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Izrith's Incredibly Irascible & Irate Inventory of Injustices
This is solely devoted to listing things I've encountered and think could be improved. Many of these will be about Fury, the class I play. List is not exhaustive and I will add more as I encounter them.
Also please understand that this comes from a position of wanting to improve the game. There are MANY things about Starmourn that I find extremely enjoyable (I've been hankering for a good sci-fi MUD for a LONG TIME NOW), but those won't be listed here.
1. Cloning mark costs should be tied to character level, and not number of deaths.
Given that combat in Starmourn is much more dangerous than in other IRE games (MANY low level enemies have extremely dangerous strong attacks, often doing 600 damage or more, looking at you windmill drones), it seems unfair to tie cloning costs to death count. This can EASILY lead to a trap where a new player dies quite a few times, finds themselves with zero marks, and is basically stuck.
EDIT: Apparently this isn't the case and is just flavor text; a dev has stated that it IS based on level only and not number of deaths.
2. Fury's blade enhancements (FLAMESHAPE, WINDSHAPE, LIGHTNINGSHAPE) do not show up in the defense list using the Nexus client.
Self explanatory.
3. Speaking of the Nexus client, the rage resource bar covers up the F buttons on the bottom part of the screen. This may be just a Fury thing, but I'd like to be able to read the button labels.
Self explanatory.
4. Spamming BURN from Fulmination trumps messing with Battleflow and Rage in the early levels of Fury.
This is kind of silly when the main draw and mechanic of the class is managing your stances and rage, and there's little reason to do so when repeating BURN over and over again does much more DPS. In fact, I hear that even at higher levels, Fulmination BURN spam still beats Battleflow/Rage unless you have both WINDSHAPE and BERSERK going. The only advantage that using Battleflow/Rage in the early game is getting RESISTANT up, which leads us to...
5. RESISTANT rage cost is too high.
As I've already said, combat in Starmourn is much more deadly. Which is fine. But what isn't fine is being unable to get your strong defensive buff up until halfway through a fight already. RESISTANT's rage cost is too high to permit it to be used on the first attack. Given that you start in Symmetry, you have only GUTREND or SWIFTCUT available, and neither generate enough rage to use RESISTANT on your first combo, so you have to go through LEGSPIKE to get back to Symmetry, and THEN you can either GUTREND or SWIFTCUT and follow up with RESISTANT. What this all leads to is that you'll often lose half your health before you can get RESISTANT going. As far as I'm aware (I could be wrong), no other class has this limitation. Please either lower RESISTANT's rage cost so it can be used on the first combo, or buff GUTREND/SWIFTCUT's rage generation.
6. Autopilot likes to zig-zag.
Currently, Autopilot has a distressing tendency to rapidly change directions in the middle of empty space, when there seems to be no reason to do so.
7. STUN is locked behind a stance requirement.
This ability is nearly useless being stuck behind the EMBER stance requirement. Firstly, having an interrupt be locked behind a stance means that when an enemy (mob or player) winds up an attack, you simply do not have enough time to switch to that stance, unless you just happen to be in it or in Symmetry. Wind up attacks are short enough that there's just isn't time. If we had a Rage ability to switch to EMBER, such as how AIRFLIP/AIRLEAP work, then that might not be a problem, but we don't. POSITION also doesn't work since it requires UNSTOPPABLE to be in effect. Solution? Remove STUN's stance requirement and allow it to be used in any stance.
8. Attack commands require you to specify a target.
This is more a QoL gripe than anything else, but why can't these things just default to targeting whatever you're currently fighting? I know about SETTARGET, but having to re-set a target after every single fight kind of defeats the purpose. I'd much rather if commands (in particular the COMBO one) defaulted to targeting whatever you're currently fighting, perhaps by assuming you are targeting the last thing that you targeted.
9. Non-storyline quests seem to give little EXP.
I believe it was the intention that it be harder to level in Starmourn. That's fine. However, HELP BASHING very clearly states that doing level-appropriate quests should grant more XP for time spent than regular old bashing, and they currently don't, or don't seem to. Example: I did the hacking quest for Jonah, traveled around Scatterhome's asteroids, beat up a few security mooks in the process; took about a half hour. My reward at the end was a measly 200 XP. I could have gotten more in just a couple of kills while bashing. Seems strange.
EDIT 1: NEW ENTRIES HURRAY!
