Rohan origin comeback thread.

[sunnyangel]

lolno

Everybody SAYS that they would like the old school rohan feel but in reality its bull****. I have played on maybe 20 or so lvl 99 pservers and they die within weeks because simply put the struggle is just not fun. We have exposed the masses to a higher quality lifestyle with twins and the lvl 15 costume and chimera gear. IMO epic-upg 1.0 pre +18 rings was the BEST time in rohan history, the best pvps that lasted because people didnt die in 2 hits ala 2008 rohan and people didnt die in 4 hits ala +18 boss drop 50% scrolls bull****. I honestly would prefer rohan origin with either a scaled down upg weap style (maybe +30% hp on all dps weapons and +70% hp on tank weapons / +6% dd / +6% crit) or a working not p2w style of isen server. The main problem with the isen server was the stupid gear progression system that made it impossible unless you balled out to upgrade past chimera on anything except weapon. The system of farming power badges to get the spirit stones for your crafted gear was fair a f and if they added more ways to get power badges (example: buying from ip shop or making quests in indun) it would be much better since everyone just logged like 5 chars for PA to keep up with the spirit stones.

[soulholder]

Nah. How did Twins possibly make the game better in the grand context of things? I could take a level 30 with agi twins and crit people in the nearby levels for five times their max health. Level curbing of abilities helped, but honestly, there shouldn't be a need to do so. It's symptoms of a bigger issue. And at the end of the day, the issue is P2W powercreep in a highly exclusive have or have-not environment. R:BF's pop died out with epics and upgrades not because of bad balance or time investment, but the sheer fact that it was pretty much impossible to climb out of being a have-not without major assistance from big-name guilds or P2W spenders.

2008 was the best this game ever was, and likely ever will be. People didn't die in two hits, either, unless they were just bad or massively underleveled/geared. A player in good gear in his 70's was an endgame or 8x/9x threat enough to take them damned seriously Combos dropped people 10-15 levels up if they weren't paying attention. Strictly speaking, the pace was fast, yes, but the combat itself required some mental acuity, and success was found in a mixture of gear + skill. AA resets and every little cooldown mattered. Good-enough gear wasn't IM-dependent or expensive to make. Costumes gave +5 stats and 30 pdef/mdef and were hardly mandatory because of it.

Most skills had barely any difference between 6/7 and there was little incentive to spend a ton monthly to stay competitive. Minigame (B5/L7/nopoly)stat scrolls didn't even exist - just wraths, sprint scrolls, and some other minor junk in the mix. In no other time has this ever been the case.
Twins were a good QoL buff to offset the intense needs for crafted accessories and the insanity of powercreep someone who spent a ton of money on the game could achieve. However, hard-stat-capped R1-R4 rings with a low level requirement were amazing because the gains level-to-level between a well-geared level 60 character and level 99 only differed in raw stats mostly from the actual point investments from builds. The rest was gear amp from %'s.

A lot of the rest of the problems just happened from over-farming and obvious best-choices for PvP as far as option items went (DD).

[sunnyangel]

THH you never actually played this game so I can chalk your thoughts up to just being a casual. I have been around the endgame pvp scene since the start and I can tell you that balance during the 08 days was just an illusion. You are a victim to confirmation bias which is when you think its fair because you managed to get away with it when in reality at the top tier that never happens. Templars with feathers that had a decent defender on their back did not die to anyone not within 30% of them gear wise. Dekans with 4x hearts were 1 hitting anyone who didnt have at least 19k hp and good luck killing a 1 vit per lvl priest with 4x amulets it wasnt gonna happen.


Getting that full buff empower dark eyes ctb people had 25k+ melee fighting ppl with at most 8k. Night and day difference and lol plz lvl 7s were always important again thats confirmation bias. You got away with having lvl 6s and you think that you would be able to get away with it in real pvp? plz



The epic-upg pre +18 days was THE BEST MOST BALANCED time in rohan. Ask anybody who was around at that time and they will tell you.

