heRO SvN Update

[Ardney Wolf]

Thanks Ayu for taking the time to respond and open some dialogue on this. Nidsrule and I seem to be on roughly the same page and (s)he's made several of the points I was going to make already. Let me just drop in 1 or 2 clarifications on my personal stance.

First off, I would like to reiterate that I'm not bothered by BGs not being implemented immediately because I know tech difficulties are tech difficulties. What I am against is the mistaken view that the BG gears are in any way overpowered or game breaking. I formed this opinion while playing on the official servers where they were implemented so take that for what it's worth. My 1st hand experience ends prior to the release of the KvM BGs so I can't directly comment on their items or the way those BGs play out. For people who don't have any experience with BGs, a description of what they are can be found here.

The issue of balance with the weapons has largely been addressed but I would just like to make 1 more point. The comparison to BG weapons and high end hydra-carded weapons has been made but this misses the mark. They're better than high end hydra carded weapons for a reason. These gears were added with mature servers in mind where the playerbase has largely managed to acquire many high-end, highly upgraded items. heRO is a server that fits this description. By added def or mdef bypass on each of the BG 1 gears, it serves to upset the status quo and force people to adjust their habits/tactics slightly. A hidden benefit of this is that it actually helps newer players to fight somewhat (though not at all exactly) evenly with the veterans as they have their lethality significantly increased without requiring a multi-month investment. No matter how you look at that, this is a good thing

Secondly, BG gears while mainly geared for PvP are not completely devoid of PvM benefits. The Priest staff given by the Flavius BG is actually equivalent (possibly better, can't remember) to a +10 Staff of Recovery for healing purposes, the Mage medallions add a small chance of stun to every magic attack, etc. These??items serve to add more options to each class. There isn't a single class that cannot benefit in some way both PvP and PvM wise by having access to the BG gears. And the best part is that even if a person absolutely sucks at PvP they will still get access to those gears as medals are awarded for losing as well as winning.

Which brings me to the next point. Much talk has occurred regarding how "unfair" the matchups can be for certain classes but this seems to have taken only the KvM BGs into account. The Tierra Gorge and Flavius BGs are team efforts where any class can be useful since the objective is not merely to kill other players but to defend an objective while destroying your opponents objective. There are many strategies for doing this that involve many different classes. And again, even if you do end up with a team that lacks experience, coordination, gear, or just plain gets outplayed by your opponents you're time still isn't wasted because you're still getting medals.

^That being the case, there is no need for extra coding or GM supervision to facilitate BGs. In all honesty, many similar concerns regarding teams and playability were raised by the community on iRO prior to the initial release of Tierra and Flavius and they were largely unwarranted. Things went?a lot more smoothly than anyone anticipated once people actually had a chance to try it out and understand how it worked.

But again, as Ayu mentioned this is all somewhat moot as we are not (currently) able to implement BGs. That's fine and understandable. But that does not mean that the actual BG items can't be included in the game at some point through alternate means. The only reason for keeping them out is a perception of imbalance that they might bring which is what I'm vehemently arguing against here because I believe (from experience) that that view is 100% wrong. If the GM team feels that certain items are game-breaking then they're not ever going to revisit the idea of implementing them even if they do have the means to do so down the road. This seems to be what has happened with the slotted elemental armors and it's what I'm trying to avoid having happen to all the BG gears.

And while we're here let me make a couple of last quick points about slotted ele armors. 1st, they're not in any way unbalanced. Learn to use endows, converters, or ele weaps. Simple as. In fact, most people already do this in WoE due to the large number of GRs on the server. The only difference would be that they would have to do it more intelligently to match a primary element rathe than randomly with any element to do basic damage agaisnt Ghost.

As to coding issues arising when an element card is slotted in elemental armor, the solution is as simple as mimicking what occurs on iRO. 2nd element always overrides 1st element. An armor can never have 2 elements. If you slot a bathory in a Fire armor, congratulations, you've just made really expensive shadow armor (note, this actually happened on the official servers. Much mockery ensued). This effect is actually already seen in-game when someone with a GR stands in Gospel and it becomes holy element. The server desn't explode, it just overrides.

TL;DR: BGs are this It is my belief that the perception that the newer items and gears are overpowered is wrong. This perception must be corrected or newer content will be less and less likely to be implemented. BGs, if they could be implemented, would function smoothly and provide something else for people to do ingame while at the same time giving their characters more diversity in gameplay styles. BG gears and slotted elemental armors are not OP, just different.