Why is it launching too soon?

[myndzero]

This is not to hate on the server or anything like that, I have been waiting for it for a while now.

The server is launching in 10 days now, and on the site the overall progress is still only 85%, with all areas except one not being classified as completed. You have posts on forums with various bugs found (This is to be expected, there would of always been bugs) but the biggest thing is that the player & NPC damage is just not correct according to the posts I've been reading, with people comparing it to other servers as well. You can take the last bit as a grain of salt as I haven't tested it myself so I can't confirm it, but if that is the case it seems like a big issue. Vanilla is mean't to be hard, annoying, or however you want to call it personally, and I'm sure even like this it still overall is, but it just won't match the core vanilla experience people were *expecting*.

I know the developers really want to get the project out there & into the players hands, and that's probably how most of the littler or undiscovered things will get fixed. I just think it's too soon, I think it needs to be delayed so they can fix these core problems.

 

[Rawhide]

Maybe...
The issues you are refering to have not been confirmed, but there will offcourse be bugs.
Just look at the Launch teaser...Silithus everywhere...Brrrrr! *shrives*

 

[Aieris]

You are still talking about weaker NPCs as a huge and big bug.. It isn't. It's caused by new generic NPC stat system which means, that chero can change one value in code and for 90% of NPCs in the world, one stat will change. The reason why it's still not fixed is, that we don't know what exactly is wrong. Yes, NPCs are weaker, but why? And also, isn't our experience affected by years of playing on pservers where this thing may be buged for the whole time and NPCs are actualy harder than they should?
Memory and feelings of old Vanilla players are not relevant sources. Vanilla felt hard, but that may be caused by that nobody knew, how the game works. Now we know it and so it may be easyer for us. But this just needs investigation.

 

[Szabinger]

You are still talking about weaker NPCs as a huge and big bug.. It isn't. It's caused by new generic NPC stat system which means, that chero can change one value in code and for 90% of NPCs in the world, one stat will change. The reason why it's still not fixed is, that we don't know what exactly is wrong. Yes, NPCs are weaker, but why? And also, isn't our experience affected by years of playing on pservers where this thing may be buged for the whole time and NPCs are actualy harder than they should?
Memory and feelings of old Vanilla players are not relevant sources. Vanilla felt hard, but that may be caused by that nobody knew, how the game works. Now we know it and so it may be easyer for us. But this just needs investigation.

You are contradicting yourself. You are stating that it's an easy fix, just have to change a value. Then you are stating that you don't know what's wrong. So which one is it?

 

[Wind]

This progress bar is subjective, you can't really reach 100% of perfection and it has never been the case on any private server. Basically, seeing 85% does not mean that the experience will be bad.

 

[Amel]

Both can be correct, to put it very simple you can know that a football match is not supposed to take 60 minutes but more but all the same not know how long it should actually take, is it 80 minutes or is it 90 minutes?

In this case, NPCs do less dmg than they should, so are they doing only 70% of the dmg or are they doing 80%, it's easily fixed by increasing their dmg output by *1.42 or 1.25 respectively but as long as you don't know which you can't fix it.

At least that's how i see it.

 

[Magnifican]

I believe the 85% overall progress shown in the main page before it was removed did include the content not released on launch, like BWL, Zul Gurub, Silithus, AQ, Naxx etc.
I play on the beta right now and the starting zones are very well scripted I think, except for some pathing issues in caves, but this has been confirmed already so it'll be fixed before launch
When people get to see the Nostalrius bugtracker (once it arrives) they will see that it isnt so bad after all. I played on Nost too level 30 and decided to switch to focus on Kronos only. I was sceptic to the hundreds of small bugs in the tracker as well, but nothing is gamebreaking and it get fixed very fast so its all good.

 

[forerun]

All mobs paramaters have own special formula to calcualte their hp, absorbs etc. Putting new values to the formula will change all mobs in just one click. But how to reproduce that vanilla feeling of mob killing? Too squishy too harsh where is the middle way?

 

[muff]

You are contradicting yourself. You are stating that it's an easy fix, just have to change a value. Then you are stating that you don't know what's wrong. So which one is it?

"we don't know what's wrong"

"we know what's wrong but we don't know what's caused it"

"we know what's wrong but we don't know the perfect way to fix it"

(i assume) aieris meant the second or third sentence, not the first.



