Cyntara v16s2 Countdown

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Zakyrie


Posts: 19
Likes: 17
Member since: v6

This is just a follow up thread to the original. I've had a few days to collect my thoughts and further expand on some ideas. This thread will follow a similar format to the last.

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1: Multiple rebirths and a look at possible rewards

Silence posted here that he was unsure what rebirth rewards players would actually want. So I thought up of a 4 rebirth system that you guys might be able to take some inspiration from.

4 rebirths,

1st = 1 time bonus hp and mana, vocation change to (reborn sorcerer, reborn paladin, reborn knight, reborn druid)
Knights + 10% total health, 20% total mana
Mages + 10% total health, 15% total mana
Paladins + 15% total health, 5% total mana

2nd = permanent 30% increased exp and skill rate, auto advance artifact weapon 5 levels (this way we get more damage with our rebirths yay)

3th = permanent 55% increased exp and skill rate, auto advance artifact weapon 5 levels

4th = Elemental Charms, new outfit and vocation change to (arcane sorcerer, enlightened druid, divine paladin, supreme knight)

This is the final rebirth and after mastering should allow the character to unlock the full power of their vocation

Knights get a charm that allows them to right click it to switch between different elemental types for exori rai (fire, energy, ice)
Sorcerers get a charm that allows them to change their SD damage between Fire and Energy
Druids get a charm that allows them to change their SD damage between Ice and Earth
Paladins get a charm that allows them to change their Exori Con Rai between Holy and Death damage

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2: Current weapon progression (both artifact and non-artifact)

A lot of things here don't really seem too thought out.

I'm gonna quickly touch on artifact weapons, since I think they're pretty good overall. I just don't think there's many ways to really upgrade them as an individual. Example, I went around hunting Vampire Bosses hoping to progress my weapon a bit with the scrolls they drop. However, it was giving some sad shit like "+75 ap". While im at a 300% research rate and need over 10,000 points to further upgrade my weapon. Players would basically need to spam guild chat with "DUNGEONS????". To even have a chance at progressing their weapons.. and not every player on Cyntara has the option to grind dungeons daily with a team. So basically more solo means of upgrading would be nice (which I touched on in rebirths and daily rewards).

Anyways, onto main weapons. Your starter weapon has your name engraved on it and you're suppose to scale it up with you as you travel through Cyntara. But as is, the server seems to force you to get rid of this weapon multiple times. Right at the start of the game you get a better weapon as an upgrade to the original. This makes players actually throw out their original weapon thinking "this things a piece of junk". Come later to find out that it had their character names attached to it.

Another example of this is Annihilator. You need the quest to be able to progress your weapon beyond a certain stage, but when you finish the quest it just straight up gives you the next weapon upgrade as a reward choice making you want to ditch your "original weapon" again. So if I understand this correctly… the reward is being able to upgrade your weapon further, but then getting a completely new weapon which is the next upgrade down the line, through a reward chest. AND then still having upgrade your original into the weapon you just got if you want to keep using it?????? That honestly makes no sense. Inquisition has the same problem if I remember correctly.

So.. the solution. I'm surprised this wasn't already in the game since it's focused on progressing 1 weapon.. Weapon upgrade tokens. Non-tradeable / non-droppable tokens that will advance a weapon from one stage to the next with no chance of failure, depending on which token you have.

Stage 2 Tokens, will advance a weapon from stage 1 to stage 2. Stage 3 tokens advance a weapon from stage 2 to stage 3. ect.

You should never be getting a completely new weapon other than artifact honestly. Just ways to upgrade and progress the original.

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3: Future tweaking on high level items involving enchanting

As I've said previously, enchanting does what it needs too and offers a noticeable difference between a set that isn't enchanted and a set that is. My problem though is that items progress way too slowly. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Lavos Armor gives 3+ skills while being one of the most easily obtainable armors in game.

Royal Draken Armor gives 4+ skills while being one of the best amors an EK can wish to have.

Which is a total difference of a 1 skill level increase. So going from one of the easiest armors to get that has a level req of 250, to one of the hardest to get which req at least 650.. nets you a total of 1 skill?

Honestly this wouldn't be a HUGE problem if enchanting wasn't in the game. BUT that difference literally is something you get out of a lesser enchant crystal.. So when we start talking about things like mage items and magic level which scales similarly (the best mage spellbook giving 14+ ml and one of the first you get giving 8+). You can start the see the issue.

I could just take a full on noob set, first items you start with in the game, throw enchant slots on every piece and just pour crit and magic level into it. Once I hit that 100 magic level and 100% crit, there's actually no noticeable difference between that set and a "end game" mage set. This can obviously be applied to the other vocs, I'm just using mage as the main example.

The solution for this is just better item progression. The higher up in tier the item, the more you shouldn't have to rely on enchants like skill and magic level. They should be giving decent skills to close that gap between how much ML they actually need to hit cap. That way when you get to the point you've freed up a decent amount of your magic level enchants, you can start investing into things like luck, elemental protection, maybe even regen onto your set. Instead of just being forced into crit and magic level where the enchantment makes more of a difference than the actual item itself.

