With the new changes coming to companions I am wondering....
What will become of all the companion influence enchants? (Dark, Brutal)
I’ve spent a stoopid amount of money to get Rank 15 Darks on my toons? Am I just screwed now?
What will become of Charisma Stat bonus?
Boon Companion Influence bonus?
Artifact Modification Companion Influence Bonus?
Boudica's Sisters - A Guild For Introverts
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"Companion Influence will be swapped to another stat. The reason every single detail isn't in this post is that the work is currently ongoing. We're hoping to be able to have it ready for preview in a few weeks and will have all of the details ready for that time as well. Since that preview will be after the Black Friday timeframe we wanted to give the heads up on Bonding Runestones now so everyone had that info."-Noworries
The mount system didn't hit me too bad because of account wide lego mounts, even with 30 toons, but this, this could wipe me out of the game.
As a player (with R15 Darks on all utility slots) though, I don't expect this to be ignored. They'd most likely allow them to be exchanged like before. As for the stat itself, no clue on what would be a suitable replacement, nothing seems good enough.
If dominance insignias become useless the rant will be legendary.
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EDIT: Wait, I forgot the best one: A "More loot luck" entchantment
I don't remember if +Movement was removed completely, but that might be decent (IIRC Darks used to have +Movement back in the day)
You never spend more than you are willing to completely lose on a game.
For example, if a new MOD drops and my end level toons can barely complete in the new material because I have to grind out the new gear/materials in that mod which is now BiS then fine. Because I haven't lost anything I just need to work to catch up with the new gear/materials.
However, if after the change my end level characters take such a hit in stats that the material I do now with relative ease becomes hard or even impossible without investing more time and money into the game, that is moving backwards. That's simply unfair and them giving us the finger. And that's people who have end level toons. The bulk of NW isn't like that. If you are a person running a toon and just now are able to play stuff like Avernus and you get sent backwards and can't play it any more through no fault of your own, I don't see one reason why they would want to stay with NW. It's very discouraging.
I really hope the yet to be seen companion boosts put me back to square one. No offense to Jared Sears handle, but I do worry that I will come back here in the Spring to find my companion does 3 times the damage I am doing and my characters all do 30 to 40 percent less than before. I realize this change will happen with or without our opinions, but it is also a work in progress. I hope the people on preview will garner the attention they need for developers to make appropriate adjustments. I play here very casual, I normally spend a lump of cash on the winter and summer sales. I will either skip winter or go lite on spending, and see you after the changes take hold.
Imagine we have to change companion system and bondings because is giving us programming problems to balance companions, scaling, and we want to make all the companions desirable, not only augments, So bondings need to go, thats 100% sure. Also we want to give players another toy to spend money / resources
So how we can do it? I think we can revamp the entire system to address other problems too.
- We will compensate players that have bondings with AD to buy something else. CHECK
- We will revamp companion types for each class to balance tanks with other classes. 2 universal, 1 def, 1 offensive, 1 utility for every class. CHECK
- We will remove companion influence. We need to give something similar to items that have CI like dark enchants and dominance insignias. NOT CHECK
- We can make the system a long therm goal, with companions upgradable to mythic and not nerfing the actual tiers of companions. So if players want to spend more resources they will be more powerfull. NOT CHECK
So I think the change can be a very good for the game, BUT ONLY IF WE DONT LOSE STATS / PERFORMANCE with the change, even if we can be more powerfull investing more resources.So we will see what they do with points 3 and 4
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Well Magic Legends is an Arpg and had a pretty bad reception. After the trailer which was only cinematic and garnered some attention all the gameplay or Q&A videos on it gathered less and less attention finally reaching something like barely 2k views. Everyone was disappointed to say the least and the game had a very bad reception in general.
Then people just went their way and stopped paying any attention to it. This game seems like a sunken ship before it has even released but who knows.
If they really are thinking to throw more attention to this game rather than NW I believe they 're in for a surprise.
For example, they will often release a new whatever to use in Guild Hall decorations with a new lock box or mod. However, that's all they do. They don't think to address anything this might actually need doing other than the actual item. Like, creating a inventory spot for it in Guild Decorators inventory GUI which without makes the new item completely useless and take up normal inventory spot while you hope for months/years at a time they will fix the issue.
Every single item / process in the game should have a chart with it detailing everything it touches. So, if you remove "companion influence" from the game there should be a list associated with "companion influence" related items and all these items should be fixed/addressed before changes go into affect.
We shall see.
I can offer this illustrative scene, which unfolded at the dragon in Ebon Downs this afternoon.
There we were, perhaps 10 or so players waiting for the beast to spawn. Several 80s and a bunch of lowbies, and the high levels were discussing in chat how to NOT kill the dragon to fast so everyone there could get a hit in for credit for fighting it. It was agreed to only use at will powers by the assembly.
When the dragon spawned, it died in about 2 seconds. Most of the people didn't get a hit in after waiting like 10 mins for the dragon to appear. After we had so carefully planned how to most delicately tap the dragon with our weapons so as to not upset it too much, it still went and died on us catastrophically fast.
A case can be made that perhaps a "step back" for maxxed-out players in certain content might be a great idea. We shouldn't have to coordinate how to do the gentlest version of shiatsu massage to the supposedly most fearsome creatures in all of Faerun.