Okay, So Let's all think back on our subject for a bit.
So What was wrong with FFO's Old experience syste?

1. It allowed for power leveling.

Why is this a problem?
-You'd have new players with no assistance what so ever feeling drowned out by the people who have end game characters super charging thier characters to higher levels.

-You'd have people leveling up abilites they don't even use for the sake of obtaining other abilities.

2. Disbalances the game

-This overall displaces the society.

-You have weaker players being in environments that arent' normally suitable to them.

3. In some cases Content get's neglected.

- Some people like to fight mobs to get good equipment, but they have been several cases in the past that due to newer people being power leveled, they never even got involved with the quest-line.

- The more coordinated people used this fact with power levelng as well to spam Garland to get some of the best drops in the game.


I mean the list goes on, this is just touching slightly on why the old system was flawed, but yet people are asking for more changes to the experience and leveling system.

The way it currently works is a lot better, but even as a new player i think it takes way too much time to train your character, I mean sure we've upped the prof rates before in the past, but if we up them too much the the game is too easy, and the game shouldn't be easy moded in such a manner.

So with some consideration my suggestion is as follows.
Oh, and before I start.
(MY IDEA IS ONLY CONVENIENT FOR TERULIA) IF anyone comes up with a system relative to FFO then post it here, saying whats wrong with the old system, what changes can be done to fix it, and how those changes would help, this makes gaku more likely to consider changes.

ANYWAYS
1. Slightly enhance the natural proffing system
-increase the prof rate of status spells since they aren't as frequently used.
-increase the prof rate of utility skills dramatically(The society shouldnt be spammed with a ton of crafted equipment because people are trying to prof up utility or crafting abilities.)
2. Add an allowance system.
- Allowance is designated to specific jobs, as in using a Priest skill while having priest as primary or secondary gives Priest Allowance, but this allowance isint usable in any other job.
3. Make all allowances fade when you log out.

-----------------
How this system helps.

1. the strictly natural prof rate system works but it is too much of a grind. Terulia already has a de-profing system that lowers your prof as you die or are inactive, this system is for the sake of inactive people suddenly logging in to defend their domain not being as strong as they'd be if they actually played the game. And this system prevents players from being 100% capped all the time, giving them a reason to train every so often even as higher levels. This system would allow for players to level up other job specific abilites by continuing to fufil the role of that job by using it's other abilities. The game Is already having a small gap in power based apon your interactivity with your own kingdom, and power balances are already resolved so to say. With a system such as this players advance at a steady pace promoting them to involve themselves with content they're capable of handeling as opposed to just rushing through the game missing quests and other contents, an adventurer should have gone through ordeals before he slays the dragon at the end of the story.

Again, the list goes on but this pretty much touches on the the overall concept.

Oldbie stance~ This idea is not completely my own, it came apon with brainstorming of several parties, sure the idea is subject to improvements, but I'm pretty sure i'm not completely re-working the idea just because a hand full of people don't like it. Most wouldnt consider it because it's Terulia, and supposedly an incomplete game such as terulia sucks. My point on that is, not all betas are near perfect.
FFO Got to be as amazing of a game as it is with alot of development.
Terulia will get there one day.(In the near future at this rate)

_________________________________________

First of all, when examining the topic of experience gain and 'progressing' through an online game we have to consider a few things. First of all, what is our primary goal with a progressive system?

The simple act of adding in a progressive experience system changes the divide of players from two groups to four groups:

Skilled
Unskilled
Trained
Untrained

In no game will progression ever be a substitute for skill. In no game with progression will there ever be a lack of divide between people who "powerlevel" and people who don't. No matter what kind of experience system we use, there will be a way to abuse it, there will be a way to no-life to the top, and there will be a clear divide between players who barely play and players who play every day.

If we are going to keep the ability to level up, whether base stats or skills, then we're going to have a second pair of players. Then again, without such an ability, it stops an "RPG" in the "classic" sense.

