Thursday, September 3, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Cast Time and Cooldown Calculations
I actually knew about this a long time ago, I just forgot about it since it's just that pointless to know.
(Base time) * ((100 - (percentile value))/100)^(how many stacks there are)
Or something along the lines of that.
(Formula is a bit messy, doubt you'll be able to understand it)
Anyways, what this means is that the calculation is multiplied and not a stacked value. What this also means is that the effects of reducing cast/cooldown times are a lot less effective than they appear.
(Note: Examples are fictitious and doesn't reflect real in game equipment)
Example:
Agi cast time is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
So instead of decreasing 10% OF 1 second (which results in 0.9 second) we plug in my messy formula to get:
1 * ((100 - 10)/100)
1 * (0.9) = 0.9
The result is the same, but when we continue to add different reductions such as...
Example:
Agi cast is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
Crystal decreases cast time by 10%
Now normally you would think that it would be 1 second minus 20% (result is 0.8 second), that is not the case. You have to plug in the formula.
1 * ((100 - 10)/100) * ((100 - 10)/100)
1 * (0.9) * (0.9) = 0.81
In other words, 10% of 10% of 1 second. However, the reason why I made the formula format like this is because of what happens when you add stacks to it.
Example:
Agi cast is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
Crystal decreases cast time by 10% (2)
Again, you would think it would be 30% of 1 second (0.7 seconds) but that is not the case and where the formula gets a but more math intensive.
1 * ((100 - 10)/100) * ((100 - 10)/100)^2
1 * (0.9) * (0.9)^2
1 * (0.9) * (0.81) = 0.729
Again, difference is minscule.
Increased Cast/Cooldown Times
Same formula applies, just add the percentage instead of subtracting.
Some Irregularities
Now I just want to make sure because of how the nature of this post is that I mostly took the tests from somewhere else and went from there. Including the fact of how lazy I am to test these things. I just wanted to make sure of some minor aspects clear.
Stacking Percentages
I am unaware of how specific it needs to be for the percentages to stack. For example, if the Top armour and Bottom armour both decrease cast time, do they stack? Or in different brackets?
Same issues with crystals. If they are the same crystal they stack (for example tarots) but what if they are two separate crystals?
Conclusion
So although cast/cooldown times are a lot more complicated than they seem, my question is, "Does anyone even care about it?"
(Base time) * ((100 - (percentile value))/100)^(how many stacks there are)
Or something along the lines of that.
(Formula is a bit messy, doubt you'll be able to understand it)
Anyways, what this means is that the calculation is multiplied and not a stacked value. What this also means is that the effects of reducing cast/cooldown times are a lot less effective than they appear.
(Note: Examples are fictitious and doesn't reflect real in game equipment)
Example:
Agi cast time is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
So instead of decreasing 10% OF 1 second (which results in 0.9 second) we plug in my messy formula to get:
1 * ((100 - 10)/100)
1 * (0.9) = 0.9
The result is the same, but when we continue to add different reductions such as...
Example:
Agi cast is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
Crystal decreases cast time by 10%
Now normally you would think that it would be 1 second minus 20% (result is 0.8 second), that is not the case. You have to plug in the formula.
1 * ((100 - 10)/100) * ((100 - 10)/100)
1 * (0.9) * (0.9) = 0.81
In other words, 10% of 10% of 1 second. However, the reason why I made the formula format like this is because of what happens when you add stacks to it.
Example:
Agi cast is 1 second
Armour decreases cast time by 10%
Crystal decreases cast time by 10% (2)
Again, you would think it would be 30% of 1 second (0.7 seconds) but that is not the case and where the formula gets a but more math intensive.
1 * ((100 - 10)/100) * ((100 - 10)/100)^2
1 * (0.9) * (0.9)^2
1 * (0.9) * (0.81) = 0.729
Again, difference is minscule.
Increased Cast/Cooldown Times
Same formula applies, just add the percentage instead of subtracting.
Some Irregularities
Now I just want to make sure because of how the nature of this post is that I mostly took the tests from somewhere else and went from there. Including the fact of how lazy I am to test these things. I just wanted to make sure of some minor aspects clear.
