Division Zero

Division Zero is moving to My Atlantica Online

2008-11-13T11:56:00.001-08:00

Division Zero is now a part of the My Atlantica Online network. In addition to PvP strategies and videos, we also plan to bring you a full-featured wiki, community forums and even coordinate our own events for players to participate in.

Thank you to all the readers who read and followed this blog when it was limited to a simple page on blogger.com (and, subsequently, much love to blogger.com for hosting this ridiculously amazing service). Thank you very much for your support, and hopefully you will choose to extend this support to my blog's new home, myAO.

See you there!

Mercenary Analysis: Exorcist

2008-11-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

A mercenary meant to control spellcasters in the enemy formation, and empower the spellcasters in one's own.

Rank: C

Basic: Exorcist
Stats: Str 290, Dex 170, Def 260, Int 240, Vit 240, M.Def 285

Upgrade 1: High Exorcist
Stats: Str 350, Dex 190, Def 400, Int 300, Vit 270, M.Def 295

Upgrade 2: Great Exorcist
Stats: Str 380, Dex 200, Def 550, Int 330, Vit 290, M.Def 300

Upgrade 3: Michael
Stats: Str 420, Dex 210, Def 600, Int 350, Vit 320, M.Def 305

Upgrade 4: Hero Michael
Stats: Str 449, Dex 224, Def 660, Int 374, Vit 342, M.Def 305

Historical / Legendary Source:
Michael is an archangel, one of the principal angels in Christian and Islamic tradition. He is viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. In the book of Daniel, Michael appears as "one of the chief princes" who in Daniel's vision comes to the angel Gabriel's aid in his contest with the angel of Persia (Dobiel), and is also described there as the advocate of Israel and "great prince who stands up for the children of your [Daniel's] people".

[...]

According to a diary authored by Father Raymond Bishop, a Jesuit priest at Saint Louis University, the mere mention of the name of St. Michael caused scratches on a 13-year old boy during an exorcism. Near the end of the exorcism, the boy saw a vision of the Devil and ten of his helpers engaged in a fiery battle with St. Michael. At one point during the dream, the angel smiled at the boy and said "Dominus." Shortly thereafter, the boy shouted out: "Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael, and I command you Satan, and the other evil spirits to leave the body in the name of Dominus, Immediately." Father Bishop's diary was used by William Peter Blatty as the basis for his book, The Exorcist, and later, by Thomas B. Allen, in his 1993 book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism.

(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel))

Pros:

Mana Seal. Two turn silence of all spellcasters in an enemy formation. Pretty much, if a monk doesn't keep itself fully awakened with no Combo count on it, you will stun it, limiting the monk's choices as to where to target its Awakening.
Speed Cast. If you've ever felt your spellcasting mercenaries just never had enough AP in a turn, Speed Cast will make all your problems go away. It also keeps your spellcasters somewhat healthy each turn.
Speed Cast + Monk = Awakening every turn, if necessary.
Decent strength, giving it a good source of melee damage.
Being melee and a swordsman, it has a decent defense rating and good HP, making it a decent choice to rotate a middle line with, and a decent front choice once Guardian Stones are available.
Surprisingly nice magic defense. Unusually, this may is the only mercenary who has any amount of gains in magic defense as it upgrades.
Decent AP gain (nothing spectacular, but not bad).

Cons:

Outside of its obvious applications and skills, it is an otherwise mediocre mercenary.
Even though it can ostensibly become a decent front line choice, it will find itself being the first mercenary to rotate in any situation because enemies will focus on it. (This can be a good thing, sometimes.)
Takes good damage from Flame Sword, but isn't fodder to it like other mercenaries seem to be.
Mana Burn damage can be good, but only when taken to a very high level, which is difficult because Exorcists already have competition from two other excellent skills which take priority.
Seal Staff is almost useless. It has very little use in PvE, and apparently only at very high levels.

Abilities:

Mana Seal: All spellcasters in an enemy formation, prevents targets from using skills or spells. 175 AP cost. (9/10)
Speed Cast: All spellcasters in your formation, adds AP and small amount of healing every turn. Passive. (9/10)
Mana Burn: Single target, upgrades to row, upgrades to cross. Deals damage to targets' MP and deals that same amount of damage to their HP. 150 AP cost. (7/10)
Seal Staff: All spellcasters in an enemy formation, lowers attack power and deals damage per turn. 150 AP cost. (2/10)

Breakdown:

Exorcists are pretty much staple mercenaries for just about every build in the world. Do you have any mercenaries in your build that have any methods of immobilizing enemy mercenaries? Do you have an Archer on your team and a way to open up the front line quickly enough to keep the enemy's back row permanently silenced? Do you run any amount of spellcasters in your formation and depend on them to keep your party in good condition or as a source of damage? Do you want to keep your enemy from dropping Holy Guards to remove the humongous amount of DoTs you just laid out all over his formation?

Do you like controlling your opponents and directly influencing what their actions in a turn will be?

If you answered yes, then the Exorcist is for you.

It's really hard to write anything more in a breakdown for the Exorcist because he really is that indispensable. I personally cannot think of a single build that would remain competitively viable at higher levels with no Exorcist presence, simply because no Exorcist presence in my enemy's formation would simply not force me to push forward my standard strategy. Exorcists are something you have to work around, and having that kind of clout in a mercenary is just extraordinarily beneficial.

Example Build:

There's no need to make one. I think every build I've ever made relies on an Exorcist being present in some way, shape or form. Look at other Mercenary Analysis, look forward to a Build Garage... to draw a terrible Yu-Gi-Oh! comparison, if you've ever played old Yu-Gi-Oh! at all, think of the Exorcist as a Pot of Greed or a Raigeki. Why in the hell would you not run one? Either you've got something very special going on with what you have or you simply don't understand what the Exorcist is doing for you. Just because of his ability to give a Monk extra AP to work with every round, you should consider having one in your formation. That's how indispensable the Exorcist is.

Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 9/10

Mercenary Analysis: Beast Master (Revised)

2008-11-10T23:26:00.001-08:00

(This is a revised Analysis. That means that there are significant changes in the writer's opinion from the time of the original writing of the first article and his current feelings on the mercenary. You can read the original article here.)

An axe-toting mercenary that can summon beasts to attack the entire opposing formation.

Rank: C

Basic: Beast Trainer
Stats: Str 280, Dex 170, Def 800, Int 160, Vit 290, M.Def 175

Upgrade 1: Beast Tamer
Stats: Str 350, Dex 180, Def 900, Int 180, Vit 320, M.Def 175

Upgrade 2: Beast Master
Stats: Str 380, Dex 190, Def 1000, Int 210, Vit 350, M.Def 175

Upgrade 3: Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 400, Dex 210, Def 1000+, Int 230, Vit 370, M.Def 175

Upgrade 4: Hero Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 428, Dex 224, Def 1000+, Int 246, Vit 395, M.Def 175

Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhu Rong is the Chinese god of fire and ruler of the southern hemisphere from pre-Qin mythology. He is depicted as a proud man clad in armor wielding a sword and riding on a large tiger. He was one of the gods that helped separate Heaven and Earth and set up Universal Order.

He is most famous for battling his own son Gong Gong, who was a water demon responsible for causing floods. When Zhu Rong heard that his son was attempting to seize the throne of Heaven, he went to stop him. The two of them battled for days across Heaven until both plummeted down to Earth. Finally Gong Gong was defeated and sulked away in shame while Zhu Rong returned to Heaven triumphant, after having won a great battle.

(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Rong)

Pros:

Very high defense rating at very low upgrade stages.
Good vitality produces rather decent HP at later levels.
Giant Crystals are about the cheapest of the Rank C crystals to obtain.
Axes do high damage and hit a complete row.
Full row attack means that Beast Masters are attractive targets for Brutal Will and Seth's Will.
What seems to be a surprisingly attractive base combo rate combines well with the previous point.
Beast Summon hits every person in an enemy formation for decent damage.
The previous two points combined mean that a Beast Master can do damage over a widespread variety of targets.
Decent magic defense compared to other melee mercenaries, and much better than the other axe mercenary, the Viking.
AP regeneration increases slightly as mercenary is upgraded.
High defense (even without a shield) means the Beast Master makes a decent backup tank to relieve and rotate your front line with.

