> @noworries#8859 said: > We fully understand how big of a topic this is which is why we wanted to get the details out early to get feedback on all of the changes. And feedback certainly has been given! Although these types of topics can get heated due to the passion players have for this game, it is a good thing to see such involvement and discussion from our player base. > > There are valid points being brought up through out this discussion. Reading over all of this feedback, from multiple sources, has allowed us to take a look at different perspectives on the bonding issues. Bonding runestones do need an adjustment and we'd like to allow for other companion and runestone choices to not be so underwhelming compared to a bonding companion. > > Many of the points brought forward by you is that a 50% up time changes too many dynamics which will drive many players to feeling that an augment pet is the only correct route to play. That is not our intention and not where we want the game to go. > > 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, meaning that either slot will grant the stat gain (it does mean the AP functionality of the Eldritch Runestone offensive slot is going away). This allows players who would like to use an augment pet with Eldritch Runestones to have a choice in which augment pet to use. > > The concerns on dungeon runs/difficulty in the game with any changes to bonding runestones is not unnoticed and something we have been paying attention to internally throughout all of this. We have been doing internal testing on this and look forward to feedback during preview on this very topic.
@rafaelda The thing is, they shouldn't be nerfed. People balanced their builds BASED on it. That's like making a car that works fine, and then suddenly you can no longer use rubber tires but sponge tires. NO ONE would like that, because it's dumb. What should be nerfed (or rather, FIXED (cough*modsreadthis*cough)) is power share. It's just stupid. Nerfing DPS classes because DCs are overpowered? Errrrr.
Top tier groups SHOULD be able to do it stupidly fast, that's why we're grinding for it. This is just a bad call. There's no excusing such behavior on their side. Again, I don't mind the R14 thing, and I don't think anyone does - it's just a niche thing for the top tiers to do, so they aren't bored all the time. Because us mere mortals will do better things than upgrade enchants that cost 375 billion AD. And this is just a kick in the goolies for everyone who's actually still going up in the gear score because now they have to re-allocate their hard-earned AD, and they don't want to do that. And that's not good. And you should avoid making such ultimatums.
Well, it is true that cooldown = uptime is not necessarily the same thing as up 100% of the time. But, its close enough that you are making Bondings totally eclipse augments again. Defeating the stated goal of making both viable.
Even changing Eldritch to stat sharing in both offensive and defensive slots doesn't bring them close enough to Bondings to make them a viable choice. Bondings still give you more stat points 90% of the time or more plus the other contributions like debuffs, insignia procs, healing, DPS, etc. (195% for 3 Rank 14 Bondings as opposed to the theoretical Bulette pup with 3 Rank 14 Eldritch at 176.5%.) Additionally, this means that there is no need for any other runestone to exist other than Bondings or Eldritch. So, there goes diversity and choice out the window.
Here's a radical idea.
Remove the proc from Bondings altogether. Make the stats always on just by equipping them. This of course means they would work on augments, too.
Triple the proposed percentages for Bonding runestones but remove stacking so that you only get stats from one Bonding. (195% for Rank 14.)
Make them half as effective for augments. So that Rank 14 adds 97.5% to an augment (197.5% total).
Leave ArPen on the Eldritch runestones and instead replace the defensive ability. Probably with Lifesteal.
So, the result is that both augment and non-augment pets are good choices and all runestones will finally have a use even in endgame. You also get reliable, predictable stats from any companion. And you have a little more control over what those stats are because you free up two slots for the runestones of your choosing.
They should also give all existing accounts a refinement package containing 1 Teal Diamond, 1 Brilliant Diamond, 3 Ultimate Potency, 3 Superior Enchantment Stones and 2 Coalescent Wards. Enough materials to upgrade a single Rank 12 all the way to Rank 14.
This. More viable options is always the way to go. This suggestion still leaves Bondings way better than augments but nowhere near as bad as now.
Might not need to condense them down to just one stone like you say though. Just make no proc and half as much for augments.
Bondings are too strong. In fact since they are leaps and bounds ahead of any other option and many consider them to be the single most vital thing to get - more than artifacts, relics, etc. - AND they only come from zen - Bondings are really the only aspect of this entire game that you could actually say is "pay to win".
