[Question] Is CoA too easy? pros/cons

The new startergear is pretty neat, i agree. But i think this server is all about running endcontent. The highlevel instances all have mechanics. I think the gear is made for you so you can
1. level up fast without any struggles (a tank or a healer as example had some problems with the old starter gear)
2. The Gear has nice values to start running higher instances
You defently have to farm more on the official server, i kinda miss that aswell, but here you have to do 'hour' runs. Its not like the official where you run the newest instance in ~30mins (didnt played for a while on official, dont know if it changed) The "grindy" part is that you have to farm the PURPLE items in the instance + "shards" and "dust" (similar to the lvl 87-90 hall items). With those purple items + shards + dust you can upgrade an item to RED. and with the new ULTIMATE gear, you can upgrade it even further to YELLOW, but that requires alot of time.

Like i said, i miss the "speedrun farm for highdura" runs, but in CoA its a different way of grinding

It feels like CoA dont want you to do the "boring" part of the game (some people like you and me dont mind about it, but many do). Doing minigames everyday, maybe even reset it for DAYS will get boring, and thats why your startergear is that huge. The server is mostly about running instances. You will get fast ---> good <--- gear, but by far not perfect gear. I'm kinda thankfull for the plussing part, since otherwise i would lose my mind if its like on the official server (not to mention that the broken +30 stones dont exist here). In general, if you wanna play without planning to invest any money / small amounts, you will have a good time griding up to "high end gear". im not talking about 250k~ patk, im talking about 300+.

cons? hmm good question. im playing active for a month now.

The cons are just from my point of view.

- You can buy rare skins in the item shop

- Some bosses can be really boring and extend the raid time

- the crash still exist (the performance got better tho)

*Edit: CoA can be easy if you wont make it challenging for yourself (paying 500 bucks each month and buy everything). Other then that it can be really intense, especially with some events of the bosses

Is CoA too easy?

Good question and as usual all depends on your prospective.

Leveling to max level/events/mobs farming/mini games - yes all now much faster and easier than if you get started. The way I see it and I think how the devs at least initially wanted it is a lot of ppl here already played ROM before and thus did not want to have an extra barrier to spend months getting to max level and all other things you experience as a new player. From my prospective on official, if I wanted to level an alt, I would just make clean items low lev with bag stats and that would make my low lev alt really strong thus easy to level/progess, I see it as a similar idea here

Once you get to end game, however, it is different story. As Shino mentioned above, I agree, most bosses are not burn, most require tactics, thus even with super gear still need to execute. Gear of course helps between event + kill mobs + kill some dps check bosses.

Cons for me ironically too much farming (from where I think you are coming from, you might enjoy it) - new golden gear they way its set up and how much time I can invest in game, I likely will need 1 month per 1 piece, so will be year + to finish assuming I will be doing it.

Another con for me and Shino mentioned above as well, some bosses have repetitive and boring mechanics that just waste so much of the raid time - and since I generally cant afford too much time due to rl, this is big con for me, especially since it does not add much of a value strat wise.

Pros though a lot - new content new features a lot of really nice things, check it out!

Hey there!

I guess you have to ask yourself what you want/enjoy in this game.

As Shino partly already pointed out, all the leveling, questing, gold farming (TQs with multiple accounts, etc), grinding lower inis to steadily improve your gear, daily minigames, etc somehow is obsolete on this server.

Of course, you can still do all that stuff, if you have fun doing it, but for most players it is just annoying, especially because they also already did that for years on the GF servers. So most ppl welcome this stuff being less important.

If you are one of the players who actually enjoy "working" their way up, spending lots if time to reach the point where you will be able to run endcontent instances, you will feel personally less rewarded and thus have less fun playing on this server.

Participating in those monthly events in Varanas, Dalanis etc. has more value here as well: custom cards (and titles).

During every one of these festivals you can get certain titles and cards, so if you are into collecting stuff like that, you will be occupied with that for a while too. Those cards sell for good money in the AH too, making a nice income source for beginning players.

However the time investment to optimize your character is not completely removed, in my opinion just raised to another level. I never played on GF servers when Cenedrils were around, but reaching lv 100 on your Cenedril seems almost impossible to me there, due to the required time and currency investment. Correct me of im wrong.

On Arcadia on the other hand, lvling up your Cenedril(s) to 100 requires substantial effort, yes, but its far from crazy impossible.

Same goes for maxing out your pet(s).

If you like to play multiple classes, you can also spend quite some time gathering enough TP to get all skills for the classes you play to 104. Since you only need 1/10 of TP to maximize a skill, achieving that is not a task for years as it was on GF servers, but something you can focus on for a resonable amount of time, setting new goals for your character after that.

