APS solutions

and only skill u need in nirvana is...claw,tangling mire..spark and ep lol

I'd just like to say that those bosses knocked my minibarb down to about 1 attack per minute. It was painful.

Anyway - to those saying "Balancing APS will cost them money" they could, you know, introduce just as expensive gear for other classes with huge gobs of magic attack and physical attack for the people who like to use skills. (And pets, all too often left out of this...)

However, it seems pretty clear that their actual intent is to reduce the number of mirages people can get (for why?!) instead.

This conversation has been going on for 2 years now. There is no solution. I think the best answer they had was to fix channel cancelling.

In fairness, this is probably the first thread I've seen on APS that actually states the problem and its origin clearly, and presents an appropriate solution (namely, the first of OP's solutions; the second does not work as the APS calculation is the problem, not the weapons themselves and certainly not non-fist weapons). The only solutions are change the calculation method as suggested, or to lower the APS cap to 2 or 3.



Frankly, although it's easy to accuse PWE of a greedy/uncaring nature (and you wouldn't be wrong in doing so), even that may not be the reason this isn't getting done. Personally, I have a theory that we (that is, PW Beijing) simply have different devs than the originals... as in, most or all of the original devs jumped ship months (if not years) ago. My best guess is that this happened shortly before Rising Tide.

Just look at the recent pattern of updates... "new" instances that aren't really new at all, unnecessary replacements for game elements that worked perfectly well before (I'm looking at you, timed newbie armors >_>)... and the only major updates were the RT and Genesis expansions, which curiously tacked all their new content onto the bottom of the map while sporting complete departures from the game's original theme (though that may be more the fault of artists/musicians).

Perhaps most telling of all is their strange reluctance to modify the original code. That would explain why they haven't fixed APS, rubberbanding, buff overwrite failure (magic shell, blazing arrow, etc.), and similar long-standing problems. Speaking from experience, if you're trying to modify someone else's program and you see a million lines of code, you're more likely to append other things to the end of it all rather than make changes. This is the M.O. of someone who did not have a hand in writing the original code, because someone who did write that code would be far more comfortable with it.



But I digress. Although I must say, coming back from a month's hiatus to find an intelligently-written thread on APS is a rare pleasure indeed. :P Kudos to the OP.

Another potential way to at least disrupt aps is to simply provide greater access to -aps stuff. Aps isn't all that great if a boss spams a -150% aps debuff...

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Personally, I have a theory that we (that is, PW Beijing) simply have different devs than the originals... as in, most or all of the original devs jumped ship months (if not years) ago. My best guess is that this happened shortly before Rising Tide.

Given the size of Wanmei, I'd be surprised if we weren't on the 3rd or 4th set of devs. Some people are more willing to work with other people's code.

(It also suggests that the code might not be heavily commented.)

Okeano - Harshlands wrote:

Actually, the OP is a moron who just divided a bunch of numbers by 1.

...wow, trolls these days are awful. >_>

Fenrina - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Given the size of Wanmei, I'd be surprised if we weren't on the 3rd or 4th set of devs. Some people are more willing to work with other people's code.

Agreed. I went general IT instead of Compsci for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I always felt totally out of place in someone else's code. Kinda feels like you're sitting at someone else's desk in someone else's mess. :P

Fenrina - Heavens Tear wrote: »

(It also suggests that the code might not be heavily commented.)

Also possible.

Fenrina - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Another potential way to at least disrupt aps is to simply provide greater access to -aps stuff. Aps isn't all that great if a boss spams a -150% aps debuff...

Or if it constantly casts reflect on itself.

ijs :P

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Agreed. I went general IT instead of Compsci for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I always felt totally out of place in someone else's code. Kinda feels like you're sitting at someone else's desk in someone else's mess. :P

there are ways to cope with it, and if you approach it right it can be a great way to learn about coding, but it IS rather like digging through somebody else's underwear drawers. (yes, i do / have done code archaeology for a living. i comment my own new-written code very well, and modularize religiously.)

as for anti-APS, the event bosses this weekend seemed... like food for thought. i only got to do the one in fb51, and that one only twice.

the first run was with a varied squad including high-level melees, and the run went smoothly; i didn't notice anything unusual about the boss, a pretty boring run actually.

the second run was with an all-caster group of comparatively lower levels, and it felt like we were fighting a whole other mob. everyone was getting stunned, channel-slowed, and whatnot, constantly. i could not keep the bugger debuffed for the stun spam. it finally went down and nobody died, but i wish i'd run that squad first and the other one after --- then maybe i'd be better able to tell you what went right the first time and wrong the second.

thinking back, i suspect the first squad's BM and seeker kept the boss stunlocked. or maybe someone was spamming cast-cancels on it then, i should have paid more attention. anyhow, the all-caster squad had a MUCH slower run of it, and suffered much more from those features.

Okeano - Harshlands wrote: »

You must think you are pretty smart and was the first person to come up with a "solution" to high APS. You are too stupid to understand that it's not there isn't a good solution but the devs simply don't care for a solution. Stupid threads deserves stupid replies.

Most people who suggest "solutions" for APS just invent something completely irrelevant to the problem itself... i.e. they suggest buffing casters, buffing flesh ream etc... those things aren't the problem, the problem is the APS cap and calculation. I've been saying this for at least a year, and this is the first person who made a thread about that. There is a good solution, and although the devs aren't implementing it (for whatever reason), that doesn't make the thread stupid.

Honestly, between this and the "1" gaffe, I'd suggest you quit while you're ahead, man. XD

Fenrina - Heavens Tear wrote: »

True, but -% aps would work better. Reflect would reflect skills to so there wouldn't be as much pressure to move away from aps.

But most melee skills aren't designed to inflict massive DPS... except maybe for sins, but if casters can deal with X Immunity bosses, sins can deal with reflect bosses. Even so, skill DPS pales in comparison to 5aps DPS, meaning it is far, far less likely to kill the user in comparison to a 5aps user.

What a reflect boss would accomplish is favoring skills with low DPS but high hate generation used by characters with very high HP. Hmm, didn't we have a class like that at one point? One that wishes its usefulness might come back...? o.o

Fenrina - Heavens Tear wrote: »

There is one other aspect to this. It is not a coding issue. The code itself is working fine. The issue is one of balance. The 5 aps cap exists because when the game was originally coded, it was assumed no one would ever get that high. If a bug or glitch somehow allowed massive aps* then the cap would limit the damage done.

*I've seen evidence that the game engine can handle 18aps or higher without missing a beat. Granted, that was in JD, not PWI.

Yeah.

I wasn't going to bring this up in my initial theory, but... admittedly, it does stretch one's threshold of disbelief to think that this one number in the code can't be manually changed, even by the most incompetent of devs. Unless they can't find it at all, which would be hilarious (and would probably warrant someone being paid to do an exhaustive search on the number "5" XD).

As far as hiring new devs, yeah... that's what we need to be demanding. Devs that don't suck.