You'd still be able to take a noob set and make it match in terms of damage by dumping crit and magic level yes, but that noob set would also be losing out on the potential advantage higher level sets would give in the form of enchantment freedom and not being bound to only 2 enchant types.

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4: Daily rewards and play points

This will just be a repost from discord since I already said everything I need too about it there. Just posting here so it doesn't get lost.

#1386 Reply

Trith


Posts: 315
Likes: 117
Member since: v6
Discord: Trith#1471

This shit is really good i love it

#1387 Reply

Joan


Posts: 22
Likes: 5
Member since: v10-s2

Absolutely agree on all, except the first which I'm hesitant about, but not because its a bad idea, just because I want people to keep thinking about possible Rebirthing rewards and not settle for these suggested here. I also really hope we can make it to at least 10-20 rebirths and not settle for 4.

HP% and MP% increase on rebirth shouldn't be a problem if potions are balanced properly, including severe nerf(NOT removal) of friend-potting(I don't want this feature gone because its a very powerful strategic feature that can mean the difference between a bad and a good team), so that higher HP/Mana doesn't give a long-term advantage in battle, but only a short term(a person is able to tank longer, but only until he/she inevitably runs out of mana/HP, which should happen even if its only 3 or 4 players attacking them, then he/she will be tanking the same as everyone else).

However I do have issues with Rewards for #2 and #3 Rebirth, as those things give long-term a game-breaking advantage over those who haven't completed the 2nd and 3rd Rebirth, and the people who are late to rebirthing will take ages(if ever) to catch up. However, I don't completely disagree with these two either, only partially.

Regarding the fourth reward, this Charm of course should definitely be Unique/Soulbound, meaning this item cannot leave the character it was granted to or used by any other character under any circumstance, ever. And to expand a bit on this Charm thing, making it change the Knight/Paladin's basic attack element if they desire could be cool too.


Regards, Zaul

#1389 Reply

Zakyrie


Posts: 19
Likes: 17
Member since: v6

I strongly disagree with the 10-20 rebirths, it's just too much and becomes extremely tedious after awhile. You want to keep things fun and somewhat fresh. Shit would get old really fast and only the most dedicated of botters would ever see that goal. Also, good luck trying to come up with meanwhile rewards for those players that manage to rebirth that many times. We also are leaving out the most important part where Cyntara is known to reset quite often. All the work out the window just doesn't seem worth it.

If you want to keep players on a game or server, you have to make it feel like they're doing something worth while. Where they start to feel an attachment to their character and feel like there's actual progression happening. Which is why "engraved weapons" and artifact weapons were such a nice idea.

Which is the entire idea behind rebirth #2 and #3.

After hitting rebirth level twice, your character learns from past experiences and it takes them less time to do that exact same grind. It also makes it feel like less of a grind pushing you to keep moving on with an increased EXP rate and you can actually feel the benefits of leveling / investing the time rebirthing your character.

I also think you overestimate the advantage of raised EXP. This goes hand in hand with my previous post of lowering overall EXP rates. Right now if you hand out 2x EXP to players they'll be getting level 2000 within days because at level 1400-1600 you still have a 4x EXP rate. So with double EXP that's basically 8x EXP at a very high level. This means we get basically no EXP boosts at all on current Cyntara since the overall rates are just too high to keep them balanced.

Now do the same thing when the EXP rate is at 1x at level 1400 and that double EXP is now only a 2x rate. You're not shooting up to level 2000 overnight.

Having a raised EXP rate is essential to keep players from thinking "it's just not worth it" and quitting after the first rebirth, fearing doing that same grind 3 more times.

Basically would you rather have level 1800 players a month into the server, where new players see this and don't even give the game a try. Or level 900-1200 characters with raised EXP from spending time rebirthing. This will be huge for server longevity since even at a 55% increased EXP rate, at level 1400+ thats only 1.55x EXP, vs the current 4x at the same level on live.

#1392 Reply

Joan


Posts: 22
Likes: 5
Member since: v10-s2

Of course, I was thinking about a Cyntara that will never reset. If the consensus is that the server is going to continue resetting I wouldn't even bother changing anything, because I cannot take a resetting server seriously beyond a cheap, 1-2 months seasonal war OT.


But no mentally sane person could feel any attachment to their characters if they knew full well that its going to reset some months/a year from that moment, I certainly don't, and that's why I never bother leveling my characters beyond the bare minimum to war, or bother with quests that aren't absolutely necessary to increase my PvP potential, noone could ever feel any attachment to their character, belongings and achievements if they knew it'll all be gone in a mere year at most.


I ended up agreeing that EXP needed changes, but much more drastic changes than 1200 in a month. This is assuming we're speaking about a never resetting Cyntara, for the resetting Cyntara we now have I couldn't care less about 1200 in a month, 2000 in a month, or 99999999 in a month. It will all be gone soon enough anyway.


I want neither of those things, because there are better options. Just seeing players above level 1000 isn't healthy, it gives a sense of hopelessness to anyone who doesn't know all they need to know about Cyntara and knows they can catch up real quick by playing efficiently. That one extra zero matters.

