Difference between revisions of "War of Emperium Changes"

Revision as of 17:16, 26 July 2022

General Information

In Aug 2022, heRO server plans to make a major overhaul to the Guild vs Guild scene in the server. We'll be introducing War of Emperium Second Edition along with series of sweeping changes to introduce changes to the server. War of Emperium Second Edition is rarely added to pre-renewal servers, and just like with PvM content, heRO server will be customizing aspects of it to fit our pre-renewal environment. Here we will list out the series of changes that the GM team plans to make, along with some explanations to why the changes with a mini-FAQ for each section. These FAQs also involve the summary of DMs, questions, suggestions and grievances that players (current and former alike) have submitted to the GM team throughout these years.

Our Philosophy of The Changes

One major question in everyone's mind is: why the changes now? We think that it is quite obvious that the status quo in heRO prior to this is not working out. GM team (and some of our players) have made the following suggestions before, especially in the summer of 2021, but it was always met with resistance and pessimism. The typical response is that heRO is a low rate, and people need to work for their gears and hard work ought to be rewarded. However, it's plain to see that WoE is extremely inactive, and it's unwise to pretend that the 15th year will be the year where the server's WoE scene will magically fix itself. We always say to ourselves that the server only needs motivated players to join who prefers low rates where it's expected to work hard for WoE. However, even with the high fluctuation of players who try out the server in the past year, not a lot of them stayed and almost none of them showed interest or the motivation to join the WoE scene as-is. WoE is not going to change or improve without changes.

heRO's playerbase as a whole is also aging, and we have less time than we used to 10+ years ago. It is demanding of players to grind for things that are consumed on a weekly basis. Even though we are a low rate server, we want our players' time to be spent on things that are permanent. Therefore, we want to focus on removing the weekly "maintenance" aspect of WoE on the server. The threshold to be "WoE ready", even for a low rate, has to be a lot lower or at least only uses gears/cards that aren't heavily time gated. This way, players who value effort is still rewarded, but they don't have to wait for any real life time cycle: as long as they are willing to play, whenever they can, they are working towards their goals and be WoE-ready. Our definition of a healthier GvG scene is one where the fights are more competitive and winners are determined by their planning and gameplay, and less determined by gear access to extremely rare items or wealth.

Even when items and preparations are solved: WoE:FE itself in renewal is a very clear known quantity. It is more than 15 years old and people know what to do relatively well. Without changes, heRO doesn't offer anything outstanding in this regards, and you are mostly replicating known strategies to carry it over to heRO. It is true that heRO has custom items that may change some options, but heRO traditionally tries to preserve the default WoE scene so a lot of items are purposely made to minimize the WoE impact. Part of WoE's charm is in its strategy: planning to come up with a team setup and gear builds that tackle the problems that the guild face. Finally, the atmosphere and what players are looking for now in 2022 is very different compare to when heRO first started. Nowadays, players are a lot more receptive to customized changes by each individual servers. heRO has made some customized class balances and players did not have a big problem with the changes. Instead of just mimicking what the main game has been doing, we would much rather take the balance of the game into our own hands and make periodic changes to address problems as they show up, be it in class balance or item changes.

While the current iteration of the changes will definitely not address all the problems, we'll like this to be a good step forward and focus on changing/improving the game, one step at a time with routine changes for the WoE scene, similar to what heRO has been doing in the PvM side for so many years.

Therefore, our changes that we'll do from this point onward:

• Eliminate the need to farm any items that aren't permanent in usage for WoE (remove "maintenance" cost)
• Reduce the need or eliminate the centralization of time gated rare items that are "mandatory" or over-centralizing the metagame
• Embrace periodic balance changes, via both buffs and nerfs, for classes and items alike

With that said, here are the details of the first wave of changes!

War of Emperium, Second Edition

WoE:SE will replace the Saturday WoE:FE session at Saturday from 11 AM to 12 PM server time (see here for timezone conversion). The base mechanics of the WoE:SE is the same as official (which you can read about here: iRO Wiki WoE SE), with the following exceptions:

• Guardian Stones do not require a list of items to fix. Instead, they require a single Guardian Stone Repair Kit with 1 weight to repair them. However, you are still expected to know the proper repair prompts as if you have the proper items to repair it.
• Barricades do not require a list of items to fix. Instead, they require a single Barricade Repair Kit with 1 weight to repair them. However, you are still expected to know the proper repair prompts as if you have the proper items to repair it.
• "Guardian Stone Repair Kit" and "Barricade Repair Kit" are sold at low cost at the WoE Supply Shop (before discounts)
• The Emperium of WoE:SE castles is identical to the pre-renewal WoE:FE Emperiums
• Provides God Item ingredient pieces for Asprika and Brynhild
• WoE:SE will share the same customized ban list of items as heRO's WoE:FE
• Warper will be available to warp to each WoE:SE castle

Similar to WoE:FE, the god item quests will only be a series of item collection. Contact a GM to trade said items for your new god item. You can check it out at this page: God Item Quest

FAQ About Changes to WoE Second Edition

Q: Why create the 2 Repair Kits?
A: Again, we want to greatly reduce the need to farm for "non-permanent" things for WoE every week for our players to reduce maintenance cost. Farming steel, trunk, elunium, and oridecon every week did not fit in our vision for WoE, so we decided to remove this aspect of it.

