Results 1 to 10 of 10

Thread: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

  1. #1

    Unhappy It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Hey there folks! I just heard about this game today and wanted to try it out.

    First off, one character slot for a free account??? Come on man at least let it be two. There's no way I was gonna pick anything other than dragon with only one character slot. Anyhoo

    I naturally checked over the forums to read about what all dragons can do, and have been playing / experimenting for probably a couple of hours, and I'm very disappointed to find that dragons basically suck unless they go melee (or min-max like the devil)!

    Dragons also have only one "school" each for Adventurer and Crafting, and the game coding / design apparently doesn't currently permit them to be split into multiple schools at this time. Altogether this looks to me like dragons were rather rushed in design and implementation and need a serious gameplay overhaul, the kind that would basically break all existing dragon characters and be like "Sorry everybody, we've refunded all your training points et al since dragons are completely different now!"

    I was hoping to be like a templar sorta? A big ol' stone dragon sage, slow as molasses, full of archaeological knowledge (--> scary forgotten magic). I maxed out all the "be fat" sliders, she's thicc as all get out. Failing this idea I am okay with just making her a magic crafter but have to level her as a barbarian and spend however long on the respec!

    I haven't played any other race yet since I don't want to delete my dragon, so my impressions of the game are solely from a dragon perspective and completely ignorant of how the mechanics affect any other race. With that in mind, my suggestions are:

    • We've got to have those separate schools yo. (I should play a different race to see how separate schools actually work, they're a foreign concept to me as a dragon first character.)
    • Explain ingame what the stats actually do. "Helps with mentally complex craft skills" doesn't do it for me. Success rates? Quality levels? Resource saving? Extra material output? And which skills are "mentally complex" and which are "mentally demanding"? What does it mean???
    • Change Breath of Fire to be magic-based (or the higher between melee + magic). As it is, every single worthwhile attack dragons have is strictly melee-based and you'd have to be a madman to go magic. Also, is BoF seriously a single-target attack or am I just very unlucky with hitboxes? That mess should be an AoE mainstay
    • Possibly as part of the multiple schools overhaul, give dragons way more spells, especially attack spells whose cast times are proportionate to human life spans and not dragon ones. (And/or make one of the stats reduce cast times, like Dexterity)
    • Fix dragons' necks to have the "chest plating" not abruptly cut off right there it's quite jarring
    • Give Spitfyre her own movie, she's a darling


    I kind of like the general idea of the same stats influencing combat and crafting - I presume the point there is to separate fighters from crafters and the screwiness of the stats does that pretty well. But again, I have no idea how any of those stats work in either a combat or crafting sense, so.

    And don't worry I heard about the silly "wait until level 50 to become an adult so you get the bonus thingy" thingy. That'll be a while since I don't know if I'll get a standard access account yet, especially if dragons aren't gonna be patched anytime soon.

    P.S. It'd be awesome if there were multiple dragon races just like there are multiple not-dragon races. The classical lizards are all fine and dandy but I would hurl money at fluffy or leafy dragons

  2. #2

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    First of all, welcome to Istaria! I'll be covering your post in points for clarity's sake.

    Quote Originally Posted by LeFibS View Post
    First off, one character slot for a free account??? Come on man at least let it be two. There's no way I was gonna pick anything other than dragon with only one character slot. Anyhoo
    For this there is the archive button on the launcher, it will put your character in storage, stats and levels intact, and not have it count for your total number of characters, but you also can't play it anymore unless you unarchive it through a support ticket (a tool to do this from the launcher is in the works, no ETA currently)

    I naturally checked over the forums to read about what all dragons can do, and have been playing / experimenting for probably a couple of hours, and I'm very disappointed to find that dragons basically suck unless they go melee (or min-max like the devil)!
    This used to be true, however, a recent patch has included several more offensive spells for dragons across all tiers, and a hybrid build has been viable for years (viable in this case meaning just as good (if not better) than melee)

    Dragons also have only one "school" each for Adventurer and Crafting, and the game coding / design apparently doesn't currently permit them to be split into multiple schools at this time. Altogether this looks to me like dragons were rather rushed in design and implementation and need a serious gameplay overhaul, the kind that would basically break all existing dragon characters and be like "Sorry everybody, we've refunded all your training points et al since dragons are completely different now!"