It is okay to try and figure out a way to make a simple, easy way for training in Terulia, with the fewest amount of exploits, but the fact is that no matter what there will be particular ways to abuse it. Eventually there needs to be a point where we stop preventing powerleveling and decide if we want "skill" to be the determining factor in PvP or "trained".

From that decision, we can branch off into other things. Terulia has already begun some of that stuff - it's a lot more skill-based than trained-based. Whereas in FFO, eventually you can bruteforce through anything with sheer stats and gear, in Terulia there is a lot more of stuff that you have to learn how to adapt or what kind of parties to take to survive properly.

-You'd have people leveling up abilites they don't even use for the sake of obtaining other abilities.

The issue here is either a lack of skill from the general public (e.g. most RWs don't use Scan; most Ninja don't use Smokebomb) or a lack of utility from the spell itself (e.g. Reveal). In the former, there's nothing to be done but to lol at the meta of the players. In the latter, there are certain changes to be done. I would like to stress that in these cases sometimes less is more - do not have a bajillion spells where half of them really have little utility overall.

1. Slightly enhance the natural proffing system
-increase the prof rate of status spells since they aren't as frequently used.

No. First of all, anyone that does not use status spells in anything but PvP is pretty much a scrub. All status spells have some sort of utility somewhere in PvE all ready, and will have even more so with the diversity of enemies in Terulia. I direct you to above: we just lol at the meta of players who don't use ****. As it stands in FFO status spells increase fine, and I expect those numbers to be translated mostly verbatim to Terulia.

-increase the prof rate of utility skills dramatically(The society shouldnt be spammed with a ton of crafted equipment because people are trying to prof up utility or crafting abilities.)

This one has fair arguments on either side. For now, I'll just direct you to something I've recently come across in Wakfu:

I have begun crafting Long Distance Weapons - that is how I decided I could help my guild most. All of the LDWs up to Level 20 Crafting weapon are pretty much useless, but after that they start to get pretty useful. To get my LDW Crafting to Level 13, I crafted 150 Buzzard Bows, a Level 0 craft. The gathering of the materials and the total time spent crafting, I ended up spending roughly 6 or 7 hours on this.

While I was doing this, I was bothered about it being such a steep grind to get even mildly useful at this skill, and I decided that it's better that it is. If it only took like 10 Bows to get to Level 20, then the result would almost be an entire economical collapse - these crafted weapons would be going around everywhere, and would be worth nothing. Taking the crafting as a profession for money would be a joke, because they are worthless. Since a lot of these weapons are also better than what monsters could drop at an equivalent level, then monster drops would also be worthless.

Like I talked about before, if there's going to be a progressive leveling system, there's going to be a divide between Trained and Untrained. This reflects IRL, and applies in this scenario as well. People who focus on crafted equipment will automatically do better than those who don't. There has to be a reasonable amount of grinding that will make it worth doing, or else it will either completely unbalance economies or be worthless anyway.

2. Add an allowance system.
- Allowance is designated to specific jobs, as in using a Priest skill while having priest as primary or secondary gives Priest Allowance, but this allowance isint usable in any other job.
3. Make all allowances fade when you log out.

Hi, I am basically the King of Abusing Allowance in FFO (KAAFFO for short). I can max out all my skills in an hour with minimal effort if I still really wanted to play this game.

This is still an abuseable system. But, it's a good system. It works well. Again, remember that any system with progression will have a divide between trained and untrained, and making the system needlessly complicated to try and prevent abuse is only going to make newbies not understand why their skills aren't leveling up. It's bad enough that we have three separate allowances right now for weapons, armor, and spells - but you want to add more.