[soulholder]

... a day in and we're back to this, lol. Things never change.

I think your dates are just way off. And I've been at or near the tops: in beta in the 60's/70's, and built a reputation as a skilled ranger despite being under-leveled thereafter. I also ran with NW fighting Forever and hit full glacial and the likes before calling it quits in 2012, and literally let other people take Bez/Rulers while I was in NW pre-walter's/twins. My friend/prior commander in Deceit who moved to NW with me ended up with what was supposed to be my set of the drops because I just stopped caring enough to keep putting in the effort; I'd done my share of "PvP" in the game, and things were starting to spiral even beyond hope of control with how much RNG and cost kept getting put in. I've never been at the true pinnacle since post-beta, because I never cared enough to spend that much cash to max out in order to make myself the best. You've seen what some people charge to leverage themselves into power. I'm not one to care that much about e-peen over budget. I'd rather win an intellectual argument.

The reason I think your dates are messed up is because R5, and subsequently feathers, didn't even exist in 2008. Nobody had T5 exotics/ancients then, either, because the last > level 100 items per weapon type weren't even in the game until then in order to do the forging. R5 and the surrounding gear was post-release content that came out in 2009, and the 100+ gear content patch didn't come out until a number of months later. The giant for CtB didn't even come out until winter 2009/2010. The absolute best thing one could get at the time was R4 rings, which are marginally better than Wings and the likes, which I had even before level 60 because there were guilds on Ahkma literally giving them away to random people, myself included, in order to fend off their opponent guilds.

A lot of people from '08 Ahkma will reference a few rangers who were particularly good at the game: Zukii, Rod before transferring to Syrephis, the GM from Element whose name escapes me, and myself. Frankly, I taught Rod and some of his high-ranks of his guild (Vic and Tae) how to play and beat ranger as dhans, because they were my guild officers before they moved off the server.

Epics/upgrades "balanced" PvP by devaluing stats and build choices and the variance between builds. Everyone ran the same gear stats in the competitive scene, and thus the game became mostly a proof-of-concept about whether or not the classes were numerically okay. And they were in the context of the meta; that's it. That doesn't mean anything for the general game-state. All they did was make WFFS/DFFS less-potent after the Hero patch due to differences in relative health. Most 2008-era players didn't stay here post-epics. I've seen the metrics; 70% player reduction in less than a week to never return. A majority of the rest either burnt out sooner from crafting or other reasons, or they lost interested with the blatant cash-grab. So anyone you ask is probably likely going to be inherently biased because statistically they weren't likely to have actually been here at release.

I didn't partake in the serious post-epic PvP because I just didn't care at that point to. The damage had been done. The forum PvP was more fun than it was in-game, especially given the number of users here.

You compare skills to how they were in '08 vs post-'09 reworks vs whatever reworks have happened since I last played, and 7's were hardly necessary in '08 for most skills. Some of the essentials, absolutely they were huge helps. But many skills didn't improve past level 6, or were barely improvements to a point where even at endgame it didn't actually matter. In fact, in '08, some skills actually saw tradeoffs going from 6-7 which carried potential negative utility. One of these which is lingering now is the duration on Piercing Root in Origins. What it doesn't mention is the hidden 50% cooldown cut which *used* to exist at 7 (I haven't tested it for Origins and don't care to), despite losing 70% of its duration. Early MB worked on the same principle: higher shield, lower duration.

And you should know full well that templars only had insane magic attack because the values got inflated so much. You know the math behind how blunt mastery worked. In 2008, those values weren't achievable enough to make them worthwhile. Tell me the name of a templar in T4 gear that's ever out-damaged an agi dhan, guardian, defender, ranger, wizard, or dekan at those same levels/gear. There wasn't one, because that's just how the game worked at that time. Templars were a mix of priest and defender, as they were to be. The 2009/2010-era of the game was horribly imbalanced, yes. But to say that 2008 wasn't balanced is just negligent of the game's history, because at release, it pretty much was very well-balanced, the only questionable builds being dex guard and agi dhan if they were very well-geared and well-built. If anything, things didn't die fast enough, because wizards with Psy shield could keep whole parties up with everyone dealing such relatively low damage.

