blight delta 265-discussion

[Calyndrell]

What I want, what I believe Vahrokh wants, and many other unrepresented Dragons on the forums want, is dps back to our old dps. However you accomplish that, I am willing to give it a go. But I think our dps should go up. As I said before, we should be able to outdamage a biped warrior. Even a 10 school multiclassed biped warrior. Dragons =! bipeds, so stop trying to make us "equal".

Ok Explain to me why? why should a dragon be able to outdamage a rating 200 biped? taking all quests into account I would say a Dragon should roughly equal a multiclassed Melee based ped (I am strictly thinking berserker style ped one that is purely aimed at MELEE DPS) If the dragon throws EVERYTHING into that then sure.. but wait.. even a pure lunus melee dragon still has a Great HoT a great reactive shield. an amazing AoE. Dragons had it made so that they can alter their specs simply by changing their scales a melee dragon nolonger has terrible primal skill like it once did.. a spell casting dragon now has a decent multistriking Critical auto hit with the new GR
.. what I am trying to say is Dragons actually DO WELL when compared to bipeds if you don't think so you need to learn your dragon. its simple as that.

[Vahrokh]

Ok Explain to me why? why should a dragon be able to outdamage a rating 200 biped?

... and this, sadly, is the "dragon vs biped" dilemma in a nutshell. Bipeds rightly annoyed because they had to pour in so much effort just to see some punk doing as good as them. Dragons rightly annoyed because they WISH they could pour in so much effort to EARN that power, yet they can't because the game does not allow this.

Istaria will never be a peaceful MMO until this huge shortcoming is fixed.
Believe me, I asked for GR to be a regular multistrike (and not the "imba" golden I win button) 10 years ago (ravage at the time was a tickle) and I also asked 10 years ago to give us 200 rating to grind.
I don't even care to get different and more or less synergic abilities off the various classes, just to get some sort of global buff each "virtual new 100 class" we grind or implement 1 class that at 100 empowers melee by X%, the second improves healing by X% and so on.

Nobody wants a free meal. What we wished for, was to have unlocked the ability to earn the meal.

[Guaran]

..we should be able to outdamage a biped warrior. Even a 10 school multiclassed biped warrior. Dragons =! bipeds, so stop trying to make us "equal".

Ok Explain to me why? why should a dragon be able to outdamage a rating 200 biped?

Dragons =! bipeds. I've already said this. And you've said the opposite. More than once.

.. what I am trying to say is Dragons actually DO WELL when compared to bipeds if you don't think so you need to learn your dragon. its simple as that.

I do do quite well, but I am experienced at my toon. I still think dragon melee and breath dps should go up, to make up the difference lost from 3 uses of GR over a 60 second period.

We aren't Bambie dragons. We aren't Fluffy the killer puppy dragons.

We are bone splitting, fire breathing Dragons!

[Calyndrell]

... and this, sadly, is the "dragon vs biped" dilemma in a nutshell. Bipeds rightly annoyed because they had to pour in so much effort just to see some punk doing as good as them. Dragons rightly annoyed because they WISH they could pour in so much effort to EARN that power, yet they can't because the game does not allow this.

Istaria will never be a peaceful MMO until this huge shortcoming is fixed.
Believe me, I asked for GR to be a regular multistrike (and not the "imba" golden I win button) 10 years ago (ravage at the time was a tickle) and I also asked 10 years ago to give us 200 rating to grind.
I don't even care to get different and more or less synergic abilities off the various classes, just to get some sort of global buff each "virtual new 100 class" we grind or implement 1 class that at 100 empowers melee by X%, the second improves healing by X% and so on.

Nobody wants a free meal. What we wished for, was to have unlocked the ability to earn the meal.

Nothing like taking one sentence to throw the whole post out of context.

I have ZERO objection to a dragon being as powerful as a multiclassed ped. because dragons require ALOT of quests to get decent. I just want to know WHY he thinks a dragon should be able to outdamage a pure melee ped. considering all the other abilities dragons have.. like I mentioned the amazing HoT the great AoE etc etc.. dragons are incredibly versitile for one class to be honest a dragons rating should probably hop to 110 for being 100 adult and 130 or even higher for ancient.. and thats without all the other abilities.

[Guaran]

I have no problems with my Dragon being more powerful than my 250 rating ped.

Oh wait! He's not!

[Calyndrell]

I have no problems with my Dragon being more powerful than my 250 rating ped.

Oh wait! He's not!

OOh good cos i have no problem that he's not either Have a good day

[Vahrokh]

Nothing like taking one sentence to throw the whole post out of context.

I have ZERO objection to a dragon being as powerful as a multiclassed ped. because dragons require ALOT of quests to get decent. I just want to know WHY he thinks a dragon should be able to outdamage a pure melee ped. considering all the other abilities dragons have.. like I mentioned the amazing HoT the great AoE etc etc.. dragons are incredibly versitile for one class to be honest a dragons rating should probably hop to 110 for being 100 adult and 130 or even higher for ancient.. and thats without all the other abilities.

