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I was with the flow and did not rush things. And slowly got some stuff to be able to play again. Actualy I wanted to quit when they launched the incredible stupid counterforce mechanic.
My stats are not great not terrible. Around 35k att and 15k deffense. (+11 astera staff and +8 - +13 dulla/astera gear). But still wehen i had only 5,8 percent in Agares and got onlyone shite item i decided to quit the game. I feel like too much investment needed to get to acceptable level.
3000+ add dmg as a minimum requirement (full +12 gear and a +12 weapon). I have only 2500 so my dmg output is abismal. To upgrade my gear is more or less possible. I can reforge and free +13 my cap what helps a bit, but i need a new Astera top...i broke it at +9. I could also +11 it with my free rune. This run would cost around 100m gold what is not much. But would not take me too much further.
The big help is to get a +13 or higher weapon. What requires huge luck what i dont have or lots of gold like ... hell a lot. Lets count minimum 10-12 weapon essense and additional mats to go from +11 to 13. Level 150 will be out untill i can farm this.
All in all this game was fun until it lasted, but now its not fun for me anymore.
I'm just a casual player, I do raids every now and then and just chill, after failing a couple of reforges, I became irritated so I made another character, it went on until I maxed out all my character slots, took just minimal play to get them all to lvl 100, now I just do rar on maybe 3-4 characters a day, throughout the day, made around 1.3b in a month just from regular play, now I just buy my gear one at a time enhanced from the mp, invest your time in alts, used to do rar on all 9 characters but it was too much but I still easily make 100m a week with 3-4 character rars, I don't put my ego in the game, I just aim to be third place and I end up being second.
Bought myself a +13 astera weapon already enchanted, from my personal experience, rar drops have always had higher drop rate than any s3 raids I've done. I would do maybe 30 s3 raids and end up with nothing, doing 15 -20 rar raids, gives me shard 2 in 2-3 days (and shard 1 guaranteed most of the time, the only thing I spent real money on was probably a ninja mask, from the rars I gather up maybe 100+ mats in a week paradise orbs, goldy cloth, leathers and I sell them at night when there is nothing in mp and they easily got 75k a piece. I don't even bother with astera raids, the drop rate is so horrendous that I've kept my cf at minimum, the time is not worth it
other benefits of rar
-seals (without even notiching, I maxed out my seals, all of em at 1000, so I just buy damascus steel everytime it reaches 1000
-maxed out all skills
-real fast compared to s3 raids (most of the time they are real fast, just hate the elchulus one)
just be patient, don't expect a shard 2 or shard 1 every rar and lose hope, have fun and you'll end up rich without knowing
I feel like the game in-game is very active. But outside of the game all I ever see and all I ever hear is stuff like OP.
- Game is dead
- Steam Chart player base is low
- Game is Pay to Win
But then I see a popular Youtuber make a video about Vindictus and everyone instantly reinstall the game. it's like you yourself can't speak on the good things about Vindictus without someone having a counter argument but any E-Celeb can speak about the game and people will listen to them regardless if they're informative or not. At this point in the games life cycle the people who play the game are people that really like Vindictus. While everyone else complaining are people who don't play the game and probably don't have a full time MMO game period.
I never got fully into Vindictus until this year. Before that I would jump in and jump out just to experience the good combat for a quick second. Now I'm a full time player and I'm loving everything about Vindictus gameplay. And considering how much the game spoils newcomers from level 1 - 100 these days there's really no reason to be so negative about Vindictus as a new starting player. You get to experience everything, the story, Inner Wear, hair, Outfits, VIP, and Raids thanks to lv90 bag if you get to end game.
As for older players... either they're here because of nostalgia or they never left. But I can't speak for them, just my personal experience. Thinking back in 2017 I figured this game would have shutdown by 2019, but I'm really glad it's still alive and I get to experience Vindictus and it's awesome combat. They just don't make action MMO combat like Vindictus anymore for some reason. Shocking its action combat didn't become a MMO standard.
I know for me personally as well as others they're forcing players to decide between running raids or running Onslaught. You either can choose to play OS for roughly 18+hours a month and raids here and there if you have the time or forget about OS titles and steel etc. Then by the time you're done running OS since it's such a "fun" thing to play for that amount of time every month you feel burned out and don't want to play vindi anymore. So there's that making it feel more dead than it is.
There's always been an issue with vindictus of not fast enough updates especially for this game type. Compare it to say MHW which has released an absolute unit of updates compared to vindictus in the same time span. The game is also not very newcomer friendly, and if you don't start the game out by playing with a group of friends it's not exactly fun for new members. Remove:
OS titles from rewards.
Counterforce - this is just bullshit for new players all around considering how expensive it is just so you can run QB raids and do anytype of dmg in a new raid.
QB requirements. - Yet another handicap for any new players who need the drops more than the people that can run the QBs. Add/Return:
8 man parties.
Community events that aren't trash. A soap event isn't anything great to boast about, games in this genre run regular events or community things for limited items, free things that aren't necessarily anything great or game breaking but add an aspect of care or thought to the players making them want to keep returning.
Character balancing and bug fixes. - Been asking for the latter for 8 years, not holding my breath to see it.
Optimization. This has needed addressed for 8 years as well.
Sad part is this games combat system is regularly talked as one of the best for this type of game and it really is IMO. Even to MHW this combat system I find more enjoyable. It's always had that going for it along with great potential, but honestly not listening to community feedback for so long has taken a big toll on the game. Adding things into the game that no one wants and then leaving or not changing things people bring up constantly for months and years drives players away. It's hard to keep a community happy and returning when you ignore and show no real effort to make them want to return. You don't have players, you don't have a game.
