Thoughts on Zodiac/Staff
 

I just started playing an hour of Zodiac and man, it's pretty screwed up. I have to pm a FAQ atleast 5 times for him to respond, or find him in game to ask him my question. I had to mass out atleast 20 times to ask how I can get my head uploaded. Even then, nobody would tell me. I then had to post a thread on how to get my head uploaded. Not to mention that players are almost all trials / douchebag 12 year olds that can't afford WoW so they are looking for a new MMO. A LOT of people who start Graal run straight to Zodiac.

All I'm saying is, it's all about playing the actual game then helping each other out. Since it's a sort of MMO people can't be arsed to type to somebody and tel them how to play. They're too busy sitting outside spawn killing noobs with l33t armor that they grinded hours for thinking they're TEH BEST PKER ever just because they grinded that long. In every MMO it's the same. Get the best gear, spam one spell and kill everyone. I don't see the aspect of playing a MMO for PVP.

Just my two cents.

- Catbert, Retired from Era (Master Miner)

its funny because i play zod and normally i'd defend it but your second paragraph is absolutely right.

p.s mmo != mmorpg

Sounds like you should just play Darkfall.

Maybe if you made some friends with the people they could teach you. I was clueless to Zodiac a week ago and over a dozen people helped me get gear/level/learn how to play. Now I can sit outside OSL and kill noobs with my l33t armor cause I'm 'TEH BEST PKER EVAR!'.

But in all seriousness, most people on Zodiac will ignore you until you're on their level, get used to it that's how the server works. Unless you know someone you'll spend weeks leveling and grinding for gear just to find out its worth nothing and you wasted your time when you could've gone 1-60 in a few hours and got boss gear had you known what you were doing.

Yea, It's complicated, but I've only seen a few FAQs and they're usually busy (since it's a complicated server to explain and there's so many trials/people running straight to Zodiac). Perhaps you should look over the wiki while you wait for your FAQ questions to be answered rather than making threads ripping on the server.

You even stated you only played for about an hour and left because you didn't receive instant help and got PKed (when there's a /togglepk command) so I don't really find your argument compelling.

its how most servers work, noobs get torn apart and no one wants to be your friend

MMORPGs are just the worst things ever created in general

You kidding. I tear you up on my other account "thebadfoo" with my Mage/Scout. Your Druid can't escape the awesomeness and you :( :( all the way inside. Just saying.

Zodiac's PKing system needs a reform. Right now it's just a competition to see who can do the most damage and combos in the shortest period of time. With the awful hit detection there's almost no skill involved.

I'll take Zodiac to Darkfall any day :pluffy:

Nah no matter your gear it only takes 2 days of like 3-4 hours each day to go 1-60

Not on your own. Zodiac isn't new player friendly because you have to work with a party to make the leveling curve semi-bearable. You're expected to start knowing people, or congregate with other clueless players.

New players don't know the hip leveling dungeons. I see level 50s at Spear Gladiators sometimes. Maybe if Zodiac's FAQs were effective.....

@ pat the whole leveling **** is messed up tbh and it's up to the server to provide people with direction not FAQs.

FAQ's shouldn't be needed at all in order for players to find out what to do.

They are where I come from :(

GK is horrible. As a new player you have to PM friends/FAQ's about every single little detail in the game, and you still end up not understanding half of it.

You're under the dillusion that there's actually something to do on GK that requires a FAQ's help. It's literally "get sword", "kill stuff forever", "buy stuff".

Not at all, and corrected:


With that said, new people are very lost and confused when they start playing GK, and they can't get anywhere without asking people a **** load of questions.

I need FAQ to help me grind for diamonds 24/7 on GK :(

...Zodiac isn't even worth playing anymore. It's like you get 1 char to level 60 and its done, fun over. It's not really fun at all anymore, to me.

Playing the DDR game to unlock the Battlechanter probably ranks as my best memory of Zodiac.

It's funny, since day 1 every manager, especially Jerret have been putting so much effort into making the server balanced. Yet I fail to see a difference; everything is still unbalanced, people are still complaining.

You really have no idea what you're talking about, making assumptions about what work I actually do and where my priorities are.

Everything is unbalanced? When you give people complete freedom to build their character the way they want things are going either be bad, average, or good and ultimately depend on the player's skill level.

People are always going to complain/speak their opinion, it's human nature.

That and how 1337 your gear is. I've always thought gear factored way too much into how good you are at the game.

couldnt be more wrong sadly :(

The issue that I have with servers like Zodiac, GK, etc is that a noob, no matter how much skill they have, literally can't beat a regular player because of the combinations of gear needed, health/damage bonuses, etc.

