Time travel since MOD 5 to MOD10 - opinion part I (Mod merged part II into thread)

gripnir78

Well thats gona be just my own opinion about how NV changed since mod 5

*WALL OF TEXT WARNING


To make things stright – no, I am not super player. I am casual, but I was playing sicnce dragoons showed up till Tiamat (MOD4/5), had a long break, till last summer festival. So I can see how this game is changing. And it is changing IMO in a very wrong way. But let me explain how I see things.

First, Astral diamonds - fuel of the game, root of the problem.

When I started playing I had few sources to get AD from:

roughAD

skirmishes, dungeons pvp - as rewards for quests
Leadership profession
invocating, with dwindling amount on each invocation
All of those with refine limit of 36k a day.

normal AD

AH – from few forms of in game activity – runing dungeons/skirmishes or even kiling mobs.
How was that posible – pretty simple – almost every sub boss and every end boss could drop you an item, epic, for random class, slavagable, but NOT bind on pick up. So running dungeons could bring you (with a bit of luck) some extra AD in pure form – from AH where you could sell all items you didnt need. And there were those enchntments in your utility slots helping you get refining stones, wich previously were not bound to account, so you were able to sell them – for pure AD on AH again.

Since then there were a lot of in game changes, to both – cut players oportunity to gain AD and to increase the demand for them.

1) Invocation – wont give you rough AD any more – just miserable bonus to rough AD if you gona get those from any other source.

2) Leadership profesion – wont give you AD any more.

3) Dungeons/Skirmish drops – yup those still exists, but all of those gona be bound to your toon, or account at best – so you gona need to slavage those to get rough AD. Well some may say you can have a good artifact drop to sell – well, yes you can – but when was a last time you get such drop? Once in how many attempts? A 100 or 500? Not to mention that not all dungeons even drop those.

4) Any special enchantments wont give you not bounded refining stone any more, so that path is closed as well

So without any luck (or more likely, a blind luck) – you are in fact limited to get 36k AD per day per character. Mulitply this by 30 days, thats about 1,1M AD per month per character. And now just compare that to the AH prices of anything you want. Just pick one rank 12 enchantment (brutal - lol). How many months its gona take to get it? Yes I know – you can obtain that one cheper by makieng this yourself – but marks, wards, refining stones are still costly. So its gona teke a lot of time and AD to get it yourself.And yes you can have many alts to help you refine AD, but is it really a good thing to have alts just for slots in backpack, banks or AD refine? Not to mention time you need to get those 36k rough AD per character to refine.

Now, the expenses.

Well thats a crazy ride. Since Tiamat, we have – new artifact weapon/off heand sets requiring more refining points then dragon sets. We have new cloaks/belts/arti sets – greater – needs more refining points. Then we have enchantments rank increased from 10 to 12. And we have another slot for artifact, and those artifact have now that light blueish (mythic) level to get. Wow, thats a lot. Dont even wanna know how much more refining points you need now to fully upgrade your weapons and artifact stuff in compare to Tiamat mod times.

Is that all – no, of course not. While armor sets are, lets say quite easy to grind for them (not quite since last MOD10) even easier if you are a member of nicely developed guild, enchantments you need for them are not. You need a lot of them, and again, you need huge amount of refining stones to level them up. Add weapons/armor enchants on top of that – and you have another huge AD sink.

Devil in details.

Well I was bit suprised to mount system change. Previously your epic or legendary mount was needed for just one thing – to allow you to travel faster across the map. Or to look better – if any one was up for it. Not any more. Now having a lot of mounts is a must have.

Now you need it for its bonuses of 2000 or 4000 for statistics (or similar bonuses) and in case of legendary mounts even to add another power to your tray. And you can get bonuses from totaly 5 mounts to your stats from insygnia attached to them, along with additional buffs from insygnia cofigurations. And, yes it also costs a nice amount of AD to achieve. Thank God these insygnias dont have enchantment slots...for now (Dear devs pleasy dont use it against us )

Companions – new gear type for them – another 6 enchantment slots to fill And legendary companions adding 15% of their stats even if not summoned means another slots to fill).

Some may say, that game was rebalanced to give you refining stones for upgrades from dailies etc. True, but just count how many of these you gona get farming your daily quests, and how much you really need. Add diminishing returns from using hoard enchants/limit to drop, and you are really facing long way to get your stuff upgraded. And did you noticed that there are a lot of types of refining stones – some of those are universal, but most gives proper bonus only in certian situations. And all of those comes in 3 versions, unbinded/tradable – bind to charcter or to account. Same story with a marks of potency etc. Perfect inventory fillers, so you gona need a new bag for them, right? Sure you would, as you want to store them until another double refinement event. .


Gear – well that part is not that hard if you are a guild member, but in small guild or for solo player it could be tricky. I woke up in game in my Draconic Templar set, just to see it was HAMSTER.Ok what to do then. Well decided to hit 70 and then to think. Well I didnt have to think long, as I had tharmalune bars, and some AD to complete Dusk set in moments . Lucky me. Without those I would spend hours to get anything usefull, but just usefull – like those seals gear. But new Mod 10 requires frost resist. And there is no set to get this except that from tharmalune store (only 2 pieces) another 2 are combined with zen store purchase, and that is pretty much must have if you want to do end game PVE content. Sure – you gona get Mako's ring, yes you gona get shirt/pants reinforcemnet kits – thats 9 points of resistance -you need 28 – not mentiong GS for a while Then you gona get another 4 points form boons (not that fast) and another 5 from potions. Thats 18. How to get missing 10 – tharmalune store or special zen offer wit AH support. And that requires to buy zen for lockbox keys or spend your precious AD – if there gona be any zen to buy from players. Well yes, you can get new set boots drop form HE in Bryn Shander and spend time to grind to restore them, but still you gona miss some points. You need to buy and least 1 piece of frostborn set. And funny thing – that all is needed to enter FBI. If you are inside you can switch back to your proper gear as those frostbrons are not too good, and have semi (if at all) usefull bonuses. BTW from what I see on the forum and from guild members, FBI is...well not rewarding too much and is a bit waisted effort, especially when you need lot of veinblood to keep that relic set working.

gripnir78

Continuing...

Gear Score– lol – thats funny. It dont really tell anything about your character power as your bonuses form comapnions/mounts dont count, your boons dont count, and you can have a huge amounts of statiscic point from them. For me GS is only a meter of grind time or real money put into this game. And please high level GS players dont feel ofended in any way here – but look at this – 2 different toons wearing lets say alliance armour – and lvl 5 enchants, one solo player, other good guild member with mounts, companions and some boons – real gap between them is huge, but in GS there is no gap at all. Still, dear devs you say 1600 GS is required do do SoT or eLoL. Now go buy that 5k ZEN lvl 70 toon geared with seals armor and rank 5 enchants and try that. Experienced player might be able to do that in resonable time. But let say that 5 friends joined the game and decided to buy this pack to reach end game content – I wish them luck.

So if you didnt spend real cash for vip account or for some enchanted keys you wont get tharmalune bars. VIP is 1000 zen = ca 500k AD and you gona get 1 key per day with random amount of tharmalune bars. Sure after a month you should be able to buy set you need. But that takes a month and 500k AD. Thats not much, true but its just a beginning of long long grind to make your toon playable on decent level.

And dont get me wrong – I am not asking that new, casual player should have a easy way to get a level of gear similar to hard core, long playing ones. But let it be possible within lets say 12 months range, playing 2-3hrs a day without spending too much real money. Now to build well equiped character you gona need to spend months, or to be more precise - years of playing to achive that. Nolife's gona do it faster, but for a casual player, playing lets say 2-3 hrs a day, and not in very good guild its simply beyond reach, until his wallet gona join this fight, and to be honest we not talking about small amount of cash to spend.

Devs keep saying that they have a problem with bots or AD sellers. Hmm why so surprised?
You keep cuting our options to get AD while you keep increasing demand for them. So dont be surprised that pepole search for alternative ways to get them. You still complaining about AD sellers, you even closed a gatway becouse of that. (And lets be honest its worst explenation I ever heard – all you wanted was to cut players ability to get AH sellable items for companions and cut ability to make refinig stones in resonable amounts via leadership – nothing else, sure it gona hurt bots, and AD sellers – but first of all it gona hurt regular, honest players, as botters gona find a new ways to get what they want – but this time in game, keepeing servers busy) And if those demned third party offers give twice as much as you offer for zen, well dont blame players to try that way.



Two funny things.

Devs say that they gona try to hit AD sellers with restrictions for new accounts/toons. Like zone chat restrictions, trade restrictions and so on. BUT in the same time you starting to sell 5k ZEN characters – already level 70, and those wont get any restriction right. Is it me or there is something wrong? Ah yes – money dont stink. So you simply count that some AD sellers gona buy those from you spending ZEN they got from selling AD for desperate players, who buy them just becouse they dont want to spend all their lives grinding this game? For you its a win win situation, you gona get your money, for honest players...not so much.

Second funny thing is actually something really weird. See I am exeprienced player. I play computer games for 25 years. I played hundreads of games. But... dont even know how to start that...lol... OK.... until NV I spend money on games... to actually play them. But NV is the really first one witch offering me, to spend my money, for not playing a game. Yes, campaigns completion tokens. Thats what I am talking about. You offering us to spend quite amount of money, to simply skip a game content? Yeah I know - to simply skip tons of grind, but this game is all about grind right? With those tokens you actually remove quite a chunk of so called end game here. Yes, its nice option for any1 who already grinded trough those and dont want to spend life doing that on his alts for boons, but it doesnt change a thing – you pay for not playing. You could make it other way – like for every character completing specific campaign you would unlock 1 boon for any other characters you gona create, and that triggers if those chars gona hit level 60 (like with sigils). That would substantialy shortened a time required for alts to get their boons, and finishg a campaign on 5 toons would give auto unlock. But that is not what it is all about isn't it?

And last thing – content.

Well I was surprised to see that while there is some new maps to explore (very nice one) there is a lot of dungeons/skirmishes removed/reworked. Now after 3 months of playing again, I understand why. We dont need those. Well, we dont need even some of those left in game. All sets give same bonuses for every class (dusk frostborn, etc) so there is no need to have more sources of that sets. There is also limited amount of artifacts to get from dungeons, so no need to keep those, as players gona do them once never to come back, as there is no reward worth trying again. And one more thing. Dear devs you added a lot of new ways to boost our toons (and to spend our AD or ZEN). And it ended in a situation that hard core, high GS players just blitz trough any so called end game dungeons. It's not any kind of a challenge to them. It is not rewarding either. Best thing is that my guild mates, with much higher GS are in need of a new goals in this game. And no, none of them even wanted to touch FBI,as thay see it not rewarding in any way – seriously. So what thay do – well they searching for a goals like who gona finish CN faster or who gona do more dps. And again, is it just me or there is something wrong with this game, that players need to find a new ways to enjoy the game cos game itself is not chalenging at all?

So dear devs I belive you just pushed to hard with a grind options. New gear, new artifact levels, all that companion/mount systems simply made top GS characters to powerful for the content. To powerful, and to bored...

Dont get me wrong - I like this game, I really do, I am missing original snow storms in Bryn Shander (that was real feel like blizzard). I bought few things form your store. A mount – long time ago. Now a VIP account and Remorhaz bundle. I am ok with that. But still, what I need is beyond my reach to achive in game, in resonable time, and I wont buy tons of zen to get that. And as I see my much better geared/experienced guild members bored, I am not that sure is it worth trying.

btairborne

So you are at the same time complaining the grind is too long to get to max everything and that when you get there you are then overpowered and bored? So in other words- you want it to take less time, be less powerful when you get there and not be bored somehow even though you have finished all content and are now BIS. If you didn't spend money before, why would you spend money then if it was even easier to "finish" the game and be be able to buy everything you want without buying zen through higher AD income?

wylonus

we all could petition for new invoking system, most players dont like it and we know devs cant stop the "bots"

it need a complete overhaul, i would take out ADs from invokings to break the shackles of bot programmers.

i would reset Auction House, any seemly "overpriced" items should have short sell time, they would get fed up with items returning to mail unclaimed.
Auction House should have some kind of mandatory rules on stacked items, overpriced, no junk loots that are vendor baits shouldnt be on auction, and few other etc. it need to curb data processing and it would reduce lags.

gripnir78

All I am trying to say is simple - game is not developed with any system. Its like devs are interested only in ways to keep us busy pimping our toons, but that is just it. You dont relly need it for in game activities. If all that mounts/companions/new level enchants or arifacts would be followed with new, more challenging/rewarding dungeons etc. that would be fine. But its not. So instead of developing new real content, they develop new grind areas, while cutting our options to make that grind easier/faster. And maybe its just me, but I belive that "end game" whatever it is should be challenging for any player - even those on top of GS or experience. Right now you can simply over dps everything.

throsbi

Have you looked thru the zen store? All of the old grind has some sort of token you can buy to bypass all of it. Look thru the zen store again and all of the things you are complaining about have a tie to a zen store item. Need larger bags? zen store has them. Need a better mount/companion/etc. Look in the zen store.

You see its one of the down falls of a free to play based game is they have to somehow get players to want to buy the things that cost real money. The way they do it here leaves a bit to be desired but thats a whole nother story

krailov

I think that challanging game play will vary depending on who you ask, so if you are looking for 'stimulating and thought provoking', they cannot offer it as standard fare, as the whole point is that we all have the same 'experience' - hence the standard dungeons. If you are talking about 'kill vs be killed', then yes, they could introduce even more tiers to the current dungeons - Lunacy level?

All that does though is create a bigger gap between have and have nots. They need to re-think why we do dungeons, what rewards should drop "all the time" at the end, vs rare drops that actually have value - like a Tensors Floating Disk or Coalescent Wards. I bet if they created epic runs that said you have a chance for a choice of purple mount or companion (unbound), all the high tiers would be crazy on it, and the drugery is worth something.

They should incorporate stimulating via the Foundary - make it so you can only do the same Foundary quest 2 times in one week max, treat it like a dungeon, with an epic key for epics at the end (VIP will burn those), and voila, instant thought-provoking DIFFERENT content - all the time!

santralafax

etelgrin said:

it was 24k dude back then not 36k....

oh dude, also one thing, greater marks of potency were for 100k back then.

Now we have superior marks for the "mature" toon.

As to artifact drops--I had forgotten they could drop. Do they still? I haven't gotten a "free" artifact since maybe early Mod 8.