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Macroing is the end all, be all, of progression in DF:UW
IamEpitaph
Member Posts: 4
Name of original poster withheld, but I thought I would pass this on....
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Macroing currently is, for the most part, the end-all, be-all of skill progression in DFUW. To some, this is nothing new because of how commonplace it was in DF1. To other, perhaps newer players, it might be something you may or may not be fully aware of just yet. Everything from all stats, to weapon skills, to abilities, and ultimately to schools, can be macroed while AFK.
AV really wrestled with this in DF1. They increased stat/skill/spell gain on mobs drastically, multiple times. Increased overall gains drastically, multiple times. Implemented meditation, multiple ways. All to specifically address macroing and "the grind", in tandem. So now, it's pretty damn remarkable that with this entire new game, AV seems to have taken gigantic steps backwards to the days of the complete absence of all these measures, with just a pure macroable "grind" awaiting prospective players. Keep in mind I am not saying that the skill progression and "grind" in UW is overly long, or even bad in comparison to DF1. It may or may not be, and that is a topic for another thread. What I am saying is that the real issue right now is that you can simply macro through everything just like the inglorious days of old in DF1, because there are just no deterrents preventing you from doing so, nothing encouraging you to do otherwise, and is the most effective way to even move forward with individual character progression.
I had the pleasure of having some duels with a player from Afghan recently, and those fights made certain things clear. First, as is the FOTM and most effective playstyle by far in the (early) beta right now - he was a Dex warrior. He had high archery skill (a hellish grind atm, probably like 75k arrows just to hit 50 non mastery) and high dexterity (110-130), but in addition to both of these things, he also already had the 70 strength requirement (no idea on his actual strength, maybe it was 100+ as well) in order to wear Plate Armor. I play a Skirmisher, have 102 Dex, and 45 Archery. I was in a full suit of Studded Leather, which is the R30 Skirmisher equivalent to Warrior's R30 Plate. As a test, he used a Rank 0 bow against me, whereas I used a Rank 30 against him. I proceeded to hit him for 16-17 with my Rank 30 Bow, whereas he hit me for 24-25 with his Rank 0. Now keep in mind, what I'm saying here has little to do with class balance, and is not a reproach on the Afghan player's skill level or anything of the sort - on the contrary, he was a competent, chill dude who could legitimately aim - as well as the fact that in this particular scenario, it also has to do with Skirmishers being late bloomers, and Dex Warriors giving up all higher armor later on besides the R30 Plate they're currently equipped with, while no one can really craft anything better than R30 at the moment anyhow, granting early superiority to the Dex War. So please don't mistake this for an argument of class balance or the like, and read on.
There are bugged mobs all over the beta currently, but macroing on a mount, a player, or a bloodwall virtually is the same concept; rapid, and usually afk, gains. The point in the Afghan player's case is not that he had these stats and was able to capitalize on them, but rather that a player was able to achieve them so quickly over another player who would prefer to play "legitimately" (not using myself as an example, as I of course macro like every competitive player is forced to in order to compete in small scale engagements), but just imagine if a newer player who has been pveing, hitting mobs, hitting racks, crafting, gathering, gearing up, etc, and who, in terms of playerskill and ability, could be on par with or even surpass myself or the Afghan player, imagine if they ran into someone with a char of the Afghan's progression level, and proceeded to get steamrolled in seconds. What sense would this player make of what had just happened to him?
Our intrepid, capable adventurer would no doubt question how it was possible that another player could deal so much more damage (the margin would be absurd) to him than he could deal in return, when both parties involved had been playing actively from server up. He then has a choice to make: he could choose to learn how to afk macro every night/day, he could become a face in the crowd in some zerg where refined char progression is not as relevant, he could become a lone wolf and grind for months "legit" in order to "catch up", or he could just move on from the game out of lack of desire to do any of these things; none of which are actually positive outcomes. And this is the same EXACT flaw that plagued DF1's skill system for so long and caused many players who did not want to resort to 3rd party macro software and leaving their computers on overnight for months just to compete in an MMO, to leave. And now, somehow, here we are once again.