Stacking Percentages
I am unaware of how specific it needs to be for the percentages to stack. For example, if the Top armour and Bottom armour both decrease cast time, do they stack? Or in different brackets?
Same issues with crystals. If they are the same crystal they stack (for example tarots) but what if they are two separate crystals?
Conclusion
So although cast/cooldown times are a lot more complicated than they seem, my question is, "Does anyone even care about it?"
Friday, August 28, 2009
Megaten: Skill System
Not only am I a hypocrite, I also fail to meet exectations (about 2 and a half weeks since my last update?). Anyways this post is dedicated to... myself for my love/hate relationship with Megaten's skill system.
Megaten has an original skill system as far as MMORPGs go, and it also adds a sense of realism to it. It has a skill based progression where to raise "Attack" you have to attack monsters. Your skills will get experience for it and eventually level up.
The skill system is also highly customizable. It is like making a custom gun (excuse my lack of comparison) for your purposes. Just pick a part and train it to tailor for your build. This also leads to very original (albeit not very good) creations/builds for the typical archtypes.
Even though the concept is good, it is still flawed in many ways.
Because not only do you have to level up yourself, you also have to level up your skills. So the game is essentially a double grind. A very long one at that. I would love to argue that skill grinding is a lot longer than level grinding but that is personal preference and the fact that I never use incense doesn't help.
As a reference, I made a newly created character and started to attain Enhancement right away. It took me roughly 3~4 hours to get to C2-5 Enhance. In that time I could probably get from level 78->79 and wouldn't be stuck at that level.
The time will also come where you would want to polish your build too, and reseting some skills will be needed. Unfortunately, when you reset some points from a certain skill those points can not be reallocated to a different skill. So you end up having to grind more skills all over again. This has caused me to have trained for at least +100~200 hours just for skill grinding because some are more unforgiving than others (5 hours for last rank of Magic Control?).
However, if we were allowed to reallocate points it would make the skill system broken because it is very apparent that some skills are easier to train than others. Which would make the incredibly hard expertises to train infinately easier.
So while I do wished you could reallocate points, it would have dire consequences to some aspects of the game. One aspect is that Synthers would be more common, which could effectively kill the crystal market. Synthers are usually not made as alts because of how draining it is to train their skill so only a few people have atleast made characters for it (I count 6 or 7 characters? Guesstimation). However hard they are to make, they are a needed aspect of the game. But then again the crystal market probably wouldn't fail because I forgot to account of how lazy people tend to be. Training high level demons is a bore and most people would likely buy it from someone else, not to mention some of the plugin-only crystals (Bishamonten).
Oh yeah, the typical -level up and place skill points here- MMORPG format wouldn't work here either for reasons similar to reallocating points.
To conclude, I hate Megaten's skill system.
Megaten has an original skill system as far as MMORPGs go, and it also adds a sense of realism to it. It has a skill based progression where to raise "Attack" you have to attack monsters. Your skills will get experience for it and eventually level up.
The skill system is also highly customizable. It is like making a custom gun (excuse my lack of comparison) for your purposes. Just pick a part and train it to tailor for your build. This also leads to very original (albeit not very good) creations/builds for the typical archtypes.
Even though the concept is good, it is still flawed in many ways.
Because not only do you have to level up yourself, you also have to level up your skills. So the game is essentially a double grind. A very long one at that. I would love to argue that skill grinding is a lot longer than level grinding but that is personal preference and the fact that I never use incense doesn't help.
As a reference, I made a newly created character and started to attain Enhancement right away. It took me roughly 3~4 hours to get to C2-5 Enhance. In that time I could probably get from level 78->79 and wouldn't be stuck at that level.
The time will also come where you would want to polish your build too, and reseting some skills will be needed. Unfortunately, when you reset some points from a certain skill those points can not be reallocated to a different skill. So you end up having to grind more skills all over again. This has caused me to have trained for at least +100~200 hours just for skill grinding because some are more unforgiving than others (5 hours for last rank of Magic Control?).
However, if we were allowed to reallocate points it would make the skill system broken because it is very apparent that some skills are easier to train than others. Which would make the incredibly hard expertises to train infinately easier.
