Allods Online

[felix]

Originally Posted by Vexx

aye... no disagreement that a good tutorial is needed for each class. The existing ones are mostly either out-of-date (from last summer's closed beta) or are still in Russian.

I thought it was pretty damn good. It starts you out in n00b tower, teaches you basic controls, makes you move around, fight some mobs, fight some bosses and you get little tips with instructions on what everything does; everything under that cinematic pretext. You then move to n00b island and more friendly quests to get you familiarized with the game and various quest types (escort, team, raid etc). I remember I would get instructions on warrior and summoner concerning the use of their special energy system and various game mechanics. As you progress you subsequently get quests to teach you other aspects of the game: there's this one quest where you are asked to buy some free cash shop items to complete it, another which teaches you how to work with runes, another that teaches you how to work with auction houses, various quests that require you to get certain crafting goods (a sort of social quest more like it), of course each crafting profession has its own crafting quest, another how to use power potions and so on... The NPCs you are directed to all have a "How To..." and "What is..." dialog as well which explains in detail what the function is and how it helps you. The rest/fatigue mechanic is explained for example by all goblins as a dialog option.

Well, I think you either disabled tips, didn't read the description on skills or just expect the game to just play itself for you; everything seems very straight forward and intuitive to me.

[Vexx]

Well, I think you either disabled tips, didn't read the description on skills or just expect the game to just play itself for you; everything seems very straight forward and intuitive to me.

You misunderstood me (almost to the point of being insulting). I think the basic game is incredibly straightforward if you read the instructions and read the quests. A lot of my annoyance with many players is that they don't *read* before they start asking questions they've just been supplied the answers to in the game.

Where players need help is in analysis of *how* to spend their talents and skills so they don't massively gimp their build or waste points in areas they don't need. Its really easy to make strategic mistakes (which, of course, means extra $$$$ for the game as people buy "reset" packages). Most of the guides and recommendations for building characters are out-of-date or done by neophytes themselves.

@-KarumA-:
I was initially playing the euro server (I seem to encounter fewer 'tards on overseas servers in any MMO ... just my anecdotal experience) but the ping time was a bit of an issue. Aye... the tech support is basically non-existent. Even the American company only has like 5 or 6 people on the entire project, the Euro may have fewer. The dev team in Russia is completely separate and gpotato.eu and gpotato.com are separately licensing it.

I'm using Vista 64 on my game machine so don't know what might be your hang up with the european client other than you're not able to acquire a "clean" set of installation files (fileplanet and some other game-download sites have been corrupting huge file transfers routinely for me... they don't verify the transmission. With the size of games lately, I wish games came in smaller chunks for DDL with hashcode verify). Outside of that, I'd suspect driver update issues.

[felix]

@ -KarumA-

Don't use a mirror. Or if you must try GamersHell, it never failed me yet.

But anyway if I were to guess, you're using Windows XP SP2? Or don't have drivers installed?

[felix]

Originally Posted by Vexx

You misunderstood me (almost to the point of being insulting).

o_O; no comment

Originally Posted by Vexx

Where players need help is in analysis of *how* to spend their talents and skills so they don't massively gimp their build or waste points in areas they don't need.

The game is based heavily on your initial 3 or 4 skills in your Talent Tree, regardless of which class you are playing. You don't need to pick one since all of them are given to you by the end of the first few tutorials. Subsequent skills tend either combo with them (Warrior), help and improve some combination of attacks you have with them (Mage), work based on them or are a variation on them (Healer) and so forth. As long as you can figure which way you want to go based on those initial skills you'll be fine. Rubies are best distributed to complement your play style, typically just search for a very useful skill in the ruby grid (each class has at least one) and aim to get it via a optimal route.

This game is like a puzzle, its not just pretty graphics and killing stuff (and pumping str or int ). The hole point is you figure out the puzzle in your own way.
Well if you need help just ask around...

ps. you sure edit your posts a lot

[Vexx]

You are correct... one of the appealing parts of the game to me is the ability to customize your character's skills (which makes it a lot more interesting trying to create well-rounded groups for quests) and work out a, for example, spear/shield-preference warrior who is hard to hit, or a black arts vampiric healer summoner that doesn't draw attention til its too late. Those players who only know the "typical asian mmo" where you "pump everything into one stat" and there's basically "one set of gear" can be in real trouble here But it will be the rarer player who doesn't end up using a "water" or two to respend talent/skills or attributes.

There's quite a selection of garb as well for the fashion-minded, so you don't necessarily have to look like a moving garage sale to max your stats.

So do you fall into the "everything into luck" faction or something more complex? I've been bell-curving my primary stats with luck at the top of the curve... (e.g. with a melee - more luck, but then expertise/finesse, and then strength, watch the percentage change to dump a few in other stats). The attribute discussions get pretty "religious" on zone chat so not much to glean from there.

[felix]

I'm new to the game too you know.

But anyway, if you must know I just try to pump the 2 "rare" stats. A very simple build I did/do for "magic" classes for example was Perception on even levels, Luck on odd levels and work out the rest from equips. No clue if its good or not, don't really worry about it as long I think it works. Well I wasn't "crippled" by any means. I've tried a few other hybrid versions, but still kept true to the basic idea of just having less random more stable output compared to highest output.