Q: Why are there so little changes with only the repair kits and no other parts of WoE:SE? I've played it on other servers and <insert mechanics here> is absolutely busted.
A: We are bit more on a wait-and-see basis if other parts need changing. Nothing is off the table for things that needs to be changed, if we deem that it's beneficial for the server overall.

Changes to heRO's War of Emperiums

The following changes will also be made to both WoE:FE and WoE:SE.

The following items will be banned in both WoE:

• All God Items
• All MVP Cards (all cards with golden color)
• Deviling Card (Newly added)
• Ghostring Card (Newly added)
• Selkie Card (Newly added)
• Nemo
• Dory
• Yggdrasil Seed (Newly added)
• Yggdrasil Berry (Newly added)
• Costume Fools Day
• Costume Jack Mask
• Costume Tormenting Spirit
• Costume Cute Octopus Balloon
• Costume Santa Poring Balloon
• Costume Birthday Balloon
• Costume Big Wedding Veil
• Costume Guild Recruiting Hat KOJ
• Costume Deviruchi Balloon
• Costume Rainbow
• Costume Rain Cloud
• Costume Lightning Cloud
• Costume Tiraya Bonnet
• Costume BF recruiter hat
• Costume GF recruiter hat
• Costume Twinkle Little Star
• Costume Blazing Sun
• Costume Banshee Master Kiss
• Nobility Mount

As a result of these changes, any gear with Ghostring card, Deviling card or Selkie card will be given a chance to be decarded at no cost during the month of August. Please contact a GM to take up this trade offer.

In addition, all skills will no longer consume any items as a skill catalyst so long as you have the proper amount of items in your inventory.

• As long as you have 1 Fire Bottle and 1 Acid Bottle, you can cast Acid Demonstration without any limit.
• As long as you have 1 blue gemstones in your inventory, you can cast as many Safety Wall as you see fit.
• As long as you have the proper ammunition equipped, you don't need more than the amount consumed by your skill because ammos are not consumed.
• This applies even for Wizard Soul Link- so long as you have 1 crystal fragment and the Soul Link active, you will bypass the effects of Kaite.

The following items will be sold at the WoE Supply Shop at a low cost, where these items can only be used in WoE.

• War Healing Potion
• War Blue Potion
• War Concentration Potion
• War Awakening Potion
• War Berserk Potion
• War Poison Bottle
• Guardian Stone Repair Kit
• Barricade Repair Kit

Finally, Guild Dungeons will be accessible even to castle holding guilds. At the price of 400k, you can pay for guild dungeon access for everyone in your guild for the next 24 hours. Castle owners do not have to pay fee. Keep in mind that guild dungeons have PvP enabled, and all Guild Dungeons are FFA.

FAQ About Changes to heRO's War of Emperiums

Q: Why ban the Deviling Card or Ghostring card?
A: The 2 share similar reasons why in context of WoE. Their presence greatly affect the scale of how much damage you can soak up, and the defensive factor is a cut far above many other pieces of equipment/card combinations possible in the game. We consider the situation to be similar to how certain MVP cards can do things that no other cards can imitate or that the raw number boosts they provide to be far higher than every other options available.

Q: Why ban the Selkie Card?
A: Selkie Card is a key component in being an enabler of multiple magic immunity/status immunity builds without the involvement of an armor card. There are existing builds that do magic immunity, but you must have Selkie to pull it off while keeping armor card slot open. Rather than tackling the payoffs for these various builds, we decided to tackle the enabler instead. Originally, we were planning to rework this card completely, but we decided that these builds are only problematic in WoE situations and they are at most niche applications in PvM. There is no reason to remove the card from PvM. Therefore, we opted to ban the card directly in WoE without changing it for PvM.

Q: Why not ban the Angeling Card? It is one of 2 remaining cards that are unobtainable in OCA, yet it is available in WoE.
A: Holy element's defensive capabilities against the main elements is not nearly as drastic as what Deviling and Ghostring can do. In WoE, builds tend to favor specialization. The 25% reduction to many common elements is not as useful as a 50% or 75% reduction against one single common element (neutral). A weakness to dark is also very different than a weakness to ghost. Melee characters can immediately enchant their weapons to be dark elemental if they suspect that someone is using Angeling to counter the card. You cannot do the same against a Ghostring, since ghost enchant does not exist at this time of writing.