So while I do wished you could reallocate points, it would have dire consequences to some aspects of the game. One aspect is that Synthers would be more common, which could effectively kill the crystal market. Synthers are usually not made as alts because of how draining it is to train their skill so only a few people have atleast made characters for it (I count 6 or 7 characters? Guesstimation). However hard they are to make, they are a needed aspect of the game. But then again the crystal market probably wouldn't fail because I forgot to account of how lazy people tend to be. Training high level demons is a bore and most people would likely buy it from someone else, not to mention some of the plugin-only crystals (Bishamonten).
Oh yeah, the typical -level up and place skill points here- MMORPG format wouldn't work here either for reasons similar to reallocating points.
To conclude, I hate Megaten's skill system.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Status Report
Just to anyone that actually VISITS my blog, I am NOT dead yet. I am currently renovating my home office so I had to take down my main computer. I am currently on my laptop and I find that downloading Megaten all over again is relatively stupid when I already have the files on my main computer which I can hook up again in the next few days.
So what I am currently doing on my laptop is that I've been playing around with different MMOs. The current one I've been playing is S4.
Anyways, I've always planned for this blog to have (bi-)weekly updates but just to say in short, I have nothing to talk about. I don't care much for all the Aeria Drama that goes around because with the past 5-something companies I've been to, everyones' attitudes are synomous. Take for example, LaTale. When I read that Aeria was picking this game up I decided to snoop around a bit on the forums and what I found was (un)surprising. Everyone pretty much went: "Fuck OGP" and "Aeria are our saviours!"
The same Aeria that caused all that controversy with Megaten?...
To repeat myself, how the company acts and the attitudes' of their player base I relatively don't care much. But then again, I'm a pretty indifferent person.
So what I am currently doing on my laptop is that I've been playing around with different MMOs. The current one I've been playing is S4.
Anyways, I've always planned for this blog to have (bi-)weekly updates but just to say in short, I have nothing to talk about. I don't care much for all the Aeria Drama that goes around because with the past 5-something companies I've been to, everyones' attitudes are synomous. Take for example, LaTale. When I read that Aeria was picking this game up I decided to snoop around a bit on the forums and what I found was (un)surprising. Everyone pretty much went: "Fuck OGP" and "Aeria are our saviours!"
The same Aeria that caused all that controversy with Megaten?...
To repeat myself, how the company acts and the attitudes' of their player base I relatively don't care much. But then again, I'm a pretty indifferent person.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Revisit to LaTale
So today LaTale came to OB in Aeria Games. This was something I was looking forward to because OGP is dead to me because of all the bad things I heard about. Though, everyone hates on their companies anyways so it doesn't bug me. I typically use a objective view to these issues but it's hard enough for me. Anyways, what made me quit LaTale was that their enchants in the game was drops only, and it was hard enough to actually find the monsters that drop which enchants. So I heard that Aeria was getting LaTale so I promptly stopped playing. Today is a magnificent day because Aeria just released OB today. So without further ado I hopped on LaTale as fast I could.
I quit after five minutes.
What just happened? Well first thing first. Do I really want to regrind thirty levels again? I mean it may be fun to some people but if you read my earlier blog; I have low tolerance towards monotonous grinding. The first time you go through something it's fun, but for every subsequent playthrough it always loses its touch. One thing I realized when I was about to do my first quest is that... I had no one to do it with. What prolonged my gameplay with LaTale was that my brother was there to play it with me. We both leveled together, did quests, and even pvped with each other for the fun of it (I got killed, but hey I'm bad at PvPing). So my point of this blog is that if you have people to play games with it will prolong your stay with it exponetially. I even log into Megaten a few minutes each day just to say hi to my clan mates even though I pretty much quit the game.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Aeria got rid of the buyable Skill Resets the Misc. Shop had. I play as a Fire Wizard, with Dagger skills to help me level faster. I was planning to reskill later when I had at least three skills (Level 40 for reference) because anyone that plays LaTale knows that Fire Wizards have LONG cooldowns. So you pretty much spend most of your career kiting as many mobs as you can. However, since OGP allowed you to buy Skill Resets I was allowed to have extra skills to help me level earlier on. This plan was effectively killed when Aeria got rid of Skill Resets. What Aeria does have over the OGP though is that there were certain features OPG didn't have. For example, you could just BUY the enchants for your armours instead of item hunt for it or buy it with real money.
