vanilla is bad.

Why should a weapon with a huge damage range always hit hard?

Leknar’s Wrath does 15-177 (as one example). There should be 162 different outcomes for each swing. Right?? Unfortunately, in Nod there are only three outcomes: miss, 400 damage or 800 crit (numbers vary with build but you get my point). Everyone has max STR (for crushers in this example, 2STR/1DEX for slash, or DEX for pierce) making the minimum range nonexistent and taking the randomness completely out of battles. Everyone’s character then becomes a close copy of one another. Yes this is a generalization and there are more actual variations but, for the most part, this generalization is true enough for this discussion.

If we make the damage range an actual game mechanic, suddenly mobs become a challenge and pvp has some excitement to it.

As it stands, I can predict a pve battle to a few seconds by clicking auto-attack with sound off, change to a different web tab, then click back in about 50 seconds or so and I see the xp number scrolling or the chest appearing. Boring.

Here are a few ideas for improvements:

First, change the friggin delay on 2H weapons, they should be slower with much higher damage than 1H. It’s fine to lower the damage on 1H to compensate, but 1H should, for the most part, be faster and more accurate than 2Hers. Lowering damage on 1Hers would also make shields worth a crap, they lose to well built DWers every time. Also, give us weapons to choose from, like ones with massive high-end damage but 1-5 minimum even for the highest lvl ones (many weapons are already like this), or a daggerlike weapon with minimums and maximums that are close (not like the 11-33 of the current lvl 25 piercer, but more like 17-22), and other choices in between the two extremes.

Crushers should take their chances on missing or getting parried on a few of their slow, massively powerful hits. But no. high STR negates parry for some unknown and ridiculous reason. Higher STR should be slower and easier to parry. It’s even fair to make crushers stuns more powerful as well to make up for the slower speed and less accuracy they should have.

Piercers should take their chances on someone being able to mitigate their many small hits. The high end on their damage is too high. Make that lower and give them a faster delay than slash and crush. It’s silly to have crushing and slashing weapons faster than piercers (at high levels anyway, I’m using the 64 epic pierce as example here). Let the crushers hit the hardest but slowest, the piercers the least damage by far but the most consistent (minimum damage high and better to hit) and fastest.

Slashers should be the most effective since they shouldn’t have the faults that crushers and piercers should suffer from, but have middle-of-the-road damage, accuracy, damage range, etc.

This gives you three very distinct play styles, plus the choice to go all or nothing with 2H, faster damage with DW, or defensive 1H and shield within the different styles.

If someone wants to always hit for max damage, give us more skills to get to that higher end, but not just one, that is far too easy. Make a character have to work to be the best he can be. Give us skills to make up for a weapons weaknesses; an example would be a skill name aim shot to increase accuracy and damage but also increase delay, or barbed-weapon to increase minimum damage, etc.

As it stands, all you have to do for crushers is max STR and … boom, you’re a God like everyone else … which makes you not a God at all.

To conclude, I’m aware that this is far too great of an overhaul and would completely change the game. So it’s not going to happen. But I’m interested in your opinions on ways to make the game better, which is all this is; an idea to make Nod better. Much of it has probably already been said, but thanks for reading my ideas.

bump, in light of poll.