Q: Why not ban the Maya Purple Card? It is the other remaining card that is unobtainable in OCA, yet it is available in WoE.
A: Admittedly, this is a really tricky situation. One one hand, it's a unique effect that no other cards can replicate, and you may completely invalidate a major class feature of Sinx and Stalker. On the other hand, you can argue that Box of Sunlight can do the same thing as Maya Purple so it's not that unique. However, Maya Purple doesn't require you to stock up on very heavy boxes that requires a long time to farm. But is the problem really on Maya Purple Card, and can we consider buffing or changing Box of Sunlight instead? If we follow our current design philosophy and increase the accessibility of Box of Sunlight such that you can constantly use it to consistently keep up its effect, or buff the item directly in duration or lowering its weight, then you have the reverse situation. If Box of Sunlight is heavily buffed, then Maya Purple have no reason of existing beyond being a WoE card of convenience, similar to Fly Wing vs Creamy Card. We decided to keep the status quo for now and evaluate the situation again after a month or two of WoE:SE.

Q: There are MVP cards/some God Items that are far weaker than some of the banned cards though? How do heRO GMs plan to explain this level of hypocrisy?
A: We agree! In the following months, we will consider if we can let some items/cards off the ban list. Again, nothing is off the tables. We will take an active approach to do whatever it takes to offer more strategic options and game play choices. WoE changes will not be a constant stream of bans- if a buff or unban seems suitable, we will do so.

Q: Ghostring card is useless now! What will GM team do with it?
A: We acknowledge that the current Ghostring effect in PvM is not very useful. Banning Ghostring from WoE is a huge nerf for this card. However, we ask all Ghostring owners to hold on to their cards for now as we think of possible changes to the card in the future: either by buffing its PvM application, or have it return in WoE with changes to the card.

Q: Isn't the removal of skill catalysts going to completely unbalance WoE, especially when certain classes are kept in check due to their skill cost?
A:

Q: Won't these changes completely unbalance the weight game aspect of WoE? I am concerned that the strategic element of WoE logistic runs and "refilling" will be gone.
Q: Can we make "Boxes" of the new WoE items?

Q: Why can't the WoE Supply Shop also sell <some item> for WoE as well?

Q: Why are GMs effectively giving out free items for WoE? Why not just hand out gears at this rate?

Q: Why should guild dungeons be available to non-castle owners? Winners to WoE ought to be rewarded.

Q: The price of guild dungeons is far too high/low. Will the price should be lowered/raised?

Changes to Battleground Items

While certain parts of Battlegrounds were released right on the edge of renewal, the Glorious set of BG was clearly within renewal era of the game. Also, even within the Glorious weapons and gears, there's great disparity between the power level of different weapons. We want to use this opportunity to start rebalancing gears that are mainly intended for WoE usage for class balance within heRO's WoE scene, along with directly addressing a very centralizing weapon that affects both PvP and PvM: Glorious Fist.

We have decided to align all the weapons to have a "similar structure" at the 6 and 9 refine point. Physical based weapons tend to have 2 effects by default. For magic/support based weapons, we have 4 effects for magic/support based weapon, mostly the usual matk boost innate to all magic based weapons, then a refine based bonus to matk so that their refines are relevant beyond breakpoints for casters. Finally, the +9 effect is almost always a 20% boost to a signature skill that the gear is oriented for, whenever possible. Some exceptions are made for skills or support skills that cannot benefit from direct % boosts. We've also decided to give 2h weapons additional boosts to justify their sacrifice of a shield slot (for weapon types that have 1h alternatives, so this will not apply to weapon types like bows). It may be too mild for now and they are still inferior to equipping a shield, but we want to direct 2 handed weapons towards the direction of an extremely high risk, high reward glass cannon strategies.

With that said, here are the following changes:

As a result of these changes, any Glorious Weapons will be given a chance to be exchanged for any other Glorious Weapons at the same refine at no cost. Any of the affected Medal of Honor/BG Accessories can also be exchanged for any other BG accessories with the same cost during the month of August. Please contact a GM to take up this trade offer.

FAQ about BG Item Changes

Q: Can you explain what was "wrong" with Glorious Fist?
A: Glorious Fist's issues are on multiple scale. It is a relatively "+9 or bust" gear where any thing before +9 is not helpful because it is worse than the Glorious Morningstar. Once it does get +9, it is an overcentralizing piece of gear in both PvM and PvP scene. In PvM, it allows Champions to very safely get off an Asura Strike even against the most dangerous MvPs, possibly to a point that if teleport is sufficiently lucky, then you can solo even the Biolab MVPs which should be some of the toughest in the game. In PvP, it is much worse. Instant cast Asura Strike allows no counterplay to Safety Wall or swap gears, and the downtime between each casts of Asura Strike is greatly reduced due to the free cast of Dangerous Soul Collect as well.

