No Soulshots/Spiritshots please :)

samsaint

@AshesOfCreation Please please please dont bring in Soulshots and Spiritshots like Lineage 2 they were such an annoying consumable!!

Wandering Mist

Could you explain what those are for those of us who haven't played Lineage 2?

samsaint

Its a consumable which increases your damage per attack/cast/arrow. They were pretty much must haves and got really expensive to supply. when grinding in a dungeon or sieges you needed to buy 1000s to keep you going. It made you feel powerless unless you used them was not a good feature. The only positive was big guilds making mass supply of them were making a fortune each day.

Wandering Mist

Pretty much every mmorpg I have ever played has had consumables that are required for end-game content. I don't see why they should be removed from the game.

samsaint

Im not saying get rid of consumables. They should have consumables.

just not these consumables they are basically having a consumable for every click. you click it it buffs your weapon and then you hit someone its gone then you click again buff your weapon hit someone its gone. Every hit you have to apply the consumable.

I much prefer one consumable lasts a period of time rather than clicking for every single attack.

Wandering Mist

Wait, a buffing consumable that only buffs a single attack? WTF kind of shit is that?

George_Black

In L2, soul shots were used to increase the dmg and casting speed of normal attacks and physical dmg abilities.
Spiritshots were used for magic abilities.
You had to slot a pack of let's say 1k shots on your 36 slot bar, right click them, and every time your weapon landed a hit or ability, 1 shot would be used for B, A, S shots. For NG and D I think the cost was 3 and for C 2.


In L2, there were gear tiers that could be equipped based on a characters lv:
No Grade: 1-19
D Grade: 20-39
C Grade: 40-51
B Grade: 52-60
A Grade: 61-75
S Grade: 76+

A b grade weapon would use B grade soul/spirit shots, and the user would need to buy around 1.5 to 2k shots that would last for 1-2 hours of fighting. Groups would carry around 3-4k B grade shots and adventure as much as they can before running out of shots and healing potions, before needing to go back to town, LOOK FOR PLAYERS SELLING THEM and head out again.
It was a nice organisational feature in addition to healing pots, but it looked silly with flashes coming out of the characters weapon at every attack.

If a normal attack would dmg a target for 76 dmg, an attack with shots would dmg the target for 130 or so. A similar analogy was when using abilities.

The costs of shots were affordable, unless you were playing the game 3 days a month....

Next post coming.

George_Black

Each item would provide D, C, B, A, S crystals if it was crystilized by a skilled Artisan, or destroyed by over-enchanting. Weapons would provide more crystals and armor pieces less.

SOUL/SPIRIT SHOTS

Using those crystals, Artisans that learned the blueprints would craft D, C, B, A, S shots depending on what crystals were used. obviously S grade crystals would cost so much more than D grade crystals, and the shots S grade shots produced would be so much more expensive than D grade shots.

If a player achieved let's say lv 52, before getting hyped about crafting B grade weapons, they should take into account the cost of shots as long as they use that weapon in the foreseeable future.
Also, tanks or bards that used both physical and magic abilities, would have higher expenditure than other classes, due to the need to use both soul and spirit shots.

NG shots were sold from NPCs
D grade were easy to produce. An Artisan would buy a D grade weapon from an NPC and crystalise it to get D grade crystals and craft D grade soulshots or spiritshots.

C grade shots were a tiny bit harder to produce. B grade and A grade required rare blueprints that took a few days of grinding for players to get. They'd sell good on the markets and B and A grade shots were a profitable business for Artisans.

S grade shots were rare when the S gear expansion was introduced in L2. Over months/years as more people managed to craft and loot S grade items, more crystals found their way in the markets, and more shots were produced.

Next post coming

George_Black

If you read the above posts you'd see that as players levelled up, the old gear could be turned into valuable adventuring consumables by artisans, after being crystalised and made into shots with the appropriate blueprint.

For me the concept of having to organize your inventory with items like:

healing pots (obvious item)
soulshots (x1000 shots would increase your dps for a good amount of time while adventuring)
ressurection scrolls (not nearly as good as a healer rez, but would come in handy in cases of extreme emergency)
return to town scrolls (In L2, teleporting wasn't as big as it is in todays mmos. It seems AoC will be even harder. But if you forgot to get return scrolls in L2, you'd be fvcked, trying to leave that deep deep dungeon you found yourself into)
death penalty scrolls (scrolled used to reduce death penalty debuff. Costly)

I found myself playing ESO, and the only items I am worry about are my food and poisons. Honestly the last time I bothered crafting or bying either of them was many many many many many months ago. I miss that feeling of preparation in towns with my mates. Just 5 minutes running around, bumping with one another, as we look for all those adventuring materials sold by players or sometimes npcs.

