Spell Skill-up Cantrips and Defense dummies

S

soba

Dalayan Beginner
While looking around Northern Newport I noticed the archery dummies, this reminded me of when I was playing EQLive and back then I had a few similar ideas.

Cantrips:

Would it be possible to add lvl 1 spells (I call them cantrips) for all casting classes with a 0.5-1.0 cast time and very low recast times for all spell skills (Abj. Evo. etc) whose only purpose would be to skill up spell skills faster?

The leveling in this game is pretty fast from what I have seen and several classes have godawful spell choices to raise their skills up with, a few examples would be Conj for Wizards and Conj for Rangers.

Defense Dummies:

I realize from a RP point of view it made sense but from a game mechanic point of view it never made sense to me that a class like a Wizard or Rogue was penalized for playing his class correctly and not getting hit by having his Defense skill either go up extremely slowly or not at all.

Would it be possible to add dummies that for example hit extremely fast for 1 damage when struck and always procced a 1hp heal on his target at the same time? Perhaps the dummy could strike back for 0 damage instead but I'm not sure if there would be a way to code that.If your worried about the person just going afk and not "earning" his skills you could add a random powerful attack (with a 2 second prior warning) so the person would have to pay attention and stop attacking.

Adding those two things would eliminate a dull skill grind allowing the player to focus on the core fun parts of the game gaining experience,exploring and raiding while still having to work for his skills

Thank you for your time.
 
Just get a mob of greenies beating on you and your defense will go up. it's slow but it's more realistic from a RP training perspective...wanna learn to defend yourself? go pick a fight. :)
 
Does defense even go up with green mobs? Doesn't it have to be light blues for a skill up chance?

I know spell skill goes up with greenies, tho.
 
Certain skills will go up in duels and on green mobs. I am not sure if defense and offense are in that. Other skills like throwing, monk special skills, special defensive skills, etc. WILL go up, but not specific weapon skills (1hb, 2hb, etc)
 
Parry, dodge, etc. will go up on green mobs. You can't train offense on them due to them being trivial, but the defensive skills will notch. It's nice for those classes that you dont' want training defensive skills on light blues at 50+...ow.
 
I feel this would be a good topic in which to post my opinions regarding this skills issue.

Here is the situation for newbies:

Melee Newbie - Equips weapons, goes out and begins to kill monsters. Four or five kills later, newbie dings. Newbie got 2 skill-ups during that time, both in the weapon category he/she chose (1hs, etc). Newbie begins to kill monsters towards level two. Several minutes later, newbie dings, again, got 2 skill-ups in that time frame. Repeat process till level 7, newbie has obtained 8 or 9 total skill ups in weapons, maybe 2 or 3 points in offense and defense. What does this mean? It means that this adventurer is a poor excuse for a melee and should go hang themselves. No, really ...it means that they are extremely ineffective in combat because their skills are just too low. All the time they've been leveling, their skills have not been able to keep up with the pace. I don't expect a level 7 melee character to perform miracles, however, a non-twinked level 7 character should be able to defeat a level 4 monster with relative ease. At this point there are too many close calls with similar fights and it's because the character's skills are too low. In response to the above posts about letting mobs of greenies beat on you to skill up ...that's effective sure, but ridiculous. Skills shouldn't have to be trained by ...trains.

Caster Newbie - Same as above, except figure in casting skills, like alteration, divination, evocation, etc. These skills also increase too slowly, meaning a level 7 wizard could fizzle themselves manaless and end up dying to a mob that should have been cake for them to kill.

Weapons - This is another issue, not directly related to skills but a problem nonetheless. Most newbie weapons are weak/poor excuses for weapons. They have very low damage and low delay, as opposed to EQlive newbie weapons for example, which have medium damage and high delay. Okay, so you've got your new Tan'Esh, damage 4 and delay 19. You'll swing like a champ, but at level 4 (example) you'll miss a whole lot, and when you do connect you will hit for maybe 7 damage tops. So while you're fighting and having to hit the monster 15 times to kill it, it's beating the snot out of you because ....Your defense skills are still at 2! Or whatever (never been past 10 at level 8) and you're likely to die because of this. This makes for fights that last too long to be any fun. On top of that the risk vs. reward is horrid. That's another issue though outlined in another post.

I don't expect any of you devs to jump at this and go and change anything, it would be nice, but time speaks, and a whole lot of people have been successful playing on WR with the above problems. I'm sure quite a few people might even think I'm lazy and just want want want, which is not the case. You see I came to WR to have fun, and I have to admit that I've had very little of it as a newbie there. Because of the above skills problems and other issues the game just isn't fun at the starting levels.