I'll give them credit at least since the new management came in it has gotten a sliver better, but it's still a far cry from where I'd consider a reasonable level. New players join but don't stay around for many of the reasons I've listed and the only players that really keep returning consistently are the ones that have been playing this game for years. If there were real attempts to listen to the community and interact with them and work with them, like they should, on their thoughts to improve the game, that would bring a lot of people in consistently. I've been on this game since basically 2010. These issues have slowly crept more and more into the game as time passed on and improvements to other games etc came around and Vindi kinda stalled. Not listening to the community drove it further down until where it's at today. Game will never thrive or at least have a chance to until they actually listen to the feedback that they say they do in every ticket I've ever sent in. BTW I've never had a ticket actually answered, I asked a question about OS to 3 different GMs and not one of them could give me an answer, just said to keep an eye on the forums and give feedback because they check that, I've never seem them listen to any of it but hey, I guess they treat it like spam, you see it while you delete it but that's about it. Wasn't a hard question either was just about the rewards, something any GM should be able to answer in a literal Yes or No and that be it. The game has always had a dedicated small player base that's never really left. Eventually some do and since the issues I've stated exist, you can't get new players to replace them.
The biggest issue killing this game is and has always been ignoring the community,time and time and time and time again.
Just my opinions from my 8 years playing this game consistently as well as others I've talked with saying the same things.
Optimization is so broad its no wonder they have no idea what you mean. If you mean the ui its been improved so much over the past 3 years from its laggy release state. If you mean general dungeons they run fine if you aren't using a toaster. Load stutter when entering an area for the first time is just the way the game is programmed and you gotta live with it.
They do listen to feedback but only from kr. For example glaive lynn was going to get an utterly forgettable long awaited buff but the kr lynn players rallied to get them to buff her for real and they listened. From this point yes they do have character balances.
Counterforce was a bad idea i agree but you can get literally free +15 lv90 belt and earrings upgrade them a bit maybe build a dulla ring and be perfectly capable in lv100. Ya it takes some effort but why should it not.
Agree that 8 man should be an option or at least make it 6 man instead. 4 doesn't feel raidy enough.
QB requirements are like the bare miniumum if you can't reach them the boss will just get tickled by you. If you wanna enter with tickle stats play with your friends in a custom party cuz no one likes to deal with 0 damage people in a "quick" battle.
New players leave for a multitude of reasons. New games might appeal to them more, the combat isn't for them, the fact you have to work to get anywhere, important info is not presented in game like money making tips.
I do give them some respect for not falling to the whims of the community every time tho. The community doesn't always know best.
(ya support doesn't play the game hence they couldn't answer your question best to ask that in the discord)
The game on the whole just doesn't respect time and resource investment anymore. Rise solidified that with add damage & +20, and the removal of raids for much of the content and the change to 4-man for all but RAR and Redeemers slashed what was left of the population again.
As noted, no input from our region is listened to, and a lot of the decisions don't align with the kind of experience NA/EU/AUS players want. Ban waves including those of long-time, loyal players and content creators were the final nails in the coffin. I still play on occasion but I haven't bought NX in two or three years now because you never know what Nexon will pull next. The lack of communication has also been a killer. Killing contest with no notice or updates, Community managers disappearing, and streams ending with no info. It's just been a giant mess.
It's sad because I absolutely enjoy the game at its core but it's not worth investing in any longer.
I came back recently to the game, and was wondering why this game was doing so poorly after they removed a lot of the P2W stuff I remember from way back.
I completely understand now. Progression is super RNG dependant. You need decent drops in raids and RAR or you are stuck for days/weeks even months.
This basically means you gotta pick a character and try to progress with it, pick a handful and you cant do anything.
Why did Eira get Dullahan +12 armor while other characters get +12 lv 90 armor? hello devs? Give everyone dullah+12 already. We wont be able to do **** for weeks either way...
Another thing are the bosses, old bosses were fun skill checks (ingkells, glas, blood lord), new bosses all have one hit KOs and a fuckton of unblockables, games not fun. Why create characters with blocks and dodges and then create unblockables that you cant even dodge??
Other games create boss mechanics to avoid one hit KOs and when the mechanic is well done, boss gets damaged. Vindictus tried to do the same except they failed this completely and you just dont do them in any boss and tank the damage.
Events are rigged af, these relic boxes, for example, always give trash, but luckily, theres always a rune right next to it. Game even takes a bit to show you whats behind them meaning the roll animation isnt doing anything and the decision is done after you pick a spot.
The community is garbage at times too.... as a new player I tried OS for the steel, read the guide and gave it a go, I did well and was blessing / throwing as team communicated but still found some individuals mad because I was new and shouldn't be there.
I always loved this game due to the gameplay, its the most fluent to date, imo, but I can totally see why they got 1.2k players when Eira released and then lost 60% of those players in a month.
I feel like the game in-game is very active. But outside of the game all I ever see and all I ever hear is stuff like OP.
Stopped reading after this hilarious line. I wish the writers of Seinfeld would have discovered you years ago. The show might be funny with your writing.
Another thing are the bosses, old bosses were fun skill checks (ingkells, glas, blood lord), new bosses all have one hit KOs and a fuckton of unblockables, games not fun. Why create characters with blocks and dodges and then create unblockables that you cant even dodge??
