god items discussion

[Kiaro]

Everyone STILL seems to be clinging to the idea that God items being hard to make justifies them being anyway they like. Let's take a closer look at this, because it seems to be the number one idea for people:

Either, you believe that God items are fair, or God items are fair at the low rate they will come into the server. If god items are just inherently fair (like a feather beret) then every person on the server having one will be fine. If everyone had access to megs, obviously str classes would be the predominant part of the metagame, everything would revolve around being or preventing a double meg from winning. So let's discard that. Let's say that god items in super dilution, one per server every few years is okay.

Now, note at this point even the advocates of god items are not saying the god item isn't terribly terrifying: just that it isn't BAD ENOUGH to warrant killing off. What I want to get to the heart of is, what about this dilution justifies it? Okay, I would say 'competition', but most people here seem to say 'effort'. I want to propose that all it takes to get a god item on this server is effort which is a bad thing - on a real server, it would take competition.

Firstly, effort. Imagine being trapped in a jail cell, and escaping by grinding away at the cement with a rusty spoon for 4 years (the guards are unobservant). This is the current situation with god items - slowly but surely you make your escape. No one has noticed that as time goes on, every jailmate with a spoon is going to escape, and all it takes is time. Some guilds have bigger spoons than others, but really, we're staring at inevitability. This is not a good way to hand out god items.

Alternatively, there is competition. This is like a chess grandmaster competition. Everyone knows how hard a chess grandmaster competition is, so instead I'll describe how hard RO is on a big server: Trying to keep up with how long each guild has been in each castle/gather intel on who has what god items. Forge and discard alliances as it is appropriate to get certain god items and to stop people getting certain others. You MUST get enough pieces to make a god item before the seals are open so that you at least stand a fighting chance at getting a god item and stopping rival guilds getting one. It is very hard work, and every woe you are in nigh constant combat going through a flood of consumables. This is while trying to maintain a tight well formed and gearded competitive trans guild. Only in these raging fires will a champion be forged, and the winner will have certainly earned a god item. Is there effort? Yes, but the correct KIND of effort. Competition.

Kadar slightly misses my point: I know god items wont flood the server any time soon. But is it right to have such powerful mechanics on a simple time release? It's like sitting waiting for a machine to crack a lock combinmation on a vault stacked with money for a few years then taking the prize inside. Competition is like setting up a successful business and on your merits rising above the fierce competition going around.

Hero is too small to facilitate a competition worthy of earning god items. The issue of whether or not the items would be diluted enough is almost irrelevant: Do we release we are giving out god items to people just for being on the server for a long time? It's inevitable. Even if you can hardly get your commerce off the ground, there's simply not a real level of competition. The server is split into too few guilds for the castles to create a real struggle to get god components.

Belial: Yes, the god item quest is hugely inappropriate for hero. That's why I'd not suggest including it, but without it there is a huge gap of effort lost. I mean, even if the weapons were removed the mass pvp element indeed would not exist, as you say. That is the problem with the population, and it seems to me to be the seem as WoE:SE. WoE:SE is designed for servers larger than us. Did we throw it in regardless, despite the negative impacts it'd have? No. We might have a custom modified WoE SE style event every so often, according to something Pandora posted at some point... but we recognised a feature for servers larger than us. I'd say the god items quest, and the god items themselves, are the same.

Also, no one but me seems too worried about this but I'd like to ask again:

Is no one else worried about the consequences of having a feature that gives god items on a time release function when, as hero is a growing server, it will only serve to create a barrier to woe competition that cannot be caught up in pvm? Levels, +7 gears, cards, guild co-ordination. None of this requires competiting in WoE. The current difference between LW and <insert smallest guild on the server> is a simple matter of earning zeny and gear and levelling, 40 new people could join tomorrow and, with work, usurp us all with their incredible dedication and co-ordination. God items are not like that. They require that you go to woe for a long time. Say enough players show up to turn the server from 'effort' getting god items to 'competition' earning god items. How is it fair that guilds that sat around and got spoon fed god components for playing at all should have those in the face of the competition that suddenly exists and is required to get god items, with the influx of players? (or one of the castles closes, etc etc).

That is a real game-design issue to consider, and it hardly seems excusable.

Oh and lastly, apologies to pandora. That discussion was the spark for this thread, but the kindling was already well in place. I'd heard a lot of 'well just don't talk about it' or people generally being uncomfortable talking about current states of god items and that struck me as bad. So don't think I was tring to have a go at you, that was not my intent.

[exwing]

If you want more competition, then reduse all castles back just to pront, and possibly alde, then you have your competition. it's still going to take EFFORT.

[teOx]

Everyone STILL seems to be clinging to the idea that God items being hard to make justifies them being anyway they like. Let's take a closer look at this, because it seems to be the number one idea for people:

Either, you believe that God items are fair, or God items are fair at the low rate they will come into the server. If god items are just inherently fair (like a feather beret) then every person on the server having one will be fine. If everyone had access to megs, obviously str classes would be the predominant part of the metagame, everything would revolve around being or preventing a double meg from winning. So let's discard that. Let's say that god items in super dilution, one per server every few years is okay.

Now, note at this point even the advocates of god items are not saying the god item isn't terribly terrifying: just that it isn't BAD ENOUGH to warrant killing off. What I want to get to the heart of is, what about this dilution justifies it? Okay, I would say 'competition', but most people here seem to say 'effort'. I want to propose that all it takes to get a god item on this server is effort which is a bad thing - on a real server, it would take competition.

Firstly, effort. Imagine being trapped in a jail cell, and escaping by grinding away at the cement with a rusty spoon for 4 years (the guards are unobservant). This is the current situation with god items - slowly but surely you make your escape. No one has noticed that as time goes on, every jailmate with a spoon is going to escape, and all it takes is time. Some guilds have bigger spoons than others, but really, we're staring at inevitability. This is not a good way to hand out god items.

Alternatively, there is competition. This is like a chess grandmaster competition. Everyone knows how hard a chess grandmaster competition is, so instead I'll describe how hard RO is on a big server: Trying to keep up with how long each guild has been in each castle/gather intel on who has what god items. Forge and discard alliances as it is appropriate to get certain god items and to stop people getting certain others. You MUST get enough pieces to make a god item before the seals are open so that you at least stand a fighting chance at getting a god item and stopping rival guilds getting one. It is very hard work, and every woe you are in nigh constant combat going through a flood of consumables. This is while trying to maintain a tight well formed and gearded competitive trans guild. Only in these raging fires will a champion be forged, and the winner will have certainly earned a god item. Is there effort? Yes, but the correct KIND of effort. Competition.

Hero is too small to facilitate a competition worthy of earning god items. The issue of whether or not the items would be diluted enough is almost irrelevant: Do we release we are giving out god items to people just for being on the server for a long time? It's inevitable. Even if you can hardly get your commerce off the ground, there's simply not a real level of competition. The server is split into too few guilds for the castles to create a real struggle to get god components.

Also, no one but me seems too worried about this but I'd like to ask again:

Is no one else worried about the consequences of having a feature that gives god items on a time release function when, as hero is a growing server, it will only serve to create a barrier to woe competition that cannot be caught up in pvm? Levels, +7 gears, cards, guild co-ordination. None of this requires competiting in WoE. The current difference between LW and <insert smallest guild on the server> is a simple matter of earning zeny and gear and levelling, 40 new people could join tomorrow and, with work, usurp us all with their incredible dedication and co-ordination. God items are not like that. They require that you go to woe for a long time. Say enough players show up to turn the server from 'effort' getting god items to 'competition' earning god items. How is it fair that guilds that sat around and got spoon fed god components for playing at all should have those in the face of the competition that suddenly exists and is required to get god items, with the influx of players? (or one of the castles closes, etc etc).

i want you to rethink this notion that it is a simple time-release function. as long as eco gets broken, it will be halted. true that with 0-10 eco you will eventually get a god item. but your guild will have evaporated long before that. when i joined heRO LW had 4 trans players (ex had 5 but he counts as 1). the major guilds of those days dont even exist today anymore. formerly unstoppable guilds were destroyed by drama or apathy.

so where does the effort and skill come in? in order to gain a god item in a realistic time frame (which is still like 1-3 years) youll need to pull off high eco for incredibly extended periods of time. this in turn means massive amounts of guild effort, strategy, planning, gearing, everything.

out of the 2 choices that you mentioned, i believe god items are fair in the low rate they come into the server. this makes sense for an MMO right? isnt that the entire point of ragnarok? GTB card is hax, good thing they have historically come once a year. low rate = strong item. you have played ro before right? that is why the dilution justifies it. killing gtb 20 times a day makes it a tick tock situation before you get the card, but i wont be complaining about that.

read:
1. it is not a time released function
2. yes it is fair for an item that is ridiculously low in drop rate to eventually make its way onto the server.

and yes i tend to "CLING" to ideas that havent been properly debunked.

[Kadar]

@Kiaro
Your argument seems to be based on two things.
The fallacy that god items are completely unbalanced and the fallacy that they are time release.

As teOx said it may look like time release on paper but in actuality there are other things to consider other than is X guild holding a castle.??The most prominent one is guild lifespan.??Every old guild which has been around for years and held castles for a long time died before they could make a god item.??Not every guild is going to get a god item.??In fact there probably isn't going to be a single god item made for another year.??Not only is this server not going to be flooded with god items anytime soon but IT NEVER WILL.??This server could last 20 years (and I guarantee that it won't) and never see more than 4 god items.??Stop basing your arguments on everyone having god items.??It's never going to happen and it changes the game dynamic too much to compare to any situation we might EVER encounter on heRO.

It seems that the god items you have the most trouble with are Meginjard and Mjolnir.??You keep saying they are unbalanced and any guild which gets them is going to be unstoppable.??Frankly I would take a WS carded Holgren hammer anyday over Mjolnir.??Meginjard however, is definitely better than any other str acc in the game.??But it's only useful for melee classes.??Not only that but it doesn't help you stay alive any better at all.??So what if you can kill most people who come close to you easier than before.??Ranged and magic will still kill you just as fast.??Only one person in the guild can wear the god item at a time anyway.??So all you gotta do is gang that one guy and there goes whatever 'WoE only' advantage that guild had.??Then keep them from getting back into the emp room.??Not a hard thing to do if a guild wants to stay competitive in WoE.

Speaking of competition you seem to think that castles are handed out on silver platters.??That there isn't enough competition on this server to justify god item drops.??While it's true that we don't have as many people in a castle as iRO or kRO but it's also true that we don't have as many people to defend with.??People try very hard to keep their castles.??Any castle can break.??It's also a whole lot easier to destroy what we've worked for on heRO than it is on iRO or kRO.??I think the castles on iRO have a much better deal because they CAN just sit around.??A little group of 10 who worked their asses off hunting good equips can't break an iRO precast.??A group of ten skilled and hard working players COULD break a precast and take a castle on heRO.??The amount of fighting that DOES go on in heRO is very fitting to how many people are in WoE and how many castles that are open.??There is really only one castle that doesn't get a lot of fighting and it's Alde.??If you want to complain about not enough competition for items go beat that dead horse.??No guild wants their enemies to get good items so there will always be WoE competition.??There is never going to be a time where everyone is going to be content holding their own castle and just ignoring everyone else.??If you want to foster more competition then go make a guild that's focused on taking castles away rather than defending them.??If you really believe there isn't enough already.

Btw. Every prisoner gets a spoon. Not every guild gets a castle much less eco enough to get a god item sometime within 10 years.

[Général_Argos]

170 str lk with megin, blessing, concentration and auto-bersek gets ~825 atk. If the ennemy is using thara and such, and that the lk is using a quad bloody weapon, the damage output will be roughly the same as the atk + the skill modification. You get 9,9k bowling bashes, spamable with aspd delay, and that are area of effect. Megin not being unbalanced? lol. 19,8k, with a pally double atk bonuses, and with the + 20 stats, probably 22k with.



- Look, an ennemy squad!

*Lk use one bowling bash*

- Wich squad?

