02-12-2016, 07:02 AM
Grinding in PvE has remained almost entirely stagnant for about as long as I've been a part of this community. I can name off nearly every major change right now since I began (which was around September 2014.)
1. The EXP earned from monsters was, overall, greatly increased (this occured about a year ago, so, very old news). This made grinding way faster, but, the method of grinding didn't change at all.
2. A few new dungeon types were added. (Forests, deserts, castles). This made PvE a bit more interesting with the added variety. (this occured a long, long time ago, though, probably about a year back?).
3. Monsters were given a handful of class skills in an attempt to make them a bit more interesting. I won't comment on how effective this was. To this day, though, Spectres and Shamans don't seem to realize they have invocations. Oh well.
4. 10* items were added, giving incentive to hunt all types of monsters for their rare drop.
Nowhere in all of this, though, has the 'best' way to get through PvE changed, at all. In the beginning, Evoker naturally was the de-facto fastest clearer (at least since it was introduced, but, I can't really speak on what happened before my time). Lantern Bearer used to be second-best until its costs were jacked up (and Hexer was introduced). The thread I posted when these forums were first put up still applies to this day, and Dev already knows Evoker will pretty much always be the 'best' for PvE.
My point, is that there should be options for grinding in PvE that don't solely reward your ability to clear large amounts of mobs at once. Suggestions have been made in the past to allievate the tedium for the majority of people, like new prefixes, (one of which was essentially what I just suggested, by Chaos no less).
To clarify, some of the issues with grinding as it stands are--
1. Clear times are vastly imbalanced between certain setups, driving people to only ever go for the fastest methods, which, in turn, result in people turning to those who run the most optimal setups for clearing PvE, else be forced to take much more time to obtain the same result.
2. A vast amount of content is restricted to running dungeons for everything you need. Even things like certain ingredients and materials can only ever be found in a chest, though, recent updates have slowly added more ingredients available to be bought, and farming has provided a means to produce some, but, a good number of things remain only available from chests in dungeons. Not to mention obtaining most items in the game, you need to go through a dungeon, which leads me to point 3.
3. Item generation is a complete shot in the dark. Every mob you kill will roll for literally everything in the game that meets its rarity standard, the same goes for chests. This makes finding specific items extremely difficult, even if it's a low rarity item, due to the sheer density of the items on the table to sift through. Crafting is the obvious solution to this, but there are other possibilities.
4. Monster battles in general remain the same from 1-80+, all that changes are the numbers, and a handful of skills some monsters get.
As for possible solutions...
1. Offer alternatives to the current grind to accomdate different playstyles, and not just cater to setups that can efficiently clear large groups of monsters. Anything from laplace requests, to singular, powerful mobs, that could give rewards that'd offer another route to grind through levels/mura and what not. Both of these things have already been suggested in the past, even.
2. Have more ingredients and crafting materials available in NPC vendors, and/or offer ways to generate the materials outside of dungeons, akin to farming. Maybe a mine that isn't full of monsters for ores, as an example.
3. More crafting recipes. That'll solve the issue of finding specific items for a -lot- of them, it's just a matter of which ones should be craftable. The black books were a step in the right direction that was sadly never taken again.
4. More skills for monsters to utilize after a certain point, maybe. Or perhaps even monsters that only show up after a certain level is passed. Who knows.
The most egregious issue out of -everything- in PvE, though, is the fact it's -exponentially- more time-consuming if you don't have access to the more efficient methods of grinding, which for the most part, means running Evoker whether you like it or not until you can grab a friend who runs Evoker so you can not run Evoker and grind as what you actually wanted to level as. There really shouldn't be such a huge gap between clear rates, yet it's remained for over a year now. And, as has been stated numerous times in the past, the answer to this is -NOT- to cut down on what the current best method is. It's, as I've stated already in this post, to offer alternatives that are on par that other setups can accomplish.
So, I, as a player, am -begging- for SOMETHING ELSE that can offer a means to grind without resigning myself to the grind mage train express for the next eternity. Black Beast attacks were a nice addition, but the EXP is usually just enough for a single level, maybe two, per raid. Level-based EXP is good though. But when it only comes every 3 hours, well, you're gonna be waiting for awhile if you're banking on that. Fishing contests are nice, and the rewards are neat too, but, the same with the beast attacks, it's only gonna come every IG day, and not everyone can stick around to participate all the time. I'll say I like the EXP payout from it, though (the mura reward is dreadful but that's a whole nother topic). World events like those are steps in the right direction, but, the issue is -they aren't reliable-. Meaning if you want to grind any other time...well, have fun if you're not an Evoker, and can't ring up your Evoker buddies to bail you out.
Need be, I can get into specifics for materials and recipes and what not, but, there's so many to list it'd take me forever, and I don't even know if that'd be necessary.