I'm a little cautious of dumping everything into just one stat, but I suppose luck is the one that makes the most sense if I were, given how many skills in this game involve criticals, and its pretty thinned out in equips (not that its absent, more like it would seem you can get only so very little compared to others). Well I can't really tell, since I'm not sure what the formula is or what the caps are though its probably some sort of more you have less you get, from what I see.

I also don't know about this noise you speak of. I suppose its a US server thing, the only "radio" people I've seen are your usual 10-year old newbie in guild chat. This may well be because of the high russian player population we have now though. Most of which are most likely familiarized with the game since before they joined; given how I can't explain the high density with anything other then the usual player-server migration that happens (ya, there are russian servers).

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by felix

@ -KarumA-

Don't use a mirror. Or if you must try GamersHell, it never failed me yet.

But anyway if I were to guess, you're using Windows XP SP2? Or don't have drivers installed?

Win XP SP3, I downloaded it all from the official site but installing was no problem it was the updater in the launcher that was the problem.
It would be fine for about 5 minutes but then in my eventlog it would give out warnings about the max amount connections being overwritten and 1 minute later blue screen. There's nothing wrong with my pc, everything is up to date.

The most annoying thing about it all is if I download and install the American one and use their launcher updater nothing happens, no warnings in the connection nor a blue screen, it is only limited to the European version. I had been playing on the American servers for days beforehand with no trouble at all. I've seen other people having this problem as well, but tech support merely ignores them and doesn't do anything.. Tech support on Allods EU comes to the forum like once every two weeks and only responds to the newby or I am stuck posts

I'd rather play the American one than the EU one

[Kafriel]

Stats are so weird...just 28 expertise is enough so that I never miss, so there's no point in raising it any higher than that, right? Also, a warrior's main attribute is supposed to be STR, but the damage increase is something around 0.3% per point, so dumping everything on luck, which increases my criticals by 2% or so, is a lot more sensible. Additionally, one could raise endurance so that they receive more glancing blows and less criticals, but this kind of formulas give me the impression that the game is critical-driven.
To the point of fatigue->exp, yes getting fatigue over 100% gets you some extra % that would be harder to attain in the next levels, but without leveling up, you can't equip better gear or get more skills. I noticed that the LV gap is HUGE (a LV10 wolf kills me in 3 hits if I'm LV7) and mob exp is little (~50 per kill when you need 18k tnl), so saving up fatigue is really hard after a point.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Stats are so weird...just 28 expertise is enough so that I never miss, so there's no point in raising it any higher than that, right?

Not sure, but the % values are apparently level dependent so the amount required for 0% at lv10 isn't the same at lv11. From what I've observed. I don't really understand it myself.

[Vexx]

For melee types, so far its worked for me to do something like STR:FIN:EXP like 2:3:3 using both base plus gear. That way I seem to miss rarely and dmg decently. My paladin is growing attributes a bit organically rather than just a set algorithm. When I get points to spend, I use mouse over to observe what my actual improvement will on spending a point in str:fin:exp:luck. For my warrior trying it differently -- when in doubt, all base points to LUCK but use gear to keep str:fin:exp at about 2:3:3

In general, I'm seeing there's many, many paths and none of them appear to be "the bestest" so far (which pleases me, but my characters are only in their mid-20s at this point).

[Kyero Fox]

so Im downloading it atm. anyone got any suggestions on class/race? I want to be a Tank

for some reason the download doesnt work. "____ is not a valid win32 application"

[felix]

Warrior/Paly for tank class.

[Kafriel]

A melee healer owned about 20 people in a row in the arena a few days ago...

[felix]

Hehe, yea this game doesn't have auto-focus, in other words while monsters may face you regardless of angle or if you move around players won't. At melee range its not that hard to go behind someone.

Healers also have 2 very powerful skills and the fanaticism effect, along with a few disables, invulnerably buffs, hots etc

[Kafriel]

Turns out the maps are awfully underspawned, about 5 targets in a wide expansion of land, with a respawn rate of a minute or two. Mini-bosses respawn at 5-10 minutes, so if there's more than 6 people doing the same quest at the same time, even the simplest quest could take hours to finish...I think I'll wait a few patches before playing again

[felix]

If you are in a party and you kill a boss the credit is shared.

[Kafriel]

Boss kills are ~3/20 quests, so I don't mind as much, but normal mobs should be more and respawn faster. Then there's the eternal lfg <insert monster name> that goes on for over 5 mins until a new party or raid is formed for a boss. I'd say the game's too popular

[felix]

lfm Damned Soul

[Kafriel]

Yeah, DS in noob island, spiderdude, Boris and orcdude in NovoLands. If I hadn't sparked the PvP VS PK convo, these shouts would be all we got to hear on the server

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Yeah, DS in noob island, spiderdude, Boris and orcdude in NovoLands. If I hadn't sparked the PvP VS PK convo, these shouts would be all we got to hear on the server

Aye, DS is a particular example that a lot of F2P are prone to... its like channeling 5 lane freeway down to 1 lane for a mile. Instead of actually fighting the battle, people end up forming large raid parties and nuking the poor boss to oblivion. On the Empire side.... the lvl 10 group quest has become a joke because everyone wants a lvl 30ish to lead them and its simply a "bus tour" and scavenger hunt as the high lvl blasts the mobs to bits. Doesn't really help the n00bs learn how to integrate their character into teams at all (and it shows later in higher level group quests).

I really enjoy the game... doesn't mean there aren't problematic design issues.