That's one of the things I've been trying to lower the barrier of entry to but I don't want to completely **** on the people who spent the time to get that '1337' armor in the first place.

Zodiac = Ridiculously linear. I'd rather waste time idling staring at Graal then work my ass off for something that you can't do anything with. I leveled 1-60 in a couple days and realized that it didn't accomplish anything, the servers economy is so ridiculous.

What could be done different or added to make the experience better? Obviously the lack of quests, importance to things like jobs has a lot to do with it.

As much as people would like to get going on a full-out bashing thread, I'd hope to get some constructive feedback on what you'd like to see and what could be improved (I already know those ugly textured PS works from 2007 need to be replaced so you don't have to rant about it).

So you delete my post because I CLEARLY proved you wrong in every single way. Good way to not let yourself look like a complete fool.
But I might aswell just give my opinion *cough* , go on with V2, everyone was so excited, even I was when I saw pictures, etc. Unforunately, it didn't go through for whatever reason.

You aren't contributing in any way with your post, the whole point of your posts is clearly to harass and incite some sort of raged response out of me. I really can't figure out if you're trying to be some sort of elusive troll or if you really are that dumb.

Lol, he wins.:asleep:

Anyway I've been playing Zodiac a lot now and gotten pretty decent. My only main rage or thing I seriously dislike is the mass of 100% hit long ranged stuns. They are pretty ridiculous, if someone is far behind you then stops to cast one you can literally get over a level away from them but it will always hit, then they can just walk up and permastun/combo you in 1 session.

I mean, one or two of these on select classes (like assassin which would be pretty lost without the shadow bind skill). But just about any class can be concocted with one of these, such as gladiator which can already tank mass damage and utterly rape you with perma stun if you get close enough, but then you actually get the edge on one with hit and run and boom, your stuck mid-stride and they casually walk up and destroy you.

Then there's examples like Dragoon which pretty much only have 3 skills, and every single dragoon has to either jump + freeze + breath of fire or they are deemed utterly useless.

Basically what I'm saying is that skills should be reworked so if you get off the paved road you'll still be able to travel. Right now everyone just mashes the same 3-4 hot keys over and over, the only thing making either of them better being how expensive their gear is. Even in sparring, there is no real skill involved, the player should be able play the game and win. Their skill setups shouldn't allow them to, or eventually everyone's just going to make the same class with the same gear and its gg (a bit exaggerated but that's the final product of the current system).

biggest problem with zodiac was trying to apply WoW mentality/skills to graal

classes like thief look good on paper but when you'll be pretty damn lucky to land even 3 hits on the opponent it's pretty ridiculous

I'll point out four distinct problems with Zodiac:

1. It's hard for many newbies to get into Zodiac.

a. They have to depend on others way too much to get far. One example is getting some actual useful gear for your character. You either have to fish for hours or painfully try to figure out TW and FC!
b. There's not enough incentives for exploring. Sure there are things to find like dungeons and trainers; but it's faster just to ask people or a FAQ to find those -- and that's very boring.

Solutions:

a. Add some interactive NPCs that give you directions on where to go. Give simple and easy-to-use commands like [Where is] and a sub-command such as [my trainer?]. Don't add one that gives you every answer though, add something like a Warrior NPC that gives you questions on Warriors and whatever.
b. Put some NPCs that give you helpful hints, or a quest, or whatever will keep the players exploring.

2. Leveling becomes incredibly stale incredibly fast.

I really don't need to explain this since everyone should know the deal.

Solution though? Well, guess you could start by giving a unique boss to a bunch of dungeons. All of them should give you a boatload of experience and some group drops. Should give them all skills like teleporting or whatever. Mix and match this!

Should also present other ways to fighting monsters. Like some that randomly roam on the overworld or whatever.

3. Not enough skill is used to play most classes.

Let's take a look at Dragoon's jump, it's a sure-hit attack. Okay, it does miss but it can be changed so you can manually aim where to land (and make it never miss). This actually would nerf Dragoons... but I guess you can compensate by giving it more damage and add more skills. Another idea is to make Mage's Crush a fixed location instead of magically following the player. Could make it an Area of Effect to help balance it.

I saw someone use a Ninja/Mage that exploited Zodiac's system by getting as many sure-hit skills as possible. I never saw that thing lose. Once people realize the key to winning is to use as many stuns, binds, and sure-hit skills as much as possible everyone will use those kind.

4. There's really not much incentive to do things once you're level 60.

Well, once you're level 60 you could join a nation and fight for it.

First, you need to have a good character. Oh, not good enough? Time to creset or make a new one! Time to deal with MORE insane boring leveling!