_________________________________________

Shane wrote:

In no game will progression ever be a substitute for skill.more.

well aaaaaaaaxeually in many games i've played there's not much skill involved in the first place, or it's minimal, and whoever spent more time training or finding the better gear has a flat-out advantage. even FFO is like on this old silly grid-based movement system and most classes only have a handful of skills, it's neat how much tactics you can put into it but it still ain't no world of warcraft or whatever
in the end, in ffo, though, it's less been about levels or gear (with the exceptions of weirdos like marcus or ace) and more about teamwork and coordination. if you want to succeed in ffo, no matter who the opponent is pretty much, all you need is a collection of friends that all actually get along and will all actually listen to each other or a leader on voice chat or even just text (as norkia did it) and coordinate. and that's something that no gameplay alterations can really change or enhance -- let's just hope future 'groups' are better than knizia and most the groups i've seen that came after that MIRITE LMAO

but seriously, i like the idea of allowance, there just REALLY SERIOUSLY needs to be a visual bar on the screen or something to represent how much you have. I can't stand not knowing for sure at any time if I have enough allowance to actually get anything from acting, especially remembering that back when we were testing it some spells like most status spells took a MASSIVE chunk of it per use, and I don't know for sure if that's ever been fixed.

I would say that, as well, another bar visually representing the progress of a skill to its next level, maybe that you could only see by talking to a certain NPC or something, would be very nice. I mean, making the game challenging is one thing, but if you want to be more intuitive for players I think stuff like this is a good idea. But at LEAST an allowance bar, that'd make it a lot easier to explain to new players and feel a heck of a lot more comfortable to guys like me.

Oh, and Terulia doesn't even use allowance right now..? What does it do, then?

_________________________________________

My bad for not responding, I saw the post but i was on my phone at the time and it crapped out on me.

Anyways I see very little harm in giving this system a shot in regards to Terulia.

Universal Allowance in small sections wont work with terulia mostly because terulia has one system FFO does not.

The ability to activly change your job combination.

So an objective of this system it to make it so that people are unable to bank experience, or skill points or what ever term used here, and then switch job combination and instantly have a fully capable character without having to even have played it.

This system also does not retain experience into profs if you ditch that Job, this is to prevent people from slowly capping each diffrent job tree, and then be able to switch to what ever role they want to play on the fly. It's not going to be hard to train your character up with a little bit of time and detication with terulia, but It shouldn't be too easy.

Terulia isint going to have god-like prof values FFO currently has anyways, I'm recently finding out the numbers and how everything works behind prof values completely, and yes, it goes without being said already, the large gap in profs between new players and capped players in FFO is completely offsetting, and thats what appeals to the FFO community, sheer massive numbers, with terulia we hope to die that down a lot by focusing on players seeing smaller numbers, and relying on sheer skill as opposed to sheer power. After playing a ton of games and trying hands at the diffrent capabilities in those games, I realize it's not sheer power that makes a good player, I mean if that was the case than anyone could be a good player, What makes a good player is the amount of skill someone has, I hate to toot horns, and I won't but look at FFO history, It's always been Massive Team A, vs Small rebellion Team B in most pvp fights. The only time Small rebellion Team B would ever win was because they displayed more skill in those skirmishes than the Massive Team. In my opinon All higher numbers mean is more potential, But nothing's guaranteed.

And this is the premise behind alot of what we have planned in terulia. I'll touch up on how this relates to other subjects some other time.

_________________________________________

I don't think making it so "balanced" is such a good idea. I mean, making the game rely completely on skill is nice and all, but that will probably not appeal to the vast majority of casual players (not everyone who likes games is a god at them). The way I see what you're saying is that you NEED skill to be a good player, so the casual players who lack skill (probably a lot of them) will be BAD players. In my opinion, relying on skill is something for a completely PvP oriented game or for almost only hardcore players playing the game, which if it was so I would agree with the idea.

Also, this comment isn't really directed at any of the ideas (mostly because I'm too lazy to read them all thoroughly), but the general view of whatever. I probably have no clue what I'm talking about but here's some stuff to consider I guess.

_________________________________________

I don't see the game as going to rely completely on skill. Skill will be the only thing that offsets good players from the best players. You wont need to be a god to be a functioning member of society, look at every online society. Some people just play the game just to have a good time with their friends right? But there are the other people who like to excell at the game. Basically the game won't be lacking most of the fundamentals that make it a fun game, but for those players that wan't a little bit more out of what they put in, the option will be avaliable.

