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5 Reasons your new mod is killing the game Part 1
magnusg15
Member Posts: 54 Arc User
I highly recommend you read this in full. This will be the most in depth, reasoned, and logical analysis you will get from a player. In fact after I post this you may want to offer me a job.
1) Economy:
Your changes to the economy of astral diamonds in this game was probably necessary for the PC with the bloated astral diamond glitch that was in the game early on. I get it, but the PC economy and Xbox economy are radically different beasts, we are already seeing the prices on zen plummet which you would think would initially be good, but do you know how hard it is to get astral diamonds now? I have only managed one day refining 24k astrals in full and that was because I salvaged all my old PVP gear on my main in order to do so. If you continue to make it this difficult to obtain 24,000 astrals a day people will stop buying ZEN because you wont be able to get your value in astrals out of it. additionally you wont be able to trade via the auction house which will lead to more spamming, more bots, and less zen siphoning via 10% astral loss in the trade house for you. This also makes Astral Re-sellers of which I have never used, appear to be a far better deal. 2 weeks ago $17 for a million+ astrals was a bad deal, now though?
The dungeons and skirmishes are fine to complete and get whatever 6-7k astrals, plus maybe a salvaged item for another 3 (seriously 3k for how difficult everything is now?!?!), and get their quests but that brings me to the 2nd problem I thought I might Queue for a little PVP today and try and earn some astrals that way. BIG MISTAKE
2) Broken Queues:
To continue from the last paragraph, the queue system is irreparably damaged. Somehow you allowed the game to thrust my Cleric (i play both cleric and rogue @ 70 and 3-4 others on their way) into a PVP with not 1 person missing but 2. I'm not talking 5 people started and 2 left thereby leaving their names on the leader board and having them disconnected or damaged or what have you. I'm talking 3 of us vrs. 5 people the entire time from the get go leader boards only showed 8 names in a laughable 5v3 slaughter. At first i thought it was some kind of new thing where if not enough people were queued you could do a 3v3, boy did i learn I was wrong fast. so now if I dont want to get some kind of quest ban I have to stay in this game and either stand by the fire and do nothing and get 0 glory or attempt to make a cap, and get slaughtered by K/D ratio HAMSTER who want just a little more glory for killing me.
So I stay, and get 0 rewards. Waste. of. time. Do you think I want to try my luck a Queue again?
Which brings me to my next point. Nonequivalent rewards
This is also a problem in dungeons, sometimes your software messes up and even when someone isnt kicked it doesnt allow you to replace people who quit the team. I say the restrictions with boss fights and rare loot are enough, forget about the queue restrictions and kick-proofing allow people to build the team they need and forget about trying to replace Class with class on the queue system, just speed this stuff up man, nothing like waiting for 30 mins at the end of a dungeon just because a scourge left, to get another scourge when your hoping to get a pally or HR.
3) Nonequivalent Rewards:
For everyone reading that means that you put in a bunch of work and get basically nothing for it.
Being a rogue is hard, Being a cleric is harder.
Currently because nobody wants to take a support class through somewhere around 5 million xp of redundant farming I usually wind up in these epic dungeons as the SOLE SUPPORT on my cleric. I have to work my HAMSTER off, and hope I have a HR throwing out some dodges in order to have a chance at making it through these dungeons. At the end of the dungeons I MIGHT, and I stress MIGHT be able to defeat the boss with the team I have then once we've defeated the boss we open the chest and Boom Alliance Assault necklace of wasting my damn time.
Seriously, a necklace you know no one will ever equip because arti-necklaces are too easy to get now which salvages for 3k or less. at least I get that nice chache of the elements right? wrong, because I dont need that gear anymore and every piece of it salvages for HAMSTER, seriously I could spend 600 thats six bloody hundred elemenetal seals on the chest piece and have it salvage for what? 8k?!?! how many caches is that? how many dungeons is that without the cache????
Here's how you fix it: give us 10k astrals per cache, put it in the cache, allow us to get those astrals so we can push through. OR allow us to buy an "Rough Astral Cache" for 100-200 elemental seals. Hell... Make it for 20 protector seals if you REALLLY think you want to make it tough. but seriously, no rewards for 8 minutes of a 3v5 PVP, barely anything for 1-2 hour runs of dungeons which are nearly impossible to complete right now.
Which you guessed it, brings me to point 4 OMG the hurts.
4) Seriously... No really just Seriously?!
Ok either your code is messed up or you are just trying to send a message saying, "We don't want anything but hardcore players".
You basically turned the difficulty mode from "Normal" to "Legendary" in one fell swoop. And you took out almost all the content before reaching end game.
See I'm a hardcore player, I was probably within the first 10 to level 70 on my rogue, I hit it at 4 am the hour following the first day reset from the patch as in ( game loads lvl 70 I got to 69 by 3 am and took an hour longer to hit 70.) But heres what I don't do anymore: spend money on the game. Now I spent 10 bucks on VIP and prior to that because I appreciated the nature of the game I have probably spent as much as any other video game, somewhere around 60-80 dollars. But that's probably all you're going to get out of me, because I'm a hardcore player.
Your big money is in casual gamers with an identity of being a hardcore gamer, these guys are the ones who dont spend as much time on grinding and want to drop some of their duckets to skip that. Hardcore gamers don't skip the grind, in fact, we look at it as the gameplay that youve designed as a barrier to completion. why would I spend real money to skip that?
Additionally hardcore gamers know how to work the market and make zen, there in lies the problem. If you have the difficulty set too high for casual gamers to enjoy, and come in and spend their zen to buy astrals... and the astral market is suppressed as it is now then you are going to stop getting money, because us hardcore gamers arent going to turn around and start spending money, we are going to leave to another game that makes more sense to invest time into. See I'm not deterred by the difficulty, but a bunch of my buddies and guild mates are. Theres a level 66 scourge warlock in my guild who has been grinding away at hitting 70 for 2 weeks. I was helping her on my cleric, weve had others help her, but shes casual and does have all the time in the world to play. NOW that Ive got both my main classes to 70, and so do most of the other everyday-logins in the guild, nobody really wants to go back and help her out because shes not a support class. and shes a casual player, she probably wont be on to run dungeons or be that much of a help when she is on. Despite this, on a lower difficulty setting, I was able to help her run through dungeons like Epic castle never and lostmauth pre-mod 6 because, a couple of really good players could compensate for some casual not necessarily perfectly spec'd players.
1) Economy:
Your changes to the economy of astral diamonds in this game was probably necessary for the PC with the bloated astral diamond glitch that was in the game early on. I get it, but the PC economy and Xbox economy are radically different beasts, we are already seeing the prices on zen plummet which you would think would initially be good, but do you know how hard it is to get astral diamonds now? I have only managed one day refining 24k astrals in full and that was because I salvaged all my old PVP gear on my main in order to do so. If you continue to make it this difficult to obtain 24,000 astrals a day people will stop buying ZEN because you wont be able to get your value in astrals out of it. additionally you wont be able to trade via the auction house which will lead to more spamming, more bots, and less zen siphoning via 10% astral loss in the trade house for you. This also makes Astral Re-sellers of which I have never used, appear to be a far better deal. 2 weeks ago $17 for a million+ astrals was a bad deal, now though?
The dungeons and skirmishes are fine to complete and get whatever 6-7k astrals, plus maybe a salvaged item for another 3 (seriously 3k for how difficult everything is now?!?!), and get their quests but that brings me to the 2nd problem I thought I might Queue for a little PVP today and try and earn some astrals that way. BIG MISTAKE
2) Broken Queues:
To continue from the last paragraph, the queue system is irreparably damaged. Somehow you allowed the game to thrust my Cleric (i play both cleric and rogue @ 70 and 3-4 others on their way) into a PVP with not 1 person missing but 2. I'm not talking 5 people started and 2 left thereby leaving their names on the leader board and having them disconnected or damaged or what have you. I'm talking 3 of us vrs. 5 people the entire time from the get go leader boards only showed 8 names in a laughable 5v3 slaughter. At first i thought it was some kind of new thing where if not enough people were queued you could do a 3v3, boy did i learn I was wrong fast. so now if I dont want to get some kind of quest ban I have to stay in this game and either stand by the fire and do nothing and get 0 glory or attempt to make a cap, and get slaughtered by K/D ratio HAMSTER who want just a little more glory for killing me.
So I stay, and get 0 rewards. Waste. of. time. Do you think I want to try my luck a Queue again?
Which brings me to my next point. Nonequivalent rewards
This is also a problem in dungeons, sometimes your software messes up and even when someone isnt kicked it doesnt allow you to replace people who quit the team. I say the restrictions with boss fights and rare loot are enough, forget about the queue restrictions and kick-proofing allow people to build the team they need and forget about trying to replace Class with class on the queue system, just speed this stuff up man, nothing like waiting for 30 mins at the end of a dungeon just because a scourge left, to get another scourge when your hoping to get a pally or HR.
3) Nonequivalent Rewards:
For everyone reading that means that you put in a bunch of work and get basically nothing for it.
Being a rogue is hard, Being a cleric is harder.
Currently because nobody wants to take a support class through somewhere around 5 million xp of redundant farming I usually wind up in these epic dungeons as the SOLE SUPPORT on my cleric. I have to work my HAMSTER off, and hope I have a HR throwing out some dodges in order to have a chance at making it through these dungeons. At the end of the dungeons I MIGHT, and I stress MIGHT be able to defeat the boss with the team I have then once we've defeated the boss we open the chest and Boom Alliance Assault necklace of wasting my damn time.
Seriously, a necklace you know no one will ever equip because arti-necklaces are too easy to get now which salvages for 3k or less. at least I get that nice chache of the elements right? wrong, because I dont need that gear anymore and every piece of it salvages for HAMSTER, seriously I could spend 600 thats six bloody hundred elemenetal seals on the chest piece and have it salvage for what? 8k?!?! how many caches is that? how many dungeons is that without the cache????
Here's how you fix it: give us 10k astrals per cache, put it in the cache, allow us to get those astrals so we can push through. OR allow us to buy an "Rough Astral Cache" for 100-200 elemental seals. Hell... Make it for 20 protector seals if you REALLLY think you want to make it tough. but seriously, no rewards for 8 minutes of a 3v5 PVP, barely anything for 1-2 hour runs of dungeons which are nearly impossible to complete right now.
Which you guessed it, brings me to point 4 OMG the hurts.
4) Seriously... No really just Seriously?!
Ok either your code is messed up or you are just trying to send a message saying, "We don't want anything but hardcore players".
You basically turned the difficulty mode from "Normal" to "Legendary" in one fell swoop. And you took out almost all the content before reaching end game.
See I'm a hardcore player, I was probably within the first 10 to level 70 on my rogue, I hit it at 4 am the hour following the first day reset from the patch as in ( game loads lvl 70 I got to 69 by 3 am and took an hour longer to hit 70.) But heres what I don't do anymore: spend money on the game. Now I spent 10 bucks on VIP and prior to that because I appreciated the nature of the game I have probably spent as much as any other video game, somewhere around 60-80 dollars. But that's probably all you're going to get out of me, because I'm a hardcore player.
Your big money is in casual gamers with an identity of being a hardcore gamer, these guys are the ones who dont spend as much time on grinding and want to drop some of their duckets to skip that. Hardcore gamers don't skip the grind, in fact, we look at it as the gameplay that youve designed as a barrier to completion. why would I spend real money to skip that?
Additionally hardcore gamers know how to work the market and make zen, there in lies the problem. If you have the difficulty set too high for casual gamers to enjoy, and come in and spend their zen to buy astrals... and the astral market is suppressed as it is now then you are going to stop getting money, because us hardcore gamers arent going to turn around and start spending money, we are going to leave to another game that makes more sense to invest time into. See I'm not deterred by the difficulty, but a bunch of my buddies and guild mates are. Theres a level 66 scourge warlock in my guild who has been grinding away at hitting 70 for 2 weeks. I was helping her on my cleric, weve had others help her, but shes casual and does have all the time in the world to play. NOW that Ive got both my main classes to 70, and so do most of the other everyday-logins in the guild, nobody really wants to go back and help her out because shes not a support class. and shes a casual player, she probably wont be on to run dungeons or be that much of a help when she is on. Despite this, on a lower difficulty setting, I was able to help her run through dungeons like Epic castle never and lostmauth pre-mod 6 because, a couple of really good players could compensate for some casual not necessarily perfectly spec'd players.
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Now, even when you hit level 70 you need the perfect team, great players, and a certain minimum to your gear to succeed.
Heres where this really hurts. Do you know you have a quest for a daily in icewind dale where my cleric has to kill 20 bear tribe members and I cannot help heal/kill in a group with anyone because I have to do all the damage?
This wasnt a problem the first couple days because there were not too many level 70's. but now since 90% of the lvl 70's out there are squishy rogues and cntrl wizards do you realize that I have spent 2 hours on 2 days trying to complete this quest and currently have 5/20 kills?
See, I have 30+ dmg resistance on my cleric, combine that with my yellow circle adding another 40% dmg mitigation I dont really get hurt, but as a pure healer it takes about 40+ chains of blazing light to kill these mobs. This is where rogues and cntrl wizards take advantage of the fact that there is a cleric tanking 10-15 enemies for them, roll up and even when I spam PLEASE GO AWAY IM TRYING TO COMPLETE THIS QUEST they take the kills and run off. i usually wind up with 1.. maybe. It go so bad that one particular rogue started following me around and jumping in circles around me one day so I had to log off. Again, this is a 2 fold problem, ridiculous difficulty on the kills and improper rewards for the quest. I should be able to party up with this rogue and have his kills count for mine.
This is all not even the worst of the difficulty problems, in a tier 2 dungeon I can have my 30%+ damage mitigation about 7 procs of negation at 1.5% on me that another 10.5% dmg mitigation my gold circle fully empowered at 40% and ignoring approximately 7k damage after all the mitigation comes into effect so we are at 80-81% here and I can drop Exaltation (which frankly Needs More information along with a couple other clerical spells about how it operates [blessing of battle to name another]) and divine armor, and stand in a paladins gold circle over lapping mine so we have to be at what 100%? 110% damage mitigation at this point? is this possible? point is, I should be good... but the first boss in the spider den will still ONE SHOT me. for over 70k health. Most monsters will still hit for over 25k in this situation in the T2 dungeon.
THIS IS BROKEN. JUST BROKEN. either the moves arent stacking properly or your damage is way too high. Lets say the damage mitigation doesnt work as a stack towards 100 right? lets say its applied in stages. if a boss swings for 200k lets say that whats first is the paladins ring at 20%, that should take off 40 then were at 160k then my ring takes off 40% so now we are down at 96k - 7k = 89k, Divine armor rank 4 for another 20%++? 71k then exaltation a personal buff comes into play for what does "Powerful dmg resistance buff mean?" 15%? lets just go with that... though i bet its more like 24% as it goes up by 6's mines at rank 3 so lets use 15 to be safe now were at 60k then lets get the blessings of battle which nearest i can tell at rank 4 is 10-12% so 54k theres probably things im not counting here like divine glows on the boss to reduce his damage as well. ok, so lets pretend it works this way, 1 54k is too high of a hit... 2 im getting one shot with these stacks and im sure I under estimated the damage resistances applied, I have temporary hit points applied from devine armor around 14k so that means im taking over 90k in damage. What the hell am I supposed to run with this exactly????!!??!? oh and I left out my own personal 40% damage mitigation (including negation) which should reduce this hit down even further to around 30k. but again, i'm not getting hit for 30k, I'm getting one shot. BTW the way I see it this stack is in the wrong order and should prevent even more.
I get that they have some armor pen, but armor pen isnt spell penetration, it should penetrate through each version of the spell... and if thats the case, you need to add a new PVE stat of armor pen resistance just like PVP. point is...
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?! does he start at 400k per swing?! why are the non boss add on enemies still hitting between 10-25k like this? ARE YOU SECRETLY WATCHING MY DUNGEON RUNS EATING RAMEN NOODLES AND LAUGHING YOUR ASSES OFF?!?!?!
This is mental.. I get it, T2 epic and all. but we arent even talking last boss here... hes a 1 shot through everything...
Which brings me to my last point which is
5) broken game mechanics
Us hardcore players you seem to want to make your only players really appreciate solid game mechanics but far too much stuff is broken now. Example when I charge up divine glow and empower it then it should last for far longer than it does 2 seconds per stack means 12 seconds not just shy of 9, and yes I timed it. I shouldnt be able to dodge roll on my rogue out of a health potion AND send it on cooldown without getting a heal or using the potion/stone either I use it and it cools down or I dont use it and I can hit it again. same with my own moves, impossible to catch, smoke bomb, why am I dodging out of these moves and sending them on cooldown!? On the cleric why did you allow me to do 5 versions of temporary hit points yet not allow any of them to stack?! THEY SHOULD ALL STACK!!! you need to level things out, the new superior potions need to do 20k+ in healing, or if not them then the craftable ones with alchemy should instantly heal for 20k and do another 20k HOT otherwise theres no point in health potions.. which maybe you should think about bringing down the price of stones of health if you arent gooing to do that, because ill turn the astrals into zen to buy them.
But if you keep taking astrals out of the game, raising the difficulty and forcing the casual players out, making it difficult to play a support class and complete quests, provide improper rewards and prevent me from queueing with full groups for pvp, i can tell you what is going to happen to me and people like me.
We are going to quit the game. There are fixes, there are ways to balance. I think we should talk.
hope they turn back on those changes in time.
DENIAL
Ayzah - 70 GWF
Bull - 70 GF
Legacy - always looking for active, mature, fun players. Join the LEGACY - (click here)
He was hopping all over PE when he equipped it!
I have my full burning set for pvp and I'm working on boons from the campaigns but won't get into dungeons until I've at least got Elemental Burning and all Epic artifacts. Honestly, working two characters there's so much to do atm that I don't even have the spare time to miss dungeons.
I know some players live for dungeons so struggling through the first stages of T1 then T2 is good for them - especially if they have a decent guild to go with but I'm more into the general content for now.
I actually like mod 6, it's more interesting. Yes I run into bugs but that's no different to mod 5 - just shrug and move on. I like the graphics in Sharadar & the Dread Ring btw, much better than the old areas.
Xael De Armadeon: DC
Xane De Armadeon: CW
Zen De Armadeon: OP
Zohar De Armadeon: TR
Chrion De Armadeon: SW
Gosti Big Belly: GWF
Barney McRustbucket: GF
Lt. Thackeray: HR
Lucius De Armadeon: BD
Member of Casual Dailies - XBox
I'm running a squishy HR Trapper with a 2400 "GS." I need to be on the move constantly and try to predict when attacks are coming. In mod 5 with lifesteal, you could cope with some lag, the bad framerate and the unpredictability the framerate caused, but in mod 6 with a pretty much nonfunctional lifesteal, etc, i'm down after two three hits.
I'm a good trapper. I know how to play my class, but now i'm getting crapped on in WoD and almost always hanging by a thread in Icewind Dale. I can dodge out of the way with a good marginal and still get hit. I'm getting hit by nothing, the screen goes red and most of the time the game isn't rendering the red markers on the ground (because of the bad frame rate?) Sometimes my soulforge isn't even working - probably because i'm getting double killed without even noticing.
I don't have a problem with the higher difficulty, but in combination with this broken poorly optimized version of the game, it's just extremely annoying.
A month after the release i wrote that the XBOX wasn't capable to run this game OR that the game was just very poorly optimized. Some months later they did some tweaks and made it somewhat better. But now with mod 6 there's noticeable framerate issues again - especially in Icewind Dale - and again, i'm questioning why NW was released on the XBOX in this state. The framerate hurts my eyes.
DC - "The Unholy"
Guild: Ruthless
Would be different if it was with NPCs - but you know you are doing it to another human being.
Personally I think that's a criminal mindset. It's indicative of someone who in the real world may be tempted to do the same thing if they thought they could get away with it.
Actions matter, because they reflect who you are, even if it's all digital make believe. The toon is fake, loot is fake, setting is fake - but what you choose to DO to other players on your team in all that fakery is very real.