[bloodybladez3]

THH you never actually played this game so I can chalk your thoughts up to just being a casual. I have been around the endgame pvp scene since the start and I can tell you that balance during the 08 days was just an illusion. You are a victim to confirmation bias which is when you think its fair because you managed to get away with it when in reality at the top tier that never happens. Templars with feathers that had a decent defender on their back did not die to anyone not within 30% of them gear wise. Dekans with 4x hearts were 1 hitting anyone who didnt have at least 19k hp and good luck killing a 1 vit per lvl priest with 4x amulets it wasnt gonna happen.


Getting that full buff empower dark eyes ctb people had 25k+ melee fighting ppl with at most 8k. Night and day difference and lol plz lvl 7s were always important again thats confirmation bias. You got away with having lvl 6s and you think that you would be able to get away with it in real pvp? plz



The epic-upg pre +18 days was THE BEST MOST BALANCED time in rohan. Ask anybody who was around at that time and they will tell you.

lmao, nobody in 08 or 09 was doing 19k FFS. I can show you a vid on xor of a 125k hp dekan doing 12k FFS. Who in 2008 or more 2009 over here could get 125k HP?

2008-2009, with all of its flaws, was the most balanced period. Ever.

[soulholder]

lmao, nobody in 08 or 09 was doing 19k FFS. I can show you a vid on xor of a 125k hp dekan doing 12k FFS. Who in 2008 or more 2009 over here could get 125k HP?

2008-2009, with all of its flaws, was the most balanced period. Ever.

The slight irony here being that vit dekan, aside from post-hero-patch pre-nerfed WFFS/DFFS, was probably at its strongest at this time given its relative health advantage via scaling gear. Even still, the build was kind of a pushover since it rarely truly one-shotted people, and so many people were running dhans with mana burn/silence/pouch to lock them out of combat and the old HP/MP switcheroo. And a lack of vit power creep kept them killable while not doing insane amounts of damage (coming close to 700 vit was insane).

Int Sage hit way harder with breath and was similarly-tanky given Blue Defense absorbing a ton of damage. But still, was pretty easy to lock down and out in bigger PvP environments.

It's really just the case that everything else was way more balanced in general and the game inherently more fun because of it. I think the only class that suffered was the dex scout, and that could have easily been improved by reducing its AoE cooldowns, for they already hit pretty hard when combined together.

Ultimately, though, I apparently have no idea what I'm talking about, despite being a major build contributor across most of the classes over the years, and being one of the most senior players in this game, because I decided being a nonfactor was a better decision in life than going all-in and hating myself and the communities I was part of.

@Strellan: Your "numbers" are off because you're not looking at the actual numbers from content that was around in exclusively 2008. 2009 was bad and I don't deny that. But that's also why I explicitly, like many others, reference 2008. You're assuming things existed back then that didn't, and those were heavy contributors to making the state of the game worse.
As far as "bad gear" and "skillz" goes: I don't even know what you're arguing... Honestly, now just laying claims about people being unskilled prior to epics with no reason is more supporting of you having an inherent confirmation bias than anything.

But whatever, it's pretty much apparent at this point you're not entirely sure how things went down in 2008.

[KatyPerry1]

The slight irony here being that vit dekan, aside from post-hero-patch pre-nerfed WFFS/DFFS, was probably at its strongest at this time given its relative health advantage via scaling gear. Even still, the build was kind of a pushover since it rarely truly one-shotted people, and so many people were running dhans with mana burn/silence/pouch to lock them out of combat and the old HP/MP switcheroo. And a lack of vit power creep kept them killable while not doing insane amounts of damage (coming close to 700 vit was insane).