.
git gud? The unblockables are clearly indicated with a red flicker and often do not have the level of tracking a regular blockable has to compensate.
Agares the most recent boss has only 1 unblockable and he uses it to start and end the pillar phase and its an extremely slow moving wave that anyone can run away from.
you'll fall for ohkos the first time and then never again unless you aren't paying attention.
Optimization is so broad its no wonder they have no idea what you mean. If you mean the ui its been improved so much over the past 3 years from its laggy release state. If you mean general dungeons they run fine if you aren't using a toaster. Load stutter when entering an area for the first time is just the way the game is programmed and you gotta live with it.
They do listen to feedback but only from kr. For example glaive lynn was going to get an utterly forgettable long awaited buff but the kr lynn players rallied to get them to buff her for real and they listened. From this point yes they do have character balances.
Counterforce was a bad idea i agree but you can get literally free +15 lv90 belt and earrings upgrade them a bit maybe build a dulla ring and be perfectly capable in lv100. Ya it takes some effort but why should it not.
Agree that 8 man should be an option or at least make it 6 man instead. 4 doesn't feel raidy enough.
QB requirements are like the bare miniumum if you can't reach them the boss will just get tickled by you. If you wanna enter with tickle stats play with your friends in a custom party cuz no one likes to deal with 0 damage people in a "quick" battle.
New players leave for a multitude of reasons. New games might appeal to them more, the combat isn't for them, the fact you have to work to get anywhere, important info is not presented in game like money making tips.
I do give them some respect for not falling to the whims of the community every time tho. The community doesn't always know best.
(ya support doesn't play the game hence they couldn't answer your question best to ask that in the discord)
Let me clarify, a game this old and with this type of graphics even on this engine should be easy to cap at a solid 60 fps without issue, it's not. That's what most people think when they read optimization is that it could and should certainly run better all around. There's also been programmers in the past that have even shown them where a lot of the issues lie and how to fix it, that was straight up ignored. I know 1 from this server that quit a long time ago did and one guy from Korea I knew personally who played on NA who brought it to light as well.
CF is a useless stat that wasn't needed. QB requirements in the same aspect are the same unneeded and dumb. What's the point in either one of those? If you remove CF you won't see anyone dealing 0 dmg. It's only CF that makes that true in the new raids. Even if they did 0 dmg I don't really care and someone with your gear shouldn't either, help out the new players don't shame them for not having gear or w/e. If they're trying to learn the raid and don't have insane gear, that makes no difference to me. I only run OS and raids when people ask for help who are exactly like that because they can't get a party or do exactly what you do. All the more reason QB requirements and CF need tossed. New players leave because they can't find people to run raids with or even be able to run some of the raids because of those limitations. Players that don't want to take them or help just because they won't do dmg sure as hell isn't helping.
They don't listen to feedback for ****, if they did you'd see spear lanns get a rebalance and not the chars that don't need it or OS being changed. No one is asking them to cave to every whim, but how about take a look at issues that have been around since beta for a start or topics repeatedly brought up the last few months about OS. There's a reason why voting is done by majority role. Look at a game like OSRS everything and I mean everything is voted on by the community whether it's added/changed in the game, and if it doesn't get 75% approval, it doesn't make it in. That would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now, which is months of waiting time before updates and then when there's issue with that update, ignoring the feedback given on it. I've been reporting the same bugs on Karok for 8 years now.
A GM of a game should be able to answer any question as broad as what I asked. What's the point of tech or gameplay support if they can't answer basic general questions....This isn't KR server, it's NA that's not an excuse to ignore the feedback.
Why are people constantly complaining about drop rate. Are you only complaining because it is convenient for you? Look at the price for Astera... it is barely a mil per piece.
Been playing since 2011 and still a broke ass, otherwise why would you complain about Add dmg stats, counterforce, and drop rate, or the almighty NX items. LOL
Agreed i used to play since 2011 with some breaks.
The current trend of the game is really bad, you need to have endless time and multiple characters or lots of money to go somewhere.
In S1-S2 a decent set with enchants and a +10-12 weapon was good enough to play and have fun. Now you need to have a +12-13 sert with enchants and a +13-14 weapon and this is the requirement to stay on surface and be able to get the drops from Astera bosses.
what they should do IMO:
- Eliminate Add dmg stat.
- Do something with countrefoce.
- Increase drop rates.
- Binding system is kinda stupid only reason is to keep selling potions.
- Inners and hair are fine for me they are free with AP so its ok.
- 7% dmg cap at bosses is too high. Parties are unbalanced when an elitist join she/he can easyl make 50%+ dmg hard to keep up with regular characters.
Otherwise if they want to keep ADD DMG and attack limit stat, they should make way more easier to achieve it. Cheaper refoge, and remove the NX item from the reforge list.
git gud? The unblockables are clearly indicated with a red flicker and often do not have the level of tracking a regular blockable has to compensate.
Agares the most recent boss has only 1 unblockable and he uses it to start and end the pillar phase and its an extremely slow moving wave that anyone can run away from.
you'll fall for ohkos the first time and then never again unless you aren't paying attention.
I dont know wtf you're smoking but let me tell you, lughs unblockable does not have weak tracking to compensate, you literally have to be on top of him to dodge that sht. How do you dodge dullas REPETITIVE unblockable at 3bars? thats right, you tank that sht and chug pots.
After some time you already know the attacks of the boss thus perform way better but, as a returning player you come and face unimaginative solutions and you just leave.