So in the end, pick your poison as I foresee LaTale being killed if Megaten was hosted by the same company.
I quit after five minutes.
What just happened? Well first thing first. Do I really want to regrind thirty levels again? I mean it may be fun to some people but if you read my earlier blog; I have low tolerance towards monotonous grinding. The first time you go through something it's fun, but for every subsequent playthrough it always loses its touch. One thing I realized when I was about to do my first quest is that... I had no one to do it with. What prolonged my gameplay with LaTale was that my brother was there to play it with me. We both leveled together, did quests, and even pvped with each other for the fun of it (I got killed, but hey I'm bad at PvPing). So my point of this blog is that if you have people to play games with it will prolong your stay with it exponetially. I even log into Megaten a few minutes each day just to say hi to my clan mates even though I pretty much quit the game.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Aeria got rid of the buyable Skill Resets the Misc. Shop had. I play as a Fire Wizard, with Dagger skills to help me level faster. I was planning to reskill later when I had at least three skills (Level 40 for reference) because anyone that plays LaTale knows that Fire Wizards have LONG cooldowns. So you pretty much spend most of your career kiting as many mobs as you can. However, since OGP allowed you to buy Skill Resets I was allowed to have extra skills to help me level earlier on. This plan was effectively killed when Aeria got rid of Skill Resets. What Aeria does have over the OGP though is that there were certain features OPG didn't have. For example, you could just BUY the enchants for your armours instead of item hunt for it or buy it with real money.
So in the end, pick your poison as I foresee LaTale being killed if Megaten was hosted by the same company.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Current State of EN: Just What Happened?
I'm going to say that at least half the server are casual players. Now by casual I don't mean that you play less than seven hours a week, I mean the type that plays for fun. The type that does what they feel like.
The type that doesn't try to optimize their damage potential.
I'm not going to say it's a bad thing, because Megaten is just a game afterall. Do what you feel like, and if you have fun that's all the more to you. What I AM going to talk about however, is the effects it has on the game itself.
Due to the latest "sponsor" craze anybody can get into an Ichi Gold now, while before it used to be a closed nit group only with the most elite. This was mainly because our gear sucked and very RARELY could someone OHKO Deformed Kirins. Slowly as Aeria released better equipment this limitation was gone and Ichi Gold went down severely in difficulty. Because people could now afford to lose a few slots or two people either: a)Only had few people for more exp or b)Brought someone along to buy plates for them. One thing you should know however is that one Ichi Gold plate costs 20k macca. You could complete Ichi Gold and the minimum you would get is 15k, effectively making costs less expensive. The problem is though is that people want the most efficient experience they can get and for that they do the good 'ol Jiko-Traesto method (unless you've been living under a rock it basically means you kill the Ichi Boss and teleport out as soon as he is dead). 20k Macca might not seem much, but most of the time you will run at least ten runs a session, which totals up to 200k. An average plasma farmer would take them one hour and a half to farm that. Does anyone want to dedicate their time to making money for grinding?
Back on point, what has sponsors done to our server? We have people running around that are level 80+ without a single enchant into their armour. If you don't see what's wrong with that, go slap yourself right now.
The worst part about it is, is that no one cares. Half the server are veterans and know not to invite these people, and the other half, the casual players don't care about how much damage you can do. This creates no sense of urgency in optimizing their damage as much as they can.
If what Finella said about JP server said was true, that they are elitist and expect everyone to be just as good as them, then this would show a huge contrast. Because the JP server are potentially perfectionist at damage potential there is an actual reason to enchant your gears. If you didn't you would get blocked by everyone. However, over here in the EN, because there is no penalty about being mediocre than the rest there is no need to upgrade your gears. The crystal market is practically crashed as the demand for certain crystals isn't really high. Because there is no reason to optimize your damage for the fact no one cares.