    I was hoping to be like a templar sorta? A big ol' stone dragon sage, slow as molasses, full of archaeological knowledge (--> scary forgotten magic). I maxed out all the "be fat" sliders, she's thicc as all get out. Failing this idea I am okay with just making her a magic crafter but have to level her as a barbarian and spend however long on the respec!
    You're in essence correct there, originally, dragons did have multischooling (you can even find some files related to this in the client's files), however, it wasn't considered a good move by the community as they essentially became copy-pastes of the bipeds, but on 4 legs with wings (which during launch meant nothing as there was no RoP). That being said, you're also right on the idea of why there has been no multischooling for dragons re-introduced, in part it is because the community is really divided on the idea, but it's also because the sheer amount of reworking that would have to be done for the currently existing gameplay aspects (like the abilities that you quest for).

    [*]Explain ingame what the stats actually do. "Helps with mentally complex craft skills" doesn't do it for me. Success rates? Quality levels? Resource saving? Extra material output? And which skills are "mentally complex" and which are "mentally demanding"? What does it mean???
    Understandable point and we can take it into consideration to put some better explanation in-game, but in essence it only boosts stats that you can visibly see, if you go into your stats window and then craft for example, you'll see things like "Essence shaping" or "Smelting" followed by a number that is your current skill in the stat. Taking essence shaping as an example, this is used to shape wisp essence into orb, which can then be used for spells or other magical properties, making it a mentally complex skill.

    [*]Change Breath of Fire to be magic-based (or the higher between melee + magic). As it is, every single worthwhile attack dragons have is strictly melee-based and you'd have to be a madman to go magic. Also, is BoF seriously a single-target attack or am I just very unlucky with hitboxes? That mess should be an AoE mainstay
    All dragon breaths are spells, meaning they are boosted by your magic-based stats, this isn't directly clear but if I'm not mistaken, when you look at the tooltip for BoF it should have an entry along the lines of "Skill - Primal", this also goes for some abilities you would also consider "melee only" like Galewind.

    [*]Possibly as part of the multiple schools overhaul, give dragons way more spells, especially attack spells whose cast times are proportionate to human life spans and not dragon ones. (And/or make one of the stats reduce cast times, like Dexterity)
    Number of spells was already tackled before, cast timers are the same across all races and though we get that it makes combat feel slow at times, it's in part the nature of the beast. You can influence cast timers by using things that boost your "Delay", like Primal Gift of Alacrity.

    [*]Fix dragons' necks to have the "chest plating" not abruptly cut off right there it's quite jarring
    This won't be touched upon untill the Unreal move, and even then it will have to be heavily considered (at best there will just be options for neck-line or jaw-line), as some people design their characters to specifically have that. This is also the reason why many existing options that some might consider bad won't be changed for current istaria.

    [*]Give Spitfyre her own movie, she's a darling
    We'll consider it.

    I kind of like the general idea of the same stats influencing combat and crafting - I presume the point there is to separate fighters from crafters and the screwiness of the stats does that pretty well. But again, I have no idea how any of those stats work in either a combat or crafting sense, so.
    All stats influence both combat and crafting:
    Strength - Melee damage output and physically demanding tasks (like mining/quarrying)
    Power - Magic damage output and mentally demanding tasks (like essence harvesting/shaping)
    Dexterity - to hit/dodge for melee, for craft I can't exactly remember what defines dex, but it helps in the physical tasks
    Focus - to hit/dodge for magic, it also boosts healing spells, but like dex I can't remember the craft side except that it mirror for magic.