@sgbuilder2 The issue isn't diversity, it's the massive stat loss that just unbalances builds. Bondings aren't even close to pay to win. They were getting stupidly cheap lately. I bought by R9 bonds for 950k some time ago. Before the announcement, they were 460k roughly. What you're saying is something like "enchantments are pay to win". Well, yeah, you grind and you pay in AD, and you upgrade. That's the whole point of MMORPGs. If you want everything to be free and handed out, go play Garry's mod.
> @adinosii said: > Nobody consistently sees power like this in real dungeon runs. Please don't spread information like this without taking screenshots throughout actual dungeon runs. > > Uh... 200K+is perfectly normal and common in high-end groups. > > The highest-end content (ToNG) needs something like that for a really smooth and fast (30-40 minute) run. Sure, you can do the content without a massive power buffing like that, but it will just take longer. > > If you take away the power sharing you might also need to reduce the damage you have to do to finish ToNG. This would also solve the issue of negative damage - it is silly to see the main DPS at the bottom of the "damage dealt" list. > > That happens because the game seems to store the damage as a signed 32-bit number, which cannot represent anything higher than 2.147.483.647. When your total damage exceeds that, it overflows and goes negative. > > Quite frankly, a bug like that indicates an absurd lack of testing...but that is the subject of a different thread.
the key is consistently. it's easy taking screenshot of highest power achieved. i can do that too. but when there are dots or dozens of enemies hitting you at the same time. the AA powershare is not great as advertised here at all.
I swear, people need to switch to decaf. And I'm candidly frustrated with the over the top, sky is falling, we're all gonna quit and blah blah blah rhetoric.
On one hand, I see over and over and over again, people griping and complaining and making (laughable) claims about how they've been defrauded, cheated, bilked out of all the "money" they've spent "buying" their R12 Bondings. Maybe I need new glasses - but ah, where's that magic button in the Zen store for me to buy R12s?
Don't give me the argument that the only way to create R12+'s is to buy a Zen store Coal ward or Pres Wards. If you think that's the case, let me introduce you to this nifty feature called the Auction House. There are pages of Coal Wards and Pres Wards for sale *right now* on this amazing game feature. All you have to do is make some AD in game, and awaaaaaaaay you go. Find one, click it, your AD is debited and sent to the selling player, and et voila! You have a Coal Ward or a stack of Pres Wards in your mailbox.
I've played since beta. I'm a semi casual player. I still have R12's in all my slots (well, a couple R9 Quartermasters, but..), 3 R12 Bondings, Loyal Gear, and a stable full of pets and mounts - and on more than 1 character!!! Am I BIS? Meh, close - I push almost 15K ilvl. So go ahead and delete your scrub, noob, and whatever other inflammatory and insulting comments. They're as pointless and empty as all the threats I see getting bandied about. I've purchased some Coal Wards from the AH, NONE from the zen store. Most of mine have come from invoke chests. Wow, a free way to get Coal Wards. Or go run dungeons. 24K AD or so per day from dungeon runs taking an hour'ish per toon, and then you can buy coal Wards fairly often at NO REAL LIFE DOLLAR COST! I mean, all you do are speed runs anyway, amiright? Do the daily game quests and make FREE zen, and cash it in periodically and get another Coal Ward from the zen store. Problem solved, your precious debit card never gets used, and/or you're not having to spend any of the precious allowance mommy and daddy give you.
MMO's change. Classes, items, spells, mobs, loots, dungeons, every aspect of the game gets adjusted up and down over time. Stop whining "fraud" and "money grab". It's spurious at best, and laughable in total.
As I stated before:
"Yes, I understand that NWO is listed as a Free To Play game. Yep, you can play it for free. Never spend a dime. However, let's all be honest here - at some point, monetization *must* enter the game in some fashion. You can not honestly and realistically expect the company to run on love. Salaries cost money. Data centers cost money. Capital expenditures cost money. Bandwidth costs money. Would any of you, for a moment, go to work for a job that pays you absolutely nothing? Yes, there are some items that are available from the zen store only. You can spend a lot of time and make AD and convert it on the ZAX to get those items. Oh, wait - there's always people talking about how they make a gajillion AD daily. So, AD isn't that hard to make. But salaries must be paid. Bandwidth must be paid for. IBM, Microsoft, and other vendors want their checks, too. So, in order to pay for it - someone has to buy zen, and that pays the bills. And it allows the people who choose to not invest (yes, INVEST) money in the game to get access to zen. There's even ways to generate zero cost zen, so claiming that only "whales" can get stuff is ludicrous. So please stop insulting people who do spend money on the game. They (Cryptic) have to earn a living too, and thinking otherwise is naive at best. So you can go the long and slow route and never spend a dime, or just like in real life - you can accelerate and/or simplify things with the expenditure of modest amounts of cash. I don't mock you for being...thrifty, so I would expect the same courtesy in my decisions to support the game, company, and most of all.. the employees.. who make this game."
