Adepts

D

DernipDaGnome

Dalayan Adventurer
Adepts great aspect of the 1-65 game but sadly have become less and less accessible as the population diminishes. This is particularly acute once you reach the adepts that are in the level 34-52 range. Some of these require a robust force that is near impossible to organize given our population base. Now I would hate to see these mobs nerfed because I believe that, like all good content, they should remain a rewarding challenge.

What I propose is expanding the level range that can engage these mobs but apply Nadox style stat decreases on toons that are beyond the current level caps.

Instead of having a hard cap on who can engage these mobs have more of an ideal level to engage them. It would be necessary to impose a sliding scale debuff in that the further you got above the engage cap the heavier the debuff. This probably would have to include damage dealt as well.

I don't know what a good range would be but I would encourage something along the lines of up to level 44 for a level 34 adept with the harshest penalty being scaled at level 44 in a way that would put them on par with a level 34 toon. Perhaps even below par because we would want to still encourage players to engage these mobs when they are at the "ideal" level.

In place of toons not being able to engage with higher level buffs just have them be instantly dispelled if they are above the level cap.

I believe that changes to the adepts along these lines would allow this content to become more accessible to those who under the current conditions will most certainly not ever be able to see much of it. Perhaps some adept related quests could be added as well to spice things up just a little more.

I really like the work that the devs have been putting in of recent (and in the past) and I must express my thanks for their time and effort.

Thanks for reading,
Dernip
 
I always liked the implementation in everquest that let you delevel yourself by becoming a monster and even let you change classes to play with friends. I like the idea of making some of the more mid level adepts easier to tackle too. Cant remember the last time I saw someone kill or even attempt maggot corpse.
 
Its a shame Otcho, cause maggot infested corpse is a fun fight, with some nice loots. My pally adept slayer alt still uses that piercer as his 2h weapon, the proc is a nice aggro grab. But the problem isn't a lack of players completely, it is an issue of many people racing through those levels to get to the 55 game, if not race on to the 65 game.

The problem with a de-level option, is that you will get a bunch of higher levels de-leveling just to lock down certain adepts for specific loots. The hexdoll comes to mind as one of those cherished loots.
 
cian2 said:
this is a cool idea but not sure on the viability since nadox code is zone based
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Nadox-type gear-stat-changing code can happen on the fly. The main difficulty would have been updating the client to see the correctly altered values, but I know how to resend the inventory stats on the fly now so no issue there.

The real issue would be figuring out a formula to adjust item stats on the basis of intended level rather than a constant or anything directly related to the items themselves. Trying to make item stats also subtract natural level-based stat increases (HP, Mana) on top of adjustments to the items themselves would be needlessly complicated, and potentially thwarted by simply taking items off.

Temporary de-leveling would be required first of all. Which would have its own issues and complexities (we'd need a whole system to figure out whether you should be able to have rank x of AA y at level z for de-leveling to any level in the 51-64 range, for one). But even then, I wouldn't try to implement this until someone posts a formula to turn any weapon into something a level x would reasonably have. Ratio and worn stats, mind.
 
Perhaps what you are considering is more complicated than it needs to be. What about just a % decrease in HP/mana/dmg/heal (along with spell restrictions) that increases the further away away the toon is from the intended level of engage?
 
something like, hail the adept, tell it you would like to engage, and it debuffs you by x% (based on level above ideal max engage) across the board (like a negative codex thing) until you zone...

...maybe?
 
Wouldn't it be easier to just implement two sets of level ranges you can engage an adept at and for the second higher level bracket the mob stats scale up? You'd still need to collect people in the same range as you but it would give you even more chance to put something together.
 
DernipDaGnome said:
What about just a % decrease in HP/mana/dmg/heal
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How much more damage does a level 62 do than a level 52?

I guess my main question is, will level 65s and/or anyone with raid gear be excluded from this feature? Because Nadox has already demonstrated that % reductions do not work on them. A raid-geared toon reduced by 90% still has a huge advantage over a fresh 65 with the same reductions.
 
Shrouds were awesome. I believe it was increments of 5 levels you could turn to (5,10,15 and up), dps, tank and heal classes. Unlocking the different forms with a wider range of abilities and slightly increased power was pretty rewarding. Nothing like rolling around as a werewolf, I spent ages getting that.

