ApexKO Feedback (lots)

[TabbyCat]

Hey,

 

Please see below some personal opinions & information collected from a few players;

Disclaimer: It's long. Please keep comments constructive.

 

Level 80 Cap: This was most definitely welcomed by the community, however, I personally believe in retrospect you unfortunately made it far too easy to reach level 80, in around 40 hours (whilst still going to events, getting raided and general laziness / not decent xp) made it to level 80 and 86% already whilst still having a few quests to complete in both Eslant, CZ and EMC – for reference I didn’t use XP Valks, XP wings and only 1 BDW scroll. For future reference (perhaps 83) you could enhance xp in CZ (even keep it where it was this time) but reduce xp gained in EMC/Eslant. The fundamental issue here was that there zero benefit to xping in CZ and Eslant was bloody fast to xp, 21-24 hours on Genie with a couple breaks was easy enough. Level 80 was supposed to give something to do for a period (Yes I understand you have to unlock skills over time) but is already over for the top 10 clan or so, for the more active players anyway. In future Eslant should be like 30%/40% slower compared with CZ in my opinion.

 

Level 80 Skills: This may well be just my personal opinion but the fact that you have to win 30 events in order to unlock your level 80, excluding your 72 and 75 will put a lot more casual players at a disadvantage, which is what I believe is a lot of the reasoning behind not opening +8 and allowing people to catch up, therefore being a little contradictive? Forgotten Temple is good, but BDW & Juraid are so hit and miss along with the fact that many people can only go to perhaps 2 or possibly 3 events per day maximum (again, casual players with jobs) is essentially giving them a minimum term of perhaps 1 month to get their 80 skill. Aside from that, the wording of “participation” really didn’t help things. A suggestion here would be to perhaps make it 20 Victories and/or 40 participations? This way winning gets you there quicker but losing isn’t penalised as much as it currently is? This point would obviously be beneficial, if agreed upon, to be implemented hastily.

 

PK being Bowl Centric / Farming Issues: This point is quite a large one and most definitely involves the smaller clans, less active players and players at certain time zones; however IMO is the most important. Collection Races with teleports to bowl, Chaos stone spawning every hour (I may be wrong about this timing?) means that every single activity in CZ is centred around 1 very small area (excluding the occasional Farm collection races). Whilst this is a nice idea some of the time it does leave the server to be, excuse my French, a massive cluster fuck which only benefits the “big” clans and makes you have to run in parties of 8, often 2 or 3 parties together? Whilst I accept this is a part of what PK in Knight Online has become, you will very swiftly find yourselves with only Warriors & Mages and very few Rogues in this server. Part of this issue stems from farming and the fact that CZ isn’t really that beneficial to farm? Shards & Raptors drop from quite a few mobs (might be mistaken?) in both CZ and Eslant and their drop rates aren’t too dissimilar? Because of this there really hasn’t been anybody the last couple weeks farming in CZ which removes the “raiding” part of PK which is a LOT more fun for the wider community / smaller parties. PK in general has become, Collection Race – go to CZ, complete it – leave CZ, Chaos stone- go to CZ, complete it – leave CZ. Once again this may not be a MAJOR issue right now but for sure it’s going to frustrate certain players and either have them class change to warrior or leave and at a time where the server activity is for sure climbing, not good to take a step backwards. The suggestion here rather than just commenting would be to make High Class items like Shards & Raptors drop less frequently (especially given that +7 is the cap, more on this later) and the proportion from CZ to Eslant to be something like 4/5-1, as an example. This would in turn promote CZ farming (you can make them drop at different rates from a variety of CZ mobs to spread out the PK / spots) and bring some juice to the area of the game that you’ve obviously worked on recently to improve (collection races).

With regards to farming, adding to the points above, because of the drop rate & drop locations, the economy is becoming, excuse my French, royally fucked. Shards / Raptors etc. at +1 are worth fuck all and only further removes ALL incentives to farm, it’s better to just run chaos & events.

