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Official Feedback Thread: Bonding Runestone Changes

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  • jumpingmorksjumpingmorks Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 876 Arc User

    Good to see someone is allocated to be a community manager. Not sure however the community was informed - polled - etc.. as any company would about considerable changes. If it was or there is one - then wouldn't outrage change how the community manager operates. The damage is done. A community manager is post - not pre. It would make far better business sense to get leaders together - work with them on changes - then gain their support at the top. The have them herald the changes down stream to the guilds and then more widely to the constituents in the game. As is evidenced by the entire thread here - there is a lot of disenfranchised, upset, brand ambassadors that just went right off the reservation. This all would have been avoided had a consensus been reached prior. They key will be as a community manager can you absorb sentiment and feedback and take the appropriate steps to adjust your thinking or is this simply an outlet for people to vent. personally in the many many businesses i have been involved with - i would view all this in horror and have a rapid response team to cut this mess off at the knees - thank everyone for their feedback and note that with that the following adjustments. People would appreciate their voices being heard. Now on the other hand if it is ignored then i believe you will find resentment, exodus, brand issues and be left with a middle manager making a terrible decision. Would be smart to compile the feedback in a report up to the whoever makes decisions and see if they are willing to live the impact - project impact - and make a business decision to see if there is a tolerance for it - given the downside. Its not my business it is someone else so i am not here vested into decision making - i can project accurately however that this is not a good one. Good luck - govern yourself accordingly.

    I'm sure we'll hear from them eventually, looks like they are still working on a maintenance post and maybe patch notes, or not.
  • tenetombtenetomb Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Nerfing bondings with a cooldown is just completely dumb.

    You just killed them. Everything not giving continuous stats has always been unreliable and impossible to use (when you talk about min max).

    Give them a 100% uptime but 45% stats for each bonding 12 to 14 (only the power would increase).


    Example :

    If you equip 3 adorable bites with 2 brutal 14 on each => 5013 Power and 4494 Crit

    With 3 eldritch you get (i skip you the maths) : 8847.945 Power and 7931.91 Crit or 16779.855 total stats

    With 2 eldritch and 1 empowered (which i found out to give the most stats) you get : 10589.63 Power and 6785.94 Crit or 17375.57 total stats

    With 3 bondings at 45% you get : 11020.05 Power and 6066.9 Crit or 17086.95 total stats + pet bonus



    So if you get a little bit less stats with Bondings than Eldritch but you get active bonus, it will be viable.

    Diversity is the key, you should learn to stop overnerfing things.
  • plumbot#3261 plumbot Member Posts: 3 Arc User
    This is so completely outrageous. At least there should be some kind of exchange like there was when they nerfed lostmauth's set. I spent so much time grinding for these, to have their value literally cut in half overnight is just heartbreaking.
  • rayrdanrayrdan Member Posts: 5,410 Arc User
    RECONSIDER THE UPTIME!!!
    a multi milion joke cant be worst than a 300k augmented companion!
  • bomber#0573 bomber Member Posts: 156 Arc User
    > @vida44 said:
    > I see no issue with these changes.
    >
    > I'll finally be able to buy myself a car.
    > No money to the game = more money in real life.
    ================================================
    This is very true. I may now be able to find time for friends, family, fishing, etc....(the list goes on and on)....
    Lol it may not be so bad after all ;)
  • morgrim66morgrim66 Member Posts: 47 Arc User
    Bait and switch buddy, bait and switch...wait switch and bait? Does that mean they switch things and then make fun of us for continuing to buy their HAMSTER?
    Morria Grim 16,133 DC
    Morgrim Orcbane 16,530 CW
    Bloodlust Barbie 15,646 OP Tank
  • hudman21hudman21 Member Posts: 276 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Unbelievable HAMSTER HAMSTER!!

    I have (Since beta) spent thousands of real life $$ and million's of AD all while putting up with the constant nerfing of classes, refining, AD, profession's and dungeons etc, etc over the last 3 years.

    I finally get my main (My AC/DC w/3 R12s on Con Artist companion which I spent 2 gold to acquire and 2 mil AD to bring to Legendary), to where I can grind all the new content and then I hear this utter HAMSTER of nerf bombing - Bonding stones ?

    I for one will be officially done with this game should that occur. I WILL NOT spend any more money to redo something I have already had to redo. I will not re-grind to gain all that will be lost.