I wish I could grind 130 rating or even 200 rating! Then I could tell you "I levelled Healer, Reaver, Paladin... so I am meant to be awesome".

Plus, there's more to the story. Feel free to skip the TLDR, but I want to tell the original story, the story before it all. Here's Horizons: Empire of Istaria early story.

The "biped vs dragon" does not end with rating. There's a massive disconnect between what the original developers sold and what they gave. Istaria comes right after the last, great MUDs, those like RetroMUD (where my red dragon aptly called Vahrokh Vain lives). In those games, a selected handful of players could aspire to become a dragon. This usually involved huge sacrifices, like deleting their max level character (at the time it took years and years to get to max level, every easy death you'd lose up to 30% of a level), performing endless epic quests, having massive restrictions on gear, gear slots. Having massive body restrictions (I simply could not do some dungeons because I was too big to enter). Everything was made 5 times harder to do than playing a normal character. The rewards? They were epic and awesome. I could one hit stun a raid boss with one paw! A tail swipe and heabutt would basically put any creature on their knees. And so on. There was REALLY an epic feeling at playing one of the few dragons. I have been the only guy with the endless patience to play up to an high level dragon for years. I had the "Lord Of Dragons" title, I was the ONE ancient dragon in the whole game! An amazing, endless feeling of having hit the honey pot, to have ascended to epic-ness.

Then came Istaria, where dragons would stop being a 2D ASCII representation and would take life. They were portrayed as the essence of awesome. So players expected to play an awesome beast. Description: "The Dragons of Istaria are an enigmatic, ancient race whose existence predates the earliest of written records..."

Imagine the letdown at discovering:

- you were an unique snowflake... At the dawn of Istaria, I recall digging sand at Chiconis with 130+ other hatchlings!
- you were an hatchie who would easily die to 2 beetles.
- no armor whatsoever. I recall hatchies carnage by low level skeletons who multistriked them into oblivion.
- when Artifact Entertrainment introduced RoP, we strongly depended on bipeds even Lunus did.
- once adult, you found out that between lack of skill quests, self-depleting hoard, lack of gear, you were STILL basically an hatchling, just larger.
- then there were the endless bugs, of course. We were actually born to use gear (and had a buggy gear window for years, sometimes it'd switch to a biped user interface). Somebody at AE screwed us big time and we could not heal, our CDs were not working.

I have spent WEEKS on IRC with the AE devs (including a genius lead developer) checking the MS SQL database entries for our class one by one, finding a lot of value set to zero. Just putting values in there made us 20% stronger.

- shortly after, the first bipeds got their first max level... I'd go to hunt with my guild mates. They could pull hordes of Marrows and farm them, a dragon would close-to-instadie to a fraction of them. I still recall the original ED full of players, there were that "death point" sound going on all the time and it was 90% of the time dragons who died.

Add this to more bugs, unfinished quest lines, self consuming hoard (I had to play 18 (EIGHTEEN) hours a day to get to about full hoard, my whole guild creating items all day long for me to "eat"). And we were still just overgrown hatchies.

Then the dragons revolt started. Not because we wanted more (at first) but because we could fly and bipeds could not so they pressured the devs until they made us unable to "perk" and take off easily when engaged.

Then, hell broke loose. There has been one of the first MMO wide revolts in gaming history. Enough was enough. A ton of players had quit the game in silence already (also due to unbearable lag, crashes, unresponsive gameplay, exploits...) but others were not to accept defeat so easily. Istaria was their ONLY hope to play a dragon. So it all started. The Tazoon.com forums were literally set ablaze, people (me included) being banned and unbanned. In the end the devs revoked the self hoard consumption, introduced hoard items and Silver Strike + Gold Rage.
I was against accepting that quick "atomic bomb I WIN button" fix, but the others leading the riot were happy with that (too) quick fix.

And so we are now. About a decade later. Still debating about Gold Rage and a race that never got completed.

[Calyndrell]

I wish I could grind 130 rating or even 200 rating! Then I could tell you "I levelled Healer, Reaver, Paladin... so I am meant to be awesome".

Plus, there's more to the story. Feel free to skip the TLDR, but I want to tell the original story, the story before it all. Here's Horizons: Empire of Istaria early story.

The "biped vs dragon" does not end with rating. There's a massive disconnect between what the original developers sold and what they gave. Istaria comes right after the last, great MUDs, those like RetroMUD (where my red dragon aptly called Vahrokh Vain lives). In those games, a selected handful of players could aspire to become a dragon. This usually involved huge sacrifices, like deleting their max level character (at the time it took years and years to get to max level, every easy death you'd lose up to 30% of a level), performing endless epic quests, having massive restrictions on gear, gear slots. Having massive body restrictions (I simply could not do some dungeons because I was too big to enter). Everything was made 5 times harder to do than playing a normal character. The rewards? They were epic and awesome. I could one hit stun a raid boss with one paw! A tail swipe and heabutt would basically put any creature on their knees. And so on. There was REALLY an epic feeling at playing one of the few dragons. I have been the only guy with the endless patience to play up to an high level dragon for years. I had the "Lord Of Dragons" title, I was the ONE ancient dragon in the whole game! An amazing, endless feeling of having hit the honey pot, to have ascended to epic-ness.