How can any of you even remotely make statements of spend MOAR dev time fixing bugs, MOAR content, MOAR (insert whatever)... and then also complain that it's such a terrible thing to spend cash on a game, or expect that something you bought today will remain the by god top tier end game pinnacle item forever, or that Cryptic can't offer incentives to spend or motivate cash flow into the game. Read my above requote. You don't HAVE to spend a dime, it just facilitates things if you want to do it faster.
Games change. Gear changes. Classes change. Everything changes. There is both give and take. The new refinement proposal has give - and take, but there's a HECK of a lot of give over the take. At the end of the day, we WILL come out ahead more ways than not. I'm so sorry that what you have today isn't going to be meta in every future incarnation.
OMG... my epic weapon from vanilla EQ isn't the end game epic now, and you can get it in about a day instead of the 2 months I spent grinding it originally for my paladin. My cell phone bill has gone up but I'm not getting anything new. And that Droid X I bought years ago was sold to me as the most advanced phone ever, and now there are cheaper better phones!!! Someone find me a lawyer!!! (This is sarcasm for those who don't understand sarcasm)
We will have less RP items and materials to track and inventory. Butthurt that you spent money in inventory slots and bags? I bought them too, and for about 20 toons! Guess what... they'll hold gear and other things JUST AS NICELY as they did all these gajillion RP items we have today, as well as new RP until you decide which toon to convert it to points on. And with loadouts, especially once they are fleshed out a bit, you're gonna have more than one gear set. In other games, I've had tank, dps, pvp, solo sets I lugged around all day. Half my inventory was gear sets. No one took away your inventory slots, they've given you a chance to repurpose them for something other than hoarding RP.
With the increased success rates on enchants and runestones, it will cost substantially less to get stones up to R12 than currently, so in effect, you'll be able to probably get R14's with about the same cost you have to get to R12's today for new toons - you know, those new toons you have been complaining about having to gear up now? And can the "but I need $3,000 in coal wards to keep my main current" rhetoric. It's false, and silly. Your existing stones, again, will be as good AND MOST LIKELY BETTER, except for Bondings. And if you're so marginally able to complete current content that the retuning of the Bondings makes it impossible, maybe you need to step back a tier or so in content until you can.. catch up.
And the absolute ridiculous puling whines about dungeons taking a few minutes longer? And now you won't be able to complete ETOS in less than 2 hours? You guys kill me. Have you ever PLAYED another MMO? It should be hard, you should not be able to faceroll the current "top" content end game dungeon in under 20 minutes. I mean, seriously - people are whining that they can't finish ToNG in 20 minutes or so? Seriously???? This is the first MMO I have *ever* played that end game dungeons (heck, most dungeons) didn't take time and effort several times greater than what people whine about here. Yeah, they probably should revamp the loot itemization a little, but.. I've gotten +1 daggers of suck from boss chests in DDO, and Rift, WoW, and EQ didn't even drop loot for every person in every raid or dungeon, so... what's the problem?
Surely I'm not the only person who remembers Raid Points and DKP systems and why they took place......or day long raids to break Plane Of Fear, or multiple hour raids to get to bosses in WoW only to wipe and have to start over again? Oh, wait - how about 4-6 hour runs to clear Hammerknell or the all day Saturday raids for Infernal Dawn? And you want to talk brutal? How about dungeon crawls in DDO with limited heals, mana, and campfires? You can run NWO dungeons over and over until your eyes glaze DAILY. Many MMO's, you get to run a dungeon once or twice a day, sometimes less than that. Heck, some mobs only came up when servers were reset. And you're complaining that you gotta spend 30 minutes vs 20 minutes on a dungeon? What you're all saying is that you want to be able to load into a dungeon, press one button to kill everything, get the top tier BIS loot item of your choice every time, and also have unbound gear magically drop into the AH, sell itself for you, and appear in your bank.
So if you're gonna quit, just do it. I dare you, heck, I *defy* you to do so. Stop wasting everyone's time, because if you don't quit today, the next time you don't get your lollipop, you're gonna scream it again. It gets old. My kids learned this concept at about 4 years old.