Devs clearly lost all the imagination and ran out of ideas, so they created sht bosses and the lore is now, oh baby, everyone lost their memories, infinite content.
You cant defend the state of the game with "hurr durr unblockables? just run away 4Head LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL"
This type of game should never, ever, have ohko unless it is for a failed mechanic that, as a team, was unsuccessful.
There aren't many new appealing games in the mmo hack n slash area, so your point doesnt stick, and people do not leave because of the combat either.
@Abaddan
My question would be how did the people show Nexon how to optimize their stuff without looking at the actual source code because I highly doubt that Nexon would allow people to look at their source code? Also isn't there a recent rebalance patch in Korea that rebalanced Lann too? Or was it just bad?
@Rivers_
And I'm pretty sure dully's 3 bar unblockables weren't mean to be tanked but rather avoided to bring him into that ghost phase. The tanking strategy was just something players do to try to make things go faster. And I kind of like the lore, I'm thinking you may not have actually read the story after a certain point because from what I'm reading it's more than that, sure right now I can see possibility of plot holes but I still like it and to me it's more than what you just said. Also I still challenge people who say similar things as you're saying to offer Nexon ideas on "more creative bosses and gameplay"
@Abaddan
My question would be how did the people show Nexon how to optimize their stuff without looking at the actual source code because I highly doubt that Nexon would allow people to look at their source code? Also isn't there a recent rebalance patch in Korea that rebalanced Lann too? Or was it just bad?
@Rivers_
And I'm pretty sure dully's 3 bar unblockables weren't mean to be tanked but rather avoided to bring him into that ghost phase. The tanking strategy was just something players do to try to make things go faster. And I kind of like the lore, I'm thinking you may not have actually read the story after a certain point because from what I'm reading it's more than that, sure right now I can see possibility of plot holes but I still like it and to me it's more than what you just said. Also I still challenge people who say similar things as you're saying to offer Nexon ideas on "more creative bosses and gameplay"
Honestly I don't really remember. It might have been more on the maps themselves related. Been years but I do remember a forum post explaining a significant performance hit and how to fix it. The korean guy who went by Fox also brought it up and explained it as well. There's posts even on these forums talking about how people know the exact issues of the games optimization problems. Not a big deal now since it's really just Source engine 1 being the big issue, especially since how they designed it to begin with on source engine 1 was already pretty terrible for the time and since so much time has passed. Source engine has always been pretty blah, but adding how the team designed it on that engine makes it like twice as bad. It needs ported to Source Engine 2 at least now, but with how poorly the design was on engine 1, it's almost like making a whole new game so I don't see that happening for a game with the current player base.
The rebalance patch as far as I've seen and been told adjust Sword lann and basically nothing with Spear lann at all. Basically all the old chars (Evie, Lann, Fiona, Karok) are pretty poor balance wise compared to the newer heros. Kai up to Eira have always kind of been just been better and got more attention for updates. Even so they've needed to do a pretty big overhaul on some characters for a long time now and it's just never happened.
I dont know wtf you're smoking but let me tell you, lughs unblockable does not have weak tracking to compensate, you literally have to be on top of him to dodge that sht. How do you dodge dullas REPETITIVE unblockable at 3bars? thats right, you tank that sht and chug pots.
After some time you already know the attacks of the boss thus perform way better but, as a returning player you come and face unimaginative solutions and you just leave.
Devs clearly lost all the imagination and ran out of ideas, so they created sht bosses and the lore is now, oh baby, everyone lost their memories, infinite content.
You cant defend the state of the game with "hurr durr unblockables? just run away 4Head LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL"
This type of game should never, ever, have ohko unless it is for a failed mechanic that, as a team, was unsuccessful.
There aren't many new appealing games in the mmo hack n slash area, so your point doesnt stick, and people do not leave because of the combat either.
You dodge Dulla's unblockable at 3 bars by just letting him actually finish it. Everyone just sits on top of him and his AI makes him spam it. It's not SUPPOSED to be repetitive. While I don't disagree that Rocheste bosses were probably the pinnacle of boss design in this game, recent bosses have actually been decent. I only feel like the boss design took a downhill turn in S2. Once they hit Anwynn (and to some extend TD) things started getting better again. The only S3 boss that I've felt has actually been BAD is Braha.
Also games like this often DO have a means of having you be killed in one hit. Whether it's just a very high damaging attack or an actual scripted OHKO, They're often very well-telegraphed or have a specific way of avoiding/stopping them, which is the case for most of those mechanics in this game as well. The only ones I have issue with are the ones in Neam because it's just "ha you got hit sucker time to die." I would also like to add in the fact that unblockables existed wayyyyy before S3 or even S2. The real bad decision they made was removing those unblockables and pushing survivability through the roof across all characters. They kind of forced themselves into having to do the red attack thing because if it weren't for red attacks and OHKO's no one would ever die anymore.
@abaddan on the part where you said not having the qb stats wouldn't make you useless that's not entirely true. Yes, you will do some damage but it may take you up to 20mins to do 10% if your attack is lower than the bosses defense. I have no idea why you're fighting me on this if you wanna raid with lower stats do it on the board going into qb with lower stats defeats the purpose of making it a quick battle. I'm not trying to shame anyone i'm only laying down the facts.
(ps. spear lann is in good spot. swords has always been the underpowered lann class in s3)
Okay, not gonna say a lot but two cents i do wanna add.