Cons:

No way of reaching back rows except with Beast Summon.
Beast Summon is relatively weak until level 100, and even then it does not amount to much more than decent.
Obnoxiously weak to Flame Sword, making it a sketchy choice for a front line mercenary.
Despite decent base defense, not a good choice for a main front liner if you're tight on selection for your build.
Giant Crystals are also required for Exorcists, a very attractive mercenary to spend Crystals on.
Despite upgrading AP regeneration, AP still regains somewhat slower than most other melee mercenaries save for the Viking.

Abilities:

Beast Summon: AoE, skill-based damage to enemy; requires special equipment to use. 150 AP cost. (7/10)

Breakdown:

The Beast Master is a very difficult mercenary to rate. It has its uses, and there are in fact builds that all but require a Beast Master to be effective. However, a complete lack of versatility means that this mecenary is not for everyone.

That's what I originally thought. Here's how I feel now.

The Beast Master's first, obvious use is its AoE damage ability. Because of this, it stands to reason that the build best suited to a Beast Master is one that does a good amount of AoE damage and has many different ways of doing this AoE damage. Since the Beast Master uses an axe, it has one point largely in its favor: melee damage. Axes do some of the highest melee damage in the game along with spears, with the major difference being that an axe can hit three mercenaries while a spear can at most hit two without magical assistance. Since the axe can hit everyone in a row, that means that if you drop someone on a front line, you can effectively hit the entire middle line with your axe. This is good if your AoE build also has the capability to stun your opponents, since it adds more stun combo threats to your enemies.

Surprisingly enough, when you completely ignore its Beast Summon skill, the Beast Master can fit its way into many different kinds of builds. It makes a surprisingly decent, intelligent replacement for a Spearman in a three Spearman mid-row build, where its different attack that hits a row over a column proves to be very useful in some instances. Not only that, but it is better at taking damage than a Spearman, which means that the Beast Master might be the mercenary of choice to rotate your weakening front line with. This is all besides her obvious applications in an AoE build. With Seth's Will or Brutal Will, she actually does a good amonut of concentrated high damage, and with a Prophet in the group, her seemingly mediocre accuracy can be improved and her high damage axe can definitely be put to great use along with the aforementioned spells. She is a decent choice for those of you who want to have some variety in your straightforward Spearman strategies, a solid choice for AoE builds, and offers you a stronger mid-line mercenary to rotate your front row with when you need to lay down some heals. All in all, I was very unfair to her in the beginning, but my opinion of her strengths now has greatly improved. Just don't start her off in the front of a formation unless your entire goal is to bait out early Flame Swords, then hide her in the middle, heal her and Will her up.

Example Build:

Variety Option: The Row Sweeper

Level 95

F: LKN / SWO / EXO
M: VIK / BMA / X-M
B: MON / PRO / ORA

This build was made with the idea of being absolutely bizarre in mind. If you're willing to sit through with me for a little, I'll explain to you how this relatively unusual builds work.

Let's start off with the most unusual choice here: three axe users. Your main will be an axe user, and along with those you have your Beast Master and your Viking. So far so good. A lot of people will say, okay, this doesn't seem like a great idea: why would you run a Viking with an Axe main? Bear with me for a little.

The build itself provides a relatively strong front line. Exorcists can become comparable to Swordsmen in the front line if you hand them Guardian Stones, which is what you should be doing at this level anyways. Your front line is also capable of dealing some decent damage and has a major factor with you Exorcist, that aids in control (Mana Seal). This opens up the basic combo of Mana Seal + Freezing Axe on your opponent, already a good start. The idea here, of course, is for your Oracle's level 60 Seth's Will to fire off once you've executed this.

Get ready for an incredibly hilarious front line massacre. With very high Seth's Will, some good high level axes and three Axe users pounding away, it's almost guaranteed that the large amount of spread out damage amongst the three front row mercenaries is going ot stack up very, very quickly. The low AP of axe users is pretty much overcome by the ridiculously high amount of AP that Seth's Will hands to your mercenaries at the beginning of each turn. Have Concentrate up to 60 as well and enjoy what I'm thinking of dubbing the "Atlantica Chainsaw Massacre." You should see the majority of front lines drop within a couple of turns of your Seth's Will going off, gaps suddenly opening up everywhere, and all it takes from there is to hit Holy Guard on the mid row, tag into your Axe users and drop some Freezing Axes all over.

Why not two Vikings, you ask? Vikings have a very low amount of AP per turn, and they don't ever make a good front line rotation mercenary because of their propensity to get dropped faster than a bad habit. Beast Masters are much better to rotate your front row with and they have way more AP per turn. Your main is probably a better option to rotate with than a Viking, in all reality.

Total Grade: Early Game: 7/10 Late Game: 8/10

Rants: The Weekly Championship, continued

2008-11-10T02:49:00.000-08:00

I tend to write my articles very quickly, while I generally have the ideas and opinions fresh in my head. I also tend to rely on a few people who tell me about what goes on in the Korean and Japanese servers. The problem, obviously, is that as with anything that you write on spur of the moment, and with any information that you get from a second hand, you're obviously going to run into a few problems. The first, for the former situation, is that you end up realizing that maybe there's more than meets the eye at a first glance. The second, for the latter situation, is that word of mouth will only get you so far.

For a bit on both points, I'm going to have to thank Leyla for scrutinizing and discussing things with me. Mainly relating to the topic of the Weekly Championships. I also would like to thank a few readers who bring up some good points both in comments, PMs and e-mail (the majority of whom choose to remain anonymous).

Anyways, this rant will focus on continuing the Weekly Championship discussion by adding a little more fuel to the fire. For the discussion that was had about the entire idea, you can read the discussion at:

http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/ATForum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=8149

What we've so far determined is that spreading out a lot of gold is probably an easy way to lead to hyperinflation. With items being rather scarce in some situations, and money going out of control from rewards, it would be relatively easy to see prices for a lot of things simply skyrocket. All of a sudden, all that created money wouldn't have all that much value. Not exactly something we want to achieve. What would not be quite so bad is to either hand out the equipment outright, or pay out Battle Points.

Yes, the points you earn from Free League victories that you can trade in to Pointry. I would like to say the idea is genius, but the flaw exists, of course, that with a lot of people able to get these scarce items now, you will have a lot of equipment flooding the market at much lower prices.

... I'm not sure that's so much of a bad thing. Making things more affordable to all players isn't bound to screw up the economy all that much, considering gold is only really actually created when:

Items are sold to an NPC vendor (including gold coins, etc.)
Monsters are killed in combat
Towns pay taxes to their guilds
Quests

It's also not created in huge amounts, and people still spend the gold in ways that the gold is effectively "eliminated" from the system, such as buying things at fixed prices, going to Goncourt, training skills from skill masters, so on and so forth.

Therefore, the new tournament system can just hand out 64000 points to the winner, 32000 to second, so on and so forth. Perhaps halve the rewards, but make it so that winning at least once nets you way more than a Free League victory. If it happens that Conqueror's Equipment Boxes aren't 4000 points like I suppose they are, all you have to do is more or less scale it so that the victor could ostensibly buy 12 Conqueror's Equipment Boxes with the first prize, because that's more or less what they can do currently with the established market price on, say, Mycenae, compared to the amount of gold they would win if Atlantica Gold Coins were worth 1 million each. If they're about 1200 per box, you could say that 16000 for the first place finisher is about right. Second gets 8000, third gets 4000, fourth gets 2000, fifth through eighth get 1000, top sixteen get 500, top thirty-two get 250, top sixty-four get 125. Want to be nice? Participating at all gives you 62 points. That's about, say, two Warrior's Signs. ~400k if you don't crowd the market. As with the original system I proposed, you can only get up to a maximum of 16000 points total by participating in Weekly Championships, and if at any point you make 4000 points or more during a weekend, you are no longer allowed to participate in Weekly Championships (so you pretty much can't consistently place third or second, for example, to collude to let your buddies get more points than anyone else in the tournament).

