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Suggestion A Level Affair

Are you in favour of dungeons/exp/leveling in their current state?


  • Total voters
    41

Dewyn

Retired Staff
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Location
dewyn#2005
The development and balance teams have been discussing this for some time, and we've decided that this is an issue that should be pitched to the general population:

Dungeons.

I personally have never seen anyone in favour of them; the experience-to-health/time-to-kill ratio is terrible, and with the exp required to max now sitting at 650,000 (this is the config on Herotest anyway - as opposed to the 120,000 it used to be), leveling takes far, far longer than it ever should have to.

The original idea behind the current exp rates was that it should take a "casual" player two weeks to master a class, although the definition of "casual" isn't exactly clear.
A number of us were opposed to this; such leveling only really works with MMORPGs, where there's something to do at all levels as well as a variety of items to collect and gear up with. Leveling on a Minecraft server is essentially fighting a health bar, except in the case of any mob with an arrow attack, in which case it's like fighting a health bar that will murder you in a couple of shots. Skill damage also doesn't scale, making leveling casters extremely tedious. EDIT: what777 has informed me there is scaling on skills, but he says that it is at roughly 3% per level, which still is nowhere near enough for the health pools these mobs have. A fireball that does 180% more damage is, between mana costs/cooldowns, still going to be inferior to a melee class left clicking a few times.

The current idea behind dungeons is for players to work through them, leveling until they're strong enough to progress by defeating the boss of their currently unlocked dungeon tier, but this has frankly not been executed well. Instead of a gradual progression curve, players just rush to left-click the boss to death - there is no actual physical progression through the dungeons, and there is no MMO-type scaling or difficulty that would prevent a level 1 player from taking down a level 60 mob simply by way of tenacity - then move on to the next tier, up until Tier 6, which seems to be the only remotely viable form of leveling at the moment.

At the moment, Common mobs at Tier 6 give ~350 exp, Elite mobs give ~800, and Bosses give around ~3000. By comparison, the exp it takes to reach level 11 from level 10 is over a thousand, and the mobs in the Tier 2 dungeons - meant for levels 11-20 - only provide exp numbering in the tens, not nearly enough to level at any reasonable rate. I must add that this exp scales rapidly from only requiring ~10 exp from levels 1-2.

The point is, leveling is essentially an incredibly tedious task that has been dragged out over a ridiculous period of time, and if you want to level any non-melee class alone, be prepared for an extra-long grind.

I'm not going to approach the topic of MythicMobs. Kainzo is not willing to bend on this, so for now at least, they're here to stay. I'm working on a smarter mob plugin right now, but that's for another time (^:

I will say - we've agreed that the currently configured MythicMobs are very dull; they're numerically unbalanced, having thousands upon thousands of health and dealing damage disproportionate to their health pool (200 damage a hit for a player with a 1k health pool is 20% - a level 60 scaled 300-damage left click to this mob with 25k health is 1.2%), and they only use a single, very dull skill, which is a slow homing "fireball" that is avoided by stepping over any one-block-high obstacle.

In addition, the "dungeon world" breaks any sort of immersion going; in order to level, all you must do is port or warp to spawn, turn around, then walk into a small nexus with some portals. There's also no more open world pvp, as nobody really has a reason to explore or head to specific areas apart from scouting out a potential base or town location. Yeah, we have castles, but those are isolated areas, and they aren't dynamic, nor are they fun; the biggest town with the most experienced PvPers takes the castles when they're online, and the locations don't move or provide any challenge if there are no other players present.

It also seems to confuse new players, plenty of whom we've seen trying to build/explore in the dungeon world and getting confused about it.

To summarize:
  • Dungeons do not provide a rewarding, satisfying or fun leveling experience.
  • Fighting mobs is essentially left clicking a health bar that occasionally deals 1/5 of your health as damage.
  • The splitting of dungeons into their own worlds pretty much removed any world pvp or exploration aside from castles.
  • Bosses are a major pain in the ass, having tons of health, way too much damage and not much in the way of drops. What little challenge there is can be easily removed by any class with a mobility skill and a ranged attack; in the palace (t6), for example, a Beastmaster can just grapple up onto the side of a pillar and shoot the iron golem boss with no repercussions.
So, what do we have left?