    3 words come to mind Cryptic...

    DONT DO IT!

    Life is full of drains, I prefer to be a fountain
  • fizgigtiznalkie#4436 fizgigtiznalkie Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    Zen went from 350 to 415 on this news on PS4, I think people are cashing out.
  • armadeonxarmadeonx Member Posts: 4,952 Arc User

    cryptic you have got to be totally off your head doing this are you trying to kill your own game? BONDINGS AIN'T THE PROBLEM! it's the buffs from pallys and clerics that make everything over powered, put it this way I'm a bis gwf and with all my buffs and 3x rank 12 bondings my ibs hits for about 1.5 mill but with a full buff team in fbi my ibs can hit for 35/40 mill so you tell me whats op and needs to be fixed? it sure as hell isnt bondings. do you realize how much money REAL money people have put into there builds and how much its going to cost to fix there builds once you do this NERF? this will kill the game people are getting sick to death of your switch and bait tactics cryptic

    I agree that the issue with bondings is from power sharing.

    Speaking as a 15.3k Pally, I would be all for a flat damage booster like ITF instead of power buffing & AoC. Flat boosters are predictable and limited. Power boosting leads to power builds - similar to the pre-nerf ITF which scaled on the GFs defence stat. GFs boosted DR to ridiculous levels to provide more buffs.

    Give OPs and DCs fixed level dps buffs and keep bondings as they are - even rescaled so that you need r14 to reach the current r12 levels (or close to it).



    Please Do Not Feed The Trolls

    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
  • aldvim#2628 aldvim Member Posts: 3 New User
    I don't mind this change at all. I've been on the fence lately about playing anyway. This pushes me off the fence so I can finally quit. Sad what they are doing to folks who invested so much though.
  • cilginordekcilginordek Member Posts: 459 Arc User
    edited August 2017

    Lets do some extremely rough math! Since yall are a bit hysterical, maybe this will help put it into perspective. Using single stat enchants for simplicity, assuming a stat score of 1k per equipment piece.

    Currently

    3xR12 Bondings
    840*3=2520 Bonding stats
    3*1000 = 3000 Gear Stats
    6*700 = 4200 Enchant Stats
    ~1200 Comp stats
    Total= 10920
    Multiplier - 2.85 = 31,122 total stats

    New

    3xR14 Bondings
    1050*3=3150 Bonding Stats
    3*1000=3000 Gear Stats
    6*1000=6000 Enchant Stats
    ~1200 Comp Stats
    Total = 13350
    Multiplier 1.95= 26.032.5 Stats **50% uptime (reasonable change if uptime stays at 100%)

    Augment Pet
    3x2000=6000 Runestone Stats
    3x1000 = 3000 Gear Stats
    6*1000 = 6000 Enchant Stats
    *Don't remember if Augments have comp stats
    Total = 15000 stats, 100% uptime

    Augment with 3x Eldritch
    No Runestone Stats
    3*1000=3000 Gear Stats
    6*1000=6000 Enchant Stats
    Multiplier 1.765
    Total=15,885 stats, 100% uptime


    Ty for the calcs. One thing you should keep in mind though. The Augments don't benefit from power sharing while Bonding companions do. Meaning, the bondings can get an additional 25k power, making them 50k stats with 50% uptime, so 25k stat for the duration of a fight. That is still 10k more stats than other alternatives.


    As for my GF, am currently screwed along most players who main a GF.

    I main a GF and I welcome these changes. Class rework won't happen anytime soon, probably not this year. I'm not going to stop playing just because they might change something 4-5 months later. And when they do, it would probably be a reasonable change anyway.
  • skatopsixos7skatopsixos7 Member Posts: 46 Arc User
    are the devs even going to reply to any of this?

  • zeroscarlett#9233 zeroscarlett Member Posts: 41 Arc User
    It's hard enough for the players in the middle. You hit about 11 - 13k and hit this wall where the content you can run is either the same stuff over and over that doesn't yeild you the equipment you need to push over the threshold of gear score to get into things like fbi and msva... Let alone msp... I'm 13k sw and right now I struggle to get into end game content even with my rank 12 bonding stones. I'll never see a master spell plague without those added stats. Not to mention the time andeffort and grind I put into leveling them.