Because battle points can only be spent on equipment, then there's no actual monetary crash. In fact, supply increases to meet the demand, so prices can come down a little and more people can afford to deck out in nice equipment to face the much more equipped players at the top of the ladder. Parity for those rising up the ranks could actually be achieved! Sure, the top winner will probably get a lot more equipment in the end, but chances are that he will end up putting his older things up for sale or simply choose to sell boxes to stock up on gold. The second place can buy about half the boxes which will possibly put him up to contend the next time they fight.

Here's where I'll diverge a little from what's discussed, and you can comment on this if you'd like or not -- the probability of it happening is probably low, but it's worth tossing out there. I think that, on top of all this, you could offer a lot more things with battle points. I'm figuring you should probably offer additional items, such as crystals, jewels, growth vials, vials of potential and 100k experience books (which already exist, mind you). You'd probably say, well, why would you want to give all that? The major reason is actually surprisingly because there are times and situations where having other people catch up isn't always just an equipment situation. The wealthiest person in the server probably has no need to obtain any of these items. Not only that, but people who are almost entirely devoted to PvP don't have a particularly easy way to obtain these items short of burning Battle Points off into Warrior's Signs and selling them for profits to buy the crystals with, or to buy quest resets so they can spend an inordinately large amount of time just trudging forward to get the crystals they need to upgrade.

Having people repeat the Cannoneer quest over and over to get Secret Vials of Potential, for instance, is not exactly great when it's literally the only reliable way to get your hands on them. Maybe letting players win lots of fights in the Free League to trade some points for a vial is not that bad of an idea. Options are always nice. Most of the repeatable casket quests that offer huge rewards anyways, such as six jewels that could sell for about a market price of 700k each. That's 4.2 million in gold, which is about what a Conqueror's box would cost. Since the box is worth about 1200, divide 1200 by 6 and you get 300. 300 battle points for a jewel. Simple.

The only problem is that some items probably should be a little harder to get than that. The Cannoneer quest literally gives this instead of jewels, and because there is no market price, it's hard to find out where you would begin to balance it. I would suggest that each vial in this system actually cost about 900, which is about enough for a winner to snatch 17 of the vials in my suggested point schematic.

Growth vials are a completely different beast and I refuse to touch the damn topic related to them without some well-earned sleep. Really, all in all, I think we all saw that the system was kind of busted and came up with a pretty decent, solid way to fix it and make players wealthier without actually causing ridiculous hyperinflation.

Anyways, for tomorrow's schedule I will be editing my review of the Beast Trainer and showing her a little bit more love. After watching a few matches and closely analyzing possibilities, it turns out that she does have a pretty good few uses. Also, Spearmen are probably not worth a 10 in the endgame (likeliest a 9, in my opinion), and after actually going out to watch a few matches I've also seen that the build I've suggested isn't exactly as cream of the crop in Korea as I was first told (hint: when writing and seeking some sort of journalistic integrity, make it a point to NOT go by word of mouth from people who claim to have been "totally there and watching matches unfold" -- confirm your resources). I want to write about the Witch, but I feel as if I haven't explored it enough to give it a good analysis. I may skip her to move to something I definitely am more familiar with, the Exorcist. I also would like to finally get around to finishing this Build Garage article that is just sitting here, staring at me. I haven't forgotten. I promise.

Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, and most of all, thank you for your criticism. I'm deeply thankful for the latter if only because the only thing it can do is help me improve the quality of the content. Keep your comments, thoughts, suggestions and criticisms coming, whether it be by PM, forum, e-mail or otherwise.

Rant: The Weekly Championships

2008-11-07T23:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, look.

I love the Free League more than anyone. I love Weekly Championships. I love the Milestone Mettle tournaments. It's a great way to enjoy PvP, they happen very often, and the rewards are pretty decent. They're all fine and dandy.

But, there's a huge problem.

Weekly Championship rewards are skewed. Ridiculous. Completely unbalanced, even. The winner of the Weekly Championship wins a Heavenly Horse that lasts for 7 days. That's cool. But they also win a base of 15 Atlantica Gold Coins, with another gold coin per participant in the tournament, with the maximum possible that can be earned 50 per tournament.

Atlantica Gold Coins sell for 1,200,000 gold. That's pretty much 60 million gold for reaching first place. And that's not even counting all the Atlantica Silver Coins you get every time you beat someone, and the Atlantica Copper Coins you get for each fight you participate in. All in all you can probably walk away with something like 70 million gold every time you win a Weekly Championship.

That's awesome. But that isn't the actual problem, nor is it the reason why the rewards are so skewed in the first place.

The biggest problem is that the rest of the players get completely stiffed on rewards. Players do not get anything resembling or even remotely compared to the amount of money that you get for winning first place. I'm not saying they should get a ton of money, but I'm saying that there should be more incentive to participate in Weekly Tournaments than to pretty much give your current server's impossibly dominating force an even larger amount of money than he or she already has. And you know why that player will continue to remain unchallenged in the top seat of the Weekly Championships? Because there is simply no way for any other players to amass the amount of wealth he has in that amount of time, short of turning into Chinese gold farmers or spending an incredibly large amount of real money to buy gold from said Chinese gold farmers.

The player in first place can effectively buy himself anything. Not only that, but sometimes they allow the player in first place to participate in the tournament on the next day, so they can play on Saturday AND Sunday. Not only that, but with their incredibly dominant position, those people are guaranteed at least one victory every weekend, which means 50 additional million in gold for that person, with no actual sizable rewards for second place, third place, fourth place, top eight, and so on. There is absolutely no incentive to participate for people, save for the small amount of money they might get for participating in the first place (which, incidentally, is trash), which only people who are practically broke will begin to appreciate.

I propose a solution to the system, of course: give more rewards all around to more players, and slightly curb the rewards that the first place player gains. This is not difficult to do, and can be done relatively easily if you adjust the way the Championship tournaments work to be more similar to the Free League time-per-game system. Not only that, but you have to rework the tournament system entirely: make it like a real tournament, with a real progression.

First off, cut off the minimum registration requirement to 9-man teams, so as to cull out the players who do not really have any realistic chance of victory. After that, determine the kind of bracket you're going to need, anywhere from an 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 or 1024-man bracket. From there on you're going to need to see how many people are "over" in the bracket. Cap entries at 1024. Make your brackets properly seeded by separating the highest divisions from the lowest divisions as normal. However, if you have a mismatch in the amount of people (let's say you have 128-256 people, but not exactly either amount), have the lowest division/level people fight each other first in what you will call a preliminary qualifier round. You accomplish this by matching enough of the lowest division/level people so that when all the matches between those players are over, you will have effectively "cut out" enough of the lower division players to make a bracket of the proper size, say 128 men.

So if I had 130 players, I would have an entire round to start dedicated solely to two matches, each match featuring two Division 16 players with 9-man teams against each other. The winners of those two matches "qualify" into the real 128 man bracket, and the bracket is immediately generated with standard seeding, highest division VS lowest. If people disconnect, make sure the game remembers where they are in the bracket, and give the appropriate people byes in the tournament rounds, instead of simply having them play someone else. If you just have them play someone, this will skew the brackets near the last matches and you will end up with situations such as 3 people in the semi-finals, with one person just waiting for another to win, which is a situation you do not want. When you get to the top 4, and after you have decided what the finals are going to be, have the people who are tied for 3rd place face each other to determine who will actually be placed 3rd.

