Developer K has put up a new post.
Hi guys.
December is the busiest month for the company, with all the events such as DWC and the holidays. Additionally, many users were uncomfortable with the contents of the November patch, and the forums are in a foul mood, which is not good.
<Incomprehensible gibberish>
Just hang on and read the [TMI notes].
When I was responsible of skills at Dune(?), my senior designer told me this:
I sympathize with this 100%. Skills are a basic system provided by the game. Changes to skills directly affect the stats you accumulate in your efforts. So, when dealing with skill balancing, you have to think carefully and modify things as if they were your own tools, especially when it comes to nerfs to high impact skills, which should be minimized.
In that sense, I think this nerf patch felt like a patch that took away your hard work, so I expected some resistance and rejection, but I stand by the idea that these nerfs are inevitable and necessary for better long term game health.
I thought it was an okay patch, but I didn’t explain the purpose because I thought there might be some sympathy in terms of direction. I think that was the biggest mistake.
It feels a bit late, but I’ll talk a little more why I’m also slowing things down.
There are many types of mechanics in nests. Many of them require you to react to them, and those are tuned according to your maximum action speed. What that means is that a [Pre-Action] (T/N: indicator/hint/windup animation) immediately before the boss makes a strong attack, and the timing of this pre-action should be set to consider reaction speed and response action. If the pre-action is too short, the user cannot dodge and the mechanic seems unfair/undodgable. We don’t have any of those in the game, although for melee classes it is more difficult due to limited sight. In order to balance the speed of monsters’ pre-actions with challenges, you have to assume the maximum action speed of the player. The players’ maximum action speed has gotten so high that the monster pre-actions are virtually pointless.
(T/N I can understand where DevK is coming from - at this point action speed is so high that you can react to the attack itself, instead of the windup animation or some other visual indicator)
Take a look at current nests. Have you ever had to think about how to avoid a monster’s attack in detail? Nests end up being a 4 person party individually fighting a monster while it rubs its head. Looking at the pre-actions, it’s too easy to avoid the following action.
The issue isn’t entirely just action speed either. Many classes have the ability to [Force Cancel] their skills, senselessly spoiling them. Even now, if all classes are balanced, faster action speed prevents anything. Raven Guillotine, Rangrid, Bleed Phantom, all the recent patches, are missing in this action perspective. (Spitting on my face (T/N ????))
In the end, in order to have challenge and tension in action combat with high action speed, monster pre-actions would need to be shortened to the point where the game now focuses purely on instant reaction and luck. I have concluded that by nerfing action speed from sources such as shard and Lencea would be a better path to regaining a sense of action and becoming a more popular action game.
Furthermore, since those buffs weren’t always available, the more you demand challenges, the higher the dependency on those buffs becomes (T/N not quite sure how to parse this)
Finally, one more thing. todo
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All objects exist because I thought I needed to make it based on the game plan.
Convenience must exist in the same line that provides the original function, I believe
todo
No matter what mount, it should be used to improve mobility. If that doesn’t make sense, then you don’t want this to be an RPG.
todo