Like many players, I used to enjoy PVP but no longer play. The game is dominated by well-funded guilds that understand "edge cases" in the class and power mechanics.
There is such a vast power divide between BIS players and those coming up through the ranks that running into a guild premade means you might as well sit at the campfire. Since so few players attempt PVP these days, it happens all too often to run into that frustrating, time wasting experience.
The fresh method of looking at class balance will hopefully clear up some of the "edge cases", making PVP play more about tactics and a sound understanding of how powers are supposed to work, and less about understanding what highly specific combinations of gear and powers are exponentially stronger than probably intended.
The new queue system may also remove some of the "Welcome to PVP. You can make progress toward your first PVP gear set by winning this match. Your opponent is EofA." syndrome, as I suspect top PVP guilds will tend to arrange dom matches against each other over pouncing on helpless new players.
For PVP to become meaningful to the broad player base, something needs to be done to encourage re-engagement. Once you have class balance under control, clearly and broadly communicate to the players why PVP is fun again and worth their time. Be honest about what the problems were and clear about how you have addressed them.
DEV CHALLENGE
Devs, put together your best PVP team using your full understanding of current class mechanics. Do this soon, before you plan significant class changes. Give yourself BIS gear. Livestream matches against the top PVP guilds. Use that experience as input in your class rebalancing process.
After you have introduced changes, repeat the challenge. If you have done well, your second round of matches will be close and entertaining.
To add to this .... Item Level brackets in pvp with an anti sandbagging feature that monitors each players il during the match and kicks them, with a 24hr ban from pvp for exceding the IL of the bracket they entered ... also consider a penalty for quitters and freeloaders that spend more than 30 consecutive seconds in spawn area, and disconnects that are gone longer than the time it takes to reload after a game crash...... another thing ... roll out any nerfs in increments .... often times the nerf hammer hits way too hard ... taking something that was way overpowered and making it completely useless.. nerfs in this game have been way too heavy handed imo.....
As someone who writes "customer facing content", that was a masterfully crafted letter---both in technical content and tone.
Cynical Part: For those of us more familiar with consuming marcom, it was a bit underwhelming. Eldarth gave a rather adept "unspinning" of the message earlier, so I won't bother. In short, you're looking at "everything", and will make "some changes".
There was an earlier suggestion for the devs to outfit a team with selected classes, give themselves the best PVP equipment, and then challenge a top PVP guild, using the class mechanics in the way they are intended to work, before trying to "fix" PVP. This is probably the best suggestion in the thread.
Likewise, please hire an intern, and have him play the content _every day_ until he earns the AD amount you model that we will earn daily. At level 70, (because no guild wants
+1 in all cases!
If may only add a few of my observations, i made over time in the game.
The worst thing is, that according to my knowledge they have internal "players" (employees), who are paid to play the game once in a while (every week), so they should really report back, what they see. Will they? Will they risk their jobs? Ah, no.
When i was in alpha test a few times in the past, i have repeatedly said, there are 3 things wrong with the test method Cryptic uses:
1. BiS to the top of the head. Now what the heck can a BiS char test? Maybe speed only, but it was a nonsense to do it that way.
2. BiS combined with God Mode. Again, what's this good for? A total waste of time.
3. Combine the upper two and add frightened "Yes Man style" employees/testers to it, who acknowledge everything, may it be the worst idea, like Mod 6 and so on.
What is a test good for, if you invite and listen to only such people, who say what you want to hear?
A test should include random group of people. If one selects the participants along a special criteria, even before the test phase begins, the outcome will be predictable in your favor.
Education, i left this at the last. How did General Lee say: "The education of a man is never completed until he dies."
If they really want to change things for the good, this, the core has to change, cause with current testing method no matter how many good recommendations come from the community, all the issues are bound to repeat themselves.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
0
matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
edited March 2016
I loved this one so here it is again, Rob please read it, re-read it and then RE-RE-READ it, stick it to the offices EVERYWHERE there and send it with email to every employee there. Its simply a disgrace to humanity these tremendous levels of ignorance your company shows to the players. It is not justified by any means, any numbers or any monetary scheme you may follow.
+0 weeks: installed on preview server
+1 weeks: 40 bugs reported on preview server
+2-4 weeks: +40 more bugs reported on preview server
+5 weeks: Released Live
+6 weeks: 75 bugs (previously reported on preview server) reported
+7-12 weeks: 7 bugs fixed, 5 new ones added
+14 weeks: Next module announcement
The bugs are not just a small inconvenience for the players. They are DEGRADING and ALTERING the WHOLE GAME experience. Permabubble paladin is about to close 6 months of existence, YOU rendered ALL CONTENT obsolete with this bug. The only thing you see in ALL DUNGEONS, and you will see it in CN also, is a big bubble with 4 puppets attached to it, clickin and pressing keys with NO CONSEQUENCES AT ALL, no threat, no challenge. This is how infants may have fun since they cannot comprehend reality. However the player base are not infants. The credit cards that pay your bills are not owned by infants. Get a hold on to it, soon, fast, faster than fast.
Doesnt noone there sees this? Cant you just correct this BUGGY bubble, even with a sloppy patch? ITS BEEN OUT FOR MONTHS!!!!
Do you understand that by allowing this bug you spoil all the fun from game? All class roles are vanished, all item level requirements are diminished. There is NO PVE, its the same thing playing a 20 lvl dungeon and a T2. How can this be allowed? This is not streamlining, this is a dead heart rate line, drawn over all PVE content. I can simultaneously talk to phone, eat, watch a movie AND kill Syndrith or Traven. I could SLEEP on the red attack circles, WAKE UP, and lose not even 1 point of health.
HOW CAN THIS BE POSSIBLE?
HOW?
How many millions would it take to get off of Cryptic the game license? I couldnt stop wondering it after the first 6 months since beta started.
The fact is that the state was so bad, buggy, unfair, unbalanced from so long that the few steps done by Cryptic in the right direction are not visible. More over, each one step forward, they do 3 steps backwards ( Yeah Double AD, VIP bait for tarmalune, removing dungeons and putting it in leveling 1 YEAR AFTER)
So better expect anything, and be happy from the few they give us.
Guys... nobody from Cryptic reads the forums. The moderators aren't Cryptic employees, they are volunteers "working" from home (I'm guessing).
All of your valid and righteous concerns -- even the expert opinions, the correct testimony, the urgent impassioned pleas -- all of it -- it is being read only by other players and a forum moderator or two.
Just sayin'... you know... kinda wasting your breath here. Although, some of the posts I've read have been pretty interesting. Some of you have very very specific gripes about this game, which is funny because there is SOOOOO much wrong with it, that I can't imagine how some tiny tweak made in one place is gonna make everything better.
CW is the only class I've ever enjoyed playing on NWO and it's honestly HAMSTER pathetic that we've been reduced to buff HAMSTER. A DPS CW (Thaumaturge+Icy) isn't even viable and Oppressor's been nerfed into the ground that it's almost completely unplayable, so everyone feels obligated to run Renegade. It's honestly pathetic. We had great control, you took that away. We had competitive damage, you took that away. Don't subject the CW to being buffers. You'd be making the biggest mistake ever if you didn't include CWs in your class analysis'.
All the player comments are negative. That should tell you something about your game is broken. After reading through them I'd say your problems are almost completely a PvP issues. As a PvE player I have some suggestions: Don't try and mix PvE and PvP in a game. Make a completely separate PvP server with completely different balance rules for PvP. Remove PvP from the main servers completely.
Lets face facts about a few things. Very few people do PvP. Most players are PvE only.
In PvP if one class is overpowered then it ruins the game for the others. In PvE if one class is overpowered no one really cares. It doesn't hurt other peoples game play. This makes PvP a large development time sink.
Those that do PvP tend to be the younger crowd and have no money to spend. Those that do PvE tend to be a little older with jobs and money to spend on entertainment.
So from a business perspective where do you want to focus your development effort?
0
beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
You're quite wrong about a lot of things, other than PvE and PvP being difficult or impossible to balance concurrently.
Lots of players in NW play both PvE and PvP, or used to do both before switching to just one or the other. Many more people in NW would PvP or continue to PvP if it weren't a broken gankfest (myself included). A good match is fun, but being roflstomped isn't, and if you're not a [censored], neither is roflstomping others. Not liking to roflstomp factors into the lack of challenge in PvE. Ideally, PvP gives you an unpredictable opponent who can effectively fight back. It's pretty tough to make AI that can do that (see: how expensive it was to make "replayable" skirmishes that ultimately failed).