We've agreed that we want dungeons removed, but we thought we'd ask the players first.

The alternatives would be to return overworld leveling, including swamplands. Dungeons should be relegated to the realm of supplementary content, rather than mandatory leveling areas; their primary incentive should be level-specific drops, plus things like trophies (boss heads, special furniture pieces, possibly a very limited selection of pets, etc) and resources.

In addition, to help further world PvP, we discussed bringing in automated events such as these:


(Rifts is a plugin I wrote for mcConquest whereby large structures will spawn at random at regular intervals, spawning mobs and actively fending off attackers; players should flock to these locations for rewards, currency and exp, sparking pvp between groups looking for them.)

Other plugins to draw players to world locations, such as the old /hunt plugin, would also help increase world pvp.

ALLOWING DARKROOMS IS NOT A SOLUTION.

@Kainzo @Admins @Balance Team @Coders
 
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Guardian787

Legacy Supporter 9
Joined
Mar 22, 2012
Location
Ohio, United States of America
I agree... The goal should be to get more people in the overworld rather than spread out across different servers. As of now someone can level from 1-60 without ever having to leave the dungeon area.

Bring more people into the overworld to increase player interaction instead of spreading the playerbase out and everything will be much better. Even if dungeons were to stay they should be spread across the map, either smaller dungeons or the portal to the bigger ones. They shouldn't be all in one place.
 

Hai_o3o

TNT
Joined
Mar 4, 2016
I agree... The goal should be to get more people in the overworld rather than spread out across different servers. As of now someone can level from 1-60 without ever having to leave the dungeon area.

Bring more people into the overworld to increase player interaction instead of spreading the playerbase out and everything will be much better. Even if dungeons were to stay they should be spread across the map, either smaller dungeons or the portal to the bigger ones. They shouldn't be all in one place.
Thats what they did last map with dungeons, minus the portals. I think it also made runesmiths more popular and viable because runestones to the dungeons made traveling a breeze, however I think portals are nice too.
 

Dewyn

Retired Staff
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Location
dewyn#2005
Thats what they did last map with dungeons, minus the portals. I think it also made runesmiths more popular and viable because runestones to the dungeons made traveling a breeze, however I think portals are nice too.

I would appreciate if they were no longer leveling grounds ;p
 

N1nten

ICE ICE ICE!
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
To be fair, we should make a lot of suggestions and just have the community vote on the best one.
 

pocketemu

TNT
Joined
Oct 17, 2013
Is there a reason there can't be both? You are literally debating on deleting content and creating more when there are already so many bugs and unfinished things that should have been taken care of.
I agree leveling sucks and is boring, but I think having options to level has always been the most successful way to go about it. For instance in wild star you could level through pvp, questing, or dungeons and allowed for some much needed breaks from repetitive content and I saw much more active players enjoying themselves as we leveled including myself (regardless of the end game flaws that caused the game to die). This is coming from someone who has leveled with people on virtually every mmo there is and questing and grinding always sucks. The point is, why not keep the dungeons for the carebears and people who enjoy them and just correctly adjust their ratios and apply different rewards specific to them so that both the rifts and the dungeons serve a purpose and have character.

Kainzo said he wanted it to take 21 hours to grind to max level (still sucks but oh well he's the boss man). Just take the average normal amount of mobs you can kill while levling in 20 mins x 3 and divide the total xp required to hit max level (650,000) by it then divide it by 21.

Example:
1 mob per minute factoring in mana and healing, 60 mobs an hour.

650,000 xp / 60 mobs = 10833.33 / 21 hrs. =515.87 xp per mob (which is most likely not that far off).