 

War: There has been a couple of mentions and topics regarding this but if you forgive my ignorance, nothing suggesting the avenues the admin team are taking to spice this up? Again it’s a dead event right now and without a “roadmap” of sorts or poll narrowing down suggestions, going to drive a little more boredom to players and exacerbate any other issues (some mentioned above) players are feeling.

 

+8/9 Rise: You’ve already created a topic and already commented at the end regarding it, just wanted to highlight the speed at which this server is becoming a PK server (+6 - +7 being a smaller gap than +7 - +8) and when you couple that with 80 cap, Sins are definitely becoming more useless as things stand (solo, duo, trio) therefore the class balance will once again shift. I know you’re looking into potentially reverting Archers fatigue now that 80 is out so hoping for something to be done there to prevent the class being useless all together, although I will say due to general item restrictions it will still be impacted.

 

Bosses: This mainly revolves around Eslant bosses; they’re simply far too weak in their hits and health. Almost all of them (Talos and SQ in particular) are duo/solo-able. To make them harder and more in line with USKO and give more people access they should hit a lot harder and take a lot longer to kill. The problem at the moment is that they die fast, don’t hit hard and therefore a LOT of players don’t even have the opportunity to give them a go. Currently it’s easy for me or my clan to do them so this actually goes against us, just in case you wondered if this was a biased suggestion J

 

Mage Blinding (Lightning):  I’m not sure if this is 100% but due to the amount of mages in the server, this would be helpful to be looked at. Between reducing the rate, duration of effect or cooldown OR a combination of options, this could bring more balance.

 

Mage Novas: I’m not sure you can really do anything about this but obviously at 70 Cap a lot of people said mages were OP (they were) and 80 would bring balance. From what I’ve observed so far it’s actually made them more OP in a lot of situations? Sure melee parties can tank them a bit better now however Mage parties now seem to be a hell of a lot more tanky? Partly down to party cure, nova’s still hitting relatively hard, being able to have 4 novas and the stun rate. This hasn’t currently reached its peak also as the level 75 skill is going to make it even harder for melees against them. Part of this again is probably down to the way Knight Online is now AND the item gear cap, there just isn’t the item difference which plays a big part in retaining balance.

 

Stun Rate: Even with having 221 LR, the amount of times (on Priest, Rogue & even Warrior) I and others find themselves stunned is quite insane. Couple that with the volume of mages and Lightning skills still hitting hard, wow this is touch. The Stun rate in my opinion should be reduced quite a bit. Perhaps tweak it a bit and see how things go?

 

Shock Stun: This is partly a question and suggestion rolled into one depending on the answer. Again this is solely from what I’ve observed so far in PK but my god is the stun rate high (it may well supposed to be high) and due to the amount of warriors it’s impactful on PK a lot. This issue, whilst yes I agree is exacerbated because people do not have Hell Blade (referring to getting 80 skills above) will still create a fair few problems. I may be alone is this thinking, just wanted to raise it.

 

Vote Kicking: Please reduce this to 3 or 4 from 5/6 – It’s almost impossible to get every player to firstly know what to do, and secondly either care enough or notice to do it.

 

BDW Reward: Perhaps make the winning nation get a Green chest? Make the event more rewarding not that the XP scroll isn’t as helpful.

 

Isiloon Message:  Question and suggestion; what is the actual spawn range of Isiloon? Because it states what, 5-60 minutes? ONLY once to my knowledge has it spawned inside the first 30, every other time bar 1 it has spawned 45 minutes+. Potentially reduce the time range OR make it behave in a more random time scale?

Edited June 8, 2020 by TabbyCat

[Razordagawd]

If anything, lobo lupus lycaon and tails should have a higher drop rate to offset this. Because those items are pretty expensive and their droprate hasn't been changed post 80 patch for some reason.

Some people already unlocked 80 skills. AKA the biggest babashoppers in the server lol.