Then came Istaria, where dragons would stop being a 2D ASCII representation and would take life. They were portrayed as the essence of awesome. So players expected to play an awesome beast. Description: "The Dragons of Istaria are an enigmatic, ancient race whose existence predates the earliest of written records..."

Imagine the letdown at discovering:

- you were an unique snowflake... At the dawn of Istaria, I recall digging sand at Chiconis with 130+ other hatchlings!
- you were an hatchie who would easily die to 2 beetles.
- no armor whatsoever. I recall hatchies carnage by low level skeletons who multistriked them into oblivion.
- when Artifact Entertrainment introduced RoP, we strongly depended on bipeds even Lunus did.
- once adult, you found out that between lack of skill quests, self-depleting hoard, lack of gear, you were STILL basically an hatchling, just larger.
- then there were the endless bugs, of course. We were actually born to use gear (and had a buggy gear window for years, sometimes it'd switch to a biped user interface). Somebody at AE screwed us big time and we could not heal, our CDs were not working.

I have spent WEEKS on IRC with the AE devs (including a genius lead developer) checking the MS SQL database entries for our class one by one, finding a lot of value set to zero. Just putting values in there made us 20% stronger.

- shortly after, the first bipeds got their first max level... I'd go to hunt with my guild mates. They could pull hordes of Marrows and farm them, a dragon would close-to-instadie to a fraction of them. I still recall the original ED full of players, there were that "death point" sound going on all the time and it was 90% of the time dragons who died.

Add this to more bugs, unfinished quest lines, self consuming hoard (I had to play 18 (EIGHTEEN) hours a day to get to about full hoard, my whole guild creating items all day long for me to "eat"). And we were still just overgrown hatchies.

Then the dragons revolt started. Not because we wanted more (at first) but because we could fly and bipeds could not so they pressured the devs until they made us unable to "perk" and take off easily when engaged.

Then, hell broke loose. There has been one of the first MMO wide revolts in gaming history. Enough was enough. A ton of players had quit the game in silence already (also due to unbearable lag, crashes, unresponsive gameplay, exploits...) but others were not to accept defeat so easily. Istaria was their ONLY hope to play a dragon. So it all started. The Tazoon.com forums were literally set ablaze, people (me included) being banned and unbanned. In the end the devs revoked the self hoard consumption, introduced hoard items and Silver Strike + Gold Rage.
I was against accepting that quick "atomic bomb I WIN button" fix, but the others leading the riot were happy with that (too) quick fix.

And so we are now. About a decade later. Still debating about Gold Rage and a race that never got completed.

LOL I didn't TLR however.. I know ALL THAT I played back then I remember the tazoon forums. back then I was a Biped my wife the dragon. I saw her eating bricks... lots and lots of bricks. So yes i saw it all.

[AmonGwareth]

I am closing this thread. Its run its course. If anyone has actual objective, substantive feedback to provide on ways to improve Dragons then feel free to start another thread. If all you have is accusations, veiled threats, recriminations, "I-told-you-sos" and hyperbole then please take it elsewhere.

For the record, the nerf to Gold Rage opens a door for all players of Dragons to improve the school as a whole. To address issues, to add things, to create more opportunities to build it how you want. I am open to suggestions and I will continue to listen and adjust over time. There's another patch coming soon with numerous tweaks to the Breath attacks, Bite, and others.

Teaser of what I have so far:

• Strength now plays as large a role in Dragon Breath skill calculation as Power
• Breath of Fire 1 now has a 10m range, 3 has a 14m range
• Breath of Fire 1 to 3 now all have a 1.5 second cooldown.
• Breath of Ice has a 30 second recycle and 1.5 second cooldown.
• Breath of Lightning has a 30 second recycle, 12 meter range, 1.5 second cooldown and a minimum damage of 175 (up from 40).
• Breath of Flame Burst now has a 90 second recycle and 2.5 second cooldown, but does less damage per hit (20% reduction).
• Breath of Acid has a 45 second recycle and 1.5 second cooldown.
• Bite's bleed are now known as Lacerations, lasts 15 seconds (was 35), ticks every 3 (was 5), and causes more damage per tick.
• Bite now recycles every 30 seconds, has a 2.5 second cooldown, has less variance in its damage, and shares a timer with the Power category.
• Shield of Gold now uses the Utility category instead of Critical (it will no longer share a timer with Gold Rage).
• Drain Bolt 9 and 10 will now accept 1 tech kit.
• Priceless Dragon Scales now have 2 tech slots and come in two varieties: Conqueror and Primalist.
• Preeminent Acclaim is now a tech kit available for sale by V'Tieru in exchange for Rift tokens and works on spells as Greater Renown does for melee attacks.
• Snarl 2, 3 and 4 now do mind damage instead of crush.
• Tail Whip recycles every 30 seconds (down from 40), shares a timer with Power abilities, and has a 2.0 cooldown. It is also has an 8 meter AoE range.

Thank you.