I can't remember if you could loot or not with these shrouds, but I remember exp was transferred; yet it was only the # of exp that you got naturally at the level you chose, I don't think it was scaled up. If shrouds happened here, I'm not sure what the incentive would be other than to just play and get a tinsy bit of exp. Maybe on each adept one item for heal/dps/tank that is only for shroud creatures, grows with use, makes shroud cooler. It would be fun all the same. I re-joind Live when that shroud expansion came out (idk name) just because I loved the idea so much. It might bring the T6+ playerbase more in touch with the newer players and open up the club so to speak. I can imagine as a new player the powerful 65 crowd seeming like some kind of clique. Everyone always forgets what it's like to be the new guy.
 
Zaela said:
How much more damage does a level 62 do than a level 52?

I guess my main question is, will level 65s and/or anyone with raid gear be excluded from this feature?
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1.) I haven't parsed it.

2.) If you decide to include that high of a range. If would certainly recommend excluding 65s. I always thought that adepts were the chance for new players to get a taste of raiding. There is a lot of 65 content, which, is awesome. The 50-57 range would be problematic because the gear available can be quite OP (Fomelo Iloa). But, won't their always be ringers? Nerf ringers!

Adepts are a good aspect of Dalaya, especially for new players. It is a shame to see fun content go unused.

Dernip
 
A potentially simple way could be to find a reasonable stat allocation for a specific level. Say you want to kill a max lvl 30 adept but have some people in the raid >30. The adept could put a debuff on these people that nerfs all of their stats to a predetermined stat base that would be average for a lvl 30 and ignore all of there current stats/gear. So if you have a level 34 warrior and a level 38 warrior in the raid they would both get the debuff and have the exact same stats for the fight, even though their gear/level is different. It would need to also block spells above the set level. The work would be going threw every adept and finding a reasonable level of stats for every class.
 
DernipDaGnome said:
Adepts great aspect of the 1-65 game but sadly have become less and less accessible as the population diminishes. This is particularly acute once you reach the adepts that are in the level 34-52 range. Some of these require a robust force that is near impossible to organize given our population base. Now I would hate to see these mobs nerfed because I believe that, like all good content, they should remain a rewarding challenge.

What I propose is expanding the level range that can engage these mobs but apply Nadox style stat decreases on toons that are beyond the current level caps.

Instead of having a hard cap on who can engage these mobs have more of an ideal level to engage them. It would be necessary to impose a sliding scale debuff in that the further you got above the engage cap the heavier the debuff. This probably would have to include damage dealt as well.

I don't know what a good range would be but I would encourage something along the lines of up to level 44 for a level 34 adept with the harshest penalty being scaled at level 44 in a way that would put them on par with a level 34 toon. Perhaps even below par because we would want to still encourage players to engage these mobs when they are at the "ideal" level.

In place of toons not being able to engage with higher level buffs just have them be instantly dispelled if they are above the level cap.

I believe that changes to the adepts along these lines would allow this content to become more accessible to those who under the current conditions will most certainly not ever be able to see much of it. Perhaps some adept related quests could be added as well to spice things up just a little more.

I really like the work that the devs have been putting in of recent (and in the past) and I must express my thanks for their time and effort.

Thanks for reading,
Dernip
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Without reading the entire thread, I am going to jump in here and say this isn't really true. It has always been difficult to create raids for 34-52 adepts; hence the creation of the Open Raid subforum because there was one too many adept raid threads in the SoD Discussion forum. If you want to get an adept killed, then post a thread, and make it look pretty like this one.

One painful memory from several years ago is how it took 6 straight hours to get an Icefeather raid going -- when it came to LCR, I definitely planned days or a week in advance. Same with Traek --- there was a time when he was not killed much...and there was a time when Pounders were literally never killed.

If anything I would say it is easier now (as of a few months ago when I was last playing) to get adept raids going than it was a year, two years, three years, ever ago. Also let's not forget it's summer time hence lower activity
 
It was harder? Sad. It is easier now? Happy! All your opinion of course (which I am happy to have in this discussion)

I am not really understanding what is 'untrue' - you seem to make a very good argument in favor of these changes. 6 hours to do an icefeather raid is no bueno. Case and point let's have it not be like that.

However, Weo, if the core of your argument is that "yeah was hard and I did it so it should stay that way and thus suck for everyone who does it after me" then I think you are missing the point. Excuse me if this is a really crude interpretation.

By the way, thank you for pointing out the open raid forum. That is something that is certainly underutilized.

By increasing the level range to engage the adepts we have an opportunity to increase access to new players who might not have the wherewithal to organize such events. More fun for everyone and all that.
 
DernipDaGnome said:
By increasing the level range to engage the adepts we have an opportunity to increase access to new players who might not have the wherewithal to organize such events. More fun for everyone and all that.
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I don't think anyone would staunchly be opposed to this it's just hard to think of a simple system that accounts for and mitigates the large difference in prowess a few levels can make, especially for casters.
 
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