With this you now have a clear record of the following: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, top 8, top 16, top 32, top 64. Your main bracket for this tournament was 128 men, right? So this, surprisingly enough, is the easiest part:

1st Place: 64 AGC = 64
2nd Place: 32 AGC = 32
3rd Place: 16 AGC = 16
4th Place: 8 AGC = 8
Top 8: 4 AGC = 8 x 4 = 32
Top 16: 2 AGC = 16 x 2 = 32
Top 32: 1 AGC = 32 x 1 = 32

What does this mean? Well, to place Top 32, you have to have won a certain amount of fights. You start off 128 men, so win once to leave 64, and win once again to be in the top 32. That means that winning two fights effectively gives you a certain amount of gold for your relative success. You've all of a sudden handed out a lot of wealth to a lot of players. And while it's understandable that, yes, you've just managed to give the first place winner even more gold, here's the kicker:

Earning at least 16 AGC at any point in time throughout a weekend through tournaments will lock you out from participating from any other tournaments that weekend.

This keeps players from amassing too much wealth by, say, consistently trying to place 2nd. This will make people want to aim for the top. It also keeps people from colluding and forfeiting their final match so that they can get even more rewards to allow themselves to participate again. The only thing it realistically doesn't prevent is people who, being able to win first place relatively easily, will try to run the system to place themselves in a situation where they will have about 15 AGC and then win the tournament. This is relatively easy to monitor and cap: simply enforce by code that you can only win up to 64 AGC total throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments. You've effectively set a limit to the amount of gold that can be won throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments.

Anyways, what about smaller tournaments? The trick is to cut rewards when things are smaller than 128, and keep rewards the same even when tournaments go up to 256 or 512. A 256 man bracket simply means you'll have to win 3 fights instead of 2 to land in the money, and 512 means you'll have to win four. If you're good enough, this is probably already feasible and possible, and in all reality I don't see tournaments suddenly getting that kind of attendance throughout the weekend. For smaller tournaments, simply remove the top reward amount and shift the entire thing up, so that now 1st place wins 32 AGC, 2nd place wins 16, 3rd wins 8, so on and so forth.

Having participated in, run and volunteered to staff a large amount of tournaments for fighting games (notably Evolution, which is the biggest tournament in the USA, which I have attended twice and was part of staff last year), I think the above system could possibly fix all the problems the Atlantica tournament system currently has. Tell me what you think about this, and if you're a developer or a GM, please pay some attention.

We could all use a little more wealth for being good at PvP.

Mercenary Analysis: Spearman

2008-11-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

An aggressive mercenary wielding a spear, specialized in dealing high focus damage in a formation.

Rank: D

Basic: Spearman
Stats: Str 310, Dex 210, Def 330, Int 120, Vit 240, M.Def 110

Upgrade 1: Spear Fighter
Stats: Str 350, Dex 230, Def 450, Int 160, Vit 270, M.Def 110

Upgrade 2: Spear Warrior
Stats: Str 380, Dex 250, Def 550, Int 190, Vit 300, M.Def 110

Upgrade 3: Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 440, Dex 250, Def 750, Int 220, Vit 330, M.Def 110

Upgrade 4: Hero Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 470, Dex 267, Def 990, Int 235, Vit 353, M.Def 110

Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhao Yun was a major military general during the civil wars of the late Han Dynasty and during the Three Kingdoms era of China. For most of his career, Zhao Yun served the warlord Liu Bei, playing a part in the establishment of Shu Han. In literature and folklore he is lauded as the third member of the Five Tiger Generals.

In 208, Zhao Yun distinguished himself at the Battle of Changban. When Liu Bei was fleeing in the chaos, he left his family behind. Then Zhao Yun disappeared to the north, prompting suspicion that Zhao Yun had surrendered to Cao Cao. When someone reported that to Liu Bei, Liu Bei angrily threw a handaxe and said "Zilong would never desert me". Sure enough, Zhao Yun came back with Liu Bei's infant son Liu Shan in his arms, also bringing back his wife Lady Gan. With this, Zhao Yun was promoted to General of the Standard.

(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Yun)

Pros:

Spears have ridiculously high attack power. There's just not much more you can say about that.
High strength, higher even than axe-wielding mercenaries, which contributes to the former point.
Spears also hit the mercenary immediately behind the target for half the damage dealt to the main target.
Spearmen combo and evasion rate tends to be higher than that of other mercenaries'.
Lightning Spear deals AP damage, as well as having the spear's normal reach instead of simply doing its effect to the main target.
Lightning Spear reaches the back row when the spearman hits its third upgrade at level 80.
Melee mercenary, which means it plays very well with prophets.
Solid AP regeneration with low variability (70~80 per turn).
Generally absurd combo rates when paired with Seth's Will means the physical damage output of a Spearman is among the highest -- if not the highest -- of any mercenary in the game, and definitely the highest potential damage per round of the B-class mercenaries.

Cons:

Despite being melee, it takes rather high damage, even with a surprisingly decent amount of defense.
Defense does not ever reach the 1000 barrier, even though it comes surprisingly close at the level 100 upgrade (990).
Flame Sword fodder once it can be hit by Swordsmen; these mercenaries are not particularly difficult to bring down.
Somewhat low magic defense compared to other equivalent mercenaries, which seems to be the uniting theme for spear mercenaries.
The Broken Spear debuff obliterates the damage spears do at higher levels, and the current metagame practically demands that Prophets make this their debuff of choice over any other due to the prevalence of Spearmen, which means smart opponents will keep this on your Spearmen unless you scroll or Holy Guard it off.

Abilities:

Lightning Spear: Two targets in a line, skill-based damage to enemy that damages AP; at the mercenary's third upgrade and above, attack range increases to entire column. 150 AP cost. (8/10)
Deadly Strike: High powered, single-target, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 600 AP cost. (7/10)

Main-Only Abilities:

Guard Dispel: Remove Holy Guard from an enemy row. 150 AP Cost. (9/10)
Break Down: Area of Effect, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 150 AP Cost. (5/10)

Breakdown:

It's kind of difficult to not rant and rave about just how good the Spearman is as a mercenary.

It is, for starters, the best possible unit to cast Brutal Will or Seth's Will on. The reasons why are immediately clear: not only do they hit two mercenaries deep in a formation, but they already have high combo rates to start. Prophets also increase the damage output and accuracy of these mercenaries even further and keep them relatively healthy every turn, which just adds to the attractiveness of these mercenaries.

In reality, its simple to see the Spearman's place in a formation. It is a mercenary that definitely should never be selected by itself: there should always be at least two spearmen in a formation that plans on running a spearman at all. The main reason for this is because of Lightning Spear: the effectiveness of this attack almost entirely relies on either how much you can stack it on a single columns, or how many columns you can effectively incapacitate with clever turn shifting and proper focusing of the skill itself. Not only that, but with the high amount of damage output these mercenaries have, not putting them in a row with more of the same to simply drop a Seth's Will onto is almost criminal.

Any melee build benefits from the presence of at least two spearmen. I'll go as far to suggest that if you are planning to focus on melee damage as your strategy, you should simply have three spearmen as your middle line and go with that. It is simply the most effective, high damage output you can get along with either of the two Will spells and a Prophet boosting your melee's damage and accuracy. It does not make a particularly good front liner, although it can definitely survive a couple of hits for a couple of turns, making it a decent choice if you plan to rotate your mercenaries in battle to distribute damage around them to make healing more efficient. Pretty much a staple of every credible melee-oriented build in the game.

Example Build:

Level 85

F: WIT / X-M / EXO
M: SPM / SPM / SPM
B: MON / PRO / ORA

The build is pretty much the top build in Korea at the moment from what seems to be the majority of reports of the game's balance. The build is relatively straightforward: use your front line to defend and pressure your opponents while you use your middle line to actually put damage out. The Witch occasionally makes it rain meteors on your opponents to tack on additional damage, your Axe main is focused entirely on doing the Freezing Axe + Mana Seal combination on your opponents, and your Seth's Willed spearmen actually are what makes mincemeat out of your opponent. Simple, effective, deadly, and overpowered. Run this if you want to be both deadly and completely and absolutely unoriginal (because you will be rocking the same build as just about everyone else who is very happy to jump on the bandwagon the Koreans have started), and remember to replace one of your Spearmen with a Lady Knight and another with a Spartan down the line.

Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 10/10

Rant: Is the clock too fast?

2008-11-04T21:49:00.001-08:00

I think that by now, everyone's probably noticed how fast the clock moves in Atlantica's Free League.

If you haven't, try the following:

Get into the Free League, and start a match.
Keep the Free League 'sign up' box open.
Watch the time remaining for your match.
Compare that to the time remaining in league itself.

Notice anything funny? Yes, the two clocks aren't going at the same rate. In fact, the clock for your match is going faster than the time remaining in the league itself.

What does this all mean? Well, for starters, matches now are a lot shorter. More importantly, a lot less matches are actually concluding with the clean victory of one side or another; a lot more matches are now going to points and to the clock. For balance purposes, this means that builds that can cleanly kill off single targets quicker are now much better in Free League than builds that rely on dealing even, consistent damage over a large amount of enemies over a period of time. Remember that the point system rewards the usage of skills over the usage of normal attacks, and also rewards mercenary deaths with 100 points each. If you aren't able to kill more enemy mercenaries your enemy's cleared out one or two of your own, you'll be behind late in the game. Add to the fact that it is now pathetically easy to stall for time and you'll notice that defensive builds with the ability to focus fire on single mercenaries are now a lot stronger than they probably should be.

So what should be done about this? I'm not entirely sure. Matches could stand to be a bit longer, but that might involve making the Free League drag on for much, much longer than it already does or at least used to.

With this information, I want to hear from all of you. There is now a new poll up asking for your opinion on the subject: should the time for Free League be extended and adjusted, or should it be left as is? Voice your opinion and please leave your comments on this blog post as to how you feel.

I'll be going through some of the builds I got over the weekend and write the first Build Garage post. Stay tuned.

Fun Stuff: Atlantica Japanese Voice Pack

2008-11-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

Tired of the English mercenary voices in Atlantica? Does the Exorcist make you want to cringe every time he announces that he will cast the evil out? Are you just a huge, huge animé geek? Then worry no more, you can now download a voice pack that uses the Atlanica voices from the Nexon edition of the game and replace the English voices with Japanese ones.

I will probably make a Korean voice pack at some point too.

Why is this here? Uh, no reason. Boredom? Boredom.

Click here to snag the file. Unzip it to C:\nDoors\Atlantica\LANG\ENG\FXSound and enjoy. Make sure you restart your client if you do this when your Atlantica client is open, or you might end up with some weird errors.

Vote Atlantica for WCG2009!

2008-11-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

Atlantica is listed on the World Cyber Games 2009 poll as one of the many MMORPGs that might feature in their events. Vote for Atlantica in the MMORPG section of the poll!

If, of course, you just LOVE to bandwagon and don't know what to choose for FPS or Fighting Games, please vote Team Fortress 2 and Street Fighter IV as your 1st selections for the FPS and Fighting Game categories, respectively.

If you can't use the above link, copy and paste this into your web browser:
http://www.wcg.com/6th/poll/poll_PTT.asp

Match Video: Slyphide VS mashup

2008-11-01T03:12:00.001-07:00

I've uploaded the Slyphide VS mashup match from Mycenae's 9:00PM PDT Milestone Mettle championship finals. There's commentary in the form of subtitles.

If you don't know the outcome already, I don't plan on spoiling it for you. Let's simply say that one of the two fighters is a nationmate and it's rather painful to not see him win due to some really simple, really painful mistakes.

Even with that, there are some redeeming qualities to the video. The most interesting one is the use of a skill that you probably won't often see used effectively on Free League... or anywhere, for that matter. Enjoy the video!

Atlantica Online: Slyphide VS mashup (Oct 29, 2008) on Vimeo.

What's coming...

2008-10-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today is a rather quiet day. Kids are celebrating Halloween and knocking on my door asking for candy. Life is good. There's also not much to say that wouldn't take an entire article... for now.

The planned itinerary for next week is as follows:

Mercenary Analysis: Spearman
Mercenary Analysis: Witch
Rant: Is The Clock Too Fast?
Rant: The Weekly Championship Rewards
Build Garage
Assorted Videos

What's Build Garage you're probably asking? Submit a build of your design here, along with skill selection for your mercenaries and I'll give you my opinion on how you could fix it. You of course have to tell me the original intent of your build and also tell me what you'd like to actually make it (maybe a stunning build, or an AoE build, etc.).

To submit your build to me, send me an e-mail to nothingxs@gmail.com and I'll get into contact with you about it. I will choose the two builds that either need the most help or are the most interesting, and tell you my thoughts and feelings and what I think you can do to fix them.

I'm also adding a new category called "Rants." It's as it reads: my opinions and thoughts on certain aspects of the game that likely need changing. I will be touching up first on the fact that the match clock seems to be much too short in Free League, and then I'll be moving on to putting up my two cents on the Weekly Championship and its incomprehensibly lopsided rewards. If you've followed the blog at all, you'll know I brought up the question to Xargrr in an interview, and we both agreed that something needs to change. I'll touch up more on the subject when I get around to writing the article.

That said, enjoy your Halloween and your weekend!

Mercenary Analysis: Beast Master (10/29/08)

2008-10-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

(This is an old Mercenary Analysis article. There is a current, revised version of it available here.)

An axe-toting mercenary that can summon beasts to attack the entire opposing formation.

Rank: C

Basic: Beast Trainer
Stats: Str 280, Dex 170, Def 800, Int 160, Vit 290, M.Def 175

Upgrade 1: Beast Tamer
Stats: Str 350, Dex 180, Def 900, Int 180, Vit 320, M.Def 175

Upgrade 2: Beast Master
Stats: Str 380, Dex 190, Def 1000, Int 210, Vit 350, M.Def 175

Upgrade 3: Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 400, Dex 210, Def 1000+, Int 230, Vit 370, M.Def 175

Upgrade 4: Hero Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 428, Dex 224, Def 1000+, Int 246, Vit 395, M.Def 175

Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhu Rong is the Chinese god of fire and ruler of the southern hemisphere from pre-Qin mythology. He is depicted as a proud man clad in armor wielding a sword and riding on a large tiger. He was one of the gods that helped separate Heaven and Earth and set up Universal Order.

He is most famous for battling his own son Gong Gong, who was a water demon responsible for causing floods. When Zhu Rong heard that his son was attempting to seize the throne of Heaven, he went to stop him. The two of them battled for days across Heaven until both plummeted down to Earth. Finally Gong Gong was defeated and sulked away in shame while Zhu Rong returned to Heaven triumphant, after having won a great battle.

(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Rong)

Pros:

Very high defense rating at very low upgrade stages.
Giant Crystals are the cheapest of the Rank C crystals to obtain.
Axes do high damage and hit a complete row.
Beast Summon hits every person in an enemy formation for decent damage.
The previous two points combined mean that a Beast Master can do damage over a widespread variety of targets.
Decent magic defense compared to other melee mercenaries, and much better than the other axe mercenary, the Viking.
AP regeneration increases slightly as mercenary is upgraded.

Cons:

No way of reaching back rows except with Beast Summon.
Has only a single skill, the skill itself merely average.
Obnoxiously weak to Flame Sword, making it a sketchy choice for a front line mercenary.
Despite decent defense, cannot wear a shield and is defeated handily by a large amount of melee mercenaries in actual melee.
Giant Crystals better spent on upgrading an Exorcist.
Despite upgrading AP regeneration, AP still regains slower than most other melee mercenaries (save for the Viking).
No actual way of dealing high concentrated damage.

