Allods Online Forum

First i want to tell that this are some ideas i am still working on, so feel free to improve them or suggest something better.

I will start with mercs bcs they will be part of the other ideas too.


Mercs

When they added the Kaboom Family (Cannoneers)'s quest at the start of 8.0 (correct me if i am wrong), i thought we would get a new merc to hire when we do astral runs. Sadly we didn't, but that gave me a few ideas.



1) Add new mercs

We could get new merc classes to hire during our runs. This ones could cover all the classes we have, and maybe others we don't have too. We could even get more than one type of merc per rol (tank, healer, dps, etc) wich would still be unique bcs what i will suggest next.

2) Merc skills

The other thing i saw with the Kaboom Family is that they had a special skill we could activate. My idea is that each merc could have a special skill like that. But this skill could be only used if we have 1 merc under our control: this is to promote to have more people in the party to have full adventage of the merc skills.

So if there is a party of 3 players and 3 mercs and each player use 1 merc, then they will have access to all the merc skills, but if 1 player use 2, 3, 4 or 5 mercs, then they won't have access to those skills.

3) Private mercs

The idea is to be able to hire your own mercs and use them in different activities.

a) How to get this mercs

This mercs could be obtained by doing raids: we would get tockens as rewards that allow us to buy the mercs. The mercs we could buy would be the same we can hire for astral runs. (This tokens could be also used to buy different looks for this mercs, different looks for their mounts, etc).

b) How to upgrade the mercs

This mercs could be upgraded with combat mats, dust and amalgams like we upgrade our own gear. (I know people may not like this idea but will see how it works with the idea about gear).

c) Where we could use this mercs

We could use them in the same ways we use them now and more.

They could be available to protect our private dungeon (but if are set in this rol, we wouldn't be able to hire them for something else).

Also, could be available for astral travels on our astral ship. Now, this could be hard to do, to make them do so compex tasks, but they could, at least, make guard over the deck and fight enemies that go on board of our ship.

They could be also hire for raids, to fill the empty spots. Now, lets not forget that to use their special skill each player can only have one. Also, see the ideas about raids to encouage to go with other players and not just with mercs. Maybe a way to promote this is that, in raids, players can only hire one merc, so, we would guarantee 50% of the party to be players.


Raids

Seeing the last big patch, where we have the Observatory but also Secret Path available on the search function, i started to think in a few ideas to make all raids available on the search function but also to promote people to do those raids.

1) Adjust equipment

I liked last season (Secret Path) when the gear adjusted for the raid (if we had lower gear, it went up to purple to don't leave lower players with less power), i don't know if that work like that in this season or not, but i think it should.

This would be needed to implement the option to hire mercs. This and the extra stats that players get inside the raid could help to pick players instead mercs (thinking that the mercs should be a way to fill empty spots and not an excuse to don't go with other players).

2) Hire merc (see the above ideas)

3) Repeat a raid before reset

Currently when we do the seasonal raid (this season that would be the Obervatory but next season will be another one) we get the mats the first time we do the raid and the next time we get just dust. And with the other raid (in the search function), in this case Secret Path, we just get old (and in most cases useless) mats.

The idea is to change this:

a) Current seasonal raid (Observatory)

The changes here are simple: after the first time we complete the raid (during the same week, before reset) we still get combat mats, but this ones would be normal ones (not the ones with the star), and we would keep spending keys. This would encourage players to go to the raids and help other players that didn't done the raid yet, at the same time they spend keys. This would work as an alternative to astral runs for players that want to spend their keys.

b) Previous raids (all the rest)

There are too many old raids to add all of them at the same time but we could have one of them available each week. This would keep them fresh enough to don't make it too boring.

The old raids should be leveled to the current cap, or close, to make them hardder but the players could still complete their quests by doing them. If a player want to do the original one to farm or just bcs it is easier, then they can keep doing them as they do now (by going to the entrance and go inside) and also get the old rewards.

Ofc, since now this raids would be hardder, then they should give new rewards too. The idea is that all the old raids could also be an alternative to spend keys as an alternative to astral runs. The old raids would also be the ones that give the tokens to buy the mercs (and other rewards we could get with this tokens, for example amalgams).


Astral

I think the astral travels should also be added to the search function. Find a party and fill the rest with mercs (if needed/wanted).

Now, the astral need a few changes but i will go with one now. Until now, i suggested alternative ways to spend the keys, but i would go in another direction with the astral travels. The idea would be to make a different kind of keys, apart from the others. So, the astral travels wouldn't be an alternative to spend the astral keys but would be an extra thing we could do if we want to get more combat mats (to increase the limit of 14 keys per day). So, in this way, instead of 14 keys per day, we would have 28 (14 and 14) but would need to do astral travels to spend the extra 14.

Ofc, add extra activities and other interesting rewards would make the astral more appealing too.


Gear

Last, the changes to gear.