10. Fury seems to have a large lesson gate to even start making Battleflow/Rage usable.
One of the newly discovered combos is as follows: Swiftcut/Flyinglash -> Wound/Rend -> Rupture/Strike. It's been shown to do a large amount of damage, but the problem is that you need at least 130-ish lessons in Battlerend to unlock Wound & Rupture and 157 in Rage to unlock Rend, which means that you'll probably have to reach level 20 or so before you have enough lessons to start using Battleflow/Rage. I know of no other class that has such a gate to their main 'bashing combo'. It's also really good for bleeding out enemies in PvP, I've been told.
11. MANY mobs seem to be seriously overtuned for the areas in which they are found. Here's a short list of ones which I've encountered thus for:
Haven City's Oldtown: Aggressively Malfunctioning Drones, they do a VERY LARGE amount of damage very quickly that a level 10-15 can't handle.
Seanan's Planet (Sorry I forgot the name!): Windmill Drones, they have a wind-up attack that does nearly 800 damage. This is particularly a huge problem for Fury since Fury has no interrupt that early on. Oh and you can't crash out before it lands either.
Whittler's Hollow: Opalescent Beetles, they have an unreasonably large amount of damage and health for their level range
12. There seems to be no real reason to upgrade your armor if you happen to wear light armor.
I can't speak for the other armor types, but for Fury at least (which wears light armor), I have noticed NO appreciable difference in damage taken from level 1 gear to current level gear. Using ARMOR OVERVIEW reveals that there has been almost zero increase in any resistances (some of them have increased by maybe .01 of a percent). I realize that light armor is, obviously, not supposed to block larges amounts of damage, but having no change at all is kind of...strange.
13. Similar to the previous, I've noticed no appreciable increase in damage from upgrading Kithblades.
At level one I did around 80-90 damage with a gutrend. At level 15 with an equivalently leveled Kithblade I still do 80-90ish damage with gutrend. Same thing with Burn. Thus far the only thing I've noticed to influence damage is blade buffs like WINDSHAPE. Obviously, the fact that Battleflow attacks are meant to increase based on status ailments is a big part of it, but as I said earlier, Fury basically doesn't get access to any usable combos to exploit this until level 20ish, and given that the maximum level in the game is 75, that's 33.33% of the way through the entire leveling process. I'd REALLY like to get my hands on the damage calculations to see just what exactly is supposed to effect damage, but I know that probably won't happen.
NEVERMIND THIS IS WRONG AND I'M STUPID.
14. Incursions don't immediately end when all the enemies have been blown up.
This causes them to sit on the list and I suspect prevent new ones from being spawned. This is more annoying than anything. I have a sneaking suspicions that you get a 'burst' of Captaincy XP when the incursion properly ends, so you're left sitting around just waiting on the timer. If I'm wrong about this please tell me.
15. Story quests after a certain point stop giving appreciable XP.
I just did the bit where you help Cassandra's friends. Took about an hour. Got 30% of a single level, and now it wants me to grind to 20. This is really just a continuation of my previous complaint about quest XP. I don't expect to level only on story quests, but it would be nice to get at least one level before the whole 'get back to the grinding' part.
Also please understand that this comes from a position of wanting to improve the game. There are MANY things about Starmourn that I find extremely enjoyable (I've been hankering for a good sci-fi MUD for a LONG TIME NOW), but those won't be listed here.
1. Cloning mark costs should be tied to character level, and not number of deaths.
Given that combat in Starmourn is much more dangerous than in other IRE games (MANY low level enemies have extremely dangerous strong attacks, often doing 600 damage or more, looking at you windmill drones), it seems unfair to tie cloning costs to death count. This can EASILY lead to a trap where a new player dies quite a few times, finds themselves with zero marks, and is basically stuck.
EDIT: Apparently this isn't the case and is just flavor text; a dev has stated that it IS based on level only and not number of deaths.
2. Fury's blade enhancements (FLAMESHAPE, WINDSHAPE, LIGHTNINGSHAPE) do not show up in the defense list using the Nexus client.
Self explanatory.
3. Speaking of the Nexus client, the rage resource bar covers up the F buttons on the bottom part of the screen. This may be just a Fury thing, but I'd like to be able to read the button labels.
Self explanatory.
