Too easy

[iRobot]

With damage modifiers, and damage% to lifesteal, along with ammo regen, you can sustain yourself indefinitely.

I understand it's still a pseudo beta, but I only played for an hour yesterday and it's boring already.

[Azarael]

This is what having RPG does and what it's always done. If monster balance doesn't break now, it will break at some later level. But unfortunately since the INV community in general isn't really interested in challenge, it has to be like this.

The only way around this is to have stat boosts which are trivial.

[CaptainXavious]

Situational stat boosts. They don't have to be trivial, because considering the nature, aren't always present. Allows you to put levels into things that don't turn you into a universally powerful player.

[iRobot]

Well most people are spending points on wasteful things such as monster pets. If you spend wisely any challenge just evaporates.

[CaptainXavious]

That kind of goes along with what I'm saying though. Cut out some of the universal bonuses and use a multitude of situatiinal bonuses. Intelligent spending would theoretically dictate that'd you'd either be spending more levels to round out your bonuses (buying two or three different situational damage boosters vs one universal damage increase, for example) or specializing more so that you'll do much better in a more specific manner.

As you pointed out, you only had to worry about a few specific skills and are pretty much covered. My suggestion would require you to, at the very least, require more thought into skill purchases before things get too easy. Also would make individual levels less powerful without having to force a bunch of 'dead' levels.

[Azarael]

The main problems with class-based RPG:

1) A well-made class-based game doesn't need RPG. You can just have people able to select a class/build and go. EXP is and always has been an arbitrary time sink.
2) The Invasion playerbase overlaps significantly with the playerbase of some of the rather shitty class of RPGs. Think Korean-style here. They like nothing more than to be shit-overpowered and crush monsters for pittances of EXP. Challenge and teamplay are not things they like.
3) Classes are hard to implement without changing the feel of Ballistic between servers.
4) Invasion isn't a strong enough gametype to accomodate a good class-based system.

I'm going to leave it to you guys to negotiate a solution to this problem. PvE design isn't my forte and to be honest I really can't be bothered to put a lot of thought into this when I hate RPG anyway.

[CaptainXavious]

I didn't suggest classes in this case. I refer more to the idea of a damage bonus for a few seconds after a kill (great for lots of little monsters) and an alternate damage buff that gives you bonus damage for firing successive hits on a single target (good vs bosses), that sort of thing.

[Azarael]

Hmm. But correct me if I'm wrong, specialisation is covered by "builds", right?

[CaptainXavious]

Potentially, but you'll always get builds when you can choose your skills. I present iRobot's original post as an example.

Edit: Oops misread your post. Will readdress it in a few minutes.

Edit2.0: Yes, specialization is covered by builds, but with what tiRPG has for skills, how specialized are you? iRobot has about the best build you can get for surviving and DPS'ing, which is pretty much all you couod ever need, done with like five skills.

Basically I'm suggesting that the all encompassing skills (damage boost, damage reduction, health gain) be split up to not be so all encompassing.

Oops. Accidentally thanked you. I blame my touch screen.

Also one last thing; specializations tend to have a weakness (or rather a lack of power in some aspect) which really won't happen for TIRPG at the moment unless you go with a junk build.

[Azarael]

Even then, how far can you really specialise in Invasion? And why would people who just want to spam be shoehorned into specialisation?