Remove or decrease race penalties

[Llana_Virren]

Yes, it does. He pays the bills. Who do you think they keep this game going for? The martians?

They are probably reading these forums to see:

A) Are there lot of people who want this changed ?

and

B) Do they have a good reason?

So far our reasons seem to be:

A) Current game mechanics make this a major issue for some races. Tarus in particular.
B) Re-rolling sucks
C) Being held back by something you cannot change sucks
D) Every other aspect of your character can be modified after the fact and we enjoy that about this game.

You don't seem to have the majority vote. Most people agree that they should be balanced out in one way or another although not everyone agrees on how, so you better come up with a more convincing argument than what you have so far.

Unfortunately this isn't a democracy, so regardless of who here gets the most support we're still at the mercy of SE and their "infinite wisdom" in creating balance.

Nevertheless:
A) If the argument is about HP, then I whole-heartedly aggree that players should have more. But we shouldn't give Tarutaru all the props of other races (read as: more HP, more STR) just to blandify the race differences.
All players should get at least 5-10% more HP, purely because the ratio of "DMG Taken:Max HP" is broken beyond Lv75 for players.

B) Re-rolling does suck, and my original argument was that SE should have made it not suck.

C) Whole-heartedly agree. However, just because it sucks doesn't mean it needs to be fixed. It sucks that I had to wait for Lightsday to do Arka trials... but that's just how some things are.

D) This is not entirely true. Take merits for example. You "can" invest these merits in other locations, however it doesn't happen. Why? Because those changes aren't realistic. If you need the extra STR that you normally wouldn't get as a Taru, you're certainly not going to change your STR merits to say... CHR. So while you "can" change your character after the fact, they aren't realistic or responsible adjustments for a serious player and shouldn't be used as a "model" for a "successful end-game character development system".

I have and I continue to cede that players should have more HP. This is obvious to anyone who's compared the game at 75 versus 99.

I do not, however, think that the other stats of races should be less-different just because they hold you back "100 points of dmg" on a WS.

[Demon6324236]

No one cares about their STR, VIT, or anything else, they just don't wanna die instantly from bullshit attacks, thats all they are asking for...

[Llana_Virren]

No one cares about their STR, VIT, or anything else, they just don't wanna die instantly from bullshit attacks, that's all they are asking for...

No, it really isn't all they're asking for. Or else they would say (as its been said by me and at least one other person) that players need at least 5% HP across the board. This is about the other character stats, but people do not want to admit they think its the reason they do less DMG.

Here's my queue:
If everyone here has already agreed that players should all be at higher HP (since the scaling of HP is borked post-75)... then what's the argument about?
Or is HP not the only reason to be against race stat differences? I think Tarutaru having less STR/VIT than say, Hume; or Galka having less DEX/AGI than Mithra, is intentional and relevant to the game-world sociopolitical backdrop....

[Arcon]

I can't speak for others, to me HP is very much the only reason. And increasing HP across the board will solve fuck all. That's not a solution, that's wasting development time. Because all that will happen is new mobs will be released that deal even more damage and the balance is completely broken again.

I've heard all I ever want to hear from you in this sentence:

However, just because it sucks doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.

If you truly believe that you should not be allowed to live with or near people or associate with them, because that mentality is an absolute danger to society. This is one of the dumbest hings I've heard people say on here, and that's from a board that allows Pchan, Starcade and Rosina talk uncensored.

If something sucks, not only should it be changed, but it must be changed. If you don't see why you're beyond help.

[saevel]

This does not indicate that there is a non-0 ratio floor. Ratio has a minimum of 0 as long as monster attack is a positive number, and monster pDIF is different from Player pDIF. Similarly, player pDIF doesn't have a non-0 "floor."

In order to show that their Ratio is floored to a non-0 value, you'd have to:
1) Set yourself up with a certain VIT
2) Let them hit you enough that you're pretty sure you've seen their entire damage range
3) Increase your Defense without affecting your VIT
4) Show that their damage range is unchanged

Then you will have shown that they are Ratio floored. As a side-note, you'd need a monster with high enough base damage that you can detect small changes in their upper damage/swing limit even when you have very high defense.

Melee data
BLU/SCH with 643 defense (wasn't trying for super high def) and 93 VIT. Target was a single 63~65 spider outside Whitegate

33
17
17
31
32
32
48
49
17
22
38
18
37
17
27

Two crits for 67 and 92 respectively.

No 0's, the monsters pDiffMin never got to 0 even though it's obviously under 0.5 and that monster sure as hell doesn't have 300+ attack.

You can't argue around this, once your pDiff hits 0.5 the pDiffMin should be 0 and you should get 0 damage hits. The monster could have a 9999 DMG weapon and if it's pDiff ends up being 0 then it'll hit for 0. Unless you want to argue that a number multiplied by 0 doesn't equal 0?

That was data for a single spider, I fought 9 others while testing out Blue spells, at no point in time did I see a single 0 damage hit. Those are level 63~65 WAR monsters without any form of attack / defense buff or debuff present, this is how I'm positive I was at more then 2x their attack.

