Perhaps give older characters more meaningful group interaction based skills; revamp Berserker/Sylas' circle to be meaningful like Insane Reaper and Hunting Party rather than just a stat boost, introduce more Prey drive/Delia's hold style skills (not necessarily more stuns, just something reacting to other players skills, sorta like Arisha's long windup thing), etc. I even like certain contrived mechanics specific to certain fights like S1 Glas/Eochaid breakoff, saving people from Havan aoe, Druid bombs, as well as mechanics that rely more on personal agency like Regina corruption pizza, Cromm last bar etc. But we can't introduce all of these to Royal Raids, particularly those that punish the entire group for personal failure, like Druid bombs, because that is just asking for blaming and shaming.
What you are asking for in the way of non-combat objectives might be good for a change of pace, but I doubt they will be popular. Just look at the water pool/building mechanic in Elchulus. Ones that are mandatory just to start the fight honestly sound more like a chore [edit: This would be similar to Abomination shield and Lionotus breakoff, and I do think they might make for good Royal Army Raids. The reason those raids work is that the boss isn't passive while the non-combat objectives are fulfilled. They could also be improved imo by the objective affecting the boss' offense rather than defense so they don't feel mandatory. i.e. Abom hits harder until the bell is rung; Lion breakoff only disables shooting while healing is disabled altogether.] I could see a Royal Raid against multiple Ghireals (Misty summit ball boss) being fun, though probably only for a while until the novelty wears off. After all, combat is Vindictus' main selling point. Designing content to avoid combat seems to be counter productive.
In summary, we don't have to rely on non-combat objectives to encourage player interaction because Vindictus has plenty of meaningful player interaction already if you look for it, but it could be increased for certain classes.
"Moreover, I feel like a tower would be a good foundation for the battle/ raid/ 'thing' with however many floors and a different, unique encounter on every floor with a wide variety of loot chances so everyone feels good about being apart of it and they can get some cool items and they'll learn about the game from good players and have a means of interacting with the community as a whole, and that's always good for the life blood of a game, in my honest opinion. "
So...Resenlian's Labyrinth. I think most players agree that Labyrinth can be fun. The things holding it back are that the first few floors are too easy, the entire thing is too long, and the rewards suck. If it were changed to have normalized difficulty for all levels and gear, an even progression in difficulty across the rooms from start to finish, and reward something appropriate for all levels (AP, cosmetics, seals?) that isn't so valuable as to encourage elitism, it could be good for the game.
Another thing that could be done is to make story quest checkpoints unlock with levels without completing everything prior (i.e. Rocheste is available at lvl 65, Malina at 75, regardless of story progress) to encourage new players into group content and make leveling alts less painful, though this would also cause people to miss out on the story. This is basically what RIFT does, but it's hardly a model of a successful MMO.
2) Events that involve all zones and as mentioned by others, make S1 Hero modes viable again.
3) Actually giving NA/EU/AU Golden Time and other events that are equal to what the Asian regions get. It's ridiculous that we aren't rewarded the same way.
They could even use season 2 maps for something like that. Make it function like monster hunter maps where anyone can go anywhere, gather, kill bosses, do whatever. Make it run on a short time limit on 80-90 difficulty and drop table, but allow anyone to queue up for it like the raids. Should probably be dedicated server hosted if they can figure out how to make the game handle a run that functions this way.
Of course, small tweaks like extra gathering expertise and higher drop rates for these versions of the maps could be made.
Also, I don't think you guys got my original idea was to create more interaction everywhere in the game where people had a reason to do stuff that was the normal battle or raid for the current items, but redesigned/ new things that gave not the current items but more unique/ quality items or something fun to get and the process of getting it was enjoyable because a lot of people would be there and you have to be with other people. Because, when was the last time you guys did something with the low levels or saw/ helped a new player and showed them how to do certain things inside a battle and so on. In Vindi there's 0 and I mean 0 places that currently bring people together for more than the normal oj loot and scrolls and such, and people only want strong people for those battles and raids.