Adapt and move on, because what you have today, will change. It's called evolution.
TL;DR? Actually quit instead of threatening. Send me your gear and AD. Give me your creds as well, so I can change your account info to save you the temptation of ever logging back in. Unless your name is Chicken Little, stop claiming the sky is falling. It's overcast, at worst, and the sun will shine in short order. There is no Easy Mode. Overall, there are more pro's than con's to the new system. Learn to work with the system, cause it's gonna come whether you throw a temper tantrum or not. Things cost money. No, really - they do. Devs don't work for free to fix things, and new content costs money to develop. Constructive input and criticism will get you much farther than threats, insults, and spouting incorrect info as fact.
Have a nice day. Cthon PS - my opinions are MINE. They are not the opinions of my guild, guildmates, friends, or my cat. Well, maybe my cat.
@cthon Pros? Where? Versatility? I don't remember asking for it. It worked fine. It's like someone made a submarine out of metal, and the metal submarine works perfectly fine and became the norm, but then someone said, "Everyone makes submarines out of metal - let's make one out of bread!" and that's how they "fixed" power share issues which still HAMSTER-ing exists.
They can make money other ways. R14 enchants thing is there. But bondings? The thing literally everyone uses? It's just bad design.
You take overall stats away from decreasing bondingstone effectiveness, don't add anything to make other runestones viable and then compensate the entire mess with the ability to create r14. So in the end we will be able to rank our enchantments for no overall gain to rank 14, increasing the gap between new players and end game players even further.
The change should be adjustement of the bondings curve with a diminishing return for higher ranks giving a marginal overall increase at 14 (i.e. r14 = flat 100% vs current 95% r12).
Then rework the other runestone bonuses in such a way that they are viable alternatives by massively increasing the stats they provide towards a point where they provide a yield exactly the same amount of stats bonding boosted stats provide (my current stats are 1000 arm pen, 4200 crit and 7200 power, those would be transferred at 300% with full bondings so total stats a r14 runestone should provide are 12400.
To further increase the viability of all other runestones using multiple of the same type of runestone could have the second one incur an effectiveness penalty of say 25% and the third one 50%.
But who am I kidding history proofs that this will go live as presented, we'll suffer for it and it will be fixed in half a year or later.
Pros? Where? Versatility? I don't remember asking for it. It worked fine. It's like someone made a submarine out of metal, and the metal submarine works perfectly fine and became the norm, but then someone said, "Everyone makes submarines out of metal - let's make one out of bread!" and that's how they "fixed" power share issues which still HAMSTER-ing exists.
They can make money other ways. R14 enchants thing is there. But bondings? The thing literally everyone uses? It's just bad design.
Submarines made out of bread are called hoagies (or grinders, or po-boys, depending on where you are), and they are delicious. The metal ones hurt your teeth when chewing. How does the new Refining process automatically mean that you have to pry your credit or debit card out of your wallet? You do NOT HAVE TO BUY Coal or Pres Wards for Real Life Dollars. There are numerous ways to get those supposedly "must have" Coal Wards at ZERO cost to you other than a time investment. No one is forcing anyone to pay for anything with their hard earned (insert local currency type here).
Pros? Well, let's see... 1. Less RP items and materials to track. 2. RP points aren't artifact type specific, so no more "loss" of RP because I've got no Union stones, or what have you. 3. Enchants are having stats increased, as are Weapon and Armor enhancements receiving buffs. 4. As per #3, your existing stones will give you more stats with no cost or effort from you. 5. Increased success rates for upgrades. Which will need less Coal wards. 6. Decreased cost of refinements to get to upgrade levels. 7. Decreased cost of materials overall to upgrade. Roughly 1.6M AD or so less to get something to Trans now. 8. No more double requirements of R7,R8, and R9 levels, reducing cost and number of wards needed.
That's just off the top of my head. Yes, yes... bondings have been "nerfed into the ground" and now everything will be unplayable. See above post, if you're struggling so hard with current content, then maybe you need to try something easier until you can handle it.
And if they down tuned power sharing, we'd have the same complaints and threats from people. If they buffed up everything to "balance" bondings as they sit, then everyone would complain that things are too hard. Or we'd end up with WoW bosses and combat, everyone does 2.5M DPS, and Bosses have 4.5B HP's.