4. Spamming BURN from Fulmination trumps messing with Battleflow and Rage in the early levels of Fury.
This is kind of silly when the main draw and mechanic of the class is managing your stances and rage, and there's little reason to do so when repeating BURN over and over again does much more DPS. In fact, I hear that even at higher levels, Fulmination BURN spam still beats Battleflow/Rage unless you have both WINDSHAPE and BERSERK going. The only advantage that using Battleflow/Rage in the early game is getting RESISTANT up, which leads us to...
5. RESISTANT rage cost is too high.
As I've already said, combat in Starmourn is much more deadly. Which is fine. But what isn't fine is being unable to get your strong defensive buff up until halfway through a fight already. RESISTANT's rage cost is too high to permit it to be used on the first attack. Given that you start in Symmetry, you have only GUTREND or SWIFTCUT available, and neither generate enough rage to use RESISTANT on your first combo, so you have to go through LEGSPIKE to get back to Symmetry, and THEN you can either GUTREND or SWIFTCUT and follow up with RESISTANT. What this all leads to is that you'll often lose half your health before you can get RESISTANT going. As far as I'm aware (I could be wrong), no other class has this limitation. Please either lower RESISTANT's rage cost so it can be used on the first combo, or buff GUTREND/SWIFTCUT's rage generation.
6. Autopilot likes to zig-zag.
Currently, Autopilot has a distressing tendency to rapidly change directions in the middle of empty space, when there seems to be no reason to do so.
7. STUN is locked behind a stance requirement.
This ability is nearly useless being stuck behind the EMBER stance requirement. Firstly, having an interrupt be locked behind a stance means that when an enemy (mob or player) winds up an attack, you simply do not have enough time to switch to that stance, unless you just happen to be in it or in Symmetry. Wind up attacks are short enough that there's just isn't time. If we had a Rage ability to switch to EMBER, such as how AIRFLIP/AIRLEAP work, then that might not be a problem, but we don't. POSITION also doesn't work since it requires UNSTOPPABLE to be in effect. Solution? Remove STUN's stance requirement and allow it to be used in any stance.
8. Attack commands require you to specify a target.
This is more a QoL gripe than anything else, but why can't these things just default to targeting whatever you're currently fighting? I know about SETTARGET, but having to re-set a target after every single fight kind of defeats the purpose. I'd much rather if commands (in particular the COMBO one) defaulted to targeting whatever you're currently fighting, perhaps by assuming you are targeting the last thing that you targeted.
9. Non-storyline quests seem to give little EXP.
I believe it was the intention that it be harder to level in Starmourn. That's fine. However, HELP BASHING very clearly states that doing level-appropriate quests should grant more XP for time spent than regular old bashing, and they currently don't, or don't seem to. Example: I did the hacking quest for Jonah, traveled around Scatterhome's asteroids, beat up a few security mooks in the process; took about a half hour. My reward at the end was a measly 200 XP. I could have gotten more in just a couple of kills while bashing. Seems strange.
EDIT 1: NEW ENTRIES HURRAY!
10. Fury seems to have a large lesson gate to even start making Battleflow/Rage usable.
One of the newly discovered combos is as follows: Swiftcut/Flyinglash -> Wound/Rend -> Rupture/Strike. It's been shown to do a large amount of damage, but the problem is that you need at least 130-ish lessons in Battlerend to unlock Wound & Rupture and 157 in Rage to unlock Rend, which means that you'll probably have to reach level 20 or so before you have enough lessons to start using Battleflow/Rage. I know of no other class that has such a gate to their main 'bashing combo'. It's also really good for bleeding out enemies in PvP, I've been told.
11. MANY mobs seem to be seriously overtuned for the areas in which they are found. Here's a short list of ones which I've encountered thus for:
Haven City's Oldtown: Aggressively Malfunctioning Drones, they do a VERY LARGE amount of damage very quickly that a level 10-15 can't handle.
Seanan's Planet (Sorry I forgot the name!): Windmill Drones, they have a wind-up attack that does nearly 800 damage. This is particularly a huge problem for Fury since Fury has no interrupt that early on. Oh and you can't crash out before it lands either.
Whittler's Hollow: Opalescent Beetles, they have an unreasonably large amount of damage and health for their level range
12. There seems to be no real reason to upgrade your armor if you happen to wear light armor.
I can't speak for the other armor types, but for Fury at least (which wears light armor), I have noticed NO appreciable difference in damage taken from level 1 gear to current level gear. Using ARMOR OVERVIEW reveals that there has been almost zero increase in any resistances (some of them have increased by maybe .01 of a percent). I realize that light armor is, obviously, not supposed to block larges amounts of damage, but having no change at all is kind of...strange.