Next post coming

George_Black

I believe that Steven realized the value of Soul shots and spiritshots in L2. They:

1) Motivated players to help their Artisan friends to look for those rare shot blueprints.
2) They challenged players to decide what to do with their old gear. Put it into guild bank for newbies to come? Sell it? Give them to Artisans to produce shots for profit?
3) Gave a reason for A grade players and S grade players to keep looking for A and S grade items, in order to produce shots for their powerful weapons. If you reached lv 76 and got full S gear you will ALWAYS need to find more S gear to keep yourself in optimum combat state, by using Soulshots. In ESO unless a new strong item appears in the game I DONT GIVE A F** to leave the town and do more raiding/crafting. My gear is PERFECT and it needs 0 cost to maintain it.

I believe that the repair system will be an improvement of the ugly soulshots we had in L2. I rly rly rly hated the flash every time I hit something, because of the soulshots my weapons were consuming.

We need this gold sink, that involves many players and many tasks to maintain optimum gear strength, even after we complete our dream sets.
That's what an open world mmo is all about. The reason to leave the safety of the town and become stronger.

George_Black

samsaint wrote: »

Im not saying get rid of consumables. They should have consumables.

just not these consumables they are basically having a consumable for every click. you click it it buffs your weapon and then you hit someone its gone then you click again buff your weapon hit someone its gone. Every hit you have to apply the consumable.

I much prefer one consumable lasts a period of time rather than clicking for every single attack.

You didn';t had to click them every single time. You had to right click on the shots, and they would be consumed with every attack automatically.

Finally, to give an image of what those shots would cost you as a player every day....

Let's say I was 40lv with C grade dualswords. My dualswords costed me around 7.5kk to buy from another player.
For one hour adventuring I'd make around 100k from gold dropped, and I might loot some valuable materials if I am lucky that would provide me with an additional 150k.
Once a weak if I was a bit lucky I'd pick up another C grade weapon and sell it for 7.5kk. If I was doing raiding with my group, the chances to loot C grade gear would become twice as good for that week.
For that one hour of adventuring I'd have to spend maybe 10k on healing pots and around 40k for Soulshots.

Now, if I had an Artisan friend, and together we went out to find a C grade soulshot blueprint and also some C grade gear to turn into crystals, my friend and I would make maybe 1kk-1.5kk each every weak by selling C grade soulshots to other players.


I should rly get back to my studies, but damn.... talking about L2 brings back to many good memories.

samsaint

i know it was automatic but i was trying to explain the consumable to a player thats never played before. First attempt didn't work so i had to make it easier to understand.

Thanks for your post i do understand where your coming from and agree that MMO's need a maintain mechanism to keep people playing after getting the perfect item setup.

AoC will have that as your always going to be defending/Attacking nodes etc or helping other guild members get their items form raids etc.

George Black wrote: »

I believe that the repair system will be an improvement of the ugly soulshots we had in L2. I rly rly rly hated the flash every time I hit something, because of the soulshots my weapons were consuming.

So you saying they dont plan to have Soulshots but a repair system mechanism instead? I think that will work well.

torpdeo

This sounds a lot like an ammo system to me, which personally sounds like a good idea. Maybe it shouldn't be as expensive, but having ammo that would be used on every attack would add demand for crafters even for top raiders with bis gear.

Yuyukoyay

It's not an ammo system. It's using items to enhance non ammo classes so that they do bonus damage. The problem with the system is that it's pointless. It just increases the cost of combat for those classes and takes up button space with no real benefit for the game. It's harder to balance than just making a class do the damage they should by default.

Songcaller

We have decay and item maintenance to fund. We don't one One Hit Wonder Buffs to increase the burdens.

JazVexahlia

ok I liked soulshots for 1 reason. Ok yes I liked the damage/cast speed increase. But the reason I like soul shots was when you're facing another player, and you want to indicate non-verbally that you're about to smack them. you load a soulshot (has it's own animation) in your next shot. as a warning, taunt, intimidation, etc.

Mangacho

This is a nice example of souldshots in L2

youtube.com/watch?v=8Vveqrx0t94

stolyaR

samsaint wrote: »

@AshesOfCreation Please please please dont bring in Soulshots and Spiritshots like Lineage 2 they were such an annoying consumable!!

It was very cool feature and also part of crafters life in L2 world and good impact on in game economy.
Crafters always had a job to do because EVERYONE used soulshots.
So please DEVs make crafters great again! bring back the soulshots!!!