First, about new player progression. You're not meant to be able to do every raid in the game as soon as you reach max level, thats pretty normal in most (if not all) mmorpgs. But with the free +12 Gear you can do 95 raids which are usually not too terrible drop wise if you farm em a bit. (Before we only had free +10 Gear which made it that you couldn't even join Dullahan) Then you got the Goddes Buff during first 10 Battles of a Raid which will give you drops regardless of your dmg contribution. Doing story aswell offers decent amount of gold and Seals to get started. Yes, this game is a lot about luck, you can drop nothing a week+ or drop a lot in 1 day, but that's how it is in many games.
Thats leads to the second point, DPS as new player. Gear wise you can quite easily achieve 7% even with 6k add player in party, but usually your skill is the bigger problem at start. I recently started playing a bit delia with default gear at start and after a couple of raids to get used to her, had no problem scoring 12-21% average with 12 being with 2 5,5-6k add player in pt. (And me still not being too great on her yet either) The game is not meant to be played with 6k add in the first place, you can see this if you get yourself a party with 4x6k add its just hilarious how you steamroll almost every boss in 1-2 mins.(Had a 3x6+1x5,5k add party just today and we just sp chained agares from x6, claire from x6,5 and elchu from x5 to 0...) Naturally some/many player prefer fast raids as they only want drops (myself included aswell if i dont got much time or dont feel like 5mins+ battles), but ya, not being too far away from att/crit cap and having 2,5-3,5k add is sufficent to do 10-20% easily, given you know the boss and your class a bit.
About P2W, i dont see this, havent invested anything beside char slots (ya they're bothersome as you can only get em if you wallet, not to mention their high price), and got good Progression going with 2-3 hours a day. (Given i never bought cosmetics) Might be different for Na as i play on EU and the prices there seem to be steeper.
And I kind of like the lore, I'm thinking you may not have actually read the story after a certain point because from what I'm reading it's more than that, sure right now I can see possibility of plot holes but I still like it and to me it's more than what you just said. Also I still challenge people who say similar things as you're saying to offer Nexon ideas on "more creative bosses and gameplay"
I followed and read the story, and it's wack. The fact you said "possibility of plotholes" makes me think you were the one that didnt follow or couldn't.
Just in case, i'll leave this here:
This doesn't even begin to tackle the connection between this world and Mabinogi, which would be another mess.
Regarding feedback about the battles, players have given plenty, but our feedback doesn't matter. They could have atleast looked at other similar games ...
@Abaddan
My question would be how did the people show Nexon how to optimize their stuff without looking at the actual source code because I highly doubt that Nexon would allow people to look at their source code? Also isn't there a recent rebalance patch in Korea that rebalanced Lann too? Or was it just bad?
I would assume it's the effort he's mentioning, but there was a group who pulled apart the Source levels of Vindi and showed in great details what the issues were. The most glaring was that DevCat used a lot of unnecessary layers. Basically you'd have a set of object in the map, and instead of rendering only an outer, visible, interactive layer they'd build piece on top of piece on top of piece. That meant that if you for instance, hit a switch to ride the cart up on Misty Summit, instead of tracking the outer shell and relaying its position to you and then from you to your party, it had to relay every single redundant layer underneath and track and update every single redundant layer underneath to you and then pass that information on to the rest of the party.
As of a while back the old EU forums were still archived and you could search and read through the entire detailed post, and when I say detailed I mean it. They showed every single bit of information they could about the issue with how DevCat built levels and assets and even how to fix it. DevCat did nothing with it and our game is still garbage when it comes to optimization because of it. Even if they were too lazy to go back and make the game utilize multi-threading and the ability to feed information to the GPU more heavily they at least could have taken care of what they were spoon fed and made the game a smooth experience.
All that redundancy is part of the choppiness you get in town no matter how amazing your system is.
Comments
My stats are not great not terrible. Around 35k att and 15k deffense. (+11 astera staff and +8 - +13 dulla/astera gear). But still wehen i had only 5,8 percent in Agares and got onlyone shite item i decided to quit the game. I feel like too much investment needed to get to acceptable level.
3000+ add dmg as a minimum requirement (full +12 gear and a +12 weapon). I have only 2500 so my dmg output is abismal. To upgrade my gear is more or less possible. I can reforge and free +13 my cap what helps a bit, but i need a new Astera top...i broke it at +9. I could also +11 it with my free rune. This run would cost around 100m gold what is not much. But would not take me too much further.
The big help is to get a +13 or higher weapon. What requires huge luck what i dont have or lots of gold like ... hell a lot. Lets count minimum 10-12 weapon essense and additional mats to go from +11 to 13. Level 150 will be out untill i can farm this.
All in all this game was fun until it lasted, but now its not fun for me anymore.
Bought myself a +13 astera weapon already enchanted, from my personal experience, rar drops have always had higher drop rate than any s3 raids I've done. I would do maybe 30 s3 raids and end up with nothing, doing 15 -20 rar raids, gives me shard 2 in 2-3 days (and shard 1 guaranteed most of the time, the only thing I spent real money on was probably a ninja mask, from the rars I gather up maybe 100+ mats in a week paradise orbs, goldy cloth, leathers and I sell them at night when there is nothing in mp and they easily got 75k a piece. I don't even bother with astera raids, the drop rate is so horrendous that I've kept my cf at minimum, the time is not worth it
other benefits of rar
-seals (without even notiching, I maxed out my seals, all of em at 1000, so I just buy damascus steel everytime it reaches 1000
-maxed out all skills
-real fast compared to s3 raids (most of the time they are real fast, just hate the elchulus one)
just be patient, don't expect a shard 2 or shard 1 every rar and lose hope, have fun and you'll end up rich without knowing
- Game is dead
- Steam Chart player base is low
- Game is Pay to Win
But then I see a popular Youtuber make a video about Vindictus and everyone instantly reinstall the game. it's like you yourself can't speak on the good things about Vindictus without someone having a counter argument but any E-Celeb can speak about the game and people will listen to them regardless if they're informative or not. At this point in the games life cycle the people who play the game are people that really like Vindictus. While everyone else complaining are people who don't play the game and probably don't have a full time MMO game period.
I never got fully into Vindictus until this year. Before that I would jump in and jump out just to experience the good combat for a quick second. Now I'm a full time player and I'm loving everything about Vindictus gameplay. And considering how much the game spoils newcomers from level 1 - 100 these days there's really no reason to be so negative about Vindictus as a new starting player. You get to experience everything, the story, Inner Wear, hair, Outfits, VIP, and Raids thanks to lv90 bag if you get to end game.
As for older players... either they're here because of nostalgia or they never left. But I can't speak for them, just my personal experience. Thinking back in 2017 I figured this game would have shutdown by 2019, but I'm really glad it's still alive and I get to experience Vindictus and it's awesome combat. They just don't make action MMO combat like Vindictus anymore for some reason. Shocking its action combat didn't become a MMO standard.
There's always been an issue with vindictus of not fast enough updates especially for this game type. Compare it to say MHW which has released an absolute unit of updates compared to vindictus in the same time span. The game is also not very newcomer friendly, and if you don't start the game out by playing with a group of friends it's not exactly fun for new members.
Remove:
OS titles from rewards.
Counterforce - this is just bullshit for new players all around considering how expensive it is just so you can run QB raids and do anytype of dmg in a new raid.
QB requirements. - Yet another handicap for any new players who need the drops more than the people that can run the QBs.
Add/Return:
8 man parties.
Community events that aren't trash. A soap event isn't anything great to boast about, games in this genre run regular events or community things for limited items, free things that aren't necessarily anything great or game breaking but add an aspect of care or thought to the players making them want to keep returning.
Character balancing and bug fixes. - Been asking for the latter for 8 years, not holding my breath to see it.
Optimization. This has needed addressed for 8 years as well.
Sad part is this games combat system is regularly talked as one of the best for this type of game and it really is IMO. Even to MHW this combat system I find more enjoyable. It's always had that going for it along with great potential, but honestly not listening to community feedback for so long has taken a big toll on the game. Adding things into the game that no one wants and then leaving or not changing things people bring up constantly for months and years drives players away. It's hard to keep a community happy and returning when you ignore and show no real effort to make them want to return. You don't have players, you don't have a game.
I'll give them credit at least since the new management came in it has gotten a sliver better, but it's still a far cry from where I'd consider a reasonable level. New players join but don't stay around for many of the reasons I've listed and the only players that really keep returning consistently are the ones that have been playing this game for years. If there were real attempts to listen to the community and interact with them and work with them, like they should, on their thoughts to improve the game, that would bring a lot of people in consistently. I've been on this game since basically 2010. These issues have slowly crept more and more into the game as time passed on and improvements to other games etc came around and Vindi kinda stalled. Not listening to the community drove it further down until where it's at today. Game will never thrive or at least have a chance to until they actually listen to the feedback that they say they do in every ticket I've ever sent in. BTW I've never had a ticket actually answered, I asked a question about OS to 3 different GMs and not one of them could give me an answer, just said to keep an eye on the forums and give feedback because they check that, I've never seem them listen to any of it but hey, I guess they treat it like spam, you see it while you delete it but that's about it. Wasn't a hard question either was just about the rewards, something any GM should be able to answer in a literal Yes or No and that be it. The game has always had a dedicated small player base that's never really left. Eventually some do and since the issues I've stated exist, you can't get new players to replace them.
The biggest issue killing this game is and has always been ignoring the community,time and time and time and time again.
Just my opinions from my 8 years playing this game consistently as well as others I've talked with saying the same things.
Edit: Typos
They do listen to feedback but only from kr. For example glaive lynn was going to get an utterly forgettable long awaited buff but the kr lynn players rallied to get them to buff her for real and they listened. From this point yes they do have character balances.
Counterforce was a bad idea i agree but you can get literally free +15 lv90 belt and earrings upgrade them a bit maybe build a dulla ring and be perfectly capable in lv100. Ya it takes some effort but why should it not.
Agree that 8 man should be an option or at least make it 6 man instead. 4 doesn't feel raidy enough.
QB requirements are like the bare miniumum if you can't reach them the boss will just get tickled by you. If you wanna enter with tickle stats play with your friends in a custom party cuz no one likes to deal with 0 damage people in a "quick" battle.
New players leave for a multitude of reasons. New games might appeal to them more, the combat isn't for them, the fact you have to work to get anywhere, important info is not presented in game like money making tips.
I do give them some respect for not falling to the whims of the community every time tho. The community doesn't always know best.
(ya support doesn't play the game hence they couldn't answer your question best to ask that in the discord)
As noted, no input from our region is listened to, and a lot of the decisions don't align with the kind of experience NA/EU/AUS players want. Ban waves including those of long-time, loyal players and content creators were the final nails in the coffin. I still play on occasion but I haven't bought NX in two or three years now because you never know what Nexon will pull next. The lack of communication has also been a killer. Killing contest with no notice or updates, Community managers disappearing, and streams ending with no info. It's just been a giant mess.