    It will create an even bigger gap between the middle and the end game players. How will we compete? How will we get the gear needed to get to be end game players? It's a slap in the face to all of your player base.
  • antsaooantsaoo Member Posts: 4 Arc User
    I am a casual player, and play only one toon (13k IL). I've played almost 2 years to get there and also spent a lots of real $$$ to help my progress. I have grinded over 6 months, trying to max my bonding stones (currently 1 rank 12, and 2 rank 11), and now you are going make them obsolete. Thanks for nothing PW/Cryptic/whatever. No more $$$ from my credit card. I'm out.
  • fizgigtiznalkie#4436 fizgigtiznalkie Member Posts: 372 Arc User
    That is another thing, zeroscarlett, we already have to be a bit picky who we can carry through spellplague, we might not be able to bring the weaker folks through FBI or MSVA any more and they'll be stuck at Castle Never.
  • gerverpandagerverpanda Member Posts: 28 Arc User
    All endgame content has been run using groups equipped for minimal iLvL and using only Augments and we have had zero problems. Players have it entirely wrong, as it stands if you have R12 Bondings, or even Rank10+ for that matter, currently in Mod12 and are having and kind of problem; it's you. Plain and simple. You are either doing something wrong or you've come to rely on the Bondings as a crutch and what's sad at that point is you're still failing.

    To be honest this is actually the penultimate "Get Good" moment.

    We know it is possible, but we don't want to spend 3 hours doing it. The new content was pretty much molded around Bondings. I didn't mind carrying fools like you before, but now it will take me 5 hours to do so. So if you really did what you said, post proof or quit talking out of your HAMSTER. It is pretentious to think that the sole reason others might be outperforming you is because of bondings. You show up telling people who don't agree with the nerf to get good, cause you would love for that to be the case. How many times were you told to git gud? walking around with an augment, my guess is too many.

    A good player optimizes and maximizes, its part of getting good. Bonding and companions were part of that process. If you chose not to take that step, then you ain't a good player, and you just making excuses to cover that fact.

    The nerf won't make any content more difficult, just considerably lengthier, and who wants that? You? some complain that they don't have the time(ad) and money to afford bondings, but support a nerf than will make it impossible for them to complete a dungeon in that one hour a week they get on to play the game. The nerf with make it harder for the the common casual to achieve anything (not like they did before) with even less motivation to do so now.

    These are the guys that get carried through dungeons, bottom at every chart except at dying, and die the first second they enter the boss room, and then at the end tells everyone "gg", "tyfr", "ez" with their stupid cats, and battleragers, popping catalog at every stop. They put no effort because they are lazy, or don't have the time. These guys think its ok to have their weight thrown on to other's shoulders without a choice.

    FYI the nerf was not an answer to your prayers. This was not about you. It was about increasing the grind for everyone and finding new ways to take money away from players. And you are pupu for supporting it, and not standing with most of the community. Things will change for us but not for you. Now if anything it will be easier to tell the good and dedicated players from the rest. Git Gud, and have fun on your 2 hour long t2s runs.

    If you can't afford bondings, you can' afford alot of other high level stuff so you gonna cry about that too and support nerfs, which you already do.
  • Hello, I main a GF tank(ps4)

    1) Please reconsider the cool down change on bonding's. Not being able to maintain important tank stats at specific percentages (defense and armor pen most importantly) is going to make me a yo-yo. I don't want to be a tank for 15 seconds and then a wet paper bag for the other 15 seconds.

    2) To whoever completely cleaned out the ps4 auction house of all high level rune stones(except for bonding's) I'm jealous, you are going to make a fortune if these changes go live.

    Thank you.
  • zeroscarlett#9233 zeroscarlett Member Posts: 41 Arc User
    what about when we need 10k or more armor pen to run the new content which isn't even on consoles yet? You have this content based off of stats that no one will have anymore.

    I spent 2 hours in fbi yesterday and it's not the first time... content is tough if you fall in the huge number of players who are somewhere in the middle. You need these perfect groups if you don't want to spend all of your time to play doing one dungeon. Hitting the bonding stones this hard will only widen that gap, making it harder for us to complete new content and the gear we need to get out of this gap.

    You keep fixing things but none of them are the things people are actually asking to have fixed! Get in touch with your players!!! See what the people who have spent years and hundreds of dollars on your game want!