A classic example of a poor design decision on AV's behalf in regards to macroing is the progression of the transfers. When you get them as a new player, they take 50 from your base stat and return 45 to your transferred one. By 100 skill, they take 50 and return 64. That's a negative 10% yield vs. a positive 28% yield PER transfer via progression alone, progression that, if not macroed, would take EXCRUCIATINGLY long to raise to the increasingly positive yield levels, thus pretty much making it a requirement that it be macroed, and thus only serving to cripple the new and "legit" players, which is, ironically, the very people AV are trying to bring into the game, and why they made compromises to other aspects of the game in order to accomplish this goal. However, If things continue at this rate, AV will have only succeeded in alienating both factions of their prospective playerbase; many "vets" due to the concessions made to DF1's combat, vets who are more or less begrudgingly trying to accept the changes if it means a greater population, and new players alike because the macro-all situation is not a tenable proposition for many, less "hardcore" players. And what's more, EVERYONE loses here if macroing is kept as is, because it eliminates players from being out in the world participating in the world, and instead has them in some dark hole somewhere or in an encapsulated player city AFK skilling, without even regs to boot.
Some quick suggestions would be (I'm aware some of these are reiterations of other suggestions):
•Make skill gains on mounts and players have diminishing returns. This would allow people to still go out and pvp and skill up on other players from it, but would pretty much shut down macroing all together, if the DR's were made significant enough.
•Increase stat/skill gain on mobs similar to DF1, thus giving an alternative to macroing; that of skilling/stating up while venturing into the world, getting loot, and encountering other players, all while fighting for supremacy of the spawns out there, as it was meant to be.
•Implement some form of meditation again, or just allow players to buy skills/stats with prowess points, which would actually allow a player to do whatever they like in the world, and then choose their progression based on their activities alone.
Whatever you do, the point being, AV: Progression in your game should be under your control, and carried out as per your design. If it was intended for the progression to be "open to interpretation", i,e, circumvented, it should indeed be intentional on your behalf as developers, not the byproduct of negligence and oversight. Players should have a clear path of progression that doesn't involve finding the best ways to exploit through your system, but rather to work through it within the options they are given, and in a manner that doesn't feel like they're running on a hamster wheel. But regardless of how it's addressed, this issue needs serious consideration. We all know how depressing DF will be with another empty game world, and even more than that, personally, I'd really like to see all the guys who were never interested in the concept of having to macro/perma-grind/char-crutch/script in order to be able to compete in a full-loot PVP game, and instead just get in, progress, and get out in the open world and wreak havoc with the rest of us. Free Darkfall from this burden, AV. For fuck sake, good sirs, take heed.
Comments
Was a good post. It doesn't address the ease at which you can bug out a mob though. Mobs need diminishing returns also to incentivise killing it, rather than bugging it in place.
You have to laugh at all the idiots who believed Tasos and said macroing would not be an issue in DFUW.
Come on now, Tasos words could still end up being true.
You know, if DFUW doesn't get released before the company folds.
Hear hear.
For fuck sake, don`t ruin this game with a huge skill grind. Let us grind gear, mats and equipments like a normal mmo, and all will be happy.
Let us kill NPCs because we want something from that NPC, not because we have to grind NPCs to be able to pvp. Let us harvest mats because we need them to build and craft, not because we have to grind mats to be able to pvp.
All this unnecessary grind is such a flaw in a mmo based on fun, politics and conquest.
Don't worry about having to macro up your skills guys. I'm sure 3-4 years later AV will wipe the servers again while they prepare to release DarkFall 3.0 and everything will go just fine and the game will be great without any cheaters!
In all seriousness, an expected outcome. I don't think Aventurine learns from their mistakes, they've really got their priorities at the wrong place. But hey, avrio!