    P.S. It'd be awesome if there were multiple dragon races just like there are multiple not-dragon races. The classical lizards are all fine and dandy but I would hurl money at fluffy or leafy dragons
    This would sadly clash with existing lore, though there have been some ideas tossed around here and there, we also have an event in the works (unknown ETA) that would play around with the idea of dragon races.

    I hope my answers helped you out a bit, they might sound a bit rushed as I wrote them 10 minutes before I had to leave the house.
    Oooooh, what does this button do?

  3. #3

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    To expand a little bit on the stats-crafting question.

    Stats give boosts to all skills, with some stats giving more boost to certain skills, and sometimes no boost to other skills.

    Focus boosts mentally complex tasks I believe if the gist of the in-game tooltip. That is pretty vague, but the only time to even be concerned about stats with regards to crafting is in what gifts/enhances you use when about to craft something (easy to try all 4 stat enhances and see what gives the best boost to any particular skill by watching the change in the Character window - Skills - Craft), or when planning a set of crafting jewelry/scales.

    Both Jewelry and Scales come in strength, power, dexterity, and focus types. That means the base piece like a ring or a wing scale, gives a set amount of added Strength for example. So if you make a set with mining as the skill you want boosted, you will want to use strength (because it gives the largest boost to mining skill) jewelry/scales teched with mining craft tech where it can go, and sometimes miners blessing techs because these can sometimes apply where the main tech will not. They give a smaller skill increase but they help. Since your first character is a dragon, this is easier, since all the craft techs apply to all the pieces.

    For more dragon specific information, see this post http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ecommendations
    which covers recommended techs on scale types for Tier 5 sets of crafting scales. The information can be used to plan out lower tier sets as well, though only Tier 5 gets 3 tech slots. Tiers 1 and 2 can take 1 tech, Tiers 3 and 4 can take 2.

    Also, I would not recommend spending Training Points (on stats) for any crafting reasons, as the boost is too small to be worth it. As a level 100 with 1200 training points, putting the maximum allowed into Strength (600 or half of the total) would give you 150 strength, which gives you 13.5 Mining skill. This isn't much and mining is one of the highest boosted skills by Strength. Other skills the amount is even less. For this same reason, teching stats onto craft gear is also not recommended, save maybe for end game crafting doing t6 building, and even then it would only be on a couple pieces where nothing else would go anyway (biped crafting only). For a dragon this will never be needed. See more on that in the post linked above.
    Last edited by Guaran; March 21st, 2018 at 11:36 PM.

  4. #4
    Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Location
    Right behind you when you're not looking!
    Posts
    145

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Quote Originally Posted by LeFibS View Post

    and be like "Sorry everybody, we've refunded all your training points et al since dragons are completely different now!"
    Most has been answered already before, so I'll just respond to this, which kinda caught my eye. You can actually "buy back" training points however much you want, they're not permanently allocated. It takes about a day I believe to buy back either 300 or 600 training points, if you don't have that much training points it'll allow you to buy back as much as you've got/spent.

    Not sure if you knew or not, but it does seem like you think they're permanent/cost money to reallocate if I read what you said there.
    (However much I wish we'd be able to use silvers to reallocate them instead of waiting 2 days to reallocate all xD)
    Light covers night, night fades, when it does, storms come. ~Storm Dragons
    Currently Getting Coppers, gaining Silver, making Gold, Pursuing Mithril!

  5. #5

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Quote Originally Posted by LeFibS View Post
    Dragons also have only one "school" each for Adventurer and Crafting, and the game coding / design apparently doesn't currently permit them to be split into multiple schools at this time.
    There are 3 crafting schools for Dragons: Dragon Crafter, Lairshaper and Crystalshaper.

    -The Lairshaper school allows you to build your/another's lair.

    -A Crystalshaper can mainly craft crystals which are increasing a resistance type while decreasing another one (ex: +300 ice res; -150 flame res) and crystals which are changing your attack to another damage type and increasing it while increasing damage received from another type (ex: converts damage to ice and does 135% damage; 135% incoming flame damage).

