|
NaturallyMaria -> RE: Is MQ Dying II+How Can We Improve It? (11/13/2010 23:11:51)
|
The thing about normal mode is that no battle ever takes more than 8 turns anyway, so cooldown is rarely an issue. It's so much easier to just bruteforce your way through than to actually stop and think about cooldown. Only on hard/extreme do battles actually take enough turns that you need to recharge a weapon. DoT also loses a lot of its impact when the damage only lasts for 2-3 turns anyway before the opponent dies. You might as well just count it as immediate damage.
The lack of difficulty isn't just about supposedly high-level enemies not scaling down properly. Westion and Zargon are both beatable before level 10, provided you have a strong enough energy blade. Even at the K&S, where opponents don't scale at all, it's not uncommon to be beating enemies 5-8 levels higher than you. The only place I wasn't able to tackle at a lower level was Necryptos. I tried going there around level 15 and got stomped, and I haven't gotten around to a second visit yet (I'm at level 22 now, which seems to be about right).
Maybe the difficulty does ramp up appropriately after level 20-25 or so, but that's way too late IMO. The dropship teaches newbies how to play, and the Soluna jobs should be all the training/practice that a new player needs to get into the game. Once you've mastered your job skills, which hopefully coincides with your graduation from GEARS, it's time to go out there and fight with the big boys. The game can only hold a player's hand for so long, especially when there aren't a whole lot of missions in the game yet. If you've already finished most/all of the storyline quests before the difficulty spike, what's the point?
On a related note, I do think that attaining a certain job rank and completing a certain number of classes should be MANDATORY for new players, before being allowed to either talk to Dean Warlic or catch a shuttle to another planet. That way, there's no excuse for storyline missions to be too easy. In exchange for losing early access to the Fastflash (which I don't think most newbies even realize exists at level 7), more mechs can be made available in Soluna instead.
Out of all the jobs on Soluna, I think the police was handled the best. I like that there's a mid-way prize, so new players don't have to put up with insane rolls before getting a new mech. I'd have loved to see Parma John's offer the Pupperoni, or the museum to offer the Tyrant midway then the Veloci-Mecha later. I also like that the police mission introduced Cain, since he's a villain I'll actually remember. I'm not going to remember anything about the Rusty Rat or whatever was the boss of the hospital finale, because there was no name, face, or motive attached to them.
|
|
|
|