Regards, Zaul

#1393 Reply

Diath


Posts: 190
Likes: 164
Member since: v8
Discord: diath#4938

The Alternate Fate quest reward definitely needs to be reworked however I don't really like the proposed rebirth ideas here (specifically 1, 2 and 3). They introduce too much power creep, further widen the gap between new players and experienced players, and make the general gameplay even harder to balance - something that's already really hard to deal with as-is. I really like the charms ideas and I can definitely see a few variants of these (maybe with slight alterations) implemented in the future - whether obtainable through rebirth or a new end-game quest. We actually have an idea that could be used as a reward for the Alternate Fate quest however this would change the semantics of the quest since there would be no rebirth so to speak but it would provide players with further character progression system but I do not want to go into the specific details of this system as it's just a really rough idea for now and may or may not get implemented.

Addressing the first part of the weapon progression system the reason why some token sources feel so lacking compared to dungeons is because dungeons were initially meant to be the sole source of AP tokens, other sources have progressively been added later, some even after the release (such as the prey tasks). However this isn't the only issue with the artifact system and there are a few other things that need to be addressed as well (such as not being able to let other people enchant your artifact weapon) - most of the issues related to the artifact weapons stem from the fact that it's still a fresh system and the fact that it was hard to fit into the rest of the weapon progression so there's still a lot of things that need to be fleshed out.

As for the daily rewards, this needs to be addressed. Honestly the reason why the daily rewards are so underwhelming is because even though the system and the streak bonuses were ready much earlier prior to the release, we kept delaying the actual rewards while working on other things because the rewards were mostly easy to implement once we had ideas for them however we ended up with like 20 ideas but none of them that felt either rewarding or satisfactory so we ended up just using some filler rewards so that the feature, and most importantly the streak bonuses, are accessible anyway. This has not been addressed later mostly because there were a lot of things that came up post-release that needed to be addressed urgently for the most part so they were taking priority over the rewards. Also I don't see Cyntara Coins being part of the rewards as it could be easily exploitable since the coins can be deposited into the bank account.

#1394 Reply

Zakyrie


Posts: 19
Likes: 17
Member since: v6

A gap between new and players who have put a lot of time into the game is essential for an MMO to work, or else you're just grinding for no reason. I agree it's bad when its things like level 2000 vs level 600, but non-visible or non-obvious things such as a little more % hp and mana and increased EXP rate after countless hours are completely fine IMO.

Back when v6 was a thing, you'd get HP and mana per rebirth. So a level 1000 mage at 20 rebirths would have 12k HP and 50k Mana, vs a 0 rebirth level 1000 mage having like 6k HP and 30k Mana.

I can't remember a single person complaining about this. Even in wars with 20 rebirth characters vs 0 rebirth characters. Because the most important thing to people was that they were around the same level, so the gap (even 20 rebirths apart) didn't "feel" that big.


Do you mind explaining why you think Cyntara coins would be exploitable?

My idea was, you claim daily rewards once per day, per account / IP. That's 100 coins a week. It would take a month just to get 400 coins, a standard outfit is like 500.

Yes, you can deposit coins. But when you're account limited to 100 per week through daily rewards. I don't see the problem, because there's no other way they're getting coins through different characters and just dumping them into the bank on the account they're on. Like you could even make them non-drop / non-tradeable if you want. I don't see the issue.

#1397 Reply

Diath


Posts: 190
Likes: 164
Member since: v8
Discord: diath#4938

While I agree that people who have put significant effort and time into their characters should have an advantage the progression should be linear rather than the "if you reach this arbitrary checkpoint you will get a bunch of raw stats dumped at you" thing.
I think the artifact system does it well and ideally I'd like to see something similar with regards to rebirth where people that stick around but aren't as invested will have a chance to unlock some sort of additional progression but people that invest a lot of time will have an incremental advantage instead.
The increased experience rate, health and mana also directly translate to experience level gap because while you'd normally lose your level after the rebirth, catching up won't take as much time, and once you catch up, you will be taking levels over someone without rebirth at a much more accelerated rate.

We shouldn't discourage people from playing multiple characters by implementing an account lock. They should be able to redeem the rewards on each character individually if they wish so.

Unless you mean that the account/IP lock should simply work with this specific reward in which case it's problematic because we would need to ensure that once you choose the reward on one character, your other characters do not lose the streak because they are no longer able to pick up their daily. This is even harder if we consider the fact that the reward lane position between characters does not necessarily have to be in sync.

This would also require various exceptions to the reward system making it less maintainable in the future however it's not that big of an issue I guess since it would be mostly "work on it once and forget about it forever" type of thing.

Even with the account/IP locks, there's absolutely nothing that would stop people from creating multiple accounts and using a cheap $1/mo VPN or resetting their network adapter if their ISP's DHCP server has short IP lease time effectively bypassing the lock and reaping the rewards anyway. You may say that it's a minor case but I guarantee that if it can be exploited it WILL be exploited.

#1402 Reply