I fear that boosts are taken into consideration in the current xp ratios which is beyond dumb. People are literally paying money for convenience with boosts and they should not be considered. If people wish to give this server money for convenience then let them instead of requiring them to do so to level in an efficient manner. Remember this server only exists because of the people supporting and playing it and to be honest, has only survived due to the void in it's genera that it fills, not it's quality.


I'm not saying that the team isn't working hard or doing their job whether they are or are not is not my concern because I know that you all are swamped and understaffed, I am saying that I'm playing a game I would like to support and bring friends to, but at times it's like inviting people over to a dirty house, it's just embarrassing.

In the end content and fluidity is what the server needs and why players get bored and leave. We're just looking for something to have fun on and kill time. Take that into consideration with future leveling and if you make the rifts, low level and new players won't want to go to a rift that is heavily contested by high level players and zerg squads during heavy traffic hours.
 
Joined
May 30, 2017
I will say - we've agreed that the currently configured MythicMobs are very dull; they're numerically unbalanced, having thousands upon thousands of health and dealing damage disproportionate to their health pool (200 damage a hit for a player with a 1k health pool is 20% - a level 60 scaled 300-damage left click to this mob with 25k health is 1.2%), and they only use a single, **very dull skill, which is a slow homing "fireball" that is avoided by stepping over any one-block-high obstacle.**

Mythic mobs, by all means, is able to do some awesome skills if worked on enough. Personally, I understand that the common/rare mobs are dull, but I agree that as is the bosses are some of the most laughable bosses ever. They have no flavor and are literally as you said a health bar. They just require time and barely any effort (besides clicking and doing the same thing you do for any other mob). Bosses are meant to be challenging and barely any are except archers, but that is just because of the nature of archers and less to do with anything @Kainzo has done (I know it isn't just him, but you know what I mean). Even better would be if each boss had a specific kit that could be played around. The fun in a boss fight comes from strategizing how to beat it, but in the case of the current bosses, it is as simple as hit it till it dies. Hope your post gets some people's gears moving.

Of course, if you had specific kit there would be fewer bosses meaning more fights over them.

P.S. Liked the formatting. Much better than my post in that regard, lol.
The development and balance teams have been discussing this for some time, and we've decided that this is an issue that should be pitched to the general population:
 
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spiralz

Obsidian
Joined
Jun 20, 2013
You say dungeons are bad, but I don't really see a solution for leveling. You simply say the alternative is overworld leveling, but what does that mean exactly? How would I be able to constantly and consistently level up a combat class, especially without the use of darkrooms?
 

N1nten

ICE ICE ICE!
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
You say dungeons are bad, but I don't really see a solution for leveling. You simply say the alternative is overworld leveling, but what does that mean exactly? How would I be able to constantly and consistently level up a combat class, especially without the use of darkrooms?
How did people level in bastion when darkroom would actually be filled with stone by an administrator or moderator? They played the game, and at night, mobs would spawn in large groups.
 

Kainzo

The Disposable Hero
Staff member
Founder
Adventure Team
Joined
Jan 7, 2011
Location
The 7th Circle of Heaven
Overworld leveling with the proper algorithm on spawning could work. Otherwise we cap the server at 100 players (absolute max) with the amount of entities pulled from overworld spawns.

Its complete shit.

Our system needs reworks and changes, I'll agree.
 

spiralz

Obsidian
Joined
Jun 20, 2013
How did people level in bastion when darkroom would actually be filled with stone by an administrator or moderator? They played the game, and at night, mobs would spawn in large groups.

And how is that better than dungeons where mobs spawn constantly at any time of minecraft day? At least with dungeons I can go there and grind out as much exp as I want for as long as I want and not waste time waiting for night to travel to a nearby flattened desert to stand around waiting for infrequent mob spawns then kill them and stand around waiting for more all in a 12min timespan of darkness. Doesn't sound like the best alternative imo.