How were vit dekans a pushover build? They were never meant to be a one-man-army type of char. The power of vit dekans was having like at least 2-3 running around, FFS-ing Templars at the same time when DN expired, or any other char that had priority being killed. Also, having those dekans reviving people all the time was annoying af. These two things were the strengths of dekans.

Anyways, crafting etc wasn't that bad at all, if it was capped at the 51 rings. Everything that contributed to the over-the-top damage and unfair advantadges contributed to the killing of the game. Epics, upgraded, all stats acc and what even came after all of that was just plain stupid. I had epics, upgraded, all stat boss drops etc etc but I didn't enjoy it like the time before that. Just because there were dhans running around doesn't mean that dekans were a pushover build. There were guardians and rangers, which back then, were one of the main squishy killers.

[soulholder]

How were vit dekans a pushover build? They were never meant to be a one-man-army type of char. The power of vit dekans was having like at least 2-3 running around, FFS-ing Templars at the same time when DN expired, or any other char that had priority being killed. Also, having those dekans reviving people all the time was annoying af. These two things were the strengths of dekans.

Anyways, crafting etc wasn't that bad at all, if it was capped at the 51 rings. Everything that contributed to the over-the-top damage and unfair advantadges contributed to the killing of the game. Epics, upgraded, all stats acc and what even came after all of that was just plain stupid. I had epics, upgraded, all stat boss drops etc etc but I didn't enjoy it like the time before that. Just because there were dhans running around doesn't mean that dekans were a pushover build. There were guardians and rangers, which back then, were one of the main squishy killers.

Was speaking more generally; a group of three players playing anything burst-oriented (agi dhan and ranger were big ones due to their relative burst/combo reliability from stealth/range to dodge silence/pouch and pre-cast their escapes in the form of WF/Sprint on top of their low-stat-need for high damage from siege shot scaling and obviously stat-crits + invenom elemental damage) easily brought down non-tanks without the need for truly massive gear advantages as was the norm throughout most of 2008. Vit dekan worked as a good sponge and bruiser, but unless it was ganking or focusing random under-leveled players, it struggled to contribute much given its relatively easy shutdown potential from priest/dhan control effects. Possibly different metas, though, Ahkma was also the newest of the servers just after release, full of mostly rejects from the others and new players lol. Even then, templars didn't start taking the spotlight until a long ways after when people started scaling blunt with lots of all-stat bonuses; str defender was "the build" for a long time given the insanity of bonus attack force that Fixation provided on top of all the sweet defenses from the tree to keep them up.

51's while not inherently bad were a huge step towards the stats just getting out of hand; rings alone could provide almost 40% of the total achievable stat points from 1-99 in each of three separate stats. R4 rings were 15-20 each with hearts being the big vit item. Needless to say, just the difference alone between them was about the same as investing into 4:0 or 3:1 builds, which you probably recall early on being a make-or-break split for most players.

[EaglePhoenix]

Well - we've been there, said that, discussions all over the place yadayada.
Epics themselves weren't what initially broke the game, but the fact they were a limited sale along with a whole bunch of other shizzle that went down.

There's so many things that "broke" the game, that it's pointless to pinpoint it down to one thing when, TBF, it was never right to begin with.
But hey - let's not debating on what could be and what should be - but what is and what small tweaks can make the difference.

[RememberMyName]

I'm still salty that I missed the 2nd day Epic Meister's sale because of work, and my roommate (who played Rohan) forgot to log on my EM account and buy it :|

As bad as the decision to release epics/upgrades was, I'd have to agree that the post-epic pvp was the most balanced this game ever was - everyone who wasn't in a guild that contended boss fights could buy their way into contention and the playing field was way more even instantly.

Then the giant stat inflation garbage came along and ruined the game.