    I understand making things easier on new players but don't screw over the mass of your player base in the process... aka the people who have been playing a year or more, the people who have spent hours upon hours of time playing the game, spending their money with your company... It's like a big eff you to all of us.
  • zomak#4611 zomak Member Posts: 223 Arc User
    So bonding runestones normally increase in price by 26-50% during 2xRP. Instead their price had been cut in half and still dropping. At the same time the price of augment companion ioun stones have increased 11 fold.

    I am already behind the curve and cannot make adaptations in case this goes live and still recover if it changes and doesn't go live or goes live but in a modified way that actually still keeps bondings BIS. Thus I'm already screwed. If this goes live I will lose 6 months worth of progress on my character. I will be quiting complete if this goes live as currently stated.
  • alicat22000alicat22000 Member Posts: 49 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    I understand how these bondings work. I also know how money hungry arc is. Though some changes are good some are terrible. I will say, this is awfully convenient to be brought out after so many players have spent millions of ad to upgrade thier additional companions for the bonuses of the upcoming mod. It's obvious to me that this is yet another money maker for arc.
  • ravenskyaravenskya Member Posts: 1,891 Arc User

    That is another thing, zeroscarlett, we already have to be a bit picky who we can carry through spellplague, we might not be able to bring the weaker folks through FBI or MSVA any more and they'll be stuck at Castle Never.

    Yeah right now we can do "Three of us and two first timers" to get them through FBI, MSPC... I don't know where we will end up after these changes... I might not even be able to complete it on my Healadin
    Founding Member of "Wrong Side of the Stronghold"
    Ravenskya - TR / Krisha Chaos - OP / Waffles - GF / Dex Domitor - HR
    Becky the trendy GWF - GWF / Too Toasty - SW / Falcor - DC / Morrigan - CW / Sir Didymus - OP

  • chris#7087 chris Member Posts: 10 Arc User

    Those that are in the camp of "nerf this but not that", or "something had to be done" are missing the point. Many of us have invested heavily in time and/or money to obtain these bonding stones. Not to mention the comps and the gear they wear. I expect these items to remain the same as advertised. There is no room for compromise on this issue, none.

    Yeah and when i bought my car in 2010 it was new but it's not new anymore. What's up with that?

    For the record, i'm pissed too, but this 'I paid good money' argument isn't going to accomplish anything. You fork over cash at your own risk. Ever changing meta is a staple of MMOs. Focus on pointing out legitimate points on how this will break more than it will fix, or pointing out unintended changes that will break the economy. Make them see how this will earn them less money in the future, rather than complain about money you've already given them in the past.
    You make a fair point, but I didn't buy a deprecating asset that undergoes wear and tear. Not to mention all the ancillary items that will be affected as well. When a car depreciates it doesn't affect anything else I own. If and when they change the bonding stones it will be systemic. Apple and oranges. I will make them see how this will make them less money by closing my wallet and going elsewhere, and I suspect many will follow suit.