[saevel]

No, it really isn't all they're asking for. Or else they would say (as its been said by me and at least one other person) that players need at least 5% HP across the board. This is about the other character stats, but people do not want to admit they think its the reason they do less DMG.

Here's my queue:
If everyone here has already agreed that players should all be at higher HP (since the scaling of HP is borked post-75)... then what's the argument about?
Or is HP not the only reason to be against race stat differences? I think Tarutaru having less STR/VIT than say, Hume; or Galka having less DEX/AGI than Mithra, is intentional and relevant to the game-world sociopolitical backdrop....

It's simple really. Many players rolled taru's back in the day either cause they were cute or they wanted to play mage jobs. That or they rolled Hume to "play it safe". That worked fine and was a great thing back then, I remember feeling a little regret on choosing Elvann due to the INT, DEX and MP hit I took.

Flash forward, it's now 2012 and melee spam with STR WS's is all the rage. Magic damage and MP has taken a decidedly smaller roll in the overall strategy of the game. Monsters now use high damage AoE attacks and you need high HP and a good DT/PDT set to survive. What used to be a liability is now a minor foot note, and what was a minor foot note has become a major bonus.

People who chose Taru, or even Hume want to get the benefits of Elvann / Galka without having to give anything up. An across the board HP boost would raise all boats and those players don't want that. They want to be "the best" and don't want their race becoming a liability.

[Byrth]

Melee data

Where's the second set of melee data that shows increasing defense does not continue to decrease damage? You aren't showing a ratio floor; you're showing that monster pDIF is different from player pDIF.

Also, what's your basis for saying the monster doesn't have 300+ attack? Every attempt to determine monster attack has returned much higher values than we expect based on the level/stats. Check out Ig-Alima, who has 1059 Attack "naked." That's approximately 2x what we'd expect a player wearing only a weapon to have.

Based on player calculations, we'd already estimate that level 65 spiders have about 280 attack (227 skill + 35 from STR + 8 base + 10 attack bonus 1). I'm pretty sure we can easily get another 20 out of whatever the difference between monster and player attack calculations are that inflate their attack so much, and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to expect the spider's attack to be >400.

[saevel]

Where's the second set of melee data that shows increasing defense does not continue to decrease damage? You aren't showing a ratio floor; you're showing that monster pDIF is different from player pDIF.

Also, what's your basis for saying the monster doesn't have 300+ attack? Every attempt to determine monster attack has returned much higher values than we expect based on the level/stats. Check out Ig-Alima, who has 1059 Attack "naked." That's approximately 2x what we'd expect a player wearing only a weapon to have.

Based on player calculations, we'd already estimate that level 65 spiders have about 280 attack (227 skill + 35 from STR + 8 base + 10 attack bonus 1). I'm pretty sure we can easily get another 20 out of whatever the difference between monster and player attack calculations are that inflate their attack so much, and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to expect the spider's attack to be >400.

Bulvine Scatology. Regular monsters do not have stupidly high attack, NM's are a different story. Regular monsters do not wear gear, eat food or use JA's. Their attack isn't that hard to estimate and a level 63~65 spider does not have over 300 attack and definitely not over 400.

I deliberately picked a target that would be easy to figure out it's attack and that I could just as easily get more then double it's attack in defense. I can go smack around level ~20 mobs (prevent fSTR from going to 0) and get the exact same results. I actually did this a LONG time ago as a 75 RDM/BLU on different levels mobs to see if there was a point at which adding more defense would help (cocoon + meat vs cocoon + taco for soloing stuff), the answer was no. Once your at slightly more then twice the monsters attack all additional defense means jack squat, it won't even overcome LCF as that seems to be applied after ratio floor.

This isn't that hard. Monsters have a ratio floor that is between 0.5 and ~0.8 with pDiffMin never going to 0, I'd estimate it to be between 0.25 and 0.4 as an absolute minimum.

[Llana_Virren]

I can't speak for others, to me HP is very much the only reason. And increasing HP across the board will solve fuck all. That's not a solution, that's wasting development time. Because all that will happen is new mobs will be released that deal even more damage and the balance is completely broken again.

I've heard all I ever want to hear from you in this sentence:


If you truly believe that you should not be allowed to live with or near people or associate with them, because that mentality is an absolute danger to society. This is one of the dumbest hings I've heard people say on here, and that's from a board that allows Pchan, Starcade and Rosina talk uncensored.

If something sucks, not only should it be changed, but it must be changed. If you don't see why you're beyond help.

You definitely misunderstood. I'm talking about the fact that some things suck (such as, Tarus get less STR) but that's the nature of the beast (read as: the choice you made). There's a difference between changing something because it is bad design, versus changing something because you dislike the design. If you willfully ignore that in attempt to make your rainbow world more realistic, then that's your right. But to somehow suggest that anything that sucks, even if it sucks based on your own choices, should be renegged is just unrealistic, immature, and equally dangerous to a society that has grown to believe that no action should have consequence.

[Arcon]

Bulvine Scatology.

I cringe every time I hear that. It's bovine, not bulvine. Use proper English instead of this bullshit.