In PvE, if one class is overpowered, it very much can ruin the game for others because it removes the challenge (for people who want a challenge) and potentially gets entire classes excluded from content due to not being optimal for the fastest, easiest possible run (for people who just want fast rewards and prefer content to be as unchallenging as possible). This does hurt gameplay and hurts the game overall. Players can try to create their own re-balancing within a broken system by intentionally crippling themselves in some fashion, running specific compositions, or stripping equipment, etc., but the game isn't providing anything more than a sandbox at that point.
As for who the spenders are, PvP players include a large swath of individuals all-too-willing to drop a lot of money on power (see: broken gankfest). In NW, this translates into refinement (including Zen converted to AD to support such), and now very likely the mount system as well. PvE players include a large swath of individuals who are determinedly F2P or are only modest spenders. Preferred gameplay mode is not any kind of predictor of gamer age or maturity (which sure the heck don't always correlate). Lots of PvP players I've interacted with are my (old enough to know better) peers. Lots of PvE players I've interacted with are apparently unsupervised children.
You're right, of course... can't separate PVP from PVE. There are some easy solutions to matchmaking and so on that would greatly alleviate the "problems" with balance, not having zerg premades ruining everything, and whatnot. The steps that could have been taken have been noted for years by the playerbase in these very forums. Ditto that sentiment for class balance. Not a new topic. Been easy solutions/tweaks posted for YEARS.
And yet... here we are. Still the same thing.
So do the math. Obviously (yes, obviously) this is what the devs want. This "unbalanced mess" is WAI. Obviously. It's not supposed to be fair. This is designed this way on purpose. Just look at the evidence staring you in the face instead of wishing for what isn't there.
Of course, we could all keep posting the exact same gripes year after year ad infinitum... sure, they will get the hint after the 10000th post of "this (insert thing about the game) is kinda messed up, could the devs do something about it?", because the previous 9999 posts about the same thing weren't enough to get the message across. I mean, that sounds like a good use of our time, doesn't it?
I remember a few mods back when everyone got super-excited on the forums. Cryptic had started an aggressive community-feedback thing for the class balancing, had everyone running to the test servers, posting hundreds of messages and feedback in special dev-requested format with red/blue colors and bold text all that jazz... COMPLETELY IGNORED. They just went and did whatever they were gonna do, without taking any of the playerbase comments into consideration. I think maybe that new mod had a few bugs that were actually squashed before going live. But as for balance considerations... LOL.
Edit: Forgive my crudeness, beckylunatic, my comments about making 10000 posts about stuff being a waste of time was not directed at you. But you have to admit that over 9000 posts on these forums seems like a lot to us mere mortals.
Mod 6 was a bad time, a lot of us quit and deleted our characters and the game (and these characters were worth a lot of real money, but this gives give some idea of how disappointed a lot of us were at the time)
Eventually I came back and started afresh once the devs started to sort things out. Andy's letter is very encouraging for the future, and regardless of everyone's personal bits of the game they are not happy with, no other MMO really comes close to this one, the combat system, the style of the graphic's and the animators for this game are, absolutely brilliant. So heres hoping for a great 2016!
0
matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
Becky tries to hit the 10000 posts cause then a Legendary Ring will surely drop :P
Most of this was going on behind the scenes. We had tuned a lot of the numbers to support this new foundation, but that tuning wasn’t made with the entire picture in mind. As a result, it showed when we launched. Progression and difficulty were greatly impacted. The fast-paced and fun game everyone had come to know and enjoy started to slow down and lose what made it different than other MMOs. This was a big misstep for us and Neverwinter. Maybe we got lost in our attempt to build a new foundation. Perhaps we looked too far ahead at how things like stats, XP, and difficulty might be shaped down the road. Or maybe the inclusion of going to console meant one challenge too many. Whatever it was, we knew we had to fix it. It took working with the community to get back to where we should be, and admittedly we are not all the way back yet. We rolled out adjustments a little at a time and got a tremendous amount of feedback from the players. It was great to see how much so many people cared about getting their Neverwinter back. We learned a lot through this time. We have been able to make adjustments to how we plan, develop and release our updates all geared to keeping Neverwinter fun, fast, and a great place to adventure.
1. PC player base is an after thought to the console players with this company, why over half the PC population bailed.
2. Still not one thing mentioned that hey, maybe, the OP is way overpowered, (it is). They were so hasty to nerf HR and CW very quickly, but are scared to nerf the OP, which is a class that has ruined this game because it is so sadly over powered in both pve and pvp for over a year now.
I can't believe I read that whole thing looking for a nugget of truth or an authentic conciliatory tone. Nope lots of "things were harder than we thought, we have to do better" followed with nebulous "we will do better and listen to feedback" nonsense.
I was really hoping for more "yea strongholds was a clusterfack, you guys warned us, we didn't listen, your guilds are in ruin because of it and as a coup de grace we took away a lot of folks AD generation, followed by not adjusting important pricing in a timely fashion and then removed competition for items in the cash shop making it nearly impossible to avoid paying money to gear up. We understand why you hate us because we have been callous, greedy jerks who don't play the game or pay for QA and or focus testing so truly don't know your pain."
They could then follow it up with more from the heart truthiness such as: "So here we are, no one is spending money and you are spending most of your time raging in the forums and not playing our game. To turn this around we are going to promise some things, sorry no spoilers, and eventually getting around to fixing some things and perhaps even balance some systems we really just don't understand so don't expect that to end well. We are going to dedicate most of our depleted workforce to the xbox version because we hear they don't expect as much as you PC master racers. We might even figure out some new ways to ruin classic dungeons by shoehorning HEs into them because it's about all we know how to make right now."
I guess the truth wouldn't have those few responses I've seen here saying how great this all sounds and how glad awesome it is that they are going to listen to players now (never heard that one before, maybe start by responding to that trade bar thread). I'm guessing the truth wouldn't open wallets and purses to purchase zen. I'm guessing the truth wouldn't bring fresh meat into the game eager to buy into the grind. I guess the truth would just hurt too much.
0
feanor70118Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,170Arc User
Sure, they'll do better and listen to feedback, right after they introduce more leveling dungeons no one wants or cares about, screw up Castle Never even more in ways no one wants, unbalance the game further with more game-breaking items that benefit the already-overpowered classes most, and introduce even more artifact equipment that we've hated since mod 5.
Sure, they'll do better and listen to feedback, right after they introduce more leveling dungeons no one wants or cares about, screw up Castle Never even more in ways no one wants, unbalance the game further with more game-breaking items that benefit the already-overpowered classes most, and introduce even more artifact equipment that we've hated since mod 5.
Do not forget : All the new weapon and armor enchantments we will not be able to level unless you have more then 4 characters to invoke and maybe get a coal ward as an invocation prize. Oh the joy.. I find it ridicules that now pres wards are more expensive on AH, then buying it for Zen. 50 k for 10 pres wards?!????? Really? .... and 39.something k to buy it from the Zen market.. It is sad, really..
silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
What was wrong:
There were several issues, they messed up progression pacing, so newer players clearly couldn't get FROM point A (say a new 1.6k i level lvl 60) to point B.. finish lvl 70 and doing t1s) They DID not listen to many of us who STATED over and over to leave dread ring and sharander at 60 for campaigns.. THIS wouldve fixed EVERYTHING just about.
They messed up powers/feats/enchants.. ALMOST none worked right at rank 4 for a month or TWO or THREE after mod 6 release (you get a power point.. put it into a rank 4 power.. and BAM .. it now DOES half the damage.. or NO damage or TWICE as long cooldown as the rank 3 did). You paid 3 million AD to upgrade to whatever trans enchant and BAM.. it actually hurts your own and TEAM dps!
They had some bugs on power points.. and feat progression .. SO when it broke, you were left out of the cold.. they said they would fix it, but NONE of my own messages were ever answered and I had to pay out of token pools to fix my toons and even then.. until they released underdark I believe, one of my toons (my tr) couldnt be fixed at all. They fixed this eventually after almost 6-7 months of it being broken! via a patch, that I THEN had to use my own token.. but at least it worked then.
What was right:
Game was refreshingly struct-ed differently.. with NEW rotations, class balance and the need for control, dps, heals, tanks again and in fact IT WAS really fun to get say a 2k alt through spinward and using a healing pet to do so.
T2s were REALLY fun, and getting through them was difficult and a badge of honor before ARP bug was fixed. ETOS shouldve been doable for any say average group of 2.5k's ECC I would say around 2.7-8k and EWgD about the same.. immunity phasing was really delicate and you really needed a good healer and mostly a paladin to keep people up.
the game had the right difficulty for veterans.. but had NO progression for anyone else.
They now dialed it WAY back down to ezy mode.. making nothing to do with geared folks again. But they also removed almost any source of income in the game.. so what used to take say 100 runs in old T2s to get good gear/money .. now will take you about 1000 runs to get same AD/progression (yes that is a very serious statement.. prepare to farm and farm and farm)
So just making them harder wont be much of a answer either.. as all it will do is take 3x times as long to get anywhere in game.
They dont have a good balance of risk vs reward at all and neither can they seem to get a good progression point pacing for all players in game.. from new players to veterens.. just really off the mark .
This made long time veterens and newer players go boinkers.. they then removed leadership at some point in that time frame and bam.. all hell froze over.
Its not that leadership removal was all that bad.. in fact I was ok with it.. BUT THEY took months and months to fix costing..
It was a VERY difficult 6-8 months for them (april onwards) and they lost alot of poeple both on thier own staffing and on playerbase.
They have made some progression in some areas, but have failed in others tremendously.
I guess that would be my synopsis in the state of their game.
Comments
another thing ... roll out any nerfs in increments .... often times the nerf hammer hits way too hard ... taking something that was way overpowered and making it completely useless.. nerfs in this game have been way too heavy handed imo.....
If may only add a few of my observations, i made over time in the game.
The worst thing is, that according to my knowledge they have internal "players" (employees), who are paid to play the game once in a while (every week), so they should really report back, what they see. Will they? Will they risk their jobs? Ah, no.
When i was in alpha test a few times in the past, i have repeatedly said, there are 3 things wrong with the test method Cryptic uses:
1. BiS to the top of the head. Now what the heck can a BiS char test? Maybe speed only, but it was a nonsense to do it that way.
2. BiS combined with God Mode. Again, what's this good for? A total waste of time.
3. Combine the upper two and add frightened "Yes Man style" employees/testers to it, who acknowledge everything, may it be the worst idea, like Mod 6 and so on.
What is a test good for, if you invite and listen to only such people, who say what you want to hear?
A test should include random group of people. If one selects the participants along a special criteria, even before the test phase begins, the outcome will be predictable in your favor.
Education, i left this at the last. How did General Lee say: "The education of a man is never completed until he dies."
If they really want to change things for the good, this, the core has to change, cause with current testing method no matter how many good recommendations come from the community, all the issues are bound to repeat themselves.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
The bugs are not just a small inconvenience for the players. They are DEGRADING and ALTERING the WHOLE GAME experience. Permabubble paladin is about to close 6 months of existence, YOU rendered ALL CONTENT obsolete with this bug. The only thing you see in ALL DUNGEONS, and you will see it in CN also, is a big bubble with 4 puppets attached to it, clickin and pressing keys with NO CONSEQUENCES AT ALL, no threat, no challenge. This is how infants may have fun since they cannot comprehend reality. However the player base are not infants. The credit cards that pay your bills are not owned by infants. Get a hold on to it, soon, fast, faster than fast.
Doesnt noone there sees this? Cant you just correct this BUGGY bubble, even with a sloppy patch? ITS BEEN OUT FOR MONTHS!!!!
Do you understand that by allowing this bug you spoil all the fun from game?
All class roles are vanished, all item level requirements are diminished.
There is NO PVE, its the same thing playing a 20 lvl dungeon and a T2.
How can this be allowed? This is not streamlining, this is a dead heart rate line, drawn over all PVE content.
I can simultaneously talk to phone, eat, watch a movie AND kill Syndrith or Traven. I could SLEEP on the red attack circles, WAKE UP, and lose not even 1 point of health.
HOW
CAN
THIS
BE
POSSIBLE?
HOW?
How many millions would it take to get off of Cryptic the game license? I couldnt stop wondering it after the first 6 months since beta started.
I wish i was a blizzard
not good.
So better expect anything, and be happy from the few they give us.
All of your valid and righteous concerns -- even the expert opinions, the correct testimony, the urgent impassioned pleas -- all of it -- it is being read only by other players and a forum moderator or two.
Just sayin'... you know... kinda wasting your breath here. Although, some of the posts I've read have been pretty interesting. Some of you have very very specific gripes about this game, which is funny because there is SOOOOO much wrong with it, that I can't imagine how some tiny tweak made in one place is gonna make everything better.
After reading through them I'd say your problems are almost completely a PvP issues.
As a PvE player I have some suggestions:
Don't try and mix PvE and PvP in a game.
Make a completely separate PvP server with completely different balance rules for PvP.
Remove PvP from the main servers completely.
Lets face facts about a few things. Very few people do PvP. Most players are PvE only.
In PvP if one class is overpowered then it ruins the game for the others.
In PvE if one class is overpowered no one really cares. It doesn't hurt other peoples game play.
This makes PvP a large development time sink.
Those that do PvP tend to be the younger crowd and have no money to spend.
Those that do PvE tend to be a little older with jobs and money to spend on entertainment.
So from a business perspective where do you want to focus your development effort?
Lots of players in NW play both PvE and PvP, or used to do both before switching to just one or the other. Many more people in NW would PvP or continue to PvP if it weren't a broken gankfest (myself included). A good match is fun, but being roflstomped isn't, and if you're not a [censored], neither is roflstomping others. Not liking to roflstomp factors into the lack of challenge in PvE. Ideally, PvP gives you an unpredictable opponent who can effectively fight back. It's pretty tough to make AI that can do that (see: how expensive it was to make "replayable" skirmishes that ultimately failed).
In PvE, if one class is overpowered, it very much can ruin the game for others because it removes the challenge (for people who want a challenge) and potentially gets entire classes excluded from content due to not being optimal for the fastest, easiest possible run (for people who just want fast rewards and prefer content to be as unchallenging as possible). This does hurt gameplay and hurts the game overall. Players can try to create their own re-balancing within a broken system by intentionally crippling themselves in some fashion, running specific compositions, or stripping equipment, etc., but the game isn't providing anything more than a sandbox at that point.
As for who the spenders are, PvP players include a large swath of individuals all-too-willing to drop a lot of money on power (see: broken gankfest). In NW, this translates into refinement (including Zen converted to AD to support such), and now very likely the mount system as well. PvE players include a large swath of individuals who are determinedly F2P or are only modest spenders. Preferred gameplay mode is not any kind of predictor of gamer age or maturity (which sure the heck don't always correlate). Lots of PvP players I've interacted with are my (old enough to know better) peers. Lots of PvE players I've interacted with are apparently unsupervised children.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
You're right, of course... can't separate PVP from PVE. There are some easy solutions to matchmaking and so on that would greatly alleviate the "problems" with balance, not having zerg premades ruining everything, and whatnot. The steps that could have been taken have been noted for years by the playerbase in these very forums. Ditto that sentiment for class balance. Not a new topic. Been easy solutions/tweaks posted for YEARS.
And yet... here we are. Still the same thing.
So do the math. Obviously (yes, obviously) this is what the devs want. This "unbalanced mess" is WAI. Obviously. It's not supposed to be fair. This is designed this way on purpose. Just look at the evidence staring you in the face instead of wishing for what isn't there.
Of course, we could all keep posting the exact same gripes year after year ad infinitum... sure, they will get the hint after the 10000th post of "this (insert thing about the game) is kinda messed up, could the devs do something about it?", because the previous 9999 posts about the same thing weren't enough to get the message across. I mean, that sounds like a good use of our time, doesn't it?
I remember a few mods back when everyone got super-excited on the forums. Cryptic had started an aggressive community-feedback thing for the class balancing, had everyone running to the test servers, posting hundreds of messages and feedback in special dev-requested format with red/blue colors and bold text all that jazz... COMPLETELY IGNORED. They just went and did whatever they were gonna do, without taking any of the playerbase comments into consideration. I think maybe that new mod had a few bugs that were actually squashed before going live. But as for balance considerations... LOL.
Edit: Forgive my crudeness, beckylunatic, my comments about making 10000 posts about stuff being a waste of time was not directed at you. But you have to admit that over 9000 posts on these forums seems like a lot to us mere mortals.
Eventually I came back and started afresh once the devs started to sort things out. Andy's letter is very encouraging for the future, and regardless of everyone's personal bits of the game they are not happy with, no other MMO really comes close to this one, the combat system, the style of the graphic's and the animators for this game are, absolutely brilliant. So heres hoping for a great 2016!
1. PC player base is an after thought to the console players with this company, why over half the PC population bailed.
2. Still not one thing mentioned that hey, maybe, the OP is way overpowered, (it is). They were so hasty to nerf HR and CW very quickly, but are scared to nerf the OP, which is a class that has ruined this game because it is so sadly over powered in both pve and pvp for over a year now.
trees/forest/etc.
I was really hoping for more "yea strongholds was a clusterfack, you guys warned us, we didn't listen, your guilds are in ruin because of it and as a coup de grace we took away a lot of folks AD generation, followed by not adjusting important pricing in a timely fashion and then removed competition for items in the cash shop making it nearly impossible to avoid paying money to gear up. We understand why you hate us because we have been callous, greedy jerks who don't play the game or pay for QA and or focus testing so truly don't know your pain."
They could then follow it up with more from the heart truthiness such as: "So here we are, no one is spending money and you are spending most of your time raging in the forums and not playing our game. To turn this around we are going to promise some things, sorry no spoilers, and eventually getting around to fixing some things and perhaps even balance some systems we really just don't understand so don't expect that to end well. We are going to dedicate most of our depleted workforce to the xbox version because we hear they don't expect as much as you PC master racers. We might even figure out some new ways to ruin classic dungeons by shoehorning HEs into them because it's about all we know how to make right now."
I guess the truth wouldn't have those few responses I've seen here saying how great this all sounds and how glad awesome it is that they are going to listen to players now (never heard that one before, maybe start by responding to that trade bar thread). I'm guessing the truth wouldn't open wallets and purses to purchase zen. I'm guessing the truth wouldn't bring fresh meat into the game eager to buy into the grind. I guess the truth would just hurt too much.
All the new weapon and armor enchantments we will not be able to level unless you have more then 4 characters to invoke and maybe get a coal ward as an invocation prize. Oh the joy..
I find it ridicules that now pres wards are more expensive on AH, then buying it for Zen. 50 k for 10 pres wards?!?????
Really?
.... and 39.something k to buy it from the Zen market..
It is sad, really..
There were several issues, they messed up progression pacing, so newer players clearly couldn't get FROM point A (say a new 1.6k i level lvl 60) to point B.. finish lvl 70 and doing t1s) They DID not listen to many of us who STATED over and over to leave dread ring and sharander at 60 for campaigns.. THIS wouldve fixed EVERYTHING just about.
They messed up powers/feats/enchants.. ALMOST none worked right at rank 4 for a month or TWO or THREE after mod 6 release (you get a power point.. put it into a rank 4 power.. and BAM .. it now DOES half the damage.. or NO damage or TWICE as long cooldown as the rank 3 did). You paid 3 million AD to upgrade to whatever trans enchant and BAM.. it actually hurts your own and TEAM dps!
They had some bugs on power points.. and feat progression .. SO when it broke, you were left out of the cold.. they said they would fix it, but NONE of my own messages were ever answered and I had to pay out of token pools to fix my toons and even then.. until they released underdark I believe, one of my toons (my tr) couldnt be fixed at all. They fixed this eventually after almost 6-7 months of it being broken! via a patch, that I THEN had to use my own token.. but at least it worked then.
What was right:
Game was refreshingly struct-ed differently.. with NEW rotations, class balance and the need for control, dps, heals, tanks again and in fact IT WAS really fun to get say a 2k alt through spinward and using a healing pet to do so.
T2s were REALLY fun, and getting through them was difficult and a badge of honor before ARP bug was fixed.
ETOS shouldve been doable for any say average group of 2.5k's
ECC I would say around 2.7-8k
and EWgD about the same.. immunity phasing was really delicate and you really needed a good healer and mostly a paladin to keep people up.
the game had the right difficulty for veterans.. but had NO progression for anyone else.
They now dialed it WAY back down to ezy mode.. making nothing to do with geared folks again. But they also removed almost any source of income in the game.. so what used to take say 100 runs in old T2s to get good gear/money .. now will take you about 1000 runs to get same AD/progression (yes that is a very serious statement.. prepare to farm and farm and farm)
So just making them harder wont be much of a answer either.. as all it will do is take 3x times as long to get anywhere in game.
They dont have a good balance of risk vs reward at all and neither can they seem to get a good progression point pacing for all players in game.. from new players to veterens.. just really off the mark .
This made long time veterens and newer players go boinkers.. they then removed leadership at some point in that time frame and bam.. all hell froze over.
Its not that leadership removal was all that bad.. in fact I was ok with it.. BUT THEY took months and months to fix costing..
It was a VERY difficult 6-8 months for them (april onwards) and they lost alot of poeple both on thier own staffing and on playerbase.
They have made some progression in some areas, but have failed in others tremendously.
I guess that would be my synopsis in the state of their game.
Did they said something about good communication with players?
Can you find any their answer/opinion in this thread?
.Suicide Squad.