I think dungeons were the best when they existed as one with the survival server on the overworld map.
 

w0nd3rb0y

Legacy Supporter 5
Joined
May 4, 2012
Location
Charlotte, North Carolina
And how is that better than dungeons where mobs spawn constantly at any time of minecraft day? At least with dungeons I can go there and grind out as much exp as I want for as long as I want and not waste time waiting for night to travel to a nearby flattened desert to stand around waiting for infrequent mob spawns then kill them and stand around waiting for more all in a 12min timespan of darkness. Doesn't sound like the best alternative imo.

I think dungeons were the best when they existed as one with the survival server on the overworld map.
As a veteran, this was the best way to level. It encouraged pvp and leveling was more fun.
 

radicater11

Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Location
Florida
And how is that better than dungeons where mobs spawn constantly at any time of minecraft day? At least with dungeons I can go there and grind out as much exp as I want for as long as I want and not waste time waiting for night to travel to a nearby flattened desert to stand around waiting for infrequent mob spawns then kill them and stand around waiting for more all in a 12min timespan of darkness. Doesn't sound like the best alternative imo.

I think dungeons were the best when they existed as one with the survival server on the overworld map.
Well, we can have constant spawning with Mythicmobs, it doesn't have to be night.
 

Dewyn

Retired Staff
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Location
dewyn#2005
As a veteran, this was the best way to level. It encouraged pvp and leveling was more fun.

I personally prefer Valorium's dungeons. I'm not sure why, but they felt rewarding, plus getting a couple random rare drops was always vaguely satisfying. The event drops made it even better since they would add to the loot table.

To be fair,. when I suggested overworld leveling, that was because it was pretty much the common consensus reached in discord ;p

As much fun as I had overworld leveling on Aegis, I fully admit that it was only fun because I was new to the server and was baffled that such a plugin could exist that allowed the usage of skills and such.

Overworld leveling with the proper algorithm on spawning could work

Once I actually get to work on this mob plugin, I'm pretty sure I could find a way to optimize this to stop massive quantities of lag.

Well, we can have constant spawning with Mythicmobs, it doesn't have to be night.

Which would of course cause lag. Lots of lag. As in "90% of our server lag comes from MythicMobs" lag.

I'm not even exaggerating there.

Is there a reason there can't be both? You are literally debating on deleting content and creating more when there are already so many bugs and unfinished things that should have been taken care of.

This is content that is literally causing the death of the server. Population was halved just one week after release. This is not a matter of "variety of leveling". We currently do not have variety of leveling. The leveling we do have is tedious, dull, and repetitive, that much everyone agrees on.

This is coming from someone who has leveled with people on virtually every mmo there is and questing and grinding always sucks.

I actually have had fun grinding on RIFT, which is the only MMO I've ever stuck to. There was just a shit ton to do at all times, and the game was fun until Trion kinda broke it even worse than it was already broken. Can't tell you exactly why but it had a lot to do with loot and the class system.

The point is, why not keep the dungeons for the carebears and people who enjoy them and just correctly adjust their ratios and apply different rewards specific to them so that both the rifts and the dungeons serve a purpose and have character.

I'm ambivalent about this, because providing PvE-only regions has a habit of killing pvp - look at Aegis.

Also, rifts are not for leveling, and dungeons shouldn't be, either. Rifts are simply to spark world PvP by providing an item/currency incentive to head to a specific location and battle it out with the rift itself and other players. I recall suggesting keeping dungeons as a gear/item incentive, so that

Main leveling source: provides ample exp but not much else
Rifts: provide currency, materials, locations for world pvp
Dungeons: provide loot & gear as well as certain boss items such as trophies

If Valorium-style dungeons make their return (can we have Valorium's map back, too?), I'd prefer to rename our current dungeons into something else, since Valorium dungeons were closer to the definition of a dungeon - cramped, dank, and full of dead people.