Maybe that's what Cryptic should do, to placate all the people who think the only measure of their worth is more zero's on their dps, and create a new deity called the Paingiver that all the wannabe 'leets and powergamers can follow. God forbid we have to actually apply some effort. Instead of Holy Rollers, we can have Face Rollers.
So tired of hearing that people want to be uber, but then complain there's no challenge.
The bottom line is people spent a ton of time and or money to get where they are and you want to set them back months and months/alot of money. It is all to obvious that you bait and switched the change we are not stupid. Its also obvious you dont respect your community any person who puts a single dollar into this or any game made by this company is a fool.
In regard to the Power share with bondings, Calm down, let's see how it will be first now that the bonding got reduced they won't give as much just wait and see today on preview how much power we will get doubt you will be able to reach 250-280k anytime soon. The power sharing is what made AC DC viable if that gets removed, AC DC will be another divine oracle (old divine oracle).
In regard to the Power share with bondings, Calm down, let's see how it will be first now that the bonding got reduced they won't give as much just wait and see today on preview how much power we will get doubt you will be able to reach 250-280k anytime soon. The power sharing is what made AC DC viable if that gets removed, AC DC will be another divine oracle (old divine oracle).
Assuming an AC DC is running full R14 radiants and double offense rings, and assuming I did my math correctly yesterday, an AC DC will only give about 20k less power than they do now (hitting a companion with r14 bondings).
It should still be very possible to reach the mid 200k power mark.
Pros? Well, let's see... 1. Less RP items and materials to track. 2. RP points aren't artifact type specific, so no more "loss" of RP because I've got no Union stones, or what have you. 3. Enchants are having stats increased, as are Weapon and Armor enhancements receiving buffs. 4. As per #3, your existing stones will give you more stats with no cost or effort from you. 5. Increased success rates for upgrades. Which will need less Coal wards. 6. Decreased cost of refinements to get to upgrade levels. 7. Decreased cost of materials overall to upgrade. Roughly 1.6M AD or so less to get something to Trans now. 8. No more double requirements of R7,R8, and R9 levels, reducing cost and number of wards needed.
That's just off the top of my head. Yes, yes... bondings have been "nerfed into the ground" and now everything will be unplayable. See above post, if you're struggling so hard with current content, then maybe you need to try something easier until you can handle it.
And if they down tuned power sharing, we'd have the same complaints and threats from people. If they buffed up everything to "balance" bondings as they sit, then everyone would complain that things are too hard. Or we'd end up with WoW bosses and combat, everyone does 2.5M DPS, and Bosses have 4.5B HP's.
Maybe that's what Cryptic should do, to placate all the people who think the only measure of their worth is more zero's on their dps, and create a new deity called the Paingiver that all the wannabe 'leets and powergamers can follow. God forbid we have to actually apply some effort. Instead of Holy Rollers, we can have Face Rollers.
So tired of hearing that people want to be uber, but then complain there's no challenge.
Now add all of this with the AD nerf from the queue changes - the fact that to get AD from dungeons you now have to queue for random dungeons with all of these newly nerfed people. And you have to follow the 1 tank 1 healer 3 dps mode if you want the AD from you dungeon or skirmish.
So your per dungeon time just went up, to get the same amount of AD - or you just run dungeons the old way forgoing the AD and go for salvage.
Now you work harder to complete old content, for less reward after getting something you saved up for nerfed - and then have to save up even more to get more coal wards off the AH to get your character back to where you started - while earning less AD.
True bondings/augments need a rework - but please tell me how all of these changes lumped together makes a good time for the players.
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
Bondings are too strong. In fact since they are leaps and bounds ahead of any other option and many consider them to be the single most vital thing to get - more than artifacts, relics, etc. - AND they only come from zen - Bondings are really the only aspect of this entire game that you could actually say is "pay to win".
Yes, bondings are candidly, OP. Any time you have something that completely and totally overshadows every other option, making it the ONLY option, you run a risky proposition. Eggs, one basket? Why bother taking the time to create, level, and gear a new toon? Let's just photocopy the same toon over and over. *That* is boring. And one build per character should NOT fit every situation/boss/dungeon.
Respectfully, Bondings can also be received from lockboxes. They are NOT zen only. And they are NOT exclusively PTW, because I can earn zen without spending any RL money at all, or by exchanging AD on the ZAX.