I don't mean to sound like a selfish asshole here guys, I'm speaking for myself AND a few of my friends who play on WR, and I'm sure there are others who agree with me but are too afraid to speak up. I know that this is free, you guys work hard and we can't expect perfection, but I do expect some fun in the game. I was really hoping WR wouldn't be the same kind of timesink that EQlive was, and in some cases it's worse (IE, having to wait several RL hours for a door to open so my character can buy basic supplies or gear upgrades). At any rate, I've run EQemu servers and was a GM on Eqlive for a while as well, and I really think you guys have a kick ass server here, which I'm sure is a lot of fun for people with plat and higher level's. My suggestion to you is to raise the speed at which skills are learned for newbies (slightly) so that there is more balance between skills the characters' effectiveness. I would also suggest to slightly increase newbie weapon damage or shorten delay slightly, which in fact might not need to be done if the newbie's skills are at a reasonable level.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I sure hope Wiz or someone else in charge really listens to this. Just because people don't complain doesn't mean there isn't a problem. This server would really be a whole lot more fun to play on with the above suggestions. Take care.

Regards,
Sky
 
Yeah those skill points generally have no purpose. I had them ALL on Rabb and dumped them (and money) into getting bash and 1hb to max because I had neglected them in my youth. And boy was it worth it! Wait, no it wasn't. I still can't hit the broad side of a barn and my bash pretty much never works. ;(
 
I don't think casters have too much to worry about - it is tedious work but you can always cast spells to practice skills - not like there is much else to do if you are say...waiting for the boat. I have even nuked my self and practiced Bind Wound to up that skill some - course I don't do this much :). Also, I remember seeing in a thread in the past week or two that mentioned having low level dummy spells and if I recall Wiz wasn't closed to the possibility - so that may be in casters future to have low mana consuming practice spells.

For meleses, well I think that it is annoying but I also think that this is something that will balance over time. It makes it harder to stay on top of all melee skills but as you increase in level, so does the oppurtunity to increase those skills. I can say that just being an enchanter I have seen my skills starting to catch up at level 18 (also seems like skills are coming in much faster in general - both casting and melee). The one that seems to come the slowest is Defense - course could be also that I have haste and slow - so I am hitting more and the mob is hitting less.
 
I mostly disagree. Work those skills up Boys and Girls, along side with Sence Heading.

/get's all nostalgic
 
Devook said:
Apparently nobody knows how to right-click their guild leader. For shame.
Click to expand...

If this server is like EQLive you cannot raise Offense or Defense at a guildeader, you can however raise parry/dodge etc.The ideas in this post are mostly for an untwinked newbie/lowbie who would be worrying more about saving for spells and equipment rather than dumping money into a guildleader to raise skills, or who would rather work on the skills themselves but simply with a little less tedium involved.

dbum said:
Also, I remember seeing in a thread in the past week or two that mentioned having low level dummy spells and if I recall Wiz wasn't closed to the possibility - so that may be in casters future to have low mana consuming practice spells.
Click to expand...

That's good to hear. I'm not asking for my skillups to be handed to me but the current system is very tedious with certain skills, with these implemented it would be balanced IMO.

Iadas said:
I mostly disagree. Work those skills up Boys and Girls, along side with Sence Heading.

/get's all nostalgic
Click to expand...

The big difference being you can just put Sense Heading on your hotkeys and map the left or right movement button to it and level it up while traveling, my Sense Heading is already capped at lvl 12 :)

I fail to see how implementing faster casting lower mana cost spells for all spell skills would somehow negate working for your skills,it just balances the *amount* of work you put in for the benefit you get in the end.

Perhaps the defense dummy idea would need to be tweaked so it wouldn't simply be an afk skill-up fest, leave out the healing proc and the person would need to step back and either heal or bandage up..in fact having to bandage up you would be working on 2 skills at the same time :)
 
If it's still there, go to the monster summoner in Haven. You can choose the level and number of mobs you would like to beat on...no exp, but skill ups.

Eredhel

Edit: You will get an exp debt if you die to them, btw.
 
Casting skilll ups

You guys do know you can cast spells on corpses, right? So go kill a green, then sit and cast your nukes on that corpse.

Unless it's been changed on me....
 
Well, I cast on my pet and it works just fine - but I have found spell skills have been going up decently enough for my chanter - my druid on the other hand is having a hard go with fizzles - oh well, I'll survive.

My only beef with skill ups is forage - have it macro'd and I have yet to skill up beyond what money I have put into it - and haven't forage a thing either (skill is over 40 now).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom