As stated in the latest patch notes, we have increased the difficulty of level 1 - 15 encounters by decreasing the character's HP by 30%.

We are creating this thread to gather community feedback on the new level 1 - 15 experience.

• What is your general impression of the current experience for level 1 - 15 in CBT4?
  
  
• On a 1 - 10 scale with 1 being the easiest, what was the difficulty of the new experience for level 1 - 15 in CBT4?
  
  
• If you have played through level 1 - 15 during previous CBT's and again in CBT4, do you feel that the experience has become easier / harder / stayed the same?
  
  
• Does the HP decrease encourage you to use more of the action combat element, such as dodging or blocking?

Please limit your post to one per person, so that we can listen to the community feedback more effectively and efficiently. This is not a discussion thread, but a feedback thread for a specific content tweak in the game along with your general impression of the change. :)

I started up a new Mystic today, and maybe it's mystic, but I honestly spent all of my time Lv1-8 just spamming my basic attack, and never dodging, moving, or doing anything other than holding a single button down.

Maybe the initial distance of the spell is causing me to not take much dmg, but then again, I didn't bother checking distance, I was usually within 5-10m, rather than the max of 18. (I think is the max for Mystic)

Based on my friends, who haven't really had much experience in harder/action games, they loved it.
But I think that is mainly from the monsters slow attack speed. (Which made them giggle every time they sidestepped, and mobs would miss.)

IMO keep the "Easy Mode" for Lv1-2.
Make Lv5+ harder. (Not sure how hard, maybe instead of 30% hp, take off 40%, then again, not sure if that's too much, just a random guess.)
Then keep Lv3 and 4 between the difficulties of 1+2 and 5+.

Also keep the monsters attack speeds as is. I know people find this boring, but some newer players will need that time/practice. (My BF is extremely grateful, as this is the first action game he has ever enjoyed, and started off easy enough, for him to try to get better.)
So I'd say the current learning curve is pretty decent.
But I'd only suggest these tweaks, to help with initial subs, who wanna see this "New MMO" but don't wanna be bored by Lv5+

EDIT: I should have explained, I didn't find the questions asked to be 100% reflective of all the possible views people can have towards this. (Such as my continued explanation of newer players who might need time to adjust.)
I apologize for not directly answering the questions, but giving feedback in a different manner.

CLAIRE PENDRAGON

I'll try to be concise to facilitate your work:

Quote: Minea on 03/23/2012, 12:36 PM - view

It's better than before. Getting hit thumps my HP bar and makes me consider the gameplay. However, three fast things:

- Range attacks are still easy mode. I don't think this can be fixed without major overhauls anyway.

- Healers are super easy mode. Also understandable for obvious reasons.

- Melee are forced to consider their dodging more. I still think it's not enough, but it's better. More on this later.

Quote: Minea on 03/23/2012, 12:36 PM - view

In relative terms (compared to before): 7
In absolute terms (compared to other games or the game after lv30): 2

Quote: Minea on 03/23/2012, 12:36 PM - view

Harder, but experience in this game means a lot so you could make all monsters hit 3x as hard and it would still be easy for someone that has played the game before.

For a newer player, it's definitely more interesting.

Quote: Minea on 03/23/2012, 12:36 PM - view

Yes, it does.

Final comment:

The HP reduction is a good idea and a simple fix to make it feel harder. It will never be hard unless all the monster types are changed, but I don't believe this is the objective anyway.

A good additional easy change to make it slightly harder and force you to step out of the way would be to increase monster damage (1.5x or more), which definitely will bring home the idea that you NEED to move.

Quote: Mushimushi on 03/23/2012, 03:57 PM - view

Technically, lowering HP is the same as mobs doing more dmg.

I have 1,000 hp. Mob hits me for 10. That is 1% of my HP lost a hit.
Lower max HP to 100, now 10 is 10% of my max HP lost.

I have 1,000 hp. Mob hits me for 100 dmg now. That's now 10% of my HP lost in a single hit.

They most likely went the HP route, to avoid altering dmg calculations and such.

I'm aware of the relationship between HP and damage :) but further reducing the HP might end up looking rather absurd. It was a way of pointing out that it's a good improvement but not enough.

I didn't have as much time to play today as I would have liked though I will have lots tomorrow and later tonight...

But although my experience was much better with the lower hp pools, we also need to see slightly improved reaction time on mob ai for it to be called win win. from 1-5 i was still able to kill mobs before they got thier first attack off so the smaller hp pool didn't affect me, and from 6-8 when it did start to affect me, thier reaction times were still very slow, most mobs only getting 1-2 attacks off in a combat sequence.

I don't really advocate increasing mob HP pools to solve this, I want more challenging fun encounters not longer ones - What needs to happen is low level mobs need to not fall down almost unprovoked, as they currently do, and need to turn and attack right away after being attacked.

I will say this though, My experience was much better than it was before the hp reduction I wasn't quite as bored and didn't feel quite as though i could just soak the damage if i wanted to and be lazy at low levels because it didnt matter if i got hit or not.

Just want to say I'm happy you for once ask for feedback on a change. It seems like you are learning, and that is positive. Keep this up and I think we can avoid future mistakes.

Quote: ClairePendragon on 03/23/2012, 04:07 PM - view
Doesn't quite work that smoothly when PvP servers are involved. :/

Quote: Roda on 03/23/2012, 04:29 PM - view
Are you referring to enemy damage, or player damage?
I'm only referring to Low Lv enemy dmg. Outside of that, I know too many other variables come into play.

Quote: Mushimushi on 03/23/2012, 04:09 PM
Yeah, I thought the low pools might seem a bit odd, when suddenly you start gaining large sums of HP higher up.

Also as mentioned before, raising HP pools will annoy people, but I could see some newer, less experienced players, enjoying the ability to practice on a mob a bit longer.

Over all, raised HP pools don't really increase difficulty.

CLAIRE PENDRAGON

While I am waiting on VoT to be restored, I will comment here on my 1 - 15 experience. This is my first chance to play the game.

The game seems pretty easy. As a mystic, I could just sit there, move a bit to the left or right when something attacks and not worry too much about mobs. HP is a non issue at the moment.