  • nirafelosnirafelos Member Posts: 113 Arc User
    edited August 2017
    My feelings, in no particular order:
    • Mark and Gemstone consolidation: Cool, this significantly reduces inventory issues. Previously *just marks* in all 3 binding states filled more than one full Runic Bag. My hope is that these new gemstones and Mark replacements also only come in two binding states -- unbound or account bound. Hell, I'd like to see character bound removed entirely, or else restricted to being caused by equipping an item.
    • New ranks of Gemstones: I mean, I get it, but this feels contrary to the trend of removing pointless inventory bloat. Why not just drop 2 Peridot instead of a Black Pearl, or 2 Blood Rubies instead of an Alexandrite? Also please never give me a Quartz. That will make me emo.
    • RP as a currency: Awesome. I love this. It even further alleviates inventory issues. How exactly does it work? Right click and eat a gemstone to convert it to RP? Sounds neat to me. Instantly-consumed-upon-drop/purchase? Less cool, because it comes with alt concerns.
    • Alt RP concerns: I mean I guess I understand people's concerns here, but if unbound, tradeable gemstones still exist, I'm not that worried. Like, sure, it's a currency to manage, and sometimes mains end up with too much Voninblod or too many companion upgrade tokens that can't be transferred to Alts, but for the most part it's not a big deal to transfer things over and consume them there.
    • Refinement Math changes: Mostly fine with these. I'd like to see Artifacts halved again, since the 10x multiplier from feeders during double RP was pretty much the only way anyone ever refined Artifacts.
    • New G/SMoP requirements: this is pretty harsh, to be honest. I suspect there are multiple weapon/armor enchantment flavors where these increased Mark of Potency costs will be more expensive than 8 R7s -> 1 R12. And they have a more regulated AD cost, and drop only rarely elsewhere, so for the most part these will never go down in price, and instead market value will always be between the raw wondrous bazaar cost and and the wondrous bazaar cost minus the foreign merchant coupon plus AH fees. Further, I feel that an under-discussed portion of this consideration is that Mark of Potency costs are AD that is ultimately permanently being removed from the economy (minus the low percentage that come from sources other than the Wondrous Bazaar), while previously, purchasing a second R10 for 1.5M was giving all of that money to another player. Yes, the cheapest source of MoPs is usually the AH. Those players purchase in bulk during the summer sale and stack the foreign merchant coupon. After the AH's cut, their margin is usually less than 10% of the sale price, so in that case, only 90% of the cost of the MoPs is being removed from the economy. That's extremely significant. Selling R10 enchantments was a viable and exceptionally profitable AD income stream for many people, that is being nearly entirely removed with no real replacement or acknowledgement.
    • No More Double RP events: I love this, tbh. This will even further reduce inventory hoarding. End of day/week ritual is now going to be to distribute gemstones around my account and consume them for RP currency and refine whatever I want refined.
    • Buffs to Runestones: really, really long overdue. I'd love for augments to compete again.
    • Nerfs to Bondings: also probably overdue, and I agree with the stated goal of giving players more choices by bringing Augments into better parity with Bonding stones, but I am not at all a fan of this implementation. Reducing their reliability (by reducing their uptime) is a massive and untenable nerf to almost any toon's ability to cap two or more previously reachable rating caps simultaneously. This will force tanks to choose between defense and armor penetration (and it will take them longer to reach either cap), strikers to choose between crit and arp (and to actively dump power and recovery to reach those caps), and will completely destroy the current power share meta by largely deactivating it 50% of the time. Making changes to those systems -- making crit and arp caps harder to reach, making Daily powers less "spam every 8s" and more "wait for the right moment", adjusting power share powers to still be badasses but not be multiplied by bondings (or to be applied to and shared by augments) -- are all valid goals. But I'd rather see those changes made intentionally and targeted to those systems in particular, than to see those as side-effects of a heavy handed nerf to Bondings. This is a really bad change, with far reaching ramifications, ill-considered math, that utterly fails at its stated goal of bringing Bonding Stones and Augments into closer parity. I wholly agree that changes are warranted, but I cannot see myself continuing to play this game if this implementation is the best you can come up with. Thanks @noworries#8859. I can live with that change. I'd still like to see parity between things like HP sharing via bondings (it shares via augments) and DC/OP Powershare buffs working similarly (or not, but then adjust base values) via both bondings and augments. This would allow more freedom of choice and offer a less obvious winner either direction.
    • Challenging Content X Bonding Nerf: One of the most desperate needs this game has is a full class and spec balance pass, largely to raise skill floors on rampantly underperforming classes/trees such as Archery, TR, and SW, without raising skill ceilings, since the best players of all classes are already competing just fine. It's not at all uncommon for me to outdamage similarly geared, similarly specced players of the same class by a factor of 10 in tier 1-2 dungeons. For the most part, the bonding changes are going to hurt low skill players worse than high skill players. Chult was designed to provide more challenging content than previous areas. It largely succeeded at that, though some mob types are "challenging" by knocking you prone repeatedly, which leaves them open to a counter argument of being more "annoying" than "challenging," since many classes have no counter-play options to this. Raising the Armor Penetration Cap by 4000 and then in the next major patch reducing player stats by ~15000 is...I mean I guess it's a way to enforce that the content is more challenging, but it also seems kind of randomly cruel.
    Post edited by nirafelos on
  • lowjohnlowjohn Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,061 Arc User



    We are going to switch the up time to being able to be 100% (cooldown and up time will match). This will be with the lowered percentages that we presented and seems like the best way to address many of the concerns while still bringing bonding power more in line with where it should be.

    Also, we are going to look into switching the offensive effect of Eldritch Runestones to match the defensive effect

    Thank you! Those two changes make me much happier, and I have to say the RP changes *on their own* look amazing. Thanks for the work and thanks for listening about the problems with the Runestones.
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