Oh... This is why endgame is bad?

[SKay]

Been playing DFO for a year now and it's funny to me how that still makes me a baby compared to most regular players. I've wanted to play the game for much longer however, so to make up for lost time I've been trying a lot of the classes and mostly avoiding endgame.. until recently...

Little did I know 2nd awakening was an omen of the future! Dying in 3 hits or less on a regular basis!? Especially after neople patching the game so almost everything except endgame is locked to easy mode? (don't even mention the unlockable harder epic quests mode to me, it's glitched/vague as ♥♥♥♥ on unlock requirements at best, plus it has be be unlocked per character instead of being an account wide thing) Teaching you bad habits, only to then be flattened by every other enemies attack stat & breaking the rules of how it's taught you until this point how each classes' moves work? Like player sized opponents dropping like a rock to disrupt combos instead of juggling like normal and the game completly ignoring buffs like super armour?

This sounds a lot like the reasons I got bored of dynasty warriors, I hope endgame has more challenge to offer than breaking it's own rules and min-maxing me with stats to death. Don't even get me started on tower of despair! More like tower of salt.

I don't mind a challenge.. when a game doesn't break it's own mechanics and doesn't hand hold you innocently into sudden serious difficulty whiplash. Leveling to max sucks I get it, but the least they could have done is let the players keep the difficutly slider and decide for themselves.

[76561198104269154]

Uhm, anyway It seems like you are somebody who get bored easily (I'm not saying that cause you have TOO MANY games in ur library)

[SKay]

You missed the part where I said been playing dfo a year already. Also many games? it's called a steam sale, perhaps you've heard of them?

[Sterling]

Gave hasn't ignored my super armor so far, and I have no issues juggling people with my precious Ranger.

[[UPRPRC] Harlequina]

I thought you were gonna bring up the grind at endgame... but no, the difficulty spike?

APCs being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is just something you get used to. I wasn't prepared for them early on either, and I got killed a lot of times. But I improved. As in, got better at playing the game, not equipment-wse. For the insane hell parties I also learned to prepare ahead for their arrival. APCs in tournament/tower can be annoying since you don't have cooldowns ready right away, but you can usually still outmaneuverr them. I can with Battle Mage anyway. Worst case scenario, you use a life token and then kill them... which is not a big deal anyway since life tokens are given out in all kinds of events/daily freebie ♥♥♥♥.

[SKay]

You mean the rng grinding? Oh I know that's ♥♥♥♥, but I also know it's one of the things keeping some people playing the game so I know it will never change as much of a time waster as that is.

Nope my salt comes from how awful the game seems at teaching you to play better. Either the game breaks it's own rules of how things like super armour works or its just bad at explaining in the first place. I can't even train for tower of despair because there's no real equivalent in the game and fights are over so fast, like kill you, respawn and die again before you can move levels of fast. Just feels like a let down so far that the only way it seems to know how to be a challenge is with higher stats than me and skill spam.

Edit: side note I noticed pvp has combo lessons, which would be great... If it wasn't near impossible to mimick the positioning on some of those. Do they assume you use auto inputs on those?

[Gysahl Greens]

For the point about the game breaking its own mechanics, that isn't the way it really goes in fighting game-style games, including this one. It's more like there are just so many things and players will have to discover it. You play & get the hang of how your stuff works, how to experiment to improve, experience what exceptions there are that counter you, and always have the notion of "I could lose if I'm not careful" in the back of the mind.

I also got completely floored when I first tried the Black Dragon Tournament for 2nd Awakening but with some research, practice in Underfoot's training room, staring at my skill window to see what my character can really do, and thinking on the fly, I was able to clear it with relative ease. Black Dragon Tournament played more like a fighting game compared to the rest of the PvE (which the game really should have explained since it didn't), and fighting games put a lot of emphasis on thinking on the spot about what you can do and will do vs. what the opponent can do and will do. Hard reads, conditioning, testing the waters/feeling each other out, etc. must happen during the fight. Most games, especially other genres that tend to be more popular in these days, no longer do this at all at high speeds or spoonfeed players too much. The closest thing that comes to this is FPS games, but even then FPS controls are by far easier and less complex than that of fighting games.

PvE and PvP playing differently is just a consequence of a game that has both aspects. It's gonna happen in any game just because adaptable human brains > pre-scripted A.I. enemies. PvE aspects and skills are just broken af for PvP and will remain different. It won't be fun getting pulled from the other side of the map and stun-locked for 30 hits or juggled for so long you could go get a drink and come back. PvE is just players defaulting to outsmarting pre-programmed A.I. anyway since it can't adapt. The same goes for console fighting games. Street Fighter, Tekken, Super Smash Bros., Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear champs at EVO don't get there by strictly just playing arcade mode on the highest difficulty repeatedly.

I do agree with how the game needs better descriptions on a lot of things though. But hey, it's originally a Korean game and they gotta make do with whatever translators they got. Even Path of Exile's well done, standardized way of explaining everything in-game still has everyone asking questions and taking time to learn what everything means. The devs wanted the mechanics to be literal & simple without causing confusion, but that just can't realistically happen when you also want to have complex systems. I bet even PoE's other language regions have some number of translation issues causing confusion. But back to DFO. Yeah some descriptions aren't exactly consistent with other related things but the big picture of it is that it's not like there is no one around to ask questions to. There is nothing stopping you from experimenting safely (and then contributing to the wiki/other community sources). I mean that's how game info was discovered before guidebooks, internet, and data mining came along. One huge thing they should work on though is explaining anything that is different from normal PvE before you do it. I'm looking at you Black Dragon Tournament...

