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Zeitz and his opinion on the new EXP system. Oh hey there, Zeitz’s here with his stupid and long analysis on a very popular topic right now as promised on another thread (because I have nothing to do while minting 7 hours of mining ore) – The New Exp System.

Of course, this post will be so freaking long so I recommend you open some awesome music while reading or something. Here are some of my recommendations.

Island of Wakfu – Sanctuary : Click here (I have no idea how I got 200 views on this)

Umineko – Last end conductor : Click here (This one is quite long so you should be able to finish the whole post in one go)

And my new fav song, Light Lag (I love light lag, especially since I can play with staple ping….Fail comedian is fail) : Click here

Do note that I am but a player as well. I am not god, I am not your parents nor am I your pet dog waiting to be fed because you forgot to feed him for a day after going out and having a wild night with your BF/GF. These are simply opinions and predictions not facts. You are free to believe, you are free to care and you are free to go “LOL TL;DR NUB BYE RAGEEEEEE” but don’t bother posting because if you do, the mods will remove them anyway.

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So what is up with this new system? Why does it cause such a huge uproar and chaos in the world of Wakfu right now that it might even rival Ogrest’s Chaos because it can cause Ankama to lose money, something Ogrest cannot do?

This patch made it that you can no longer obtain any exp when you reach the cap (level 105). You won’t be able to level up your guild (WAT), your spells (OMG) and even your makabra! (ZOMGWTFBBQ) Of course you will feel like quitting knowing that those that leveled to the cap before you and got high levels makabra and spells on all branches will be stronger and better than you no matter. HOWEVER, READ THIS QUOTE FIRST FROM THE RED LADY AVI MANAGER ON FRENCH FORUM FIRST. Translated by our lovely Google translator that is somewhat getting better at doing its job lately.




Let’s take a look at each part one at a time. We will start with the main concern that also involves our pocket, the MAKABRA.

So according to the red lady, the Makabra will gain exp again later on anyway so you won’t be troubled by it even though you get to cap. Of course they won’t dare to hurt you for paying. It has been stated that Makabra Exp will be fixed.

WHAT ABOUT GUILD EXP!? You seriously think they are going to leave it like this? It has been stated that the Guild Exp will be fixed.

Let’s move on to the next part. Why is it that they suddenly decide to stop us from getting exp and planning to reset it all? Well, you see, I believe this is an attempt from Ankama in order to balance Wakfu. WHAT? ZEITZ! YOU SERIOUS?

Yes I am. You see here, the main targets of this change are the people exploiting the “Wisdom + Reset” trick to speed grind and come out on top of everyone with more power than others. These people cheated their way up while us people who trained by the rule are being punished by it. These people probably have all their branches nearly maxed anyway.

Another thing is to deal with us people who unintentionally bugged the Spell system via the Guild tax before the roll back. The tax wasn’t working properly and we were gaining way too much spell exp even at low level. New players that joined after the guild was fixed or after this patch will never have as much spell exp as us and will be at a huge disadvantage.

This is their attempt to bring everyone back down to equal footing. Everybody will have the same spell exp no matter what after their new overhaul. See that guy that cheated with wisdom and is now crying at the corner because he now has the same stat as us? YOU LIKE IT DON’T YOU, LEGIT PLAYERS.

Also, this will introduce some competitiveness into the game as well. Before, you can faceroll and leech all the way and just pvp when you have all spells maxed. However, with this new system, you will now have to start thinking “hmm, how should I build now to make the most out of my points? Should I get 1 more damage on my main spell or should I get +4-5% on my element? Decision, decision.” The casual players can just level up their mainspells like normal and still play with their friends anyway but if your friends suddenly go “Hey, maybe we were not fated to be partying together. You did 10 damage less. This is good bye. Btw, thanks for the meal and your birthday presents.” then you better slap that friends of your and go find a real one.

Here's an example on how the game will become more competitive due to the choices you will now make when leveling your spells. Let’s say Person A went and maxed only one spells while person B went and leveled almost all spells and ended up having 40% resist and 80% more offense than A.

In PvE : B will be much tankier than A and can deal damage on high resist monsters because the offense bonus will penetrate the monsters' resist. A, on the other hand, will be a glass cannon. He can easily shoot and kill targets with low resist but he will have a hard time dealing with high resist monsters.

And this is just me blabering but with the spell working that way, they can then make some kind of content in the future that will requires both A and B to really work together. Imagine if there's a dungeon with monsters having really high resist to the point that A cannot damage them. However, there's this monster that once killed, will lower the resist of every other monsters in the fight. B will be the one to destroy that monster with his offense bonus and once the resist has been lowered, A will be the one beating everything down. Sounds fun for a new content, right? Hope they do make one.