Something like + 10 str, would still be godly imo (2.5x times the best bonus a single regular accesory can give), but wouldn't unbalance the game. Giving four + 10 str accs, with 200 weight instead of 800, would give something still godly to a guild leader, but not breaking the game balance.

[Avalon_Fates]

Guess what, Ifrit card can give you + 70hit crit and attack and can cast earthquake!!! Quick remove it someone might get lucky in 3 years or so and get one!!!, then who will stop that uber Crit Sin.

Oh my that Lord Knight has a Sword Guardian, Thanatos Carded Violet Fear. How dare he spent 6 years hunting and working for those hax items. RABBLE,RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE !!!

Maybe those who hate Night Impossible to get rare gears that are overpowered to be removed should make a stand!!

All those that hate powerful items that take time effort and luck to get, run around with Knifes [3]'s and Adventure Suits. That way the server is balanced.

As soon as you start going OMG HAX, In 3 years there might be a guild with one god item TT-TT the server is unbalanced..now what am I gonna do...its hopeless... I joined only 3 months ago this is a outrage how dare the vet be better then me!!! Oh he has a GR card as well and I dont!! RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE !!!

Seriously I want someone to get a god item, I'm looking forward to fighting them and seeing just how much better they are. Then Ill spend time and effot working to hopefully make my build strong enough to handle that opponent. No item on rag makes you unstoppable. Unless ya got a GM clip, and even then enough firepower directed at them and they will fall like everything else.

God, if you dont want to fight the best then dont fight in the first place.

[teOx]

@krim

170 str bowling bash (single megingjard)
double bloody zweihander and full priest and self buffs with alice doll

=14480 (7.24k per hit) on 0 def 0 reduc demihuman monster

=8688 (4.344k per hit) after woe 40% reduc

=6081 (3.04k per hit) after thara 30% reduc

=3953 (1.975k per hit) after 35 def is taken off. (being nice, 35 def is far less than full geared)

(yes, that is with both hits) it is a strong bowling bash but not unbeatable by a long shot. give to a sinx pls for 21k linked sonic blow and 4.01k grimtooths in woe.

edit: +10 quad bloody katana does 16180 = 4417 bowling bash (with both hits). unless doddler's calc is ridiculously inaccurate compared to some new calc youre using, i dont see how you got 9.9k bowling bashes.

double edit: lol i see how you got 9.9k. you forgot people can have def so you tested on 0def without woe conditions. 5k bowling bash with executioner is the best you can do

[Général_Argos]

No.

1- Its not calculated using a calc.
2- Its an estimate
3- Its not with woe reduction
4- Its with a quad bloody weapon. Why on earth would you use a double sloted weapon with 170 str.
5- My 9.9k estimate was with the 2 hits, with a 1200% skill damage modification calculated from the atk, with no weapon. Now you come with 16180 with a quad bloody weapon. 9.9k *180% (4hydra) = 17.82k, wich is close with your 16k with hydras.

Idea to make things easier: Looking into the difference, instead on going on skills and gears and etc.

Whats the real difference that we cannot argue about and that will save us time:

The atk bonus from 130 str to 170 str.

---->160 ATK<----

[Kadar]

The atk bonus from 130 str to 170 str.

---->160 ATK<----

Oh noes!!??In practice that's a 4k BB on someone without full gears.??Doesn't sound very broken to me.??Better than without the meg but it doesn't justify nerfing a (basically) one of a kind item that is near impossible to obtain.??You are more likely to get an ifrit card than a meg.

If meg got nerfed to 4 little accs at 10str each it wouldn't even be worth it.??Would be better off making a sleipner or something useful.

[Général_Argos]

Doesn't sound very broken to me.

Yea, it's only ten muscle ring in one.

Would be better off making a sleipner or something useful.

You don't decide wich materials you get, each equipment have its own materials.

You get the items to make the god items while breaking the chests. There is no extra effort to be put in except the quest, but oh wait, players don't have to do the quest.

edit: Also, on normal servers players would have to move from castle to castle and moving their economy to get the materials; there is a randomization on hero, wich make things easier.