@OP: i wouldn't call it "too soon". original ETA was last year - for them to make that ETA to begin with, things must have been in a good state already.
on top of that, remember it's a re-release of the server - it was already released and working before with people raiding at 60 - i.e. if it was good enough for them last time, it should be hot shit (in a good way) this time.
i agree that "all mob dmg/health/whatever is wrong values" is cause for concern, but afaia nothing has been confirmed on that - as you've said, it's just been unconfirmed/subjective forum reports. not legit-enough reason to suddenly delay the launch, which would probably lead to /wrists across europe.
and as said above, the progress % doesn't seem to mean much at this point, not worth worrying about a magic number.

 

[Magnifican]

If I pull two mobs then I usually have a huge problem even in the Beta, and this is even with the maxed out skills to defence and weapon you get everytime you level. It seems like many packs out in the world are closely linked together and this is a challange when soloing for sure. I dont know what all this "mobs are too easy" comes from. I havent notice it at all yet. I like that casters hit hard as hell, you meet a caster NPC you focus that one first or you will be dead soon.

Anyway, hope it works out well.

 

[dzonibegood]

Guys if you lvl up to 60 and then drop your lvl mobs will be ridiculously more easy to kill. I've played pure lvl 1 to 21 and mobs are moderately hard to kill! They always take me down to 50 - 60% while draining more then half of my mana (mage) and that's solo pull! If i pull 2 i can barely get out alive. I'm talking about yellow lvl npc.

 

[Aieris]

Yes, if you read my post in suggestion section, then you will understand - Mobs vs casters are strong as they should, because their DMG output is OK and casters deal magic damage which, on low levels, deal max damage. However, issue is versus mele classes, where it seems that armor, avoidance and glancing blows does not scale properly.

 

[Daishi001]

That's because your character keeps his skill level at 300 once he was at 60, even when you de-level him. So what you have is a lvl 30 Warrior with 300 in Defense and Weapon skills.
I'm kind of worried that the beta test is a disaster, seeing that it seems the average tester is unable to even click "Skills" to see what is going on. Not a good sign.

 

[dzonibegood]

That's because your character keeps his skill level at 300 once he was at 60, even when you de-level him. So what you have is a lvl 30 Warrior with 300 in Defense and Weapon skills.
I'm kind of worried that the beta test is a disaster, seeing that it seems the average tester is unable to even click "Skills" to see what is going on. Not a good sign.

Kronos testers double check if everything is ok before proceeding with the bug. Don't worry the bug reports from players aren't taken into account until the tester of this server reads the bug or issue and replicates it. If it isn't replicated and player doesn't have knowledge about how it actually works then it's discarded. I know because i've gone through this process when i reported stuff they first followed my instructions how to cause the bug and once they saw the bug themselves they proceeded with bug fixing.

 

[Dalloway]

That's because your character keeps his skill level at 300 once he was at 60, even when you de-level him. So what you have is a lvl 30 Warrior with 300 in Defense and Weapon skills.
I'm kind of worried that the beta test is a disaster, seeing that it seems the average tester is unable to even click "Skills" to see what is going on. Not a good sign.

You can be certain Aieris knew full well how to set up for proper testing conditions.
Moreover, what he is telling you is that his new character with 10/10 Sword Skill and 5/5 Defense Skill is doing more damage to higher level NPCs and that fewer hits are being parried/dodged/blocked by said higher level NPCs. I would worry less about the average tester and more about average reading comprehension.

 

[Skosh]

You have posts on forums with various bugs found (This is to be expected, there would of always been bugs) but the biggest thing is that the player & NPC damage is just not correct according to the posts I've been reading, with people comparing it to other servers as well.

If people claiming that NPC's are hitting too soft then that's great, but I would really, really like to see well run tests and references from 2005-2007 era forum numbers on the subject to convince me of something being entirely wrong. I'm not trying to cause trouble, but check this out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j77kIKTylU

I recently ran that test to confirm that Bear Druids were gaining the correct amount of Rage on a pre Burning Crusade server (using that math) from damage taken alone. Happy days, Kronos does have that right. But this test character is level 60 wearing a mix of quest reward greens and crafted greens (wicked leather armor), open world green quest drop rings and necklace, and the only blue item is the Twig of the World Tree.

Bear Gear - http://postimg.org/image/quoaibet9/
Bear Stats - http://postimg.org/image/ehbgbep4t/

This modestly but properly geared druid (gear had cheap enchantments) should be ready to rock BRD as a tank. Now look at the damage I'm taking from that green con Elite turtle. The rate of health loss feels accurate to me from my experience of doing a ton of bear tanking on old retail, but if I had to heal this character in BRD when it's getting pounded on by 3-4 level 54 Elites I'd be feeling nervous and really hope Crowd Control on pulls is being used.