I think the constant reset of gear is the most frustrating part of the current gear system. So, instead of reset gear during each season, the idea is to keep it for the whole year.

Currently we have green, blue, purple, etc and at the end of the season we start with green again (or in the best case with blue). The idea isn't to avoid to go to higher gear (for example from 81 to 84) but to have ways to upgrade our gear directly to the next level. For example, if we have purple gear level 81, we could have a recipe to upgrade it to purple level 84, or at least to blue level 84. Something like it was some time ago but this time make work better, it should be more fluid:

For example:

81 green, 81 blue, 81 purple, 81 orange, 81 teal, 84 teal, 87 teal; and have recipes to upgrade green, blue, purple and orange to lvl 84, 84 and 87. Ofc, the new levels (and recipes) would be available with each season, one wouldn't be able to go directly from 81 to 87 in one season.

Ofc, I know there is money involved in the current gear system, that is why i suggested the posibility to upgrade the mercs using combat mats. Ofc, they could also adjust the amount of mats needed for the gear to don't lose money with this changes. Since the idea inst to make it easier is to give a better sence of progression and don't lose all the work done during the season.


Conclusions

This ideas aim mainly to improve the search function, which is a great tool btw, to help to fill the empty spots in parties, to give alternative ways to spend astral keys and reactivate the old raids. All this without forget to create a more fluid gear system: i think they made a few changes since they implemented the new system and i think it can work if they refine it a little more.

Thx to all for take the time to read and i would love to see your ideas too.

We alredy have mercs for astral runs. I don't think it could be a problem with the other ideas for astral travels and private dungeons. So, the problem would be with mercs at raids? I can agree that one shouldn't go alone and fill the rest of the raid with mercs, at least not for the "current raid" (seasonal one)* but, at the same time, i see as a bad thing that 9-10 people are waiting bcs there is no tank or healer around to start one, or that just don't have enough dps players around. So, the mercs could be used to fill the missing spots.

*For the lower raids i see no problems bcs not that many people play them and many of the raids requiere more of one player anyway bcs of their mechanics.

About Raids and Astral Runs

I think it could be good if they add the posibility of "join" to the hard astral runs and to the normal/hard raids.

Currently is disabled, and only can "go", which means one must ask using the chat and create a party outside the search system.

If the reason of it being disabled is bcs are hard runs and random/weak players could ruin it, then they could add a GS restriction and disable the posibility to tp players with lower GS. This would be only for the "join" option, the "go" option would stay open to any party that want to give it a try.

Gear

I wanted to add something about the above idea about gear.

Current Gear

This are the current amount of materials that cost to craft gear (in some cases i show first the cost to upgrade with scroll and second to craft it directly):

green 25 mats

blue 300 mats

purple 1600/1900 mats

orange 6000/8000 mats

teal 16000 mats

Will use the scrolls to upgrade for the minimum cost. This give us a total of 23925 mats per piece of gear. This is 16000 for teal + 7925 for the rest.

Idea

The idea would be to add a scroll to upgrade the teal gear of one mini-seasonal directly to the teal gear of the next one. But the players that start at a later mini-season can start with the current level gear and upgrade it to reach the current level teal gear.

The rest is just to see how much it could cost:

First, for this idea, i will asume that, in all the mini-seasons, the cost of mats would be the same. So, with the current system we would spend 23925 mats per season. I will round it to 24000 to make the maths easier (this is 16000 + 8000).

Following the above idea, it would look like this:

level 81 green, level 81 blue, level 81 purple, level 81 orange, level 81 teal, level 84 teal, level 87 teal

Now, going back to the mat cost. The idea would be to keep the cost around the same as it is now:

So, the total of mats should be 24000 x 3 (number of mini-seasons). This is 72000 mats.

In this idea, we have the normal progress (green, blue, purple, orange and teal) on the first mini-season but only teal in the rest of the mini-seasons (instead of start from green again). So, it would look like this:

green level 81 - 25 mats

blue level 81 - 300 mats

purple level 81 - 1600/1900 mats

orange level 81 - 6000/8000 mats

teal level 81 - 16000 mats

teal level 84 - 20000 mats

teal level 87 - 28000 mats

The level 81 gear will cost a total around 24000 mats, and the lvl 84 + lvl 87 would cost 48000 (24000 x2). So, the total cost of mats in this new system would be the same as the current one.

If a player start in a late season, the teal lvl 84, for example, will cost 16000 mats to them but the player that started at the previous season would save 3900 mats.

Conclusions

The adventages of this idea are:

-This new system would be more fluid. The player would have the chance of not start over and over again, the new gear start would be each year instead of a few months.
-With this new system the secondary stats wouldn't go down each mini-season, and once the player reach the teal gear, they would increase vigor and stamina by upgrading to higher level of teal gear.
-The players would save some mats in the long run, but the idea doesn't aim to that.


P.S: sorry if i made a mistake, i changed the idea so many times that i got confused, lol, but i hope i got it right at the end and that the idea is easy to understand.