All that character-optimization took me about two years until I can say: okay, now you are done and will solely focus on running instances and gear. So no, I wouldnt say this is a "summer" game for just three months.

The biggest con on this server for players who enjoy their way up (which the Devs seem to be well aware of) is the desolation of "older" and "lower" zones. Almost noone is around there, because most players just skip or delay that part of the game, yet not everyone. Instances from lv ~75 to lv 100 however are somewhat regularly farmed, mostly within guilds, to gather items for setskills.

Though running those instances of course is a lot easier, because gear on this server is way stronger, you also dont run them with a full raid, but just a few players, so difficulty evens out a little.

Also if you are looking for further challenges, you can always come back to your starter gear to run those instances, for more intense nostalgia experience.

Considering endcontent:

To be able to reach the actual encontent, you will need to complete a questline, that also requires to complete most of the "old" instances. I believe you have already seen the "crazy" gear and stats that are available here compared to GF servers. Encontent indeed is created for that gear, or the other way around, so bosses in have way higher def+lp values than in endcontent on GF servers. Also what Shino already said, almost no boss is just "nuke'n'loot", but all have some events that have to be played properly, resultung in most bossfights lasting for several minutes. Situations like "burst...3..2..1..Serenstum!...burst" also dont exist.

The two latest instances both have each one boss (out of six/five) that is burst-able.

The bossdesign in fact is what cought me most to start playing on this server. The up to now only (and sadly by now a little outdated) custom worldboss "Aldo" took experienced guilds back in the day about 20-30mins to kill. If you fail and wipe, you start over from 100%. From a healers point of view this was just THE DREAM after having <30sec bossfights on GF servers for years.

Even nowadays with way stronger gear you wont kill him in much less than 20min, due to how the fight is designed.

In the end it still is possible to reach the absolute top end considering gear etc within a month, if you are prepared to invest lots of cash and buy stuff (however waaaaaaayyy less than on GF servers), but you will still be far from having an optimized character.

I hope I could help a little and did not overwhelm you with this wall of text, but you kind of asked for more opinions on all those topics...

Have fun and enjoy the game, if you decide to!

Cheers!

I like:

- usually casual game

- nice instances with a lot of tactics. some of them you can solve in different ways

- with good guild you can have a lot of good spent time

- you can get free items every day

- you can buy almost anything in item shop - this is the reason it is casual. for example: production runes - in RoM you had to grind to get them, here you can buy 100 runes in promo for 5 dias. So it is not so frustrating.

- if you want to grind. farm tiers and you will get diamonds or t16 weapon. it will take you a lot of time. or a lot of money.

- it is necessary to give some effort if you want something rare. you can not buy 100 level in crafting by one click. you can not finish instance by one click - you have to learn tactics and make some friends because new instances are not solo ones.

- great community. in other games you have better graphics, less crashes etc. but I couldn't find better community and support team. for example: I wrote a ticket in the middle of the night and I get solution in 5 minutes on my mailbox in game. When I start the game I get some free items from guild to make my game more efficient, they did not kick me when I do not have time for them either (in other game (top1 guild) I get kicked because I preferred help wife than go to war/instance). Community is mature here.

- you can get diamonds for in game gold or other currencies

- speed of leveling. I hate doing quest, here I do not have to. On the other hand, my wife love to do quest. So she is doing them when have free time and get for example titles. if you want to have all classes then you probably will make quest either way. you have exp x10 but you have also x10 classes to level up per each character.

- starting equipment is great but it only help you quests fast. It is not good enough for instance over 100 level. Still it is great help for new player so he can start his journey. their stats are yellow (2 attributes) so are 50% worse than purple stats (4 attributes). Probably no one will give them for free so you have something to do.

disadvantages:

- almost no one is playing PvP. I hate it in RoM but one battle from time to time would be great. it is less crashes so why not to try.

- still crashes, but it is a lot of progress here. Before I tried CoA I installed RoM and I couldn't get from logar to Varanas without crash, here I could. they for example: removed unnecessary NPC or moved them, to lover the number of objects to read by game engine.

- it is free2play so if you have a lot of money you can be king in one day. But it will cost you a lot. Of course it is cheaper than in RoM.

I am playing 6 months, put some money and even now do not have end gear. So there is really a lot to do.

Quote from scypion

Community is mature here.

I wouldn't second that for everyone, including me sometimes...but definitely more than I remember GF servers!

Also I completely forgot to mention PvP. scypion is correct, atm you find almost no real PvP, however the Devs are aware of that and announced a major PvP-patch for later this year. SW already has been improved long ago, but not yet to the extend to make it really valuable.

Generally having the Dev-team this close to the community for feedback, suggestions and bug-reports is a huge positive for Arcadia.