I just haven't had the feeling of something being horribly broken yet.

Edit - Hey Willy down below - thanks for finding that video and doing your checking. You confirmed a lot of what I already suspected, and it's great to see a reference like this. That bear sample that I have above? I did the robot chicken quest in Hinterlands with that gear and hit the bug where the chicken can summon 3+ sets of 3 Owlbears from the ambush (bug is reported). My bear got crapped on hard from all the damage I was taking. From that test, again, I just wasn't seeing an issue.

 

[willynilly]

I just did a little testing on my own, here and on Feenix. I had a level 1 orc warrior on both servers (fresh here, never leveled him up past 1). Since character creation on Kronos (for now) comes with maxed skills, I took hits on my Feenix character to get him up to 5 defense, eliminating that variable.

What I noticed was that on Kronos, the damage dealt by lvl 1-2 boars in the valley of trials, as well as the lvl 5 scorpids just outside it is more consistent; less variance. On Feenix, the boars would hit between 1 and 4 damage per hit, the scorpids hitting between 6-12 (non-crit). On Kronos, the variance was much lower, the lvl 1 boars hitting for 1 damage every time, and the lvl 2 boars hitting for 2 every time. Scorpids on Kronos hit from 5-7 damage (non-crit).

From the scorpids, we can see that the variance in hits comes at the top end of the damage scale. There also seems to be a smalllll discrepancy in the scorpid minimum damage, as no 5 damage hits were seen on Feenix, but were regularly seen on Kronos.

What this means is that for those of us who played most recently on Feenix (myself included), it feels a bit easier on Kronos. The variance in damage seen means more overall damage dealt by mobs on Feenix, as well as higher burst damage.

Now, which one is more accurate? I could look back at my experience in vanilla and say that the added difficulty from Feenix feels more accurate...but that's retarded, because vanilla on retail was a looooong time ago, a lot of that feeling could get lost in translation. So all I can do, in the absence of damage formulas from vanilla days, is look at videos. Still difficult, considering how few vanilla leveling videos survived this long. But there's always Joana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTSyexUNN9E

What does Joana show us? Boars hitting for 2 damage every damn time. If the data in the description is accurate, that this video was indeed recorded during patch 1.10, then it seems that Kronos is more accurate in terms of low level mob damage output. Interestingly though, when I make a level 1 hunter on Kronos, she takes 1 damage from the level 2 boars. The difference between Joana's hunter and mine could be defense rating, but the difference between my hunter and my warrior, I'm guessing, is agility. Still, it's possible that the damage numbers on Kronos are very slightly lower than they were in vanilla overall...or it could simply be due to defense ratings being maxed for each level. What we can say for certain is that it's more accurate on Kronos than Feenix.

Why does it feel too easy? We were all much younger when we played vanilla on retail, the game was new and we weren't very good at it. Now many of us have been playing for several years, we're better at it, and it feels easier.

Later tonight, I'll jump up a few levels and do some more testing in the mid levels, again comparing to Joana, and I suspect I'll reach similar findings.

EDIT: I just did some more testing, this time I used this clip ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVLgpiVNyJM ), comparing the damage done by yetis to Joana's pet. I got virtually the same pet (same level, same character talents, almost all same stats, lower loyalty because fuck that, and armor ~150 lower maybe due to loyalty. I got the stats from this timestamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVLgpiVNyJM&t=258 ). In the clip, the yetis do between 29 and 35 damage. In my testing, they did 30-36 damage.

In conclusion, damage done at the lowest levels on Kronos may be one point off for some mobs, but that could just be due to defense ratings. At level ~28-30, the damage is precisely what we'd expect based off of the Joana video.

Things may feel easier on Kronos for some of us due to defense rating differences (especially those who leveled up and then deleveled), but I suspect it comes in large part from experiences at Feenix, which appears to be a less accurate representation of vanilla damage than Kronos. Higher player skill compared to when we played vanilla on retail may also factor in.

@Skosh, it was something I was concerned about, I loved vanilla leveling because it could actually be a challenge, and it taught you how to play your class. If that was lost on Kronos then I'd be missing a lot from the experience. Seems like it's remarkably accurate though, and it has me more excited for release.

 

[Rockmaster]

Well done Willynilly!
I wanted to test this on the we but you were faster
I will test it as well on different mobs Just to be sure.

 

[Rawhide]

...

Fantastic work both from Kronos devs and you testing it.

Very well done and documented.

 

[I3lackPearl]

...