Example.
In typical FFO routene, Log in, Train, Get loot, Return to home, Sell loot/Spend experience/Upgrade armor, then repeat the process or move on to other things.

But in terulia that's going to be diffrent to an extent. So the training portion, It's not gooing to be like in FFO where players just wipe through monsters. Monsters are going to be pretty tough and sure, a player will be able to take on a few monsters, but a handfull of monsters will actually pose a threat to players, even capped players, promoting people always traveling with merc's or other players.

Next, the get loot portion, there won't be gold drops or equipment drops from normal monsters. Monsters will drop either components and sometimes items that are strictly for Selling.

Lastly, We're still figuring out a fair system opposed to what we have now, just being able to relog and return home, maybe a few more requirements could be met, or your player flat out stays logged in or acts as an npc while you're logged out, that portion is still being figured out but ultimately I figure that's good for role play, maybe you're able to set specific dialogue as a setting and then when you log out, your character acts as an npc for your spawn point until you log back in and then you assume the location of the NPC apon logging back in, and for logging out, maybe the NPC deticated to your player spawns once more, and makes it's way back to your spawn point. Terulia's going to be a really big continent, or at least that's our plans for it, and we're already removing warps on player built constructions, logging out is a warp procedure as well, so eliminating it promotes a few new aspects to gameplay. Actually having to travel from point A to point B, Only training near places you feel capable as opposed to in someone elses territory where as you cant just retreat, relog and be safe. Another major issue with relog causing warps is players being able to hoard things from point A to point B Via Mule. Terulia already seems to have a gold cap, as in if you log out with too much gold on you, you drop anything above the cap.

Anyways sorry for ranting, pretty much my point is, the game isin't going to be hard for people to grasp, but for people that want to fully utilize their resources, it should be possible.

The only "Full utilization" of resources that can be done in FFO are exploiting mechanics, and is no way that fair. I figure if we present the more deticated players with a fair way to be creative then we wouldnt have what we currently have with FFO.


_________________________________________

Alas marcus I must protest

A game of such complication and lack of ease will never be suited for a "casual player" if you have to take multiple paragraphs to explain the system in its simplest most aren't going to fully understand the complexities of it

As it is now explaining allowance, natural proffing, the gold cap for your level and item dropping takes quite a bit to explain fully to a "new" player, and as I've tried most get pissed/confused and don't bother going any further into the game

To make a game for "casual" players to understand and want to invest time into, you need simplicity, the complex only suits those who want to learn every detail and manipulate and abuse the mechanics to gain an advantage above others, thus we deem these "hardcore" players

Infact, ffo with experience dumping was the closest it has ever been to a casual player friendly game, simple mechanics and easy to understand

_________________________________________

Just tell new people it's like Morrowind, Obliivion, Skyrim.

Case closed. Simple yet understood.

Sure it may not be the whole truth, but if they wanted to know more they would put the time in to the investigate how it truly works. To be honest I have no clue how allowance works anymore but do I really need to? Nah not really.

All I need to know is that when I use an ability it makes it go up eventually.



_________________________________________

I think I'll try to put what I was attempting to convey in simpler terms.

(Note; everyone but Marcus is free to skip all the way down to 'My Suggestion' bolded below.)

We have two directions that can be taken:

Focus on skill as the deciding point in battles. The result will be a system leaning towards DotA-style games, such as League of Legends.

Focus on training as the deciding point in battles. The result will be a game leaning towards Phantom Brave or Disgaea style games.

There is also the supposed potential of being able to mix both, but I have not seen a multiplayer game that has successfully done both without having it being able to be broken to **** by people who can train a lot AND are just naturally good at the game.

What FFO is: A game leaning towards training. There is a good amount of skill required, but especially shown in recent servers, skill doesn't quite mean **** if you are against someone who is capped and has God Weapons of the Smite. Ultimately, the way to play FFO is to amass as much training and good gear as possible, and then focus on getting a bit better. There are a few "tricks" that can improve one's abilities in PvP, but it's simple. All exploits in the system or of the system are geared towards making as much money, experience, or loot possible.