The epics grinding is just a consequence of materialistic attitudes in western culture. Of course if it's the best of the best, then it won't be easy to get by any definition. If it really takes so long to get any good epic gear (which I hear will become account bound instead of completely untradeable as per the updates in kDnF), it would be just more time efficient learning to run things with good chronicle and ancient dungeon legendaries. I see and experience this in other MMOs too. Everyone grinds for gear, instead of actually practicing to be good. Vindictus is a huge example of this back when I played it a few years ago. If you didn't have top-tier gear, you were kicked from parties. Most of the time those same people still only play at a barely satisfactory skill level, depend on their gear in a battle of attrition, use reviving items, and then call themselves "good players" when they eventually win. Other people then immediately agree when they see only their top-tier gear. On the flip side, some people who actually practice playing the game instead of pressing and praying to RNGesus all day were able to run things better than those gear elitists. In the Korean servers, it was mostly like this instead. People were more into practicing and teaching instead of gear grinding. Exteel by NCsoft was also like this. In the west, we rushed to get high-tier gear. Then some Korean players from the Korean server tried playing with us and we got slaughtered when they just use mid-tier gear.

I can help you out with unlocking hard mode scenarios though, which is also a victim of poor explanation:

1) So the scenario for an area takes you through a number of runs for each of its dungeons; the scenario "dungeon chain" per dungeon. While loading up into the dungeon, you'll see the requirement for hard mode (which should really be on the dungeon select screen like for normal dungeon runs if you ask me). You also still need to be in the optimal level range for the area.

2) You'll have to complete at least 1 segment in the scenario dungeon chain for literally ALL scenario dungeons in the area. Dungeon segments that count for hard mode eligibility have that "damage points on you" counter thing below your dungeon clear ranking on the right side. The counter that counts how many times you get hit. Some areas might have segments that cannot be used for unlocking hard mode (they won't have damage points counter), like Time Gate, but obviously that just means those aren't counted.
- I've researched that you only need 1 segment per dungeon to meet hard mode requirements, but my experimentation so far (which is just 1 char) was just meeting it for every segment until I got it. So I don't know if it really is just 1 segment per dungeon, or if it counts a certain total number of segments that meet hard mode requirements for the area.

3) This is the biggest point why so many can't unlock hard mode. You SHOULD NOT move onto the next area when you hit the level requirement and get the cutscene of the next area. Keep fufilling the hard mode requirement for ALL the scenario dungeons in your current area. For example, don't skip the rest of Meltdown and move to Castaway Cave even if your character is able to.

4) When you meet the hard mode requirement for a segment in the final scenario dungeon in the area (e.g. Chessboard at Meltdown), you should get some dialogue from Seria when you return to town. It will be about hard mode scenario and it will be unlocked for the character. The earlier you unlock hard mode, the easier it will be. Hard mode being unlocked only for that char instead of the account isn't too much of a hindrance. It at least pushes people to play each char the best they can for hard mode unlocks. Some chars will have it easy, others not quite.

[ele]

I agree they should just let you start at level 70 or something. I didn't even get that far on the character I made for the steam release because I was bored out of my mind. Then Lancer came out and I imagined doing it again.....NOPE. Off to other games instead.

[Sterling]

Originally posted by ele:

I agree they should just let you start at level 70 or something. I didn't even get that far on the character I made for the steam release because I was bored out of my mind. Then Lancer came out and I imagined doing it again.....NOPE. Off to other games instead.

That's how you get the players to constantly say "this game is too short, where is the progression?"

[ele]

They can already say that since there isn't any whilst levelling. Just push 2 skills per room and you're done.

Give people a choice then: "Start at level 70" or "Start at level 1"

[SKay]

Start at level 70? sounds like you got that idea from WoW. I can understand the logic behind it, but I think dfo needs to be a stronger brand outside of asia before that would be a good idea.

[Jigsaw]

Originally posted by Everything by Everyone:

You mean the rng grinding? Oh I know that's ♥♥♥♥, but I also know it's one of the things keeping some people playing the game so I know it will never change as much of a time waster as that is.

Nope my salt comes from how awful the game seems at teaching you to play better. Either the game breaks it's own rules of how things like super armour works or its just bad at explaining in the first place. I can't even train for tower of despair because there's no real equivalent in the game and fights are over so fast, like kill you, respawn and die again before you can move levels of fast. Just feels like a let down so far that the only way it seems to know how to be a challenge is with higher stats than me and skill spam.

Edit: side note I noticed pvp has combo lessons, which would be great... If it wasn't near impossible to mimick the positioning on some of those. Do they assume you use auto inputs on those?

First question, which character are you using for those end game dungeons, and do you have access to pink grade weapons and armor or legendaries or chronicles? The thing is, in most of the true end game fights some classes do naturally better than others, especially ones that have a ton of built in utility, for instance, if you play a female or male nen, theres nothing in this game you can't beat solo. But if you take that same logic and apply it to a male or female striker....well...you're gonna have to really work, and really think, and really know your character in and out. Or the hyper alternative you pick a class that takes absolutely no thinking to play whatsoever like a creator, a chaos, or a summoner. The thing is, the game doesn't teach you to be better at your class, it doesn't have class tutorials outside of combo training, its up to you to practice and get skilled enough to make your character do amazing things. Like any fighting game, theres hundreds of people who will pick up and play chun li, but it takes your own practice and reaching outside of your comfort zone and usual 1-2 skill reach to really make yourself shine.

All I can say is, practice, practice, practice. Also if you have uniques and other gear like legendaries you can grind for it also makes a huge difference. Don't let the salt get to ya, should have seen me play female spitfire on any kind of hard dungeon, I was spam dying like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. But I haven't really practiced much with a female spit to the point where I can say I'm good, or to the point where I can run up into a really hard dungeon solo and not completely screw up and get wombo combod to death. Practice.