Abilities:

Beast Summon: AoE, skill-based damage to enemy; requires special equipment to use. 150 AP cost. (7/10)

Division Zero, and new address

2008-10-28T21:14:00.000-07:00

You can now visit the blog -- now named Division Zero -- with the following address:

http://divisionzero.nothingxs.net

Open Comments Enabled

2008-10-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

It took some snooping around, but the blog finally has open comments enabled. Anyone is now free to leave a comment on the blog! Pretty much, avoid excessive profanity and flame wars in the comments and we should be alright.

Build Analysis: AoE Damage Spread / Stun Hybrid

2008-10-28T03:06:00.001-07:00

A build with which to deal large amounts of constant damage to your entire enemy's formation, with enough of a twist to push through.

Build Formation

Level 95
B: AR-M / MON / ORA
M: CAN / ART / EXO
F: BMA / VIK / WIT

Skills

Witch: Meteor Strike Lv60
Beast Master: Beast Summon Lv60
Exorcist: Mana Seal Lv40
Cannoneer: Smoke Bomb Lv60
Artilleryman: Deep Insight Lv60
Archer Main: Chaos Wind Lv40, Silence Lv40
Viking: Freezing Axe Lv60
Oracle: Healing Lv60
Monk: To taste (Awakening / Holy Guard / Protect)

Analysis

This build has a main major goal, and that's to deal a large amount of damage over time to every single mercenary on an enemy's formation. It accomplishes this through the use of Meteor Strike, Beast Summon, Deep Insight, Smoke Bomb and Chaos Wind, all of which deal a really good amount of damage either on impact, or over time. It also uses Mana Seal and its 3 ranged units to focus-fire away on the initial counter presented by monks, and even uses the Viking's Freezing Axe to put a good amount of pressure and keeping an enemy formation from attacking.

The secondary goal of this build is control. With an Archer, Exorcist and two cannon-toting mercenaries, there's the potential for opening up the front or middle line early in the fight and then keeping any enemy Monks and healer mercenaries from acting -- ever again. Silence / Mana Seal loops allow for Combo counts to go unchecked, which adds up in the favor of the two cannon users in this formation. Add to that a large amount of spread out damage over time, as well as Freezing Axe, and you have a team that can switch to complete enemy formation control when the time is right. And to top that all off, cannons spread out damage in a cross shape quite nicely as well. The real goal of this build, in the end, is to successfully balance these two play styles; to control the battlefield as well as rain heavy amounts of damage constantly throughout the fight.

Pros

Large amount of damage to a large amount of mercenaries gives a good, quantifiable numerical advantage.
The presence of Freezing Axe along with Mana Seal can deny an enemy a good chance at an offensive.
A large amount of AoE damage puts enemies at a psychological disadvantage, mainly creating a situation where the enemy may feel that his main character has "nowhere safe to stand" in their formation due to the damage affecting the entire enemy's formation.
Two cannon users can put enough pressure to possibly stun a large amount of the enemy's formation, as well as spreading out good damage among many enemies -- particularly once you've reached in and silenced the back rows down.
Beastmaster, Viking, Cannoneer and Artilleryman all hit more than one target when using their physical attacks, which spreads the damage around even more.
Difficult to use scrolls against this team, since three ranged units tend to be more than enough to keep scrolls from going off -- which means Holy Guard is the only alternative to Purification, which in and of itself won't ever have an easy time firing in battle against ranged onslaught.
Melee builds may have a relatively easy time dealing with your front line, but the lack of magic defense means that the amount of damage tacked on will very, very quickly add up to become rather devastating.
Meteor Shower is one of the few abilities in the game that can simply wipe the floor with an enemy formation when used at the right time.
A random Mana Piercing scroll works extraordinarily well in your favor. Regardless of who casts it.

Cons

Very, very sketchy front line that will only fully come into its own at very high levels. Winning at low levels will be difficult because of the speed at which Vikings and Beast Masters tend to drop.
Very weak and hard to play in your early levels due to not having your Cannoneer yet. You will also run into the problem of needing to replace an Artilleryman that you've probably leveled up very highly with your new Cannoneer.
Expensive build to maintain. You pretty much need top of the line equipment at all times to keep your mercenaries simply from dying prematurely.
This build has no realistic way of preventing damage. It has to deal almost entirely with an Oracle 'fixing' the damage for it, meaning that a strong initial offensive can push this build around.
Viking! Pathetic magic defense means you might have to sacrifice straightforward damage for more enemy mercenary control in the form of trying to land stuns, Freezing Axes and Mana Seals, nevermind that a Swordsman front line hard-counters any front line Viking... ever. An alternative might be to run with a forward Exorcist and putting the Viking behind the Witch (since the Witch has higher magic defense and the Viking isn't too bad in the HP and defense department, it can deal with melee while the Witch deals with magic).
Many of the heavy AoE damage skills and spells use a lot of AP, and some of these mercenaries aren't very good at regenerating it.
Difficult matchups may exist against Spearmen stack (AP denial), 2 monk teams (uncommon but not unheard of) and smart-played Archer stacks (kiss your artillery goodbye).

Ideas and Variants

Cannon Main Variant: Using a Cannon instead of an Archer main allows you to use Chaos Wind and ramp it up to 60. It is less versatile, because you no longer have access to Silence, which means you cannot keep a Monk quiet forever, and you no longer have the bonus Bow damage that you normally deal to ranged mercenaries. However, having access to a third cannon is a lot more spread out damage that you can put forward.

No Oracle Variant: In this Variant you are essentially gambling that your offense will be better than your opponent's ability to take you out. This is very risky because you do not have a large amount of what could be considered sturdy mercenaries, so you're going to have to try and overcome this deficiency with your additional damage boost. I would recommend a third Cannon or a Prophet in this position (the Prophet mainly for its weapon debuffs that might keep your mercenaries alive for just a little longer -- which might be more than enough -- and its ranged attack).

Questions? Comments? Suggestions and ideas? Please leave your comments on this post as to what you think about this build, and your suggested variations!

Player Interview and Analysis: Xargrr

2008-10-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

If you play on Mycenae, chances are pretty good that you've seen the name.

Very, very often.

First place in the hall of fame as of the time of this writing, with 1068 points, 95% wins and 606 matches played since Open Beta started, Xargrr is pretty much THE authority on Mycenae when it comes to PvP combat. We pick his brain about why he likes Atlantica's combat system, his choice of mercenaries, scrolls, and what people aren't doing enough of in PvP.

When did you start playing Atlantica Online?
Xargrr: Started first closed beta, on day one.
Adrean: How'd you hear about it?
Xargrr: From old friends.
Adrean: What made you so interested in playing, originally?
Xargrr: Yes -- I thought using strategy in PvP was a great idea, instead of only pushing buttons 1 to 5.

It seems to many that you always seem to be playing. Just how much do you play a day?
Xargrr: It's very random. When I have school, about 2-4 hours. When I'm free, much more.
Adrean: When you say school, do you mean you're in high school, or in college?
Xargrr: High School.
Adrean: So you're under 18, huh?
Xargrr: Nope, I'm 21 years old.
Adrean: Wait, if you're 21 don't you go to the University?
Xargrr: In Poland, the school system is a bit different. High school is the same as University. So 15 to 18 year olds are in college, then 19 year olds and above go to high school, or University.
Adrean: That's kind of confusing, but thanks for clearing it up!
Xargrr: No problem!