    However these schools can't be joined on early levels.
    Last edited by SuHuz; March 22nd, 2018 at 01:57 PM.
    SuHuz Fieryclaw, Grand Master Dragon Crafter (Order)

  6. #6

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    For me that is really annoying is that you lose the jumping when you ascend. I want to jump jump and jump on the single press of the space button but want to fly up by honding it, OR making adults ancients to jump and have a chance to make a keybind for flying. Who prefer to stay with the actual not jump but fly upon pressing space they can set the fly up keybind to space and jump to something other or not set anything to jump on their dragon at all. It just suck when i get stuck es want to just jump up on a rock and no i need to loong press and fly up and then fly down. I also love jumping around so i really miss the jump for dragon ancients and adults.

  7. #7

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    I wanted to add, I main a caster/spell-casting/mage dragon and she probably has the highest burst and most consistent damage out of all my dragons. Her build isn't even full damage, so I couldn't imagine what a full power and primal caster could do. Don't sleep on casters, y'all!
    xWaterwingx SpiritStream - Lunus Ancient | Lycheeberry Pavlova - Helian Ancient | Atriva Liliin - Lunus Ancient | Intossicara Draconis - Helian Ancient | Bananaswirl Milkshake - Helian Ancient | Veshk Melone - Lunus Ancient | xWaterwingxII SpiritStream - Lunus Ancient
    And more aaaaaaaaaa

  8. #8

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Now i wanna say something too. You are right in some points LeFibs. A lot of people wish a multiclassing system for dragons. For esxample a healer? Thats what i would love. And yet... Its just a copy of the bipeds then. Dragons are pretty unique in Istaria. And actually i love them for being so simple. A perfect choice to get to know the game. There are some points that could be better too. Like the descriptions you mentioned for mentally demanding tasks. But you don`t know much of the games background story. As far as i know Istaria has been sold a couple of times to different owners. Each one didn`t do really much for the game. So it kinda "rotted" for a long time. Or better to say there werent really much/good changes. Current developers tho are working really hard on it! They have to save what others destroyed and they are doing a really good job at it. They are still catching up tho. Update to Unreal Engine is one of the bigger upcomming projects and a hell of work. On top of all i think the developer team isnt really as big as in other games like WoW.

    About the 1 character slot. Well there was a time when you were able to have more than one. You were able to play 3 different charas during a trial period of 2 weeks. Nobody really liked that either because after these 2 weeks you werent able to log in at all. Only if you chose to be human only. Then you had free access to the full game. 1 human. Not more.

    Yes the jump thingy. I wanna jump too but tbh. A jumping adult/ancient might look a bit dumb XD. I know someone who stayed hatchie to be able to jump hehe.

    Hmmm ok lets make a deal. Why dont ya try collecting these little things you wanna change and stay around til they upgrade to Unreal? Changing too much stuff before that might make a bit more work than afterwards. Tho i can`t tell you when this will happen. It`s alot of work for the devs.

    If you are able to look behind the facade, Istaria has a big, ineresting adventure, a friendly community, blogger, youtuber, modder, events and an interesting lore.

    Dragons are being worked on in magical aspects. My dragon is spellcaster and i don`t really complain about the damage i can do. I survive longer than others due to my healing abilitys and my basic attack (drain bolt) does more dmg than a melee dragons basic claw strike.

    I hope you will concider staying and try the game out in its full beauty. If you need any help let me know. You find me on the Chaos Shard (server).

    Have fun in Istaria!
    Last edited by Pryzm; May 4th, 2018 at 08:45 PM.

    "If being of fire means blind arrogance and the elevation of violence above reason, then let me be of water!"

  9. #9

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Quote Originally Posted by LeFibS View Post
    Hey there folks! I just heard about this game today and wanted to try it out.

    First off, one character slot for a free account??? Come on man at least let it be two. There's no way I was gonna pick anything other than dragon with only one character slot. Anyhoo

    I naturally checked over the forums to read about what all dragons can do, and have been playing / experimenting for probably a couple of hours, and I'm very disappointed to find that dragons basically suck unless they go melee (or min-max like the devil)!