Another thing I want to bring up: Sugi Gold. Ever since sponsoring came into play no one runs Sugi Gold anymore. Why would they? Ichi Gold gives much more experience in an experience/min calculation (As a reference, a speed run is about ten minutes. You could run two-three Ichis in that time). Back then where we had mediocre equipment Sugi Gold was more of a challenge. We had to be careful, and to pick our skills carefully. We had to lure, we had to do things a certain way, we had to be precise in our routines (wait this sounds a lot like Ichi Gold). The important fact is, is that it raises some skill play than just leeching Ichi or having some uber-geared melee do everything for you.
Last thing to mention, information accessibility. This is an aspect of EN that we are heavily depraved in. Just for example, we didn't learn about brute forcing great success on weapons until we learned about the modification chances, something we wouldn't learn by ourselves. Most of gameplay related information is gathered through first-hand means which will lead to the veterans knowing most things about the game, while being too lazy to teach others. This is the case that I also fall into sadly, and even more sadly is that I have to leech off other sources of information to broaden my knowledge. What I do know is that I've been playing since CB and knew how to build my character as soon as the get go. Information isn't easy to get to as most of it is passed off first hand and is not in an open place where everyone can see. This leads into many faulty builds in Megaten which people have to sadly restart, because they didn't have the information on what to do first hand.
The type that doesn't try to optimize their damage potential.
I'm not going to say it's a bad thing, because Megaten is just a game afterall. Do what you feel like, and if you have fun that's all the more to you. What I AM going to talk about however, is the effects it has on the game itself.
Due to the latest "sponsor" craze anybody can get into an Ichi Gold now, while before it used to be a closed nit group only with the most elite. This was mainly because our gear sucked and very RARELY could someone OHKO Deformed Kirins. Slowly as Aeria released better equipment this limitation was gone and Ichi Gold went down severely in difficulty. Because people could now afford to lose a few slots or two people either: a)Only had few people for more exp or b)Brought someone along to buy plates for them. One thing you should know however is that one Ichi Gold plate costs 20k macca. You could complete Ichi Gold and the minimum you would get is 15k, effectively making costs less expensive. The problem is though is that people want the most efficient experience they can get and for that they do the good 'ol Jiko-Traesto method (unless you've been living under a rock it basically means you kill the Ichi Boss and teleport out as soon as he is dead). 20k Macca might not seem much, but most of the time you will run at least ten runs a session, which totals up to 200k. An average plasma farmer would take them one hour and a half to farm that. Does anyone want to dedicate their time to making money for grinding?
Back on point, what has sponsors done to our server? We have people running around that are level 80+ without a single enchant into their armour. If you don't see what's wrong with that, go slap yourself right now.
The worst part about it is, is that no one cares. Half the server are veterans and know not to invite these people, and the other half, the casual players don't care about how much damage you can do. This creates no sense of urgency in optimizing their damage as much as they can.
If what Finella said about JP server said was true, that they are elitist and expect everyone to be just as good as them, then this would show a huge contrast. Because the JP server are potentially perfectionist at damage potential there is an actual reason to enchant your gears. If you didn't you would get blocked by everyone. However, over here in the EN, because there is no penalty about being mediocre than the rest there is no need to upgrade your gears. The crystal market is practically crashed as the demand for certain crystals isn't really high. Because there is no reason to optimize your damage for the fact no one cares.
Another thing I want to bring up: Sugi Gold. Ever since sponsoring came into play no one runs Sugi Gold anymore. Why would they? Ichi Gold gives much more experience in an experience/min calculation (As a reference, a speed run is about ten minutes. You could run two-three Ichis in that time). Back then where we had mediocre equipment Sugi Gold was more of a challenge. We had to be careful, and to pick our skills carefully. We had to lure, we had to do things a certain way, we had to be precise in our routines (wait this sounds a lot like Ichi Gold). The important fact is, is that it raises some skill play than just leeching Ichi or having some uber-geared melee do everything for you.