Tell me about your mercenary selection: what made you initially choose a spear frontline over a sword or mixed frontline?
Xargrr: I don't have any spears in my front line!
Adrean: Originally you used to, what made you change your front line? What do you use now?
Xargrr: Spears aren't good tankers with their low defense and magic defense, so now they're in the middle line. In my first line I have my Exorcist, my main and a Witch. Since spears are my main attack power, they can't die so quickly.
Adrean: You're using an Axe main too, aren't you? Why put your main up front?
Xargrr: Because he's invincible with my prophet and monk in the back line. With 19k HP, 17k defense and 920 magic defense, you can't kill him even with 5 deadly strikes at Level 60.
Adrean: That's amazing. How'd you get the defense so high? Really high level over-enchanted equipment?
Xargrr: Yes, Conquerer's +2/+4 gear. Now I'm waiting for Level 100 because I have already a full heavy melee set waiting, so my defense will be even higher.
Adrean: Why use an Axe main in the first place? Rumor has it that Korean players have said that Freezing Axe isn't so good at higher levels, so it doesn't see as much use. What do you think?
Xargrr: For me, it's very useful in both PvP and PvE; Korean players are newbies. Axe main is the best choice, IMO. Having a Viking in a team is a waste of a slot since Viking AP regenerates very slowly and his magic defense is a joke. That's why I use an axe.

What kind of builds did you initially have trouble against as you climbed up the ranks of the Free League? Did you even have any trouble with any builds? How about in Closed Beta?
Xargrr: In CB everything changed way too fast. Once, Archers were overpowered, and then they raised HP in PvP. In Open Beta I had trouble with stun builds up until level 50, but now it's okay. I mainly hate fighting AoE DoT (damage over time) builds, but I've found a tactic against them, too. Craft purification scrolls.

Well, that leads into my next questions. What do you think of random scrolls in PvP?
Xargrr: It's a good idea. It makes PvP more fun. You make a choice: you either kill an enemy mercenary or hit a scroll. It's another good strategy aspect.

What do you think of crafted scrolls in PvP? Do you use them?
Xargrr: You can only craft dispel, purification and awakening scrolls. And yes, I use them sometimes, particularly against AoE DoT builds.
Adrean: Do you like being able to craft and use scrolls in PvP?
Xargrr: Yes, but only these scrolls. Crafting and using Confusion or Judgement scrolls in PvP would be really bad.
Adrean: Which do you think is the most useful?
Xargrr: Purification, since it removes all debuffs from your team.

What do you think of the latest patch? Did it affect you at all? If so, how much?
Xargrr: A bit. My spearmen hit for 15-20% less damage, which is why I changed one of them for a witch.
Adrean: How'd you feel when you realized your Spearmen didn't hit as hard?
Xargrr: I tried PvP. I was still winning 100% of my matches, so I was like, "Whatever."

What do you think needs changing in the game? What's too strong (or too weak)?
Xargrr: Archers are too weak and the Swordsman's Flame Sword is too strong. That's all.
Adrean: So the game's almost perfect as it is?
Xargrr: Hmm... yes.

What do you think of the Weekly Championship rewards? Right now, only the winner really wins anything -- a Heavenly Horse and about 65 million gold in Atlantis Coins. Do you think more players should be rewarded for performing well? Maybe top 16 should receive some gold for their efforts?
Xargrr: Yes, I thought about this already. Tthere should be rewards for the top 8 players. First gets 65 million, second gets 20, third and fourth get 10, fifth through eighth get three. Right now it only rewards the first player.
Adrean: What if ninth through sixteenth got a million, too?
Xargrr: It's a good idea. More people will have more gold. More gold means better equipment. Better equipment means better PvP.

What do you feel people don't do enough of in PvP? Mercenary movement? Scroll use? Debuffs? Holy Guard?
Xargrr: Mercenary movement for sure. When I lower their mercs to 10%, they don't change it for some merc from the middle or back line. And when a mercenary in their front line dies, their chance to win decreases to 50%. Also, they use Holy Guard way too often. It's a really useless spell in PvP. Casting it on your front line is a big mistake.
Adrean: I agree with that, purification seems a lot more useful. But then how do you deal with Spartans and Cannoneers?
Xargrr: Cannoneers are useless against me. Their smoke bomb decreases accuracy by 19%, while my prophet increases it by 29%! And I haven't fought with a Spartan yet so I don't know about it. However, my first line has a very high magic defense, so he wouldn't do well against me, I think.
Adrean: People are saying Smoke Bomb lowers accuracy a lot more than 19% later on in the game. Spartan's War Cry lowers melee damage by 50%. Maybe people just haven't raised Smoke Bomb to a high enough level?
Xargrr: Yes, only on the front line, and I don't attack with my front line. Anyway, when they use smoke bomb, I can use purification scrolls, so it doesn't matter.
Adrean: Isn't Spartan's War Cry a cross-shaped debuff?
Xargrr: Nope, it hits only one line and it decreases combo probability, not attack power.
Adrean: Oh, it's the second hero upgrade that does it in a cross. Oops. Not quite so dangerous, then!
Xargrr: Nope!

This is a bit of a serious question... There've been allegations of botting and even hacking made against you, with your name actually being found on a couple of websites connected with game cheats. What do you have to say about this?
Xargrr: It's just someone who is using my nick on those sites. I was popular in few games... maybe that's why.

Final question. Range or melee and why?
Xargrr: For me, melee. More HP and defense as well as better skills, like AP drain, freezing axe... it's better suited to my tactics.

Alright then, thanks for taking your time to answer all these questions. Anything you'd like to say to anyone reading?
Xargrr: Yes, RAWR! Hamster power :P

Hamster power, indeed! Here's a video of Xargrr in the 4:00PM EST Free League, for those of you unfamiliar with his build and tactics.

Atlantica Online: Xargrr VS Soki (Oct 27, 2008) on Vimeo.

Video Analysis: Winning by Time and Scrolls

2008-10-27T11:11:00.001-07:00

The following video features me against LinhYue in a Free League fight in the middle of the night. The main goal of the video is to demonstrate the kind of play necessary if you'd rather pull off your wins by time and points rather than by killing your enemy. It's not a surefire strategy, but some builds can definitely force the clock into their advantage if played the right way.

Another goal of the video is to demonstrate how to use scrolls for reasons other than their principal purpose. I use purification scrolls mostly as red herrings along with mercenary replacement to keep LinhYue from stunning me, instead of actually using my Awakenings on time.

Video Testing

2008-10-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

One of the many features of this blog will be that just about every blog post will feature some sort of video. Hopefully it will be a video of a formation I am reviewing, or simply a related video to a topic at hand. Sometimes I will just make a post with a batch of videos with a number of matches.

However, I may or may not need more than one person to help me to record many different matches at the same time! Near the finals in weekly championships, there tend to be a large amount of high level players with a good amount of skill that probably should be recorded.

If you are able to help me with this, please drop me a line. For now, the following is a match between Lucario and HmooBPridE on Mycenae. The players are not particularly relevant, so this post is mainly showcasing the video formatting and YouTube channel. I will be trying to use music from relatively unknown artists that I particularly enjoy and adding the credits to the music at the end of each video, just as an added bonus.

Mercenary Analysis: Swordsman

2008-10-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

A mercenary for people who like to give their team a strong defensive line, affording them variety in their back lines.

Rank: D

Basic: Swordsman
Stats: Str 340, Dex 240, Def 400, Int 130, Vit 250, M.Def 125

Upgrade 1: Sword Fighter
Stats: Str 380, Dex 260, Def 700, Int 150, Vit 280, M.Def 125

Upgrade 2: Sword Warrior
Stats: Str 420, Dex 260, Def 850, Int 170, Vit 320, M.Def 125

Upgrade 3: Gyebaek
Stats: Str 450, Dex 280, Def 1000, Int 210, Vit 340, M.Def 125

Upgrade 4: Hero Gyebaek
Stats: Str 481, Dex 299, Def 1000+, Int 224, Vit 363, M.Def 125

Historical / Legendary Source:
Gyebaek was a general in the ancient Korean kingdom of Baekje during the early to mid 7th century. Little else is known of his personal life—including the year and location of his birth.

In 655, Baekje and Goguryeo joined forces to attack Silla, although they were eventually driven back when Silla received aid from Tang Dynasty China. In 660, when a huge united army of Silla and the Chinese invaded Baekje, General Gyebaek organized 5,000 soldiers of the highest morale and courage to meet them in battle. He knew before he set out that his army was outnumbered and that his efforts would be futile, but he did not hesitate to try to defend his country, reportedly stating "I would rather die than be a slave of the enemy." He then killed his wife and family to prevent them from falling into the hands of opposing forces, and to prevent the thought of them to influence his actions or cause him to falter in battle.