In PvP, they will end up dealing nearly the same amount of damage after the resist is taken into the calculation unless one side has a much better gear or something. (A glass cannon vs a tankish bruiser. This will be fun!)

The amount of turns required for A to kill B or B to kill A will be around the same. The first person to mess up is the one that will lose unlike the current system where the first person to go will win.

It is not like the current one where both side has a high damage spell AND high offense bonus to penetrate the other side resist. That is all about "initiate", "who hit first" and "who crits more"

Some of you will probably say “Why do they have to stop us from being to level it now? Just let us continue to level it and reset later!” Hey, what happened when they tell you that there’s a chance of roll back and we still continue to grind? We raged so badly at them saying we wasted too much time even though the roll back was obviously going to be introduced. Now, imagine the same case with spells. “OMG I LEVELED THESE SPELLS WHY YOU RESET I QUIT QQ”. Better stop it right now and quickly fix it before it goes for too long and cause even more rage. (Btw, I lost a lot too but I managed to recover now after 8 hours of nonstop mining so I feel your pain. Now to level up again...)

It has also been stated that they "don't want more people abusing this old balance". Here are 2 simple abuses that I came up with.

1) PvP. People with higher spells level has the advantage. However, you can simply choose to not fight them because the current PvP system is flawed as well with all the bugs (Especially AP glyph bug. That one is an Instant win bug, much more troublesome than dealing with a person that has 100 on all spells)

2) PvE. If you can continue to level your spells, you will continue to gain more resist and offense bonus. When you have a huge amount of bonus, the resist will shut down PvE monsters, ruining any possible sign of challenge. They had to put it there so that the contents will remain challenging even at cap level.

I also felt as if Ankama will do another spells damage revamp again in the future. As you have noticed, the spell cap will stay at lv 100 no matter what. This means that post-100, your spells will not get stronger. This means everybody will become tankier and tankier and it will be better to use a weapon at around lv 150 since it will deal more damage compared to a capped spell. You obviously don’t want that, do you?

With the new “distribute and level it” system, it will be easier to control the total spells level, making it easier to control the spells' status. They might finally fix the spell scaling and make the scaling better at high level. This is their first step to the global revamp! (better buff my osa damage)

***

Anyway, I predicted 2 possibilities for this system.

1) You will gain Spell points as you leveled and level it up just like Skill points.

2) We will continue to gain Spell Exp corresponding to our level that we can use to manually distribute to the spells later. It’s basically the same thing but this time, you don’t have to worry about using only low-level spells + weapon while leeching off your teammates to level a low-level spell since you can now use high-level spells and just give the exp to low-level spells later.

I like #2 more since the exp curve at lv 90+ spells will get you thinking a lot. Should I level them for damage or should I level other spells for stat? I first thought they were going to go with #1 though.

However, it has been stated that "They will not use the Spell point system" and that they "Will not destroy the basic of this game" so the chance of them still using the Spell Exp is there, but just better and with limit to preserve the balance. The chance of them using #2 is high but the chance of this system being something "unique" is there as well.

***


And that’s it with my predictions, opinions and analyses on the new system. I congratulate you for reading it this far. Also, don’t start grabbing your pitchfork and aim at me if everything I wrote ended up being false because Ankama decides not to do as I predicted and somehow derp this game evenmore. I would have flipped table too in such a case.

For now, we should just wait and see. Ankama sure messed up before and the fact that they're trying to fix the mistake is a good sign. Let's us hope that Ankama will move toward the right direction with the new system.

Tl;dr : Rage less, observe first. Sucks to be a cheater. Slow and steady wins the race and get to enjoy it more anyway.

This stupidly long post was brought to you by

Zeitz with the help of Enfys, the purpleish uke lizard man.



This part here totally has nothing to do with my post... BTW, I changed his hair color and finally drew him a mantle. Yey

Nyeheh~


This post has been edited by Zeitzbach - May 12, 2012, 13:39:00.

Thank you sir.
Ankama now got three weeks of my attention as a chance to make things nice.

Happy to know I manage to persuade someone.

I hope Ankama doesn't mess up as well. They made a huge decision and if they mess up again, they're gonna burn.

Nyeheh~

I hope soon we will see the official commantaries on this mess.
We need new devtalk asap.

This is actually a good thread, hope the Ankama have some plan about this like OP said.  

You see, the problem is not the slow and steady. The problem is there is an end to the race.