Last thing to mention, information accessibility. This is an aspect of EN that we are heavily depraved in. Just for example, we didn't learn about brute forcing great success on weapons until we learned about the modification chances, something we wouldn't learn by ourselves. Most of gameplay related information is gathered through first-hand means which will lead to the veterans knowing most things about the game, while being too lazy to teach others. This is the case that I also fall into sadly, and even more sadly is that I have to leech off other sources of information to broaden my knowledge. What I do know is that I've been playing since CB and knew how to build my character as soon as the get go. Information isn't easy to get to as most of it is passed off first hand and is not in an open place where everyone can see. This leads into many faulty builds in Megaten which people have to sadly restart, because they didn't have the information on what to do first hand.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Something Irrelevent: LaTale
So for the past few days or so I haven't been playing MegaTen. Instead I've been trying my hand at another MMO Aeria is going to pick up, LaTale. However, instead of playing Aeria's version (I wasn't invited to CB anyways...) I headed over to OGP's version.
This game is essentially like Maplestory. 2D graphics, one plane, horrible amounts of grind etc.
Now what I wanted to talk about was LaTale's quest system. Anyone that knows me knows that I have horrid stamina to long periods of grind. Which explains how the farthest I got in Maplestory was level 23, which is pretty fail if you never played the game.
The same goes LaTale as it follows the same principles as other MMOs:
1)Grind here
2)Level up XX times
3)Move onto next area
4)Repeat
Still, I enjoyed LaTale much more than Maplestory even though they are both grindfests. One thing I have to hand it to, is the amount of quests LaTale offers over Maplestory (though I only made it to level 23 so I have no say about it).
The quests in LaTale are the standard "Talk to so and so guy and kill so and so monster so and so times" but what OGP did with the quests is interesting. In the JP and KRN version they follow the same follow the same outline, but what OGP did was that they took those quests, divided the things you needed to do and rewards earned by three. Then, they made it so you can repeat the quest three times, ending up with the same experience as intended.
The way OGP dealt with this was interesting to me as there was less emphasis on grinding because when you start off you can already accept one or two quests, and then repeat those three times. You'll also probably level up while completing them and then you can accept more quests even though you still haven't finished the quests you started with. So even though you are grinding you end up spending more time running around to complete the quests. Yes, it does feel repetitive but it gave me a small sense of accomplishment, no matter how trivial it was.
I'll relate this to Megaten since this is supposed to be a Megaten blog.
When I first started Megaten what probably drawn me in was that there was a story and that is was presented through Acts that actually had variety to it. Oh, and instanced dungeons but those are a dime a dozen the more I actually looked at MMOs.
tl;dr Questing, even if they can be repetitive, as long as they have decent rewards will prolong my grinding and stay with the game.
This game is essentially like Maplestory. 2D graphics, one plane, horrible amounts of grind etc.
Now what I wanted to talk about was LaTale's quest system. Anyone that knows me knows that I have horrid stamina to long periods of grind. Which explains how the farthest I got in Maplestory was level 23, which is pretty fail if you never played the game.
The same goes LaTale as it follows the same principles as other MMOs:
1)Grind here
2)Level up XX times
3)Move onto next area
4)Repeat
Still, I enjoyed LaTale much more than Maplestory even though they are both grindfests. One thing I have to hand it to, is the amount of quests LaTale offers over Maplestory (though I only made it to level 23 so I have no say about it).
The quests in LaTale are the standard "Talk to so and so guy and kill so and so monster so and so times" but what OGP did with the quests is interesting. In the JP and KRN version they follow the same follow the same outline, but what OGP did was that they took those quests, divided the things you needed to do and rewards earned by three. Then, they made it so you can repeat the quest three times, ending up with the same experience as intended.
The way OGP dealt with this was interesting to me as there was less emphasis on grinding because when you start off you can already accept one or two quests, and then repeat those three times. You'll also probably level up while completing them and then you can accept more quests even though you still haven't finished the quests you started with. So even though you are grinding you end up spending more time running around to complete the quests. Yes, it does feel repetitive but it gave me a small sense of accomplishment, no matter how trivial it was.
I'll relate this to Megaten since this is supposed to be a Megaten blog.
When I first started Megaten what probably drawn me in was that there was a story and that is was presented through Acts that actually had variety to it. Oh, and instanced dungeons but those are a dime a dozen the more I actually looked at MMOs.
tl;dr Questing, even if they can be repetitive, as long as they have decent rewards will prolong my grinding and stay with the game.
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