My thoughts on the current development of Hafen

[Ants]

There is little substance to the updates, rather have none at all for a while as bigger fixes to basic mechanics are done.

This, the only downside being that all the gold subscription kids will cry on forums about their hat printer.

They could make tiny updates to keep the hat collectors happy. Surely it can't be much work to code a hat recolor and a new stockpile, right?

I don't understand the argument about drastic playercount drops. Right now it's around 200 people. Isn't it roughly the same as previous world had at this point?

This world started with significantly more players than last world though.

combat to be fixed to be more based on skill instead of stats, it is absurd to have a combat where there is endless stat growth and stat based combat at the same time.

Combat has been in need of a revamp for a long time and a new, good system would surely bring a lot of old players back. I'm no expert on MMO combat systems but maybe something a bit simpler then the current system would be good to start with and then expand upon that?

I think someone needs to write a detailed description of what fighting should be. Jorb and Loftar don't seem to know what to do.

[blank]

Make combat less stat based and more skill based... We don't need anymore birds atm. Devs need to focus on what will keep players playing.

[MagicManICT]

Devs need to focus on what will keep players playing.

Well, from the history of w8 and w9, 1/3 of the players couldn't play because of the client, so that's what they've tackled first. At least, that's my observation. World 7 rand for about 2 years because loftar was busy pulling all the server code for updates to the game and recreating the client for 3D graphics. Optimizations take about as long as creating such.

Will getting a better running client help bring back some of those players? Maybe. Will fixing combat bring back some of the players? maybe. Nobody has a crystal ball that can predict what exactly will and won't work to bring back players that dropped the game for one reason or another. Some are just looking for the next world, after all.

[Ants]

Make combat less stat based and more skill based... We don't need anymore birds atm. Devs need to focus on what will keep players playing.

Well, yeah. But how do you suggest they do that? What would happen if they made combat stats irrelevant and changed nothing else?

[jordancoles]

Didn't read all of this yet but I would like to point out that a movement-based, directional combat system would likely be worse unless client performance improves significantly across the board

[jordancoles]

Make combat less stat based and more skill based... We don't need anymore birds atm. Devs need to focus on what will keep players playing.

Well, yeah. But how do you suggest they do that? What would happen if they made combat stats irrelevant and changed nothing else?

Under the current combat system? Not much.

If we were given Salem's combat system without the yellow bile/phlegm bottlenecks it could be fairly skill-based and fun though.

[Potjeh]

combat to be fixed to be more based on skill instead of stats, it is absurd to have a combat where there is endless stat growth and stat based combat at the same time.

But then all the tryhards would be crying about combat alts, and it'd be reverted within a month.

[jordancoles]

combat to be fixed to be more based on skill instead of stats, it is absurd to have a combat where there is endless stat growth and stat based combat at the same time.

But then all the tryhards would be crying about combat alts, and it'd be reverted within a month.

To start they could lock combat abilities behind skills and increase the lp investment needed to be a viable pvp character

Imo UA/MC are dated mechanics and the future of combat could be directional combat, armor class, weapon quality and str/con/agi

[dafels]

We once had a combat system that was less stat based and more about skill, could take that and improve on top of it

[wonder-ass]

Didn't read all of this yet but I would like to point out that a movement-based, directional combat system would likely be worse unless client performance improves significantly across the board

true the game can barely handle 20 people on screen it would be horrible dying to lag.