To set a point where one can say: "I am done with an MMO" is utterly bad game design.

Also, you always have to take into account all kinds of gamers when designing a game and usually you want to consider the power gamers, those who borderline exploit stuff without breaking any actual rules the most. Your game design has to cater those the most, because they will reach the end of your progress line the fastest. The rest you can easily make happy because they will be busy with the normal content for months anyway.

Also, they did not make a huge decision. They randomly decided something in the middle of an already ongoing proccess.

You know what would be the wisest decision if they are seriously going for this?

To wipe the entire server and start over new with the new system. I personally would agree to this more than what is happening now (then again I come form a game where months of progress are wiped on a regular base, so I am used to it), but I guess most of the customers would leave the sinking ship then. Even though when this would be the best actual repair option. So instead they just go with some halfassed idea that pop into their heads and trust me they will screw up the balance even more than it is now.

You cannot fix a broken system by stacking new sub-systems on top of it again and again. The base of everything will still be the broken core system and it will corrupt everything else.

Yeah, right. But the problem is that Ankama implementing it by tiny parts.
It's like: "We're gonna make you an awesome nutella cake. Here, eat some dough first, and next month we give you some sugar".

"The end will not come until the said person decides to stop playing it"

You can say that this "no more exp for you" at lv 105 is the end but it actually is not. It's just them attempting to fix the game and decided to freeze it temporary before it continues even longer.

What does one do in an MMO when one reaches the cap anyway?

PVP? This is what they are attempting to fix as well.

Hunt items? You can still do this.

What about leveling profession? Well, when you reaches lv 100 then there's nothing to do but helping other people as well by crafting items for them.

It's just like any other MMO. When you reaches the cap for both the skill level and combat level, you also do nothing but hunting items, chat in town or pvp as well. The same will be seen on every game.

For example, Maple Story, when you reaches the max level, what do you do? Hunt bosses and talk in town or just roll a new char. I can also say "Ok, I'm at cap. The end for me, bye" but not really. You can do the same here on Wakfu as well. Ok, I reached max, what should I do? Maybe I will roll an Eni in case my guild needs a healer so I can be there for them!

The only one to create an end to an MMO is you.. unless they have a big "CONGRAT! YOU FINISHED THE GAME" but that's impossible for an online game, especially a sand box game.

And yes, powergamer will reach the cap sooner. However, if the ceiling was too high and will destroy the game in the future, they will need to lower the ceiling even though it will hit the power gamers as well. Imagine if Wakfu has a grup of 6 players with all spells at lv 100 when everyone else can only get 1 lv 100 spell. That group of 6 players WILL dominate and ruin the games for other. For the sake of balance and enjoyment for the majority, a sacrifice must be made.

I'm also kinda happy the sacrificed here also includes majority of the exploiters.




I have also mentioned this part as well. This tiny part was there to prevent it from going too far. You can choose to only have a dough and eat it first or earn the dough + sugar first but then have the sugar taken away right before your very eyes. Which will hurt more?

Nyeheh~


This post has been edited by Zeitzbach - May 10, 2012, 10:44:50.

But Ankama makes people to pay for the full product.
It's ok to add some new quests, monsters, dungeons, sets, characters - that's how DLC system works. Changing game mechanics roughly it's kinda fine too, but changing it part by part... That *ucks the game up.

So they had something that was better than any other MMO so better remnove it quick and make it the same shi*t every other game out there is.

Also, the promise that there will be "eventually" more content and lvl200 and new systems etc. really doesn't cut it. This is a released game and I paid for 3 months and I want content now. Instead they just released a patch that said: "You cannot play this game anymore, good bye". I mean despite the whole nonsene they release I would still like to play, but they simply took that opportuinity away from me.

It does screw the game up UNLESS it's for the better. If it ends up improving the state and competitiveness of the game later, we will all be happy. This happens in every game. When they do an entire revamp of the game, we all jump on them and tell them how it sucks and it's better to be like before. However, after a day or two, we adapt and ended up enjoying the new system more.

This kind of things, we have to give them chance first before judging. I used to judge first as well and I was proven wrong twice or thrice already that I decided to go "K, I will start giving chance now then".

I was like you before. It was on another game but when they were about to change season and revamp the whole stat system, I complained on forum, telling them that there's no point in paying or cashing anymore with the new system and I ended up getting ripped for my loyalty. However, I was proven wrong and ended up playing the content I hated more often, PvE. (Yes, I'm not really a PvEer but more of a PvPer. Wakfu is one of those game I actually enjoy PvEing since it's turn-based.)