Compared to Phantom Brave: The post-game material of this game is the definition of spergin. I've dumped some 200+ hours into this game before to turn my characters into the gods themselves. My Scrabbit had something like 1,830,000 Speed and at least two million attack power. And you know what? Barely killed the secret final boss. The way this was done was by constantly going into Level 9,999 Dungeons, getting Level 9,999 Equipment, fusing them onto my Scrabbit - and when he wasn't gaining any more stats, grinding him to Level 3,000, REBIRTHING HIM AND STARTING THE PROCESS OVER AGAIN. It was completely about the numbers. Skill stopped mattering when I could just brute-force another couple hundred thousand points of damage.

What Terulia is currently striving/showing to be: With recent updates and how it has been modified for various things, along with a few other ideas (i.e. there is only one tier of equipment, you can't engrave them, etc etc), along with practical admittance to this fact by Marcus, a game of skill. A large portion of training on monsters is going to be for the gathering of materials for things that are economical rather than forever grinding for EXP. Ideally, a player thirty minutes old can jump into a group PvP fight and make something of a difference, if not as much as those who have been playing for weeks.

Compared to League of Legends: Every fight is a separate instance, where everyone's characters start at Level 1, and progress through until hitting a cap of Level 18. The method of gaining EXP and Gold can only be streamlined through skill, as there is a hardcap on minions over time. The entire basis of the game is knowing how to react to what situations, and overall being better working with your team. It is all based on skill.

The only game I have ever seen come even close to being able to mix 'trained' with 'skill' fairly well in an online setting was Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst - which was perhaps one of the furthest things from PvP ever. In a player versus player setting, we should focus on one and have that be the deciding factor. When put in a vacuum, skill and trained are both equal in and of themselves, but combined, things start getting a bit blurred.

Skill: 'Unfair' in the sense that players can develop a keener sense on the game quicker than others. However, this is what makes it fair as the players who learn from their mistakes become better at the game, whereas the players who play in stasis will not improve.

Trained: 'Unfair' in the sense that whoever can dump the most time in the game is better than others. Also what makes it fair though, as the input will come closest to matching the output in terms of growth.

MY SUGGESTION:

Stop adding god damned bull**** making it more and more complicated to play the game for the purpose of making it fit a certain definition of fair. I could sit here and list credentials why no update you can do adding restrictions will stop me from breaking FFO. If something has potential to be broken, then it's going to be broken until it is removed. This is an important rule to follow in game design.

I really want to see Terulia become a successful, good game. There's a lot of things that might seem cool even in practice but are in reality bad game design. If we want to prevent something like FFO where amount of time grinding = relation to Godliness, then the obvious answer is the best answer - remove grinding to become more powerful. Add substance to the game in other places.

Just tell new people it's like Morrowind, Obliivion, Skyrim.

Case closed. Simple yet understood.

Sure it may not be the whole truth, but if they wanted to know more they would put the time in to the investigate how it truly works. To be honest I have no clue how allowance works anymore but do I really need to? Nah not really.

All I need to know is that when I use an ability it makes it go up eventually.

I think one issue is that all of these ideas are being bounced off of the people who are addicted to and still play FFO, and might even look at Terulia as some form of FFO that would be off the hub. A lot of the players who are of FFO just don't like it that they don't know how fast they're leveling up.

_________________________________________

Terulia is Currently Striving for a balance between both. During Incursions and PVP The game will lean more towards the skill side, but in PVE and Quests, Moreso training. It won't rely heavily on skill until endgame quests.

I don't think it's completely impossible to find somewhat of a balance between pure training and skill dependency, Although you raise a good point when you say

"I have not seen a multiplayer game that has successfully done both without having it being able to be broken to **** by people who can train a lot AND are just naturally good at the game."

. I hear you on that front, and people like that will exist in what ever multiplayer game you play, and they usually advance further than the rest, I'm not going to fight that statement with if ands or buts because theres no point. I mean sure mechanics and gameplay will make it so that people will need to cooperate to progress, but if people are compitent enough and skilled enough to cooperate in small coordinated units then so be it.

