Building on a Foundation of Fairness

npstalon

neilburton said:

Very well said, @ironzerg79 !

I agree that the removal of AD from leadership was good for the health of the game in the long term. The problem is that changes to more of the AD sinks should have happened if not at the same time, then shortly there after. Also making up for the removal of AD by substituting some other rewards should have been done right away. For example: Battle Elemental Cultists - 24 hours to get less of a reward than you get for 4 hour task of Guard Young Noble on Trip, I mean, REALLY? I could go on! Then maybe we wouldn't have seen so many "rage quitters" ;-)

I'm a pretty patient guy, as I've stuck it out though a lot of bad decisions by the bean counters and management (I tend never to blame the devs, because I know!) but everyone runs low on patience and eventually gets frustrated and burned out.

Duck! After many people complaining about the leadership rewards being out of scale, I fully expect that they will nerf those as well. Just look at their track record on changes that have hurt the playerbase and game recently. As I imagine it takes longer to change all those "rewards", it will probably take them a little while to do it though. Just removing AD from the rewards was easier than changing the other rewards completely. And lets face it, removing the AD was a blatant move to try to drive up ZEN sales ( Which IMO was a total failure. ) and the other rewards wouldn't really accomplish that.

On a positive note, I want to thank you very much @ironzerg79 for speaking out. I hope that they really listen to you and they don't remove you as a moderator as they tend to censor anything negative. And I want to also thank you for your excellent CW guide. I used it for my CW and it is working very well as I can solo pretty much anything except epic HE's.

asd98776

There are a lot of good ideas here throughout, however sadly what is missing is perhaps the most important:
A response of acknowledgment from the Developers, and perhaps even.... hold your breath, some communication that they have heard the player base and are actively, and thoughtfully DOING something meaningful about the points brought up here.

bittynation

These leadership armies have not gone away, but merely transformed into profession armies and invocation armies. They are still being controlled by bots and still making enormous amounts of AD compared to the average player. The players characters need to be revised similar to companions. Players should have active characters and non-active characters. 10 active character slots are plenty for each player. If a character is switched out the slot would hold the refine limit, invocation cool down, profession cool down etc. 10 active characters at one time and release the limit on number of characters a player could have, because it wouldn't matter, everything would be tied to the slot.

plasticbat

Commercial bots do not need to buy extra character slots. They just need to create new account. They spread their leadership army into many accounts.

pando83

All good ideas.
Bring the reasoning further:

is it fair for players to re-farm all campaigns, all boons, from start to end, on every toon they create on the same account? Is it fair to spend 5000 zen to unlock a single campaign on a single toon?

or, perhaps, it's yet another useless source of frustration when a player knows that creating another toon to play another class, will mean weeks/ months spent re-farming the same campaigns again, to make the toon grow, or that he must spend right now close to 2M AD to unlock 1 campaign on a single toon.

ironzerg79

At the very, very, very, very least...make the campaign boosters ACCOUNT WIDE unlocks. To me, that's a lot more fair...still think it's a bit pricey, but if you have a lot of alts, I guess on a per-character basis, it ends up being not too bad.

jikhan

ironzerg79 said:

At the very, very, very, very least...make the campaign boosters ACCOUNT WIDE unlocks. To me, that's a lot more fair...still think it's a bit pricey, but if you have a lot of alts, I guess on a per-character basis, it ends up being not too bad.

@strumslinger

silverkelt

I could care less, Ive enjoyed doing campaigns on every toon I did them all.

I wish it wasnt even offered.

What I want is to move a eye of lathander around.. lol, I could use it on one of my toons.

bittynation

plasticbat said:

Commercial bots do not need to buy extra character slots. They just need to create new account. They spread their leadership army into many accounts.

I'm not talking about commercial bots, I'm talking about player bots. Many players out there with 20-50 characters and some with multiple 50 character accounts. These players also have VIP accounts, they are not having a hard time upgrading their companions or paying for multiple alts.