They didn't really tell you "Hey! You reached the cap! Now stop playing" in this patch. With the current exp steep, I highly doubt we can get to 105 in a week or so unless you powergrind all day nonstop and ignoring every other content there is. If you do so and just stop playing after you reach lv 105, it is you who is ignoring the other aspect of the game and create the dead end that isn't really there to begin with.

And well, it's an MMO. The same thing will also be said even at lv 200. When someone reached the cap, they will go "Hey! I'm lv 200 already. When are you going to improve the cap to 210 now? I want more content! I paid!". It will keep on going over and over and over.

Mainly, the thing you should figure out is "How did you really enjoy this game?". Did you really enjoy grinding nonstop? Or did you enjoy it because you were playing and chatting with your friends in that dungeon instead?

Nyeheh~

I've been reading your posts and while I can't say I disagree that a change is for the best, you seem to be attacking a strawman most of the time.

I don't think I've seen a single person upset that the spell system is potentially changing to be fairer, but there are a lot of people upset that they're a high level and at a huge disadvantage until Ankama get off their asses and actually implement this system thanks to this change.

You don't seem to understand that the people who leveled all spells to max aren't being punished. They've suddenly been handed a great victory for abusing wisdom. This, more than anything else, is Ankama basically saying "Congratulations wisdom abusers! You get to kick the shit out of everyone in PvP until we fix our mess!"

This entire week Ankama has been progressively making moves that are sliding down a slippery slope into full blown learning disability territory. I have no faith in this company to do the right thing by its customers nor its game, based entirely on pattern recognition.

Not even a lab rat would continue to believe that good things can come of these rash changes.

Even though we may get news within a couple of days, I hope you realize we are potentially looking at a month or more before this new spell system is implemented.

He who laughs last, laughs loudest.

The abuser might have fun for now but the people can simply choose to avoid them. (Except for world boss. That's the problem and the current idea of World Boss sucks anyway.)

Sure I may have to deal with them up to a month.

But after the patch, those abusers are gonna have to deal with me and other legit players for the rest of their life unless Ankama derps this again. If they are truly good and deserve the top spot, they will win. If not, the legit players will win and take the top in the end.

But this is a pretty urgent issue unlike Rogue release so I highly doubt they will delay it for that long because doing so will not be profitable and will hurt them in the long run. The quicker they can fix this, the faster they can go back to earning money.

Nyeheh~

23 days left and counting.

edit: well, actually 5.

_/.


This post has been edited by Azurayin - May 10, 2012, 13:07:39.

Are we somehow forgetting who exactly let wisdom be a stat in a mmo? People will exploit and no matter how much you hate it they're not cheaters you're not more "legit" than they are because wisdom was there because ankama put it there, stat resets were done by ankama too. So let's put blame where blame should be.

And that's why they're trying to fix this whole thing for us now. Sure we can blame them for putting it there to begin with but then they removed it, showing that they are doing something now. Are we going to blame them too for trying to remove and fix the huge gap in power between exploiters and normal players?

The same can be said with the guild abuse. It was there but legit players didn't use it. (and that hopefully they will keep their word and punish abusers that costed me my time)

Nyeheh~


This post has been edited by Zeitzbach - May 10, 2012, 13:20:28.

How exactly are people to know it was abuse in the first place? The company never said otherwise until they decided it was evil and must be put a stop to. You keep using the word exploiters. Is using all the systems given to you by the game an exploit them? Were air cras exploiting the game every time they used storm arrow before the nerf? Were people using celestial brooch before it got nerfed exploiting the aparently too good wisdom and prospecting values on it? What if ankama decides tomorrow that nobody is allowed to have spells leveled in more than one tree? Is everyone who ever used 2 trees an exploiter then? Seriously man you need to get a grip on reality.

And keep their word and punish abusers? Well Tot said it's too much work to go through all the level 100+ chars to check them all. Another dev said that no names of the ones that will be punished will be made public so for all we know NOBODY is getting punished? Well other than everyone being punished for the exploit of the few.

In quote.

It's easy to just use common gamer sense. The spell change will greatly ruin the exploiter and no matter how much they try to say "Oh, it's ankama fault, not our! It's not like we have a choice! We must use it!", it won't do them any good when they finally deal with them.

Nyeheh~


This post has been edited by Zeitzbach - May 10, 2012, 13:52:19.

Hey Zeitz.
I'm a bit tired, sorry. I'll read it all thoroughly later.

Can I get a quick tl;dr?

:V

Nyeheh~