[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

Regarding Desync, and I'm sure this has already been mentioned and is more than well known by you devs, but the most effective solution (obsiously costly, hence known but not enacted) is more servers.

I live in Minnesota, thanks to Texas server I don't have as bad of an experience as many, but I feel it too. Although it doesn't improve my experience, I for sure recommend both an East and West coast U.S. server and something in the way of south east Australia. I only mention these locations in particular because of population and their tendency to sport a lot of players. Especially east coast U.S. As for Southern Aussie, an additional reason being more space between it and the Singapore server, hitting closer to more dense Aussie cities and New Zealand as well.

For east coast, best location would be New York.
West coast, California (obviously).
As for Australia my best guess is going to be Sydney.

But servers cost money, I'm sure this is a large factor in that right now. Just something to keep in mind when the time comes. You probably already do this, but research before deciding on a location, Texas was a good choice.

I am a solo player because I hate this free-for-all item distribution system and the risk to party up is much higher than to get that +50% quantity for each player. (especially if you don't have many/any friends playing that game and you want to hop in for 1-2 hour gameplay).

The second issue is, the map drop rate is very random and not high at all. I sometimes get 2 lvl 66 maps in docks and sometimes i get 5 times in a row 0 maps. Well that's not very bad, but it's very difficult to get higher level maps IN maps. My highest map I got was lvl 69 and after doing some maps, I had to begin with lvl 66 maps again.

The time to get into higher level maps with only relying on drop rates is really long even though I have increased monster pack size/magic/rare monster and/or +10-45% quantity.

you guys are definitely starting to lure me into the race scene, really looking forward to this system maturing. A+.

Thanks for giving us this "development wishlist".

Heres the thing, not wanting to nerf ranged is all well and good but I do believe it needs some kind of nerf. Specifically I think you should remove the ability for spells to "shotgun" as most would put it. That right there is one of the major reasons that range severely outperforms melee. The primary reason I support this is because the combat in this game is boring as it is. At the moment its just a one button fest for MOST people(not all mind you, just most people do this). I think you should force people to use more than one damage ability; and I believe removing "shotgun" from abilities would do this.

Melee Splash gem was an "ok" attempt at this but in reality it is not very useful. It should have just added an aoe to the single target attack, with a leveling increment similar but reduced from that of elemental equilibrium.

On another note, specifically maps. A great deal of people seem to have trouble keeping maps. I realize with this type of game you should avoid any "guarantees" however, you should also think of your players actually having "fun" and not getting severely discouraged. A suggestion to that cause: have a chest in boss room of level 66 maps that is locked until all monsters in the zone are dead. When all monsters are dead it unlocks and there is one level 66 map inside. Only that map and never anything more and never being able to be modified to more than that one map.

Just my 2cents~

On the decreased white item drops for maps, you noted that currency, skill and map drops would remain intact, however I would like to add that lowering IIQ would also lower the chance of getting 6S and 5&6L items, which are also quite rare and valuable and should thus also be compensated for.
That's the only thing missing I could find!

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D4wdl wrote:

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Laloo1990 wrote:

IMO it would be nice if the life nods where upgrades, since if you play CI for example, you can easily get to 5k or more of shield, but normaly if you play with life and melee, you get around 3k, plus if you play CI you just go away for literaly 3 seconds and you have full shield back up. BTW life regen could use some love.
Life leech also could be upgrade, if you take vaal pact you simple will die from things like viper strike, and the life leech isnt that great with the cap.
Also it would be very nice if staking defense get some interaction with the elemental resist, its seems like with all the elemental damage from monsters and people, that there is no point in staking defense, and for 12k defense you only get like 54% reduce or less, but staking elemental resistances is SO easy you get 75% almost all the time, so this would give IMO melee physicals dude more resist to elementals too. I only say this becouse i have a duelist lvl 77 with 12k armor, 3,2k life and almost 75 all elemental resist (not chaos) and physical moster almost dont hurt me, but if they come like 3 or 4 Voidbearer i almost died in 1 sec. This is just my opinion. I really love the game :) and i really like how you guys update it every week or so.

I support this

I don't ;P

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JohnChance wrote:

Chris,

This junk heap needs to GO. I'm interested in the melee discussion but how do I FIND it in 50+ pages of posts and follow what is being said and how it is evolving? How does your staff isolate important discussions on individual topics?

It's just awful and it will get worse as more topics are added to the manifesto. Right now I'm looking for one topic, but eventually there may be several completely different conversations I want to be involved in or simply keep updated about.

He has a point.
There should probably be a different tread for each topic of the manifesto.
Would be MUCH easyer for both you guys and us.

De-sync problems and client/serve dichotomy.

Embracing the vision of a impactful, instant and smooth playability, I suggest the client not only sends his information of entities to the server but also suggest to the server a course of decision. Having the server completely free to compute a different solution than the client is also something I think decreases this vision. If the client is made in a way it makes exactly the same choices the server would make, its almost impossible for a de-sync to occur. This would come at the cost of constant syncing, even when apparently not needed.

Hope people have more interesting ideas : )

Good Luck! client server syncing is one hell of an headache, I would know :P

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Ildurnest wrote:

De-sync problems...
...
Hope people have more interesting ideas : )
...

Here is my idea:
What if, instead of syncing the client to the server when they become too out of sync, you sync the server to the client, after having made sure that the information sent by the server is possible, i.e. the client has not cheated.

Its difficult to explain so try to use your imagination and keep an open mind:

When you click on the ground/mob, the client does not only send "has clicked at this position" to the server, but also the TIME at wich you've clicked:
"has clicked at this position at (insert Timestamp here)"
The server then takes this time in consideration when calculating your position:
"You already started walking 104 milliseconds ago so now you are there"
There. You just syncked the server to the client.

There should be a way to verrify that the timestamp is valid (client has not cheated)

If the information sent by the client is correct/possible, you sync the server to that, if not (the client cheated), you sync the client to the server as you do now.


P.S. I know nothing of this, just trowing ideas out there.

Its easy to see, how this wont go much further than the Q&A thread did.

I may be wrong, ad i will eat my words if that day comes, but im pretty sure you guys are biting off WAY more than you can hack.

As is now, Chris would have to be seated at his desk from open to close, and doing nothing but following up on the manifesto, and replying to all the questions / concerns that are arising about the state of this game.

And i can promise you, hes not doing that.

If i were you guys (gladly im not), i would be focusing in on fixing the /sad panda "lack of balance and smooth play" that has been introduced since OB, but yet, all i see is MORE content being added, and next to nothing being done about the stuff you did add.