13. Similar to the previous, I've noticed no appreciable increase in damage from upgrading Kithblades.
At level one I did around 80-90 damage with a gutrend. At level 15 with an equivalently leveled Kithblade I still do 80-90ish damage with gutrend. Same thing with Burn. Thus far the only thing I've noticed to influence damage is blade buffs like WINDSHAPE. Obviously, the fact that Battleflow attacks are meant to increase based on status ailments is a big part of it, but as I said earlier, Fury basically doesn't get access to any usable combos to exploit this until level 20ish, and given that the maximum level in the game is 75, that's 33.33% of the way through the entire leveling process. I'd REALLY like to get my hands on the damage calculations to see just what exactly is supposed to effect damage, but I know that probably won't happen.
NEVERMIND THIS IS WRONG AND I'M STUPID.
14. Incursions don't immediately end when all the enemies have been blown up.
This causes them to sit on the list and I suspect prevent new ones from being spawned. This is more annoying than anything. I have a sneaking suspicions that you get a 'burst' of Captaincy XP when the incursion properly ends, so you're left sitting around just waiting on the timer. If I'm wrong about this please tell me.
15. Story quests after a certain point stop giving appreciable XP.
I just did the bit where you help Cassandra's friends. Took about an hour. Got 30% of a single level, and now it wants me to grind to 20. This is really just a continuation of my previous complaint about quest XP. I don't expect to level only on story quests, but it would be nice to get at least one level before the whole 'get back to the grinding' part.
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Comments
I also play a Fury and spent a bunch of time figuring out stances (which I think are really cool), but was similarly disappointed to find out that apparently you can just spam that fulmination skill and just as fast (if not faster).
I'd also like to add:
10. Movement when you're lost feels unforgiving. I got to 7 without remembering that the RESCUE command exists, but once I hit 20, I hope there are other things to make getting back to central hubs easy (especially if you've flown somewhere and have stranded yourself).
11. Even finding the quest mobs was really hard. I think I spent 10 min walking around looking for the guy who eventually gave me the census quest (spent another 5 min looking for him once I was done). One of the quest givers on HELP STARTER QUESTS also seems to not be willing to give me a quest (the urchin boy or whatever).
12. People seem to just talk a bunch of nonsense in FT. I get that everyone can roleplay however they'd like, but Scatterhome faction chat (the only faction chat I've experienced) has felt more like Twitch chat, than a faction talking to each other.
That being said, I'm pretty encouraged by what I see. There are a lot of really interesting parts of the game that I'm super excited to dive into. And many of these issues will get better with time (finding quest givers will be easy once people write a few FHELPs, for example).
I focused mostly on my thoughts about the new player experience since that's what most of us are living right now, and also because I think that's probably the most important part to nail down early in this game's life.
2) They show up when you probe the blade. There's a "shape: wind" part.
4) WINDSHAPE also buffs Kith Burn. Berserk doesn't, however. The areas above level 20 can't be Kith Burned through, they're kinda hard now, I need to experiment with Battleflow on them later.
5) Resistant costs 10 rage, which means you only need to have at least -2- rage to gutrend/resistant. Most damage related rage abilities cost 5%, and you generate 8% per hit, so you should easily have enough for resistant after your first mob to open with gutrend/resistant.
7) You also have DEFLECT to save your ass if you can go into symmetry (which you can from most if not all stances), but I haven't tested if it works against those channelled abilities. Currently, all I can tell is, you can't do anything (channelled) once the deflect goes through and then you eat 1 attack completely. Others have mentioned Kith Fever, I've used it before, it's not reliable.
P. S. If any admin is reading this, can we combo bflow none for better QoL? TY.
Resistant is weird, but my main gripe with it is that it doesn't renew if you use it again before it runs out. Instead, it's on a weird timer where your rage window expires, and then the buff expires. It's like it's intended to only be used once in a fight, but I'm not sure why. Seems like the rage cost would keep people from spamming it. Also, if you're just sitting around spamming Resistant, you're already making weird life decisions.
Honesty, Battleflow/Rage is getting kinda fun, but I guess it's a fair complaint that Burn outpaces it for as long as it does. If the fix for that is nerfing Burn to do less damage, though, I don't consider it worth it.
http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-starmourn.html
Would be nice if recasting Resistant reset its duration, however. Currently it doesn't let you refresh it, and it can run out fractions of a second after your attempt.