So...thoughts from everyone else on this? How do you feel about grinding as it stands?
1. The EXP earned from monsters was, overall, greatly increased (this occured about a year ago, so, very old news). This made grinding way faster, but, the method of grinding didn't change at all.
2. A few new dungeon types were added. (Forests, deserts, castles). This made PvE a bit more interesting with the added variety. (this occured a long, long time ago, though, probably about a year back?).
3. Monsters were given a handful of class skills in an attempt to make them a bit more interesting. I won't comment on how effective this was. To this day, though, Spectres and Shamans don't seem to realize they have invocations. Oh well.
4. 10* items were added, giving incentive to hunt all types of monsters for their rare drop.
Nowhere in all of this, though, has the 'best' way to get through PvE changed, at all. In the beginning, Evoker naturally was the de-facto fastest clearer (at least since it was introduced, but, I can't really speak on what happened before my time). Lantern Bearer used to be second-best until its costs were jacked up (and Hexer was introduced). The thread I posted when these forums were first put up still applies to this day, and Dev already knows Evoker will pretty much always be the 'best' for PvE.
My point, is that there should be options for grinding in PvE that don't solely reward your ability to clear large amounts of mobs at once. Suggestions have been made in the past to allievate the tedium for the majority of people, like new prefixes, (one of which was essentially what I just suggested, by Chaos no less).
To clarify, some of the issues with grinding as it stands are--
1. Clear times are vastly imbalanced between certain setups, driving people to only ever go for the fastest methods, which, in turn, result in people turning to those who run the most optimal setups for clearing PvE, else be forced to take much more time to obtain the same result.
2. A vast amount of content is restricted to running dungeons for everything you need. Even things like certain ingredients and materials can only ever be found in a chest, though, recent updates have slowly added more ingredients available to be bought, and farming has provided a means to produce some, but, a good number of things remain only available from chests in dungeons. Not to mention obtaining most items in the game, you need to go through a dungeon, which leads me to point 3.
3. Item generation is a complete shot in the dark. Every mob you kill will roll for literally everything in the game that meets its rarity standard, the same goes for chests. This makes finding specific items extremely difficult, even if it's a low rarity item, due to the sheer density of the items on the table to sift through. Crafting is the obvious solution to this, but there are other possibilities.
4. Monster battles in general remain the same from 1-80+, all that changes are the numbers, and a handful of skills some monsters get.
As for possible solutions...
1. Offer alternatives to the current grind to accomdate different playstyles, and not just cater to setups that can efficiently clear large groups of monsters. Anything from laplace requests, to singular, powerful mobs, that could give rewards that'd offer another route to grind through levels/mura and what not. Both of these things have already been suggested in the past, even.
2. Have more ingredients and crafting materials available in NPC vendors, and/or offer ways to generate the materials outside of dungeons, akin to farming. Maybe a mine that isn't full of monsters for ores, as an example.
3. More crafting recipes. That'll solve the issue of finding specific items for a -lot- of them, it's just a matter of which ones should be craftable. The black books were a step in the right direction that was sadly never taken again.
4. More skills for monsters to utilize after a certain point, maybe. Or perhaps even monsters that only show up after a certain level is passed. Who knows.
The most egregious issue out of -everything- in PvE, though, is the fact it's -exponentially- more time-consuming if you don't have access to the more efficient methods of grinding, which for the most part, means running Evoker whether you like it or not until you can grab a friend who runs Evoker so you can not run Evoker and grind as what you actually wanted to level as. There really shouldn't be such a huge gap between clear rates, yet it's remained for over a year now. And, as has been stated numerous times in the past, the answer to this is -NOT- to cut down on what the current best method is. It's, as I've stated already in this post, to offer alternatives that are on par that other setups can accomplish.
So, I, as a player, am -begging- for SOMETHING ELSE that can offer a means to grind without resigning myself to the grind mage train express for the next eternity. Black Beast attacks were a nice addition, but the EXP is usually just enough for a single level, maybe two, per raid. Level-based EXP is good though. But when it only comes every 3 hours, well, you're gonna be waiting for awhile if you're banking on that. Fishing contests are nice, and the rewards are neat too, but, the same with the beast attacks, it's only gonna come every IG day, and not everyone can stick around to participate all the time. I'll say I like the EXP payout from it, though (the mura reward is dreadful but that's a whole nother topic). World events like those are steps in the right direction, but, the issue is -they aren't reliable-. Meaning if you want to grind any other time...well, have fun if you're not an Evoker, and can't ring up your Evoker buddies to bail you out.
Need be, I can get into specifics for materials and recipes and what not, but, there's so many to list it'd take me forever, and I don't even know if that'd be necessary.
So...thoughts from everyone else on this? How do you feel about grinding as it stands?
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