    Dragons also have only one "school" each for Adventurer and Crafting, and the game coding / design apparently doesn't currently permit them to be split into multiple schools at this time. Altogether this looks to me like dragons were rather rushed in design and implementation and need a serious gameplay overhaul, the kind that would basically break all existing dragon characters and be like "Sorry everybody, we've refunded all your training points et al since dragons are completely different now!"

    I was hoping to be like a templar sorta? A big ol' stone dragon sage, slow as molasses, full of archaeological knowledge (--> scary forgotten magic). I maxed out all the "be fat" sliders, she's thicc as all get out. Failing this idea I am okay with just making her a magic crafter but have to level her as a barbarian and spend however long on the respec!

    I haven't played any other race yet since I don't want to delete my dragon, so my impressions of the game are solely from a dragon perspective and completely ignorant of how the mechanics affect any other race. With that in mind, my suggestions are:

    • We've got to have those separate schools yo. (I should play a different race to see how separate schools actually work, they're a foreign concept to me as a dragon first character.)
    • Explain ingame what the stats actually do. "Helps with mentally complex craft skills" doesn't do it for me. Success rates? Quality levels? Resource saving? Extra material output? And which skills are "mentally complex" and which are "mentally demanding"? What does it mean???
    • Change Breath of Fire to be magic-based (or the higher between melee + magic). As it is, every single worthwhile attack dragons have is strictly melee-based and you'd have to be a madman to go magic. Also, is BoF seriously a single-target attack or am I just very unlucky with hitboxes? That mess should be an AoE mainstay
    • Possibly as part of the multiple schools overhaul, give dragons way more spells, especially attack spells whose cast times are proportionate to human life spans and not dragon ones. (And/or make one of the stats reduce cast times, like Dexterity)
    • Fix dragons' necks to have the "chest plating" not abruptly cut off right there it's quite jarring
    • Give Spitfyre her own movie, she's a darling


    I kind of like the general idea of the same stats influencing combat and crafting - I presume the point there is to separate fighters from crafters and the screwiness of the stats does that pretty well. But again, I have no idea how any of those stats work in either a combat or crafting sense, so.

    And don't worry I heard about the silly "wait until level 50 to become an adult so you get the bonus thingy" thingy. That'll be a while since I don't know if I'll get a standard access account yet, especially if dragons aren't gonna be patched anytime soon.

    P.S. It'd be awesome if there were multiple dragon races just like there are multiple not-dragon races. The classical lizards are all fine and dandy but I would hurl money at fluffy or leafy dragons

    Well i know this is like FOREVER ago.. but dragons been updated like alot lol
    When the time to eat a knight is to Roast them till there ready as COOKED spam...
    What can i say? im a Classic dragon looking for a free easy meal?
    Or facing my family... Isent always a Wise decision..


  10. #10

    Default Re: It seems like dragons have serious design issues...

    Quote Originally Posted by Liseth View Post

    This would sadly clash with existing lore, though there have been some ideas tossed around here and there, we also have an event in the works (unknown ETA) that would play around with the idea of dragon races.

    Cant believe no one jumped on this Easter egg cant wait !!!
    Face forward and you should be able to hear it now the only thing plugging your ears is your own fear. There is only one enemy and one of you so what is there to be afraid of ? Abandon your fear turn and face him, Don't give an inch. Now advance Never stop If you retreat you will age Be afraid and you'll die NOW SHOUT OUT YOUR NAME !!!

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Design flaw?
    By Kyrieath in forum Hardware Discussions
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: June 8th, 2012, 12:35 AM
  2. design preview
    By oluviel in forum General
    Replies: 35
    Last Post: October 5th, 2005, 09:07 AM
  3. Vexators, Bug or Design
    By Serat in forum General
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: December 15th, 2004, 03:50 AM
  4. Replies: 9
    Last Post: December 3rd, 2004, 11:58 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •