Why the "DEVELOPER STREAM: STATE OF THE GAME [3/7]" - Was SOO far off the Mark.

ayroux

btairborne said:

IF PVP is best with no gear/boons/or basically anything that you can spend money or time on, it makes a very sorry play for FTP.

There is absolutely no reason to develop something like this. The only people that would spend a lot of time doing it are people who would have no need to buy or spend money anyway. What for, if you're all equal and all you want to do is PVP?

In other words, that kind of PVP is best for subscription games only.

I disagree.

What would happen if you created "default" stats for everyone in PVP but THEN gave a 1% increase in all those stats (including HP) for every 100 Item Level you were over say 3,000....

This basically "levels" the playing field, but in a way that gives incentive for you to be BIS player.

Now, you will want to spend money/time/effort etc to run the dungeons to get the gear to have the highest itemlevel SO THAT you can have a small edge in PVP. This is exactly the type of PVP that does well in F2P Games.

So you can not spend ANY time and play with default stats. Or you can grind PVE and get an edge in PVP. Lets say you can get an extra 13% of EVERYTHING....

Lets say they said "Base HP is 150k" Well 13% more is nearly 20k more HP... You dont think people will want to be BIS to get 20k more HP?


People will be striving to stay BIS all the time, so they have the best chance in PVP.

trgluestickz

ayroux said:

@strumslinger
@mimicking#6533
@nitocris83

First, thanks for taking the time yesterday to give us updates and comments about the game. It was also refreshing to see some truth explained behind the Foundry. So thanks for that.

I want to write about two issues that yesterday's stream felt VERY far from the "mark". If you look at the feedback thread on this the LARGE majority of the comments and responses revolved around two topics: 1) PVP and 2) Foundry.

Yesterday, however, not much was said about these two issues - that are the two biggest issues in this game. First, lets start with Foundry.

@mimicking#6533 mentioned datamining Foundry to see if players are actually using this or not. This is a fallacy. This wont show you who WOULD use this if resources were put into this. To give a very black and white example. That would be like having a broken down car in your garage, and then having a sign up sheet for anyone who wanted to drive it. Come back 2 weeks later and lo and behold! NOBODY signed up to drive it! Well I think the dilemma is obvious. IT DOESNT WORK SO NOBODY WANTS TO USE IT ATM. Sorry for the caps, but it was frustrating listening to that yesterday. OFCOURSE people dont use it right now. This doesnt mean if you didnt fix up that car, people wouldnt drive it though. I get it, the guy who made the Foundry is off making big bucks at Amazon. This makes sense. I cant imagine there isnt SOME developer at Cryptic who could figure out how to spice up Foundry.

Heck, one very easy solution that WOULD get people using Foundry more? "Design a Map/Dungeon" contests. Create a contest in which PVE players can create and submit a dungeon (I have seen a handful of AMAZING dungeons) and then also offer a "create a PVP map" (again I have seen a few). Now... If these cant be inserted into the GAME, at the very least you can offer cool prizes and it gets the community using Foundry more with THEN you can offer to your bosses as a reason to invest more into foundry because... people are using it! If the goal is to be sincere in an effort to "prove" Foundry's worth, this is the avenue you should go, not "looking at your broken down car and saying nobody drives it therefore its not worth resources".

Point 2) PVP. This was frustrating to say the least. I get it, your hands are tied in this area. I heard a few points regarding PVP.
1) A duel arena.
2) "loadouts".
3) New maps have to be approved by WOTC? For PVP? I wasnt sure this comment...

First, on a duel arena. This may have been a valuable thing back in module 2 days. But not today. People ALREADY dont want to PVP because of gear imbalance. People WONT be using this feature very often and if anything - itll actually take AWAY from people actually playing domination. This personally feels like a step BACKWARDS not forwards. Whatever "map" you get approval to use from WOTC for this, I would take this, and RATHER than make a 1v1 duel arena. I would turn this into a 3v3 Death Match arena instead. This 3v3 deathmatch was already being worked on at ONE point (I played it on the PTR twice) and was a HUGE improvement. A new "duel" arena will do NOTHING for PVP and is a waste of time and resources.

Same with player "loadouts". This does NOTHING to address the gear imbalance in PVP. The problem isnt that people cant swap to PVP builds with the click of a button the PROBLEM is that because of stat inflation over the modules, an army of average players cant kill 1 "BIS Player". My only HOPE and PRAY with loadouts is that you will start realizing that boons+mount bonuses+insignias etc are RUINING PVP and should be REMOVED from PVP. You can use "loadouts" as a way to do this in that now players can have a loadout for PVP where ONLY THINGS THAT IMPACT ITEM LEVEL WORK TOWARDS PVP.

New Maps? Im not quite sure why we cant get new domination maps. You have to get approval first? Again, offer a Foundry Event. Have the PVPers MAKE maps for you, take the top 3 maps, get "approval" from WOTC and then insert them into the game. You mentioned DEVs have been pulled for a NEW game... Let the players help develop content for you.


I had to write this, because frankly I am at the end of the rope with NW. I have supported this game on so many levels - including financially, and frankly this latest DEV Stream, while I appreciated it, felt like a slap in the face ignoring the MAJOR issues this game has and the requests of the players. Whenever I heard "we listen to you guys" it made me want to vomit because the overwhelming "feedback" from the "PVP Community" wasnt addressed and was largely ignored...

Please consider what I have written here... For the sake of this game.

I also found myself feeling crushed with disapointment for most of the stream. It felt like the devs were much more interested in talking about the new maps and asthetic/gimicky content that they worked on than actually adressing the comunities' conserns and feedback. As much as I understand pride in one's work and that it can be interesting to see the design process, there is a time and a place for it. The comunity is bursting at the seams with fustration and want to see the major improvments that have been asked for en masse take priority both in words and in developing.

The dev's foundry plans were lacking over the stream. The devs made it sound like they were basing their numbers only on how many people currently play foundry. This thankfully turned out to be a comunication error and they later clarified they are looking at data since the foundry's release. While not a lot of detail was given, it does look like they have some plans for foundry and there is a good chance they won't leave it to rot.

For pvp, they don't seem to have a lot planned for it this year dispite how many players are requesting needed improvements to pvp. Hopefully, the number of players asking for improvments to pvp will cause the devs to modify their plans for this year but right now, it doesn't look good. There are at least a few quality of life improvments and new content for pvp planned this year but most are small and aren't enough. PVP needs a mulipronged complete overhaul, not just a few small bones thrown here and there.

I do think you are underesimating the impact one of the changes they did bring up would have on pvp. While its true that loadouts do not help the gear gap, that doesn't mean that they aren't a huge improvement. The loadouts were actually a widely requested feature for some time now and would greatly improve both pvp and pve. For me, this was the only part about the whole stream that had me excited and not woefully disapointed. A lot of people don't do any pvp because its too much hastle to change your entire spec and gear out just to do a few pvp matches. You have to build for one type of gameplay or the other in this game, you can't be both so you have to pick whichever one you like more. The loadouts could change that and increase the pvp population.

A dueling arena in the strongholds I do think is a mild improvement but I agree its not going to help pvp that much, especially given that players have to be in your alliance in order to make use of it. This duel system is not worth the resorces that could be put into much more important pvp upgrades. I do think there is a better way to make a duel system that would be a worthwhile investment of resorces: The devs could add a "duel this player" option to the interact with a player menu. This would mean no matter what map you are on, you can duel anybody anytime.