Before pricing is adjusted for companions and everything else they need to take care of this.

ironzerg79

They did take care of that when they eliminated AD from Leadership. And this was the big reason...I know people want to point fingers at "gold farmers", but plenty of real players were using various tools to automate Leadership.

bittynation

ironzerg79 said:

They did take care of that when they eliminated AD from Leadership. And this was the big reason...I know people want to point fingers at "gold farmers", but plenty of real players were using various tools to automate Leadership.

My point is it's not "were using", but "are still using". They can make more in one day than the average player makes in a week with their profession/invocation armies and that's beyond what they make by actually playing the game.

regenerde

ironzerg79 said:

They did take care of that when they eliminated AD from Leadership. And this was the big reason...I know people want to point fingers at "gold farmers", but plenty of real players were using various tools to automate Leadership.

Then why did the Devs not at least try the right approach by identifying those tools, and then letting GMs remove those accounts that uses them permanently, instead of just ripping out rAD from leadership?
This "AD change" feels just unfished and extremely rushed, i can understand that we now have to wait even longer for more improvements in the AD department, because of Underdark...
But i can't understand, why the Devs haven't informed the players earlier about changes, and then taken the time to make the changes alongside with improvements based on player feedback?

Also professional botters will just use other accounts after a bann and continue their "work", but real players will think twice about using anything automated again after they lost their account...

Or with the last AD change in mind, why couldn't the Devs extend the rAD reward to every daily quest, so that every character will be able to make some rAD while playing the game?

Aren't those the Devs own words, rewarding the players for playing the game?
So why do we, the players, rather feel punished then rewarded right now?

sabre10

strumslinger said:

Well said. Both Alex and I have been fighting hard for this and will continue to fight hard for it. My account is completely broke because of our stronghold and I have dozens of companions that need upgrading...

Thanks Andy, yours, alex et al solidarity and support on this is appreciated. We all know how emotive the subject is, but i just wish they knew how painful this is for the community without timely counter balancing changes.

hustin1

It's not just a matter of AD's, though that's the latest incarnation of things that just feel wrong.

Ever since mod 6, the game has become extremely unforgiving -- not only in the grind you have to undergo, but in the frustration level.

Case in point: Witch Fen

A few nights ago I did this with my 2.4k GF. She has all T1 gear, rank 8's or better, and a tricked-out powrie tagging along to provide dps. I had no trouble at all throughout the lair until I reached the bossfight. To say it was frustrating was an understatement.

No one likes dying. However, when you find yourself dying again, and again, and again, changing your tactics, and just hoping for that tiny speck of luck to get you through it, that's really not fun.

It's not fun at all.

Witch Fen's boss fight was designed for the world pre-mod 6, when you could do it solo with a reasonable chance of success. You could self-heal then, no matter what class you were. If you had regen, YOU HEALED. If twelve (12) seconds elapsed, YOU COULD DRINK A HEALING POTION. You could survive against Xylene and the trolls that she summons.

Not so today. Sure, an OP can (let's be honest, OP's can do anything -- they have no place being used as any yardstick in this regard), but many other classes are SOL.

Back to Witch Fen. There is no letup -- no chance to catch your breath and guzzle some potions. You have nonstop aggro from start to finish, so forget about self-healing unless RNG is unbelievably kind to you. Xylene and her trolls wear you down until they kill you.

Then they do it again -- and again, and again -- until you either ragequit or get that incredible stroke of luck with just a sliver of health left.

It's not fun, it's frustrating. There's a reason why zone chat is filled with people requesting groups for Sharandar lairs: the devs left them with mod-5 encounters but using mod 6 mechanics. It doesn't feel at all "fair", to paraphrase the OP, for a quest that's supposed to be (and EXPECTED to be) done solo.

I don't know if it's incompetence on the part of the devs or if they poached a hard-posterior from EQ, but it was a bad move. Like many players I'm limping along, but I won't ever be truly happy with the game again until this issue is remedied. I've said that "mod 6 ruined the game" and I stand by that claim. This is why.

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