 

Edit: A downside of making those certs available even in defeat is that people will go there to AFK and not even try to win.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Razordagawd

[TabbyCat]

1 hour ago, Razordagawd said:

If anything, lobo lupus lycaon and tails should have a higher drop rate to offset this. Because those items are pretty expensive and their droprate hasn't been changed post 80 patch for some reason.

Some people already unlocked 80 skills. AKA the biggest babashoppers in the server lol.

 

Edit: A downside of making those certs available even in defeat is that people will go there to AFK and not even try to win.

1) Increasing the drop rate does not help the smaller clans, individual players. It ONLY helps the big clans that run bowl, so no that defeats the whole purpose of my suggestion. 2 people have 80 to my knowledge, 1 being in our clan haha.

 

2) Not really, it's not COMMON that people go afk in events. But, to combat this I have suggested already that the kick limit be reduced, simple.

[Aesteris]

Thank you for these suggestions / feedback, we'll be evaluating these shortly.

[Zimpapke]

Make pk chests have change to give certificates open skills. So they are worth to open. Also reduces coin from Severi. Since it costs exchange.

[Razordagawd]

2 hours ago, TabbyCat said:

1) Increasing the drop rate does not help the smaller clans, individual players. It ONLY helps the big clans that run bowl, so no that defeats the whole purpose of my suggestion. 2 people have 80 to my knowledge, 1 being in our clan haha.

 

2) Not really, it's not COMMON that people go afk in events. But, to combat this I have suggested already that the kick limit be reduced, simple.

It does help the smaller clans because the price of the pendants will go down drastically.

and 2. it is very common that people either go AFK or log alts for events. Even if kick limit is reduced, what's the point? it's still a sureloss for the team with 7 members, ruining the experience of everyone involved.

[TabbyCat]

7 hours ago, Razordagawd said:

It does help the smaller clans because the price of the pendants will go down drastically.

and 2. it is very common that people either go AFK or log alts for events. Even if kick limit is reduced, what's the point? it's still a sureloss for the team with 7 members, ruining the experience of everyone involved.

1) The drop rate isn't high enough to allow for hundreds of people to get them at cheap prices sadly.

2) If you check out the most recent "what we're working on" they're looking to add a reserve list for events to fill those spaces  That'll help hopefully

Edited June 9, 2020 by TabbyCat

[Kong]

tabby, you are such a knowledgeable individual

-ching

[perhana]

Very nice post with a lot of though put into it. 

80 lvl cap: agree, the exp was too easy, but what is done is done.

Skill opens: I quess instead of having it hard to get to 80, this is how you like to gate the progression. I don't really like participation rewards, I wan't the wins to be the thing, but this might be too much for some people to handle, I'm pretty sure some people can't take a month of farming events nonstop with the possibility of having trash teams every time and losing everything and having no progress at all.

Bowl/ farming: This server is still seriously lacking in any party farming content. Make CZ great again! And make it worth it to form a party and go farm something. I feel this is propably the biggest reason I'm having hard time getting a party together.

+8: If you separate the votes from the comments on the poll, you can see there was ZERO good reasons given why you shouldn't open +8, only selfish reasons like "i started late, give me time to catch up / I play 30 min a day, let me get as much as everyone who plays 24 hours" This is killing any reason whatsoever to farm and play actively on the server, we got everything worth farming on the first week, now we are just waiting. The longer you wait, the bigger the divide between casuals and "babas" is going to be! Casuals can't sell +1 raptors and babas have full inhostess of +7 waiting for +8. Casuals just don't underestand that they would have a chance to get some coin from their farm with the burning of +8 weapons, now they think they get close to babas when they get their first +7, but reality is that they are getting even more behind every day you hold this back. 

There is less and less reasons to login if you don't make content for parties to farm IN A FARM SERVER. Make stuff more worthwhile to do in CZ , but don't put everything into bowl.  100% agree with this. You got mobs in CZ that no1 has any reason to touch and most of the mobs worth killing are solo content. This needs to change.

I pretty much agree with a lot of things with the op.

Good conversation opener!