You got my full respect sir!

Guess your point with the age and experience that passed since release of retail classic wow strikes a full bulls eye.
I suppose most ppl (me included) have already a full working rotation and interface setup in mind when they plan on starting a new class - that's not even close compared to retail vanilla.

Just compare it with a common shooter - a dude playing CoD for the past 10 years like a lunatic will sure say the game is easy compared to a newcomer. To me that easily explains why we think the mob's are just not that hard.

 

[Aieris]

Well, you have proved, that damage done by most mobs (i think, that some dongeon bosses will need some tweak) is accurate, but what concers me is armor, avoidance and glancing blows damage reduction when fighting higher level NPCs.

 

[Yakyro]

I also feel Kronos is launching too soon and release should be delayed.

For the past few weeks I've basicly been checking/testing everything quest related. Going zone by zone, completing every quest, much like actual leveling from 1-60. I'm checking every mob to see if they're using all of their abilities and if their behaviour (pathing/fleeing/emotes etc) is correct. I'm completing nearly every quest to see if it functions properly and check if any scripted event tied to it is working as it should.

I've now completed about a third of the zones and reported 279 issues so far. Most of it is small behaviour stuff and is easily fixed. But it's those kind of things that make this server feel different from other private servers (plus more blizzlike) and more importantly; make the world feel alive. It's things like; Rexxar & Misha patrolling and the Gizelton Caravan escort quests working properly in Desolace, the Kolkar Pack Runners actually running around the oasis in the Barrens, the Devilsaur roaming around Un'goro Crater, rare mobs following their patrol routes and having multiple possible spawnpoints etc., that will entice people to play on this server.

You have a shot to be the best and biggest Vanilla server out there, why not make sure most of those things are working properly before launching the server? People really notice stuff like that during their leveling experience and might just leave if it's not functioning properly, just like on all those other dead servers that said they were gonna be the best.

If you could just give Beta a couple more weeks, I would check every zone in the game and would report all the things that need fixing to make sure that players will have a near flawless, almost blizzlike, leveling experience. Hell, I'd even provide the waypoints for all those missing patrol routes, given that I have enough time. I'm sure most of it can be fixed quite easily. Sadly, there's no way I can finish all the zones before the Beta closes and that means a lot of stuff that could have been fixed, isn't on release.

 

[brothir]

I agree with Yakyro (great work on the reports by the way). I think ending the first beta now would be a good idea, then they could do a month of fixing and have a second beta when all current issues are resolved.

 

[Skosh]

Kronos only has one shot at a launch with the goal being as few exploitable bugs as possible, with as many hack / cheat / teleport / dupe methods being shut down as possible. That's my main concern right now.

I want to play here so bad I can taste it, but I could stand waiting a further 2 to 4 weeks if it would confirm the above won't be a problem. Then again, I have no idea if the devs already spent weeks covering that and starting bug fixing second.

 

[Asmodeus]

I also feel Kronos is launching too soon and release should be delayed.

For the past few weeks I've basicly been checking/testing everything quest related. Going zone by zone, completing every quest, much like actual leveling from 1-60. I'm checking every mob to see if they're using all of their abilities and if their behaviour (pathing/fleeing/emotes etc) is correct. I'm completing nearly every quest to see if it functions properly and check if any scripted event tied to it is working as it should.

I've now completed about a third of the zones and reported 279 issues so far. Most of it is small behaviour stuff and is easily fixed. But it's those kind of things that make this server feel different from other private servers (plus more blizzlike) and more importantly; make the world feel alive. It's things like; Rexxar & Misha patrolling and the Gizelton Caravan escort quests working properly in Desolace, the Kolkar Pack Runners actually running around the oasis in the Barrens, the Devilsaur roaming around Un'goro Crater, rare mobs following their patrol routes and having multiple possible spawnpoints etc., that will entice people to play on this server.

You have a shot to be the best and biggest Vanilla server out there, why not make sure most of those things are working properly before launching the server? People really notice stuff like that during their leveling experience and might just leave if it's not functioning properly, just like on all those other dead servers that said they were gonna be the best.

If you could just give Beta a couple more weeks, I would check every zone in the game and would report all the things that need fixing to make sure that players will have a near flawless, almost blizzlike, leveling experience. Hell, I'd even provide the waypoints for all those missing patrol routes, given that I have enough time. I'm sure most of it can be fixed quite easily. Sadly, there's no way I can finish all the zones before the Beta closes and that means a lot of stuff that could have been fixed, isn't on release.

Please read this devs!