[The Issue with the Movement Speed Change]

Greetings,

As a long-time player who also cherishes the essence of this game, I would like to strongly support Kinong’s message and expand on some of the underlying issues that the recent movement speed reduction has made more noticeable.

It’s been clearly felt across the community that the recent change to cap run speed at 100% has significantly diminished the sense of reward and progress, especially within PvE content. As Kinong rightly mentioned, farming and dungeon-running, core pillars of this game’s appeal, have become more time-consuming and far less enjoyable. Content that already required considerable time investment now feels increasingly tedious, more grindy, and, frankly, punishing.

This is especially apparent in instances where mobility is integral to the gameplay experience. For example, dungeons like Viridian Gorge, Haven of Oblivion, Lv130 Trials, and even certain Celestial Corridor bosses such as Libra, Gemini and Capricorn (where players must move to the corners constantly), Aries (where a player acts as the “NPC”) are now hindered by this cap. Even with the recent adjustments to AT/DF, the speed cap continues to negatively affect the flow of these instances.

Beyond dungeon content, class leveling and gear upgrading have also suffered. Prior to the introduction of Agent, capping all classes from scratch (including awakening) took an approximate amount of 70 hours for a geared and experienced runner with a highly optimized setup, using a geared battle pet (before pet changes), and the other player being fully CP charmed. With the new cap, leveling just one class from 100 to 130 took roughly about 1.5 times longer. With the addition of Agent and its awaken classes, as well as Wyvern Lord (soon with them too), new players are now realistically looking at over 100 hours (probably around 150 with the average setup) just to reach parity with the endgame players.

On the other hand, I would like to argue that this change has affected long-time players the most. Years of progression and carefully built setups have been rendered less effective, or even obsolete. For example, Movement speed pets now have limited utility, or previously valuable market items like Zumi-made speed boots are now less relevant, and speed-related buffs—such as the Path of Destiny one (which was nerfed)—offer even less benefit in the current environment.

Previously, and related to this topic in a way, I was hearing some concerns regarding healers struggling to keep up in PvE content due to the speed disparity between them and faster classes (In some instances, even blamed unfairly when DPS players engaged bosses too quickly, leading to deaths). Such issues, though, can be addressed through more targeted solutions rather than altering a fundamental gameplay mechanic like movement speed. For example, assigning the buffer role to a Blade Master, a class capable of self-casting speed buffs to stay in sync with others, or players just waiting for the healer before engaging bosses. I find these more reasonable workarounds that preserve gameplay integrity without negatively impacting the overall pace of the general PvE content.

Looking at the current daily player activity, I would say that the player motivation has been on a steady decline for quite some time. Unfortunately, the recent movement speed cap has only accelerated this trend pointed out by Kinong, whick keeps discouraging players who were already feeling burnt out or disengaged. These were only some issues I could think of right now, but I strongly support the request to, at least, revert the movement speed cap in PvE content.

[Patch v123 Feedback & Other Suggestions]

Hello there,

Regarding some of the already mentioned suggestions/issues and additional ones:

• Bag Bug: This bug has been around for some time, most likely since the Backpack UI changes were implemented. Its occurrence so far appears to be random, though it seems to happen more often when the player is dead and attempts to use an item, such as a leaf, to revive but is unable to do so.
• Elysian Island and Temple Arena: Viewing it from the perspective of a developer, a very low drop rate for the souls could potentially mean a better participance and retention ratio for these types of content. However, maintaining engagement becomes difficult in scenarios when players attempt to obtain these items for several or even months without noticeable progress. For now it seems not high priority, but once some changes are made, such as adding trading features for rarer souls, it could potentially boost player participation in the long term, giving players more incentive to engage due to the added sense of progression and reward.
• Loyalty Shop Search: This may not be high priority as well, and not sure how manageable it is to code, but adding a search feature for the loyalty shop would be a great QoL for people that are constantly crafting or making achievements for their characters. Along with the existing ability to buy specific material quantities, this enhancement would further optimize these procedures.

In addition to this, I would like to share some ideas that might have been overlooked during the review of the recent feedback suggestions and address a few areas that might need further clarification.

On 10/22/2024 at 7:44 PM, Perroempapado said:

Since we had the blood knight nerfed, as I take it the change was to motivate the players to use other classes, I do think this could have been done way more efficiently. And since this is the most noticeable in places where one lvl's up classes, one of the "fixes" I thought of that would not change the idea behind the nerf would be to get rid of the stun in normal & elite mobs in battle maps, this way we could build/explore some other classes to run.

Another way to efficiently manage this without the need of nerfing is to tweak around the ability of PvE and PvP differentiated stats and buffs. Instead of weakening the current class, why not buff overshadowed or underused classes like Mecha Ares, Master Fencer or Arch-Elementalist to equalize or even surpass BK's performance in terms of mob killing, since they take more time to build than the latter, and it would be more rewarding for players who invest in them. If this is a concern for PvP, make this change only effective in PvE environments. I believe it's fair to consider, and would add more dynamism with these features.

On 10/23/2024 at 6:34 AM, Jordan said:

People don't particpate on website / forum events unless its note your name down and potentially win something. In game events we mostly do them around holiday seasons. But they're time consuming and too many of them people engage less with them so its good to have a good balance between them to not have too many. Halloween and Xmas will have event bosses, Halloween wont have quests Xmas will. They are definitely not low effort and will interfere with actual patch work so more events = less content.