I've never played the game on PC, and I started playing it on X1 about three months ago; I played a GWF on Mod5 which I ended up deleting because of this. It wasn't properly built, but it was decent; however, the broken game mechanics got me killed quite a few times (and I mean quite).
Now, after the Mod6 upgrade, I decided to give it another try and built a GWF based on a couple of guides (Knowles and Lazalia).. So far, so great! I just reached level 60, and the character is very well balanced. However, I've noticed that the mechanics issue still lingers: sometimes RB does not activate determination, or it gets activated but then my character just doesn't respond to any at-will or encounter for a couple of seconds. And I'm like, WTF??? That kills my whole routine. I mean, I can live with a couple of other issues, but if mechanics don't work, how am I gonna be able to properly solo or support a team? I can easily get killed and ruin a party because the probably most basic feature of the game didn't go thru quality assurance. I don't mind the game being difficult; that's the cool thing, a challenging game; but broken mechanics is killing the fun.
Is this occurring to other players?
1. The economy will eventually balance itself out, because the prices of items in the AH will drop. (People can't afford them with the AD nerf, so prices go lower)
2. The biggest gripe I have is that they actually took away content instead of reworking it to work with this mod.
3. The 2nd biggest gripe I have is that there is very little gear to choose from now There seems to be 1 BIS instead of multiple options.
4. Queues are def still broken.
5. Dungeon Difficulty is harsh, but fair. You'll notice they get significantly easier the better geared you become. I like to compare it to how difficult dungeons were when we first started playing.. (remember The Mad Dragon??!) It'll balance itself out when more people become better equipped
All in all, they seem to still be making the same mistakes that they made on PC, which honestly blows my mind.
I see WHY though, even If we as the gamers choose not to agree, they are attempting to make more money by making currency harder to obtain. It's an okay business decision, but when its done in such a harsh way (to the point where it's almost becoming unfair) then that's going to ultimately be bad for your business. They have and will continue to lose loyal customers due to their unfair business practices.
That AD bleed tactic they used with double refinement only to drop GMOP prices without informing it's consumers was quite possibly the shadiest business practice I've ever seen in my history of gaming.
> I read the PC forums.. Tier 2 dungeons are easy as hell if you glitch the bosses to gain the gear. 3600 gear score and still being one hit.. No thanks :wink:
As casual gamer i find mod 6 completely insulting when i joined this game it was a challenging mmo with a good economy and a rewarding game play now in mod 6 i have grinded my way to 70 gained the gear and items i thought would be sufficient for the new content only to have a gf with 11k def 6k deflect a negation enchant providing 10% more mitigation when fully stacked 100k hp all in your "t1" gear and still even with multiple other buffs get one shot and completely destroyed by trash mobs in t1 dungeons now i know mitigation from equip/abilities caps at 80% but with with the current content i don't even feel like that's enough now im not saying i should be invincible but being killed by a trash mob before my stamina even drains from having my shield up with iron warrior on is completely insane i think you have some serious balance issues that you need to address before you role out a new mod because the one you gave us is seriously broken the game is no longer a fun challenging game but a broken shell of a game that has been made so challenging that your average player (about 82% of your player base) cannot even run solo content like dread ring alone i really love this game i just don't think ill be remaining as a player for much longer if you don't fix the serious problems that you have put in place with these changes
The grind is the grind, but reaching level 68 and have no more progressive content (not that there was much progressive content from 60-70) was simply shocking.
What's up with sharandar rewarding level 60 gear vs level 70 mobs - oversight or idiocy or am I missing something? IWD is lol, one shot mobs, and when you try to solo you are talking 2 mins a mob - hardly rewarding
Endless repeatable quests/missions do not make it fun, and what was a top notch fun game simply has been obliterated by the mindset - make it hard and grindy to keep people playing so they need to pay cash to get past some clear road blocks.
Where are all the old dungeons? They were promised to be re-introduced.
This game was fun, and pretty social, one we all played on, but with SWBF coming out next month, I can't see any of us really bothering with this any more. I will probably log-in for my daily key, but perhaps the occasional dungeon queue.
The game been destroyed by what appears to be a desire to milk the last of the players pennies. A real shame as I thought this game had some legs.