Second, you need some good gear. Oh, got no Nightblades', Archmages', or Battlemasters'? Have fun fishing for a whole day! Or, you could just wait for hours and hope to have your pathetic ungeared character invited to a TW or FC party and double++ hope that you actually get a good drop!!

Or, you could forget all that nation crap and join CTF for some good team fun! Did I mention that there's only three maps, and that 99% of the strategy consists of either chasing flag carriers or grabbing the flag as fast as you can?


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Wow, I really typed a lot. I hope Jerret reads this. Criticism is welcome too.

I disagree about your post about not enough incentive about exploring. RPG is all about exploring. If you ever played a console game, who do you go to in order to ask a question? I guess the internet works, but I enjoy searching and i've actually been in every tile of Zodiac for fun. It's great to do when you are bored and i've found some pretty neat stuff (I glitched on the Elmdale Island and found the Puppin Baddies). This game is all about being level 60 too. If you think leveling is fun, i'm sorry it's not. I could agree that they should make leveling less tedious and make it go faster (mainly cmping), but PKing/Nations/Sparring is what this game is all about in my opinion. I play one character and I still have fun on this game, I suppose simple things please me, but still. I'm not trying to dog everything you do, i'm just kind of defending Zodiac. Farming is boring, yes, that's why I never do it. So yea...

I think it's gotten worse. I used to be an OK Druid with just my hand me down gear, but lately I can't even seem to remotely keep up. I'm not even talking about PVP, I know I'm supposed to suck at that but anytime I manage to join a party everyone under my care dies where before I could actually keep them healthy on the same exact bosses that I used to fight.

One other thing, unless your class is specifically geared toward massing and has some way of regaining health while you chip away at an entire room full of enemies...you are pretty much stuck doing either 1 or 2 monsters at a time, which is just tedious and slow at the higher levels.

Oh, one more thing. A link on the forums for the wiki would be grand.

1. Absolutely true, I'd still be running around leveling up on a random human char if you didn't walk me through every single little thing. <3 And even when I asked FAQs they normally answer as if though I know what they're taking about (Ie. When I was just starting I asked a FAQ what gear I should get for a Druid and they responded with 'AM shad' and I sat there like... wtf is that? '/lookup AM shad'... Item not found!).

2. Leveling is really boring, you just go to the same 5-6 dungeons and sit there while someone masses for you, 5-10 hours later you're cmped. Woo, but I really don't find any other problems with this (I sit there playing addicting games in a second window or watching tv).

I'd really love to see some newer monsters/dungeons, and it would be really cool if there were things like monster invasions or rebel uprisings. These would usually happen near a spawn point location (flag, fort, osl, some new invasion areas, etc.) and a would spawn monsters for a set amount of time, sending harder monsters (and bosses) as time goes on. After a set amount of time (could add a timer in the corner if the player is in the defending area), if the area stays defended, the defenders will be rewarded with random items based on how many kills and deaths they got. Or even a Invasion point system could be implemented with this (like CTF), and have prizes you can buy.

3. This was my main point in my earlier post, they should just rework the entire skill sets. Very few, if any, skills should be absolute hits or stuns... and they should think of some new things to add to make them better (like AoE damage, more damage or stun the closer to the central area you are, this could be really cool on Dragoon jump if it was point target. And the cmps could be for extra range/stun instead of extra jump chances.) Right now there are at least 2 skills, and for some 5+, that have the exact same effect. Mix it up!

4. There's a bunch to do, but its all repetitive and easily boring.

Yea, I also find that annoying, but you can just leech off others or buy a hedgebane (works for all classes and is fairly cheap).

Bookmark/favorite it. Or, click here.

The worst thing is that Zodiac is largely unfinished.

It's got all these huge islands and towns, and then what? 95% of the buildings are empty. Caves with nothing in them. Vast expanses of water you swim through, ignore, and go to the next grinding room. There is a whole island that I'm pretty sure you can't even access. And most of the other ones only have one dungeon to merit visiting it.


Zodiac desperately needs to be shrunk down. Combine the unfinished feel of the gmap with the gross graphics they make no attempt to fix, the class rebalances that was almost randomly sprung up, and the "inside information" that new players have no means of getting, and Zodiac is one of the most unprofessional servers out there. And that's saying a lot when it's being compared to the rest of Graal

the only problem with zodiac are the sins high damage, nerfing it a bit but make it better imo, also i hated to see that FL didnt have any cmps skills to max, adding a "add 3% magic/melee damage to all blue slots skills" thing too hard for you?

zodiac is the best server on the classic tab right now.

Edit: Dragoons doesnt need more skills, they are balanced, you just suck with it.

lol