It's sad because I absolutely enjoy the game at its core but it's not worth investing in any longer.
I completely understand now. Progression is super RNG dependant. You need decent drops in raids and RAR or you are stuck for days/weeks even months.
This basically means you gotta pick a character and try to progress with it, pick a handful and you cant do anything.
Why did Eira get Dullahan +12 armor while other characters get +12 lv 90 armor? hello devs? Give everyone dullah+12 already. We wont be able to do **** for weeks either way...
Another thing are the bosses, old bosses were fun skill checks (ingkells, glas, blood lord), new bosses all have one hit KOs and a fuckton of unblockables, games not fun. Why create characters with blocks and dodges and then create unblockables that you cant even dodge??
Other games create boss mechanics to avoid one hit KOs and when the mechanic is well done, boss gets damaged. Vindictus tried to do the same except they failed this completely and you just dont do them in any boss and tank the damage.
Events are rigged af, these relic boxes, for example, always give trash, but luckily, theres always a rune right next to it. Game even takes a bit to show you whats behind them meaning the roll animation isnt doing anything and the decision is done after you pick a spot.
The community is garbage at times too.... as a new player I tried OS for the steel, read the guide and gave it a go, I did well and was blessing / throwing as team communicated but still found some individuals mad because I was new and shouldn't be there.
I always loved this game due to the gameplay, its the most fluent to date, imo, but I can totally see why they got 1.2k players when Eira released and then lost 60% of those players in a month.
Stopped reading after this hilarious line. I wish the writers of Seinfeld would have discovered you years ago. The show might be funny with your writing.
git gud? The unblockables are clearly indicated with a red flicker and often do not have the level of tracking a regular blockable has to compensate.
Agares the most recent boss has only 1 unblockable and he uses it to start and end the pillar phase and its an extremely slow moving wave that anyone can run away from.
you'll fall for ohkos the first time and then never again unless you aren't paying attention.
Let me clarify, a game this old and with this type of graphics even on this engine should be easy to cap at a solid 60 fps without issue, it's not. That's what most people think when they read optimization is that it could and should certainly run better all around. There's also been programmers in the past that have even shown them where a lot of the issues lie and how to fix it, that was straight up ignored. I know 1 from this server that quit a long time ago did and one guy from Korea I knew personally who played on NA who brought it to light as well.
CF is a useless stat that wasn't needed. QB requirements in the same aspect are the same unneeded and dumb. What's the point in either one of those? If you remove CF you won't see anyone dealing 0 dmg. It's only CF that makes that true in the new raids. Even if they did 0 dmg I don't really care and someone with your gear shouldn't either, help out the new players don't shame them for not having gear or w/e. If they're trying to learn the raid and don't have insane gear, that makes no difference to me. I only run OS and raids when people ask for help who are exactly like that because they can't get a party or do exactly what you do. All the more reason QB requirements and CF need tossed. New players leave because they can't find people to run raids with or even be able to run some of the raids because of those limitations. Players that don't want to take them or help just because they won't do dmg sure as hell isn't helping.
They don't listen to feedback for ****, if they did you'd see spear lanns get a rebalance and not the chars that don't need it or OS being changed. No one is asking them to cave to every whim, but how about take a look at issues that have been around since beta for a start or topics repeatedly brought up the last few months about OS. There's a reason why voting is done by majority role. Look at a game like OSRS everything and I mean everything is voted on by the community whether it's added/changed in the game, and if it doesn't get 75% approval, it doesn't make it in. That would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now, which is months of waiting time before updates and then when there's issue with that update, ignoring the feedback given on it. I've been reporting the same bugs on Karok for 8 years now.
A GM of a game should be able to answer any question as broad as what I asked. What's the point of tech or gameplay support if they can't answer basic general questions....This isn't KR server, it's NA that's not an excuse to ignore the feedback.
I dont know wtf you're smoking but let me tell you, lughs unblockable does not have weak tracking to compensate, you literally have to be on top of him to dodge that sht. How do you dodge dullas REPETITIVE unblockable at 3bars? thats right, you tank that sht and chug pots.
After some time you already know the attacks of the boss thus perform way better but, as a returning player you come and face unimaginative solutions and you just leave.
Devs clearly lost all the imagination and ran out of ideas, so they created sht bosses and the lore is now, oh baby, everyone lost their memories, infinite content.
You cant defend the state of the game with "hurr durr unblockables? just run away 4Head LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL"
This type of game should never, ever, have ohko unless it is for a failed mechanic that, as a team, was unsuccessful.
There aren't many new appealing games in the mmo hack n slash area, so your point doesnt stick, and people do not leave because of the combat either.
My question would be how did the people show Nexon how to optimize their stuff without looking at the actual source code because I highly doubt that Nexon would allow people to look at their source code? Also isn't there a recent rebalance patch in Korea that rebalanced Lann too? Or was it just bad?