His forces won four small initial battles, but then he was forced to move his forces to block the advance of General Kim Yu-shin on the Baekje capital, Buyeo. The two generals met on the plains of Hwangsan field, in present day Hanyang, near Chiri Mountain. Gyebaek's forces fought bravely but they were outnumbered ten to one and, in the end, he and his men were annihilated.

(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyebaek)

Pros:

Reaches a high defense rating very early on, making it an excellent tank and suitable for the front line.
One of the very few mercenaries that has access to using shields which boost already incredible defense even higher.
Decent strength means that it deals good damage to a single target, making multiple, focused sword attacks on a single target very deadly.
Melee mercenary, which plays very well with the Prophet and its Concentrate ability, adding to its Attack Power, Accuracy and healing it every turn.
Deadly Strike allows a dying Swordsman to put out a large amount of damage to a single target before going out.
Ridiculously high health when in PvP (~10-11K at level 75, up from 4.8k in PvE).
Cheap to upgrade with Ashen Crystals and Jewels.

Cons:

No way of reaching back rows except with Dark Seed, which is a low-powered skill.
Dark Seed only useful when a Shaman is in the party, meaning that replacing one with an Oracle practically means wasted points.
Rendered almost entirely obsolete by the Lady Knight and the Spartan, the former an essentially stronger Swordsman with an attack skill that hits two targets in a line, and the latter a shield-using spearman with comparable defense at the Hero levels.
Somewhat low magical defense.

Abilities:

Flame Sword: Single-target, sword skill-based damage to enemy. 120 AP cost. (8/10)
Deadly Strike: High powered, single-target, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 600 AP cost. (7/10)
Dark Seed: Two targets in a line, magic skill-based damage over time to enemy. Comboable with Hex of Darkness (Hell Flame). 125 AP Cost. (3/10)

Main-Only Abilities:

Guard Dispel: Remove Holy Guard from an enemy row. 150 AP Cost. (9/10)
Break Down: Area of Effect, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 150 AP Cost. (5/10)

Breakdown:

The Swordsman has the highest defense available early on in the game, making it a great choice for players who plan on making either a melee-oriented build or who would like to create a ranged build with a powerful front line, making access to the weaker ranged characters more difficult. It boasts fairly impressive attack power, although it technically has the weakest attack power of the melee mercenaries, being heavily overshadowed by its much more aggressive counterpart, the Spearman. Despite having the weakest straight attack power (and not being very prone to multi-attack combos over 2), its Flame Sword skill is excellent against Vikings, Beast Masters, Spearmen and Spartans, while being relatively weak against Lady Knights and other Swordsmen.

Many builds focus on starting with 3 Swordsmen, and in these builds, two of them will eventually be replaced by a Lady Knight and a Spartan; but their startlingly high defense and adequate attack power mean that they will last a very long time in your main build, should you choose to use them. Being high defense builds, these mercenaries favor players with a higher focus on defensive play. They are, however, countered almost explicitly by Spearmen, who do much larger amounts of damage and have higher combo rates than them; three focused spear attacks from well-outfitted Spearmen spell almost certain doom for any Swordsman.

Example Build:

Level 80
Front
Swordsman / Swordsman / Swordsman
Middle
Spearman / Spearman / Spearman
Back
Monk / Prophet / Oracle

The Prophet increases all melee characters' attack power, accuracy and heals them every turn. Your main can either be a Swordsman or a Spearman, having access to Guard Break. This formation relies on keeping almost all of the melee characters alive for a large amount of time with the Oracle and Prophet, while using the Monk to keep your mercenaries from being stunned and holy guarded. Scrolls of Awakening and Scrolls of Purification can help to deal with your Spearman line becoming silenced or your casters becoming Mana Sealed by an Exorcist. The line of Spearmen can also effectively deny one (or even two) entire columns of an enemy formation's AP, keeping them from acting and allowing you to pile up damage.

The most trouble this build will have is in dealing with a build that can make quick work of the Prophet, but with such a large amount of melee attack power, this build should be able to overpower any front line and break through into the back of an enemy's formation. It also has no realistic way of dealing with things in back rows early on, but by level 80 your Lightning Spear should reach all the way into the back, at least giving you a method to deal damage to the back row.

The Oracle can be replaced by another Monk with Shield of Protection if you're a firm believer of healing being useless in PvP and instead being more interested in additional Holy Guard and Awakening ability, as well as giving your main another source of constant, drip-feed healing to keep it alive much longer than the rest of your party.

Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 7.5/10

What is Atlantica Online?

2008-10-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Atlantica Online.

A relatively new MMORPG published by nDoors for North America, Atlantica Online does things rather differently than other MMOs. First, the setting that is used as a backdrop for the game's storyline is going to be immediately familiar to some: it is a combination of different civilizations through different eras of time. The feudal Japanese, the vikings from Northern Europe, the colonizing and expansionist times of Southern Europe; all of these are represented in Atlantica's world. But what is really, truly interesting about it over its setting is its combat system.

Using a turn-based combat system that focuses on creating a party consisting of your main character and up to eight additional hired mercenaries, combat depends on a combination of party selection, use of the in-game abilities and your formation's layout.

The game features a large number of mercenaries divided into categories depending exclusively on each mercenary's weapon of choice. They are also divided by rank, denoting the relative 'strength' and rarity of each mercenary. While a player can have any amount of the same D-Rank mercenary, they can only have up to one of each higher class of mercenary. Each mercenary also has five upgrade levels, where their power and ability's strengths increase dramatically.

The seven weapon classes are divided as such: sword, staff, axe, spear, gun, bow and cannon. Each one has advantages and disadvantages, and each weapon has at least two different mercenary types in it. What's more, the mercenaries in each weapon class can be wildly different from each other. Take the sword category, which has four different kinds of mercenaries. The Swordsman (Gyebaek) is a tank, the only class that can use a shield early on in the game, having a very good defensive rating and having access to swords that deal a good amount of melee damage. In contrast is the Exorcist (Michael), a melee class that is more characterized by its ability to seal enemy magic casters, burn away enemy mana and buff your own party's casters instead. And in even further contrast is the newly-announced Sailor (Anne Bonny), a dual-wielding light, highly undefended mercenary whose speciality is dealing large amounts of damage to a single target with its two swords and using its poison ability to burn away AP from its target, denying it the ability to act the next turn.

Of course, with all these options there is the focus of building different parties and pitting them against each other in Player vs Player combat. What is the best build possible? What builds defeat other builds? What advantages do certain classes have over others? What will a certain mercenary do for your party, and will it do the job better than another mercenary? What do the top players of the game think in all these instances? What is the Atlantica metagame like?

And that's what this blog aims to accomplish: I plan to bring all these topics forward to the table, asking these questions and analyzing the mercenaries and their abilities as well as their viability in different kinds of builds. I will be interviewing winners of Weekly Championships and the leaders of the Free League Hall of Fame (mainly, for now, from the Mycenae server). I plan to examine the metagame in different servers -- what seems to be more favored in one server over another? Does the presence of a very high level user of a certain build on server A cause the metagame to revolve around countering it, and therefore make that server very different from server B?

All of those questions will be asked -- and hopefully answered! -- in this blog.

These are the following topics for next week's blog postings:

- Mercenary Analysis: Swordsman (Rank D)
- Mercenary Analysis: Beast Master (Rank C)
- Player Interview and Analysis: Zekkai (10/25/2008 1:00PM Weekly Champion)
- Player Interview and Analysis: Xargrr (#1 in Mycenae Free League rankings)

It's my goal and hope that you all stick around and read this blog and comment on what you think. It's also my hope that you all send me your suggestions for Analysis, your comments on the discussion and particularly your thoughts on what is discussed.

- Adrean