From my understanding, the idea of promoting more frequent events is not only focus in-game and the forums, but rather basic events done via the official website. Low effort not meaning events in-game, but more specifically just logging into the website, click on the "Events" tab, and get a variety of potential rewards. I believe the website hasn't been active in this aspect for a very long time, and it would definitely take no effort to manage and avoid the necessity of manually delivering rewards to specific winners. A good balance between these, and normal in-game and forum activities would encourage an overall greater interaction with the player base, and would definitely serve as an additional way to show appreciation for those who still stick around.

On 10/23/2024 at 6:34 AM, Jordan said:

The issue isn't numbers at all, it's an attitude problem. People avoid PvP if they cannot win and part of the fun of game is to just play the game and get strong. [...] At this point its far beyond a server issue its a playerbase issue. Back when I played you had people who would happly go 10vs40 in TW and GvG and it wasn't about winning and the times you did win was the best.

A natural aspect of any video game is the constant shift in its player base. For instance, the player base has significantly reduced since cap 100, for example. Back then, even if one day your guild ended up against 4+ guilds in TW, there was still a chance to win depending if you were lucky enough to be on the winner side and more possibly win that way by capping. Nowadays, with significantly less amount of players and far more destructive damage and crowd control saturation, even just two additional players can tip the scales significantly. It can be frustrating to be consistently on the ground, with limited options to adapt through class or party composition, as player numbers now have a greater impact on outcomes, considering today's mechanics.

Probably not a plain 10v10 or so, but I believe adjusting the cap in the number of players a guild can have during battlefield would certainly benefit smaller guilds and incentive them to participate, as there are more options to work with, and probably not win, but now they have a slightly bigger chance to do. This change would also add an interesting dynamic for larger guilds, as now they have to carefully decide which players are best suited to attend and probably incentive the less geared players for a chance to be on the "team". It may or may not solve the "attitude" of everyone, but I think it's an idea that could be considered, maybe tweak around a little, and who knows, maybe a step of the right direction.

On 10/23/2024 at 6:34 AM, Jordan said:

It may be different now but the retention speaks for itself. When we release content like AT/DF and Abyss. All the numbers are up and stay up for months. We release a content like Trials or VG/DF and yeh the numbers go up, but a month later they're back down because people are done with it. I spend a lot of time monitoring the activity of the game in various aspects and I'm always experimenting with new ways to provide content and ways to improve the content and refine it for the next version.

In my perspective, this approach only widens the gap between new players and endgame content. I can agree that if the content is too easy, you would see scenarios where people complain about the patch being too easy after a week, but I believe we are now reaching the other extreme. Personally, I no longer have enough time to play the game as I used to, naturally because of life changes, so viewing the amount of time required to effectively utilize a specific role feels quite discouraging for me and likely for many other players as well that want to come back. I appreciate the efforts to maintain the player base and create a sense of "meaning" with each login, I just believe this ratio, if not constant, will gradually decrease over time, with less chance of new players to engage in the game.

[Patch v118 Feedback]

Greetings,

I wanted to share some insights on certain aspects of the game that have been around since the latest patch. Some of my suggestions have already been brought up in this thread, yet I would still like to emphasize their importance, aiming to prioritize and ensure this issue is acknowledged for further investigation. I'd like to offer these observations as suggestions for consideration. Please forgive any grammatical errors in this post.

 

Abyss:

Regarding the making of the Lv125 Awaken Sets, as previously mentioned, the current main issue is the significant amount of normal abyss essences required (168) to craft the set, particularly the quantity needed to enhance and craft the new awaken tablets (90). In optimal scenarios, we get around 3-4 normal essences daily, considering both monster drops and abyss bags sent to mail. In less favorable situations, which are more common, we typically 0-2 essences, mostly from bags only, which in my opinion, are more reliable. This suggests that the monster drop rate for these essences is disproportionately low given the amount required to create a new set from scratch. In contrast of Deep Abyss, where the new essences can drop both the 1st and 2nd boss forms, Regular Abyss provides only one instance/chance for this. Additionally, there is a chance for x2 essence drops in Deep Abyss.

My suggestion to this would be to possibly:

• Increase the drop rates of the regular abyss essences, at least from the bosses.
• Substantially reduce the number of essences needed to create the awaken tablets (90 -> 60 would be a reasonable adjustment).

In the current state of the game, it would take several months for an individual person to farm all the necessary items just for one single set. Achieving this in one month is overly optimistic, relying on exceptionally lucky essence and soul drop rates, and multiple daily farming sessions, which may not be feasible for everyone, especially for new players with limited characters and lacking a dedicated group of friends or a set party.

Naturally, the viability of these suggestions may differ based on the experience of each person. While some players may have pre-farmed all the normal essences needed and chose to directly awaken the armor sets, their data does not accurately represent the grind and consistency required for someone new or trying to catch up. 

Partial Enchantments:

I heavily agree with the changes proposed above. If reducing the number of abyssal souls is not feasible (though a reduction from 60 -> 45-50 would be fair), a viable improvement would be to allow them to drop naturally from the Deep Abyss bosses, similar to the 110 Trial bosses that drop Lv8 Enchant boxes.

 

While slightly deviating from the main topic, similar to the feedback provided in this thread, I would appreciate a review of previously proposed suggestions such as CC, HoO (already old content), QoL related posts, etc. Some of these suggestions may have received approval for consideration but appear to have been unintentionally overlooked for a very long time. I believe that most of these suggestions would greatly enhance the overall gameplay enjoyment and serve to motivate players to engage for longer periods of time, assuming that it aligns with the intended objectives of the recent patches.

Thank you for your time to read my response. Have a nice day~

[Anniversary Surprise!]

G2

Hoshino