Q: How is the proposed exchange of BG Weapons a remotely fair compensation compare to the nerf that Glorious Fist has received?

Q: Why remove the unbreakable aspect of the gears?

Q: Removing access to reliable forms of inflicting critical wounds is a huge detraction to strategical elements of WoE to limit the effect of healing, especially now that Potions are essentially free. Why remove strategic options?

Q: Why is the Glorious Two-Handed Axe so different? It did not follow any of your described guiding principles.

Changes to Other Items

The Stunning Star Eyepatch will be boosted from 10% to 20% resistance to the Stun status. As a result of this change, any slotted mid headgear with Stalactic Golem card will be given a chance to be decarded at no cost during the month of August. Please contact a GM to take up this trade offer.

Previous posts mentioned that the Selkie card will be remade. However, after reconsideration, the problematic part of Selkie involves its WoE interactions to allow status immunity via a 100 mdef build without sacrificing armor card slot. There's no problems with Selkie card in PvM scenarios. For this reason, we have rescinded the Selkie change and instead decided to ban it from WoE instead. There's no longer any reason why WoE ban list must be a particular "classification" of cards. We'll ban (or unban) any card or item as we see fit in the inevitable WoE balance changes after WoE:SE's introduction. Going forward, we'll like to explore options to make WoE gears more accessible: be it making it not as difficult to obtain, releasing WoE targeted gears, or explore any other options.

Q: Why this change specifically?
A: Resisting stun is a super crucial aspect of WoE, and increasing the availability of 20% stun resistance in mid headgear slot will be another step towards having a slightly more approachable WoE. Also, changing the number of an existing headgear is pretty simple as we are not creating a new item for it.

Q: But this headgear is unobtainable until November! A: This headgear is available via the V4P Gear Box right now, though we recognize that it's not ideal. We want to move more V4P gears to be obtainable without being time-gated, similar to other formerly exclusive gears from events or holidays. However, we cannot always fix all of our known problems immediately. We hope to address this in the near future.

Q: Why not just boost the drop rate of slotted headgear? There are many other cards in middle headgear slot that would have been crucial to WoE as well.
A: This is under careful consideration, but not considered so high on priority that it must be done now along side the release of WoE:SE.

War of Emperium Rewards

The treasures for both WoE:FE and WoE:SE will also be updated and customized. The last time that this has happened was before 2010, so their rewards are long overdue for an overhaul. Finally, all WoE:FE castles can produce treasure chests from each of the WoE:FE realms. Either castle in WoE:SE can produce treasure chests from the 2 corresponding regions as well. However, WoE:FE cannot produce chests from WoE:SE and vice versa. This is to increase likelihood where guilds want to fight for castle control consistently, instead of being active when particular castle of "better" castle loot is available, then the scene loses momentum and the fight stops because a castle rotation happened to a less desirable set of chests.

For example, a prontera castle can produce chests that were formerly in Prontera, Geffen, Aldebaran and Payon, but not from Rachel and Yuno. Likewise, a Rachel WoE:SE castle can produce chests that should belong to Rachel or Yuno, but not from Prontera, Geffen, Aldebaran and Payon.

WoE:SE will have its own set of treasure chests. The rate of chests being a god item chest will be the same as WoE:FE- every chest has a 50% of being a generic chest, or one of the 10 treasure chests with the potential of a God Item piece from WoE:SE (since there are 10 possible God Item pieces in WoE:SE. In WoE:FE, there are 20 possible treasure chests with the potential of a God Item piece.)

The generic chest in WoE:SE is the same as WoE:FE, which is upgraded to the following:

Every Treasure Chest with the potential of a God Item Piece share the following general loot across both WoE:

Then, depending on exactly which God Item piece chest it is, the following rewards are possible from WoE:SE castle loot:

Below are the newly improved God Item piece chests for WoE:FE.

FAQ About WoE Rewards

Q: Doesn't random chests lower the likelihood to get god item pieces for WoE:FE?

Q: Why does WoE:SE drop rate for special god item chests set at half of that of WoE:FE?

FAQ About Other Concerns

Q: What will happen to WoE:FE?

Q: There is a clear emphasis on making gears accessible but I don't think it's necessary that everyone needs to have top tier gears. What happened to the improvement aspect of WoE where players should be trying to improve their gear set a little bit at a time, week after week?

Q: Why is heRO GM team wasting efforts on an area that is clearly the server's weakness for years? heRO will benefit more to focus on what the majority of players like now, which is the custom PvM content.

Q: Why are all the documents screenshots instead of actual tables...?
A: Because GM-Ayu doesn't have the access to allow upload of pdf documents, and converting it to mediawiki tables take far too long. So instead, you get screenshot of T&D design docs.