@Rivers_
And I'm pretty sure dully's 3 bar unblockables weren't mean to be tanked but rather avoided to bring him into that ghost phase. The tanking strategy was just something players do to try to make things go faster. And I kind of like the lore, I'm thinking you may not have actually read the story after a certain point because from what I'm reading it's more than that, sure right now I can see possibility of plot holes but I still like it and to me it's more than what you just said. Also I still challenge people who say similar things as you're saying to offer Nexon ideas on "more creative bosses and gameplay"
Honestly I don't really remember. It might have been more on the maps themselves related. Been years but I do remember a forum post explaining a significant performance hit and how to fix it. The korean guy who went by Fox also brought it up and explained it as well. There's posts even on these forums talking about how people know the exact issues of the games optimization problems. Not a big deal now since it's really just Source engine 1 being the big issue, especially since how they designed it to begin with on source engine 1 was already pretty terrible for the time and since so much time has passed. Source engine has always been pretty blah, but adding how the team designed it on that engine makes it like twice as bad. It needs ported to Source Engine 2 at least now, but with how poorly the design was on engine 1, it's almost like making a whole new game so I don't see that happening for a game with the current player base.
The rebalance patch as far as I've seen and been told adjust Sword lann and basically nothing with Spear lann at all. Basically all the old chars (Evie, Lann, Fiona, Karok) are pretty poor balance wise compared to the newer heros. Kai up to Eira have always kind of been just been better and got more attention for updates. Even so they've needed to do a pretty big overhaul on some characters for a long time now and it's just never happened.
You dodge Dulla's unblockable at 3 bars by just letting him actually finish it. Everyone just sits on top of him and his AI makes him spam it. It's not SUPPOSED to be repetitive. While I don't disagree that Rocheste bosses were probably the pinnacle of boss design in this game, recent bosses have actually been decent. I only feel like the boss design took a downhill turn in S2. Once they hit Anwynn (and to some extend TD) things started getting better again. The only S3 boss that I've felt has actually been BAD is Braha.
Also games like this often DO have a means of having you be killed in one hit. Whether it's just a very high damaging attack or an actual scripted OHKO, They're often very well-telegraphed or have a specific way of avoiding/stopping them, which is the case for most of those mechanics in this game as well. The only ones I have issue with are the ones in Neam because it's just "ha you got hit sucker time to die." I would also like to add in the fact that unblockables existed wayyyyy before S3 or even S2. The real bad decision they made was removing those unblockables and pushing survivability through the roof across all characters. They kind of forced themselves into having to do the red attack thing because if it weren't for red attacks and OHKO's no one would ever die anymore.
(ps. spear lann is in good spot. swords has always been the underpowered lann class in s3)
First, about new player progression. You're not meant to be able to do every raid in the game as soon as you reach max level, thats pretty normal in most (if not all) mmorpgs. But with the free +12 Gear you can do 95 raids which are usually not too terrible drop wise if you farm em a bit. (Before we only had free +10 Gear which made it that you couldn't even join Dullahan) Then you got the Goddes Buff during first 10 Battles of a Raid which will give you drops regardless of your dmg contribution. Doing story aswell offers decent amount of gold and Seals to get started. Yes, this game is a lot about luck, you can drop nothing a week+ or drop a lot in 1 day, but that's how it is in many games.
Thats leads to the second point, DPS as new player. Gear wise you can quite easily achieve 7% even with 6k add player in party, but usually your skill is the bigger problem at start. I recently started playing a bit delia with default gear at start and after a couple of raids to get used to her, had no problem scoring 12-21% average with 12 being with 2 5,5-6k add player in pt. (And me still not being too great on her yet either) The game is not meant to be played with 6k add in the first place, you can see this if you get yourself a party with 4x6k add its just hilarious how you steamroll almost every boss in 1-2 mins.(Had a 3x6+1x5,5k add party just today and we just sp chained agares from x6, claire from x6,5 and elchu from x5 to 0...) Naturally some/many player prefer fast raids as they only want drops (myself included aswell if i dont got much time or dont feel like 5mins+ battles), but ya, not being too far away from att/crit cap and having 2,5-3,5k add is sufficent to do 10-20% easily, given you know the boss and your class a bit.
About P2W, i dont see this, havent invested anything beside char slots (ya they're bothersome as you can only get em if you wallet, not to mention their high price), and got good Progression going with 2-3 hours a day. (Given i never bought cosmetics) Might be different for Na as i play on EU and the prices there seem to be steeper.
I followed and read the story, and it's wack. The fact you said "possibility of plotholes" makes me think you were the one that didnt follow or couldn't.
Just in case, i'll leave this here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/212160/discussions/0/1642038749324170376/
This doesn't even begin to tackle the connection between this world and Mabinogi, which would be another mess.
Regarding feedback about the battles, players have given plenty, but our feedback doesn't matter. They could have atleast looked at other similar games ...
I would assume it's the effort he's mentioning, but there was a group who pulled apart the Source levels of Vindi and showed in great details what the issues were. The most glaring was that DevCat used a lot of unnecessary layers. Basically you'd have a set of object in the map, and instead of rendering only an outer, visible, interactive layer they'd build piece on top of piece on top of piece. That meant that if you for instance, hit a switch to ride the cart up on Misty Summit, instead of tracking the outer shell and relaying its position to you and then from you to your party, it had to relay every single redundant layer underneath and track and update every single redundant layer underneath to you and then pass that information on to the rest of the party.
As of a while back the old EU forums were still archived and you could search and read through the entire detailed post, and when I say detailed I mean it. They showed every single bit of information they could about the issue with how DevCat built levels and assets and even how to fix it. DevCat did nothing with it and our game is still garbage when it comes to optimization because of it. Even if they were too lazy to go back and make the game utilize multi-threading and the ability to feed information to the GPU more heavily they at least could have taken care of what they were spoon fed and made the game a smooth experience.
All that redundancy is part of the choppiness you get in town no matter how amazing your system is.