I agree that a Balance between the two is hard to find, but Players aren't going to be forced to fufil roles they dont want to. Look at FFO from a standpoint, Lets say you live in Diadel, you're just a citizen, your domain lord pisses off everyone else and the following day you log in to your domain being attacked, in that situation if the attackers , skill or training plays no role any more. The general basis behind where we're going with terulia is not only to attempt to make terulia a fair game, but to make players not have to deticate so much time to it while still playing it regularly. Most of the systems and mechanics are based around players being able to enjoy the game when they play it, and not have to do something or limit themselves just to enjoy the game.

_________________________________________

Recipe For A Good Game Named Terulia:

1 FFO 3.5
6 Class name changes
1 Garland name change
12 Uses of new class icons Relleth the *** made
1 Rename the world to Terulia

First, start with the FFO 3.5, think about how fun it was and how it didn't actually suck regardless of glitches.

Next, change minor things so that it's not a Final Fantasy game any more.

Now, you have a good game named Terulia that doesn't suck like Gaku's server & the Terulia test server.

For Marcus:

Hydro came out of the closet stop posting here and go meet him @ Bunny



_________________________________________

Uh, 3.5 doesn't exist anymore

Not only that, but the current Ffo server and terulia test don't suck in the least, everyone seems to be whining because you actually have to work for what you get and to add onto that ruling bugs have been fixed and a lot of balancing has been done so that the game is pretty fair to the general populace

Aka "waaaaa we can't abuse anymore this game sucks"

Q.Q more

_________________________________________

Duping bugs, **** phone auto correct

_________________________________________

Mobo wrote:

Recipe For A Good Game Named Terulia:

1 FFO 3.5
6 Class name changes
1 Garland name change
12 Uses of new class icons Relleth the elf made
1 Rename the world to Terulia

Remove 3.5 from the equation and that's an idea I've been trying out for a while now; all I really need are the monster icons for Terulia (only have a small handful of the small myriad of them at present) and who knows, maybe if I/we/group A does all the icon swapping work for Gaku, he might consider it, if only [airquotes]until the real Terulia is finished[/airquotes].

EDIT: When did my new class icons become known by the sub-community (by that I mean those who didn't play last hosting all too much/at all) of FFO?

_________________________________________

By group a rell you obviously mean me and you otherwise it'll never happen lol

_________________________________________

terulia wont be out till we are 30 anyways po

_________________________________________

Haha, well, even then cid we could atleast do something to assist terulia's progression, terulia is a good game but nobody wants to help but expects everything of gaku cha'kno

_________________________________________

You're all seeming to forget that Gaku doesn't need the FFO community for Terulia's playerbase because:
a) It'll appear on the HUB
b) If he makes ponies a playable race like rumors suggest, he'll already always have a game full of players (bronies)

The only thing we're good to him for is making stupid suggestions. He doesn't care if we like Terulia or not and we can't change his mind. The only hope FFO has left is if Gaku decides he's too lazy to finish Terulia and lets Relleth do his icon switchy thing.

tl;dr version: Shut up.

_________________________________________

Rarity wrote:

Uh, 3.5 doesn't exist anymore

Not only that, but the current Ffo server and terulia test don't suck in the least, everyone seems to be whining because you actually have to work for what you get and to add onto that ruling bugs have been fixed and a lot of balancing has been done so that the game is pretty fair to the general populace

Aka "waaaaa we can't abuse anymore this game sucks"

Q.Q more

Before I reply to anything else;

After 5 days of the current Gaku server, me and Black were both capped with 5-6 peices of Archwizard/Sage gear. Work for what you get? The game is a ****ing joke. It's too ****ing easy. If you try, you can cap a character overnight.

Not to mention I wasn't involved in any duping, I was banned because after I found out the admin who was handing out bans was one of the people abusing the same glitch, I "broke the rules" and took a lord-less domain.



The **** are you on Po?

_________________________________________

No idea who you are, so I just lotted you with the others

Was more of a general response to the group of whiny players

_________________________________________