QUOTE(Juggernaut Santa @ Jan 15 2020, 19:00)
I still hope we get a lot of HV patches in the future.
With one that may or may not introduce levels above 500 (IMG:[
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Levels above 500 would:
- Obsolete the extremely long-term grinding of proficiency for long-term, high-investment players
- Completely obliterate the equipment market: let's face it, the availability of low-level equipment is already shaky & the grind to 400 to be able to soulfuse is already long enough. It would alienate new players even further.
- Require a mathematical rework to a number of the game's formulas, including but not limited to almost every stat in the game that receives a bonus from PABs (since you'd have way more of them at a higher level), equipment range scaling (500 values are the intended max right now and upsetting the current % stats would have a devastating effect on combat balance), and monster health scaling (melee players in particular who actually play more than REs are mad enough about this already).
You already have additional goals beyond simply hitting level 500 - trainings, hath perks, equipment acquisition, proficiency, monster lab, etc. Simply inflating the level cap without fixing any of the myriad problems with its current state would devastate it possibly beyond repair.
Some of the more dire problems facing HV include:
- Monster lab saturation: the crystal cost curve delayed this from becoming a significant problem by many years, and it will continue to do so for some more - but we're already seeing the problem here. A relatively small number of wealthy players completely dominate monster appearances. See
my research if you want more data on this.
10 players make up 60% of all monster appearances. (This is also slightly offset in importance by the gift rate not actually being 1 win = 1 gift, it's just a chance of a gift, and from the maximum time between gifts being 3 days with or without a win.) These players tend to hoard their materials (which is honestly also a good thing - the price of almost everything would go down... which goes into my next point).
- Economic freedom for low income players: a healthy economy involves a lot of movement, and an economy that serves its users well would mean the average player can participate in it regularly. We're currently in a somewhat good age for low income users - WTBs are up for energy drinks, trophies, certain consumables, many bindings and materials, etc around the clock - so they do have a reasonable source of constant income. That said, the wealth inequality between regular players and those with large H@H setups is
insane. Even hardcore grinders cannot compare to simple star selling. This could be eased a little by increasing the supply of trophies (perhaps a level 400 schoolgirl arena). That would benefit everyone, actually - there are more and more FoSers now, and the trophy supply is miserable in comparison to how much they want to buy.
- Game balance for melee players. Yes, this is obvious. 1H players have it the best by far and it's still woefully inadequate compared to mages. The speed difference could be brought much closer, but the biggest problem with this is the way damage is delivered. Mages deliver AoE damage to the entire round. One-hand players can hit up to 4 targets every turn. Narrowing the gap between styles would require melee to be able to kill any individual target in 1-2 clicks (and depending on how this was achieved, it might make the difference between one-hand and other styles even more noticeable). One way to look at this might be: mages are too fast, and should be slowed down. But I don't think almost any mages would agree: the game is tedious even at mage speeds. (One option is to increase monster health and monster drop rates proportionately.)
- Inflation. Credits just don't leave the economy. The 1% tax on the exchanges & the very few things people buy from the item shop are not good enough credit dumps for the ultra-rich. 'More hath perks' is a band-aid fix that only stalls this by a few years at best. One option is to allow FoSers to donate credits directly (at a lower rate than common trophy prices)... Another problem is that so many players have reached the 'peerless or nothing' point for their upgrades. Honestly, I do not think this can be fixed with HV's current system. MMOs handle this kind of problem by releasing new tiers of gear every so often, and some ARPG games use a seasonal approach. There's also a NG+ option, but there'd only really be any point in that if it carried over some infinite benefits and contributed towards some kind of ranking system. A lot of people would oppose this just simply because the idea of arbitrarily inflating numbers upsets them (think 1trillion damage in Diablo 3).
This is just a few things, and I haven't really put a lot of deep thought into it (a robust solution would require a near complete rework of the game, and that's beyond the scope of a simple patch - after all, it'd change so much that it might ruin the parts that make it fun for a lot of people). It might be better to think HV is a game that can be completed, and one day might be succeeded by a HV2 with a fresh start.
What's the last thing you've (not) accomplished?, Anything that doesn't fit in other threads
Jan 14 2020, 10:28