Kainzo said he wanted it to take 21 hours to grind to max level (still sucks but oh well he's the boss man)

I've seen both 20 hours and 2 weeks, but regardless, question everything. Just because someone is the boss doesn't mean you can't challenge them, albeit respectfully. Part of the reason Conquest was so hyped two years ago was we promised a server where we would accept input from everyone and consider it carefully, which is something almost no servers do. I feel like now more than ever people just want to be heard and acknowledged if nothing else.

I can't really comment on that exp rate,since it's entirely subjective, but I can say that leveling any class with good melee damage is much, much faster, easier and less bothersome than leveling a caster/support, which sucks, because many people want to play casters/supports. This assumes solo leveling of course; healing a group of warriors and rogues is fine for leveling.

I'm not saying that the team isn't working hard or doing their job whether they are or are not is not my concern because I know that you all are swamped and understaffed, I am saying that I'm playing a game I would like to support and bring friends to, but at times it's like inviting people over to a dirty house, it's just embarrassing.

In the end content and fluidity is what the server needs and why players get bored and leave. We're just looking for something to have fun on and kill time. Take that into consideration with future leveling and if you make the rifts, low level and new players won't want to go to a rift that is heavily contested by high level players and zerg squads during heavy traffic hours.

All of this I can totally understand and agree with. The fact is, Heroes servers are only still around because they fill a niche; servers that promise interesting content fail to deliver or even get started (or their class systems are too shit to make up for it), and the two "main" servers - HC and Atherys - have both pretty much gone belly-up at this point, kept alive by dedicated veterans, staff, and some new players who can still see potential in everything.

I'm still here because I still have some hope.
 

radicater11

Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
Feb 22, 2012
Location
Florida
Which would of course cause lag. Lots of lag. As in "90% of our server lag comes from MythicMobs" lag.

I'm not even exaggerating there.
We've had the system before, it was fine. Mythicmobs allows you to optimize spawning to avoid lag. Things like only on the surface, or only in chunks around a player to name a few.
 

N1nten

ICE ICE ICE!
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
To be honest, I personally think the higher up people need to look at herocraft when it was at it's peak, and see what made it that way. IMO there's a lot of things that need changed, and I'm terrible at typing shit out.
 

Yavool

Legacy Supporter 9
Joined
Jul 4, 2013
Location
Spokane, WA
Mobs during the Bastion era were the best, IMO. Dark came, and they came in droves...unyielding. Relentless. When we added boss mobs to the mix, it was pretty darn cool; and when HP and XP went up based on distance from spawn, that was really a great idea, as it allowed people to build their towns based on the difficulty of the mobs they wished to face as they leveled up. I am not a programmer, but I do not understand how the lag can be as bad or worse four years later given the advancements in technology in that time. Perhaps that is my ignorance. Please bring back both standard mob spawns akin to vanilla Minecraft, animal spawns akin to vanilla Minecraft, and add in the aforementioned boss mobs as well as the HP/XP increase based on distance from spawn.

Ah, the good ol' days. :cool:

-yav
 

N1nten

ICE ICE ICE!
Joined
Oct 30, 2011
Mobs during the Bastion era were the best, IMO. Dark came, and they came in droves...unyielding. Relentless. When we added boss mobs to the mix, it was pretty darn cool; and when HP and XP went up based on distance from spawn, that was really a great idea, as it allowed people to build their towns based on the difficulty of the mobs they wished to face as they leveled up. I am not a programmer, but I do not understand how the lag can be as bad or worse four years later given the advancements in technology in that time. Perhaps that is my ignorance. Please bring back both standard mob spawns akin to vanilla Minecraft, animal spawns akin to vanilla Minecraft, and add in the aforementioned boss mobs as well as the HP/XP increase based on distance from spawn.

Ah, the good ol' days. :cool:

-yav
I 100% agree
 

Danda

Dungeon Master Extremist
Staff member
Administrator
Guide
Wiki Team
Max Legacy Supporter
Joined
Jan 21, 2011
PVE scaling for all skills is 1.2x at level 1 then gains 3.5% of the base every level.
I was in favour of pushing it higher than that however I was over ruled.
 
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