Lastly, I love Vindi combat, I'm not saying don't have combat in these mixed battle/ raid things but make it so that all the players can be helping to achieve the goal of that boss, and fighting/ combat will be a part of the battles. Simply put, just have a place or battle/ thing that mixes people and improves interaction in a whole so we can get rid of the rift between new and experienced players, because as of right now I can barely do much for any new players with my pretty nicely geared character.
Small note, I hate naming other games on other games forums but a good example is Aura Kingdom; my character would get fashion, mounts, utility and quality of life items and since I was nicely geared just as my Vindi chars are, I was able to give all those items to my guild members, randomly new players in the all the towns because all the zones were and spots on the map were important for every level and I could've sold those items too, but why not give them to the new players in my party and raids that I got the items with which was a tower weekend event. Moreover, I remember being a low level and doing that with my guild master and random players who came together to do the tower and we were all different levels and they got me a dragon mount, a really cool fashion set and an equipment upgrade and I learned how the game worked and what the characters could do by seeing all the high levels and low levels in the same spot and see what the changes are and how I can play like the high level to get better and what a path I should consider for my skills and such I should follow, and this game had so many things like that, especially and the pet dungeons which everyone was welcome into all parties. Vindi has nothing that let's anyone give back to the community and help or simply just play and make new friends/ guild mates by bring people into settings/ situations where there's all kinds of player in that spot/ battle thing.
That's the best I can come up with really, I still think Royal Army fits the bill perfectly (Omurice is me on another pc) and is only held back by the lack of variety and limited runs - provided the servers are functioning properly. You go in there, and there's always low levels trying to clear it. It's up to you to take on the initiative to try and make friends with them, give them advice, dump free stuff on them, or whatever makes you feel like you're "giving back".
Chop off a huge portion of s1. Like ch1-3 since those serve as training maps now more anyway.
Having reason to go back to Ortel, Hoarfrost, all those areas would be great. I never understand why games build content that they're going to let age out entirely, especially when there are higher difficulties available.
It's easier said than done. They'd rather go the lazy way out and bring a new fooking rng box as an 'update' to milk $$$ out.
u cant revitalize this game, at least not in NA marketmany games are out there like Vindictus, they also do it better, or just enough to be bought instead of vindictus.
i think there was a thread a while ago on the forums asking what separates vindictus from the other action mmo games, and the major key was the combat, and that was it. after the combat is done what else is there? nothing besides repetitive simple raids to grind for end game . that's simplifying vindictus, but what else can you do? pvp? yeah, right. sit around town doing nothing. sure.
even vindictus' community has run its course and now its a shell of its former self with the very old players still on it because they've invested so much into it. but all that's left is "DEAD GAME", "NEW CONTENT WHEN?", "RNG GACHA BOXES SUCK", nothing else to talk about because when new content is implemented, it's figured out and done in a fraction of the time it takes to arrive to NA. some players even chant "ded game" un-ironically and that hurts any chances of retaining or gaining any new players. Then there's RNG Gacha boxes that are the hottest topic among anything that's actually happening with Vindictus, you get pages and pages on the forum about how awful and bad they are, but that doesn't stop the majority of players from buying them.
ultimately, vindictus has potential, but almost all of it is wasted for cheap gimmicks and awful game mechanics
Revamp old dungeons cos they're repetitive and do not represent the game for what it is and most Let's PLays of Vindictus on Youtube are of the old dungeons.
On that subject, more advertisement for the game. It receives so little it's laughable. Most of the people I know who are avid gamers have never even heard of Vindictus. And it's funny because once people do find out about the game, they enjoy playing it which goes to show how much lost potential there is.
More updates and actually fix the lag problem we have. A lot of maps are horribly optimised for whatever reason.
Probably just in EU, but it's been so long since I've even seen a GM in game. Hopefully that will change after the merge and there will be more fun events for the players.
Do all this and I'll be very happy.
Overall you guys seem pretty optimistic about this merge...but its not going to be good for you guys at all. Its unfortunate...
This is probably the only thing NA can conceivably do.
Stop making gatcha outfitters.
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It's like you want Nexon to run out of money or something. They're the only thing keeping this game afloat.
Also, gachas are the only way I can get outfits for free.