If this is true they need to do something about these exploits and macroing asap.
Allowing this when game goes live would be a repeat of DF1.
Doesn't sound like the grind has changed much at all. :-
It's a shame. It still sounds like a PvE game with some PvP elements. In DF1 you spent FAR more time PvEing than PvPing, not out of desire but out of necessity. Farming, raising skills, raising stats... all required so much PvE grinding that it would make Everquest blush.
That's fine if a PvE game is what you are looking for... but us PvPers would like some companies to throw us a bone once in a while.
You know the NDA is still in effect right?
That being said any game where using a skill levels it up will find macroiing in abundance. The way you progress your character is through repetition, something many people find extremely boring hence the rise of macros. Both afk and non afk macroing are here to stay in Darkfall so don't expect this aspect of the game to change ever.
There are a few games that have actually found a way around it.
Although the game is very differently, Mabinogi is a great example of how to solve the macro'ing issue. It's almost impossible to macro your skills in that game. Skills still level up as you use them (although requires Ability Points to go to the next level), but instead of simply having to "use" them, each skills and skill ranks have different objectives the player must meet to be able to rank up the skill. It basically forces players to 'go out', explore, and hunt increasingly more difficult monsters to further improve his skills.
(Here's a short example of what I'm talking about : http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Combat_Mastery )
This is just to show that there are ways to prevent macro'ing in Skill-based games. As far as DarkFall goes, I'm not sure how something similar could be adapted. Since I'm not in the DFUW Beta I'm not sure exactly how things are although based on feedback it seems to remain relatively PvE-centric with PvP 'end-game' (not in the conventional sense) so perhaps they "could" pull it off somehow, but anyway.
Speaking strictly of DF and not DFUW, Aventurine could've simply done away with skills such as Run, Sprint, Sneak, Pack Mule, etc. Pretty much every players would run to a wall carrying a good bunch of Stones to rank up their skills. It was uselsss. A best they could've just allowed players to purchase those skills (Pack Mule) but already get the maxed out effect. It would already reduce the need to AFK 'macro' certain skills.
As far as Buff Spells goes, instead of having players AFK macro them, they could've just made the buff spell as proportionally effective as the rank of it's respective skill branch, and made it so that Buff skills does not give "EXP" to your Skill branch. For example, Brawn (Earth Magic) could become more effective as the rank of Earth Magic goes up.
And for Offensive skills, well that's a bit more difficult. They could very well remove the skill gain from using it on Players, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of a PvP game. However, they could definitively make it so that a player cannot gain rank bonus from the same target too many times a day. Even during real PvP encounters, a player wouldn't normally receive that much skill up from fighting other players other than the occasional Surge, so putting a cap on the amount of Skill Gain a player can receive from other players may actually be a good solution. Then there's the issue of exploiting mobs to macro on them, but that's not a macro'ing issue, it's a monster issue.
They would really have to make drastic changes to the game to totally get rid of macroing and I really don't see how it would be possible for them to do at this point. They just don't have the time/money to rewrite the necessary systems. Love it or hate it macroing is a part of darkfall for the forseable future.
Simple solution
"Put the skill progression on a curve, give most of the benefit for raising a skill or spell at level 50, and allow masteries to be unlocked at 50. Post 50 there is still benefit to raising skills but it is more menial."
Thorin Kc -
Easy,, Ultima Online did this and it worked fairly well.. Though their map was more like a grid, so even then scripts were made to circumvent it.
Diminishing returns based on your location. Let's say, every 30 minutes you are forced to move to another area. If you do not continue to move, that skill will be locked out. This completely eliminates players sitting in one spot or small area overnight, macroing. Sure, bots can get around this I am sure.. but you will cut macroing down to a minimum.
It's proven that it works.
It's a shame that they focus so much on PvP in DF. It's the reason that players feel the need to macro, and the only reason.