@cthon I was referring to the bonding nerf. I don't mind the R14 thing, the refinement change this is fine as well. We'll need more coal wards tho. R13->R14 - 1% chance. Also, ultimate marks of potency, which are 125k a pop. 1.25m AD in marks, and that just increases inventory clutter. I'm not struggling myself - I'm a pretty good player, my main is 14.2k and I can almost match same class players of higher IL - the 15.5-16k range. I can basically do stuff easily, but the thing is, Bondings are WAI, and power share isn't. So why fix something that ain't broke, instead of fixing something that's so broken that it resembles a body put through a wheel grinder?
The thing is, I make my own challenge. I try to improve my playstyle by doing mid-tier content solo (ELOL and so, I can't solo ETOS for example). And the issue here - it won't be hard to do some stuff - it will be impossible. Add to that the fact that some poor mid-tier players that aren't as lucky as me to be in a guild that can carry them can get into MSP or FBI in the random queue, and with bondings nerfed they won't be able to do HAMSTER there, and they'll just get the penalty for leaving 'cause they can't do it.
And again, I've said this 50 billion times and I'll say it again, this just pushes elitism to a new level. You'll see people requiring 13.5k+ people for ELOL in LFG. How are mid tiers gonna get past that ceiling? Where they're not good enough to get into group runs, so they can't earn AD from there, and they can't get into groups BECAUSE they don't have the AD to pay for an upgrade so marginal it's not even noteworthy. What I loved about this game is the visible increase after getting an upgrade. Eg from vorpal to dread - a massive increase for me. Or lightning, an alternative. That visible increase is what we want. This just sets our progress so far back that it makes literally EVERYTHING we've done in the last year redundant and pointless.
In regard to the Power share with bondings, Calm down, let's see how it will be first now that the bonding got reduced they won't give as much just wait and see today on preview how much power we will get doubt you will be able to reach 250-280k anytime soon. The power sharing is what made AC DC viable if that gets removed, AC DC will be another divine oracle (old divine oracle).
Assuming an AC DC is running full R14 radiants and double offense rings, and assuming I did my math correctly yesterday, an AC DC will only give about 20k less power than they do now (hitting a companion with r14 bondings).
It should still be very possible to reach the mid 200k power mark.
I agree but still it won't be as high as it used to be. From what I hear from people in the discord for AC DC to be able to compete with the buffs DO gives. It will need 70k base power and even with full rank 14 radiants they will get 2700 more power than before.
You guys better give an update on the status of this, my guild is falling apart. People aren't waiting until the change hits, they're leaving now so they don't do extra work for nothing.
Wicked, you do understand that the only thing they need to do is remove the power share affecting comps, right? That way they keep their buffs, but aren't as stupidly overpowered as before. Keep in mind, the way it is intended, it WILL NOT fix the power share issue of getting 100k+ stats. Some guy earlier said "There's bondings that give about 27k stats, and power share that gives 100k stats." And which one is the issue that makes everyone overpowered? We'll still have 50 billion power in the end and 5k % bonus damage from the scaling enchantments, so literally nothing that needed to be nerfed has been nerfed, and everything that worked fine has been buggered up. It's just NOT a good call.
Exactly. Those scale better, don't affect companions, and are consistent. That is so much simpler than a massive nerf affecting everyone in the game. That would be a re-balance. It still does everything it's supposed to do, but it does it differently. That's why GF's ITF is the greatest buff tool they have. It's a percentage buff. That's what makes it good. It's good in early game because it's not overpowered, but not weak, and same in the late game. Compare that to a bonus, let's say 10k power. In early game it's stupidly overpowered. In late game it's so bad probably no one would use it.
Mind you, it would also make lower-geared DCs viable. They wouldn't have to have 30 billion power to actually be worthwhile keeping in group. Perfect for new players.
Now add all of this with the AD nerf from the queue changes - the fact that to get AD from dungeons you now have to queue for random dungeons with all of these newly nerfed people. And you have to follow the 1 tank 1 healer 3 dps mode if you want the AD from you dungeon or skirmish.
So your per dungeon time just went up, to get the same amount of AD - or you just run dungeons the old way forgoing the AD and go for salvage.
Now you work harder to complete old content, for less reward after getting something you saved up for nerfed - and then have to save up even more to get more coal wards off the AH to get your character back to where you started - while earning less AD.
True bondings/augments need a rework - but please tell me how all of these changes lumped together makes a good time for the players.
I just glanced through the random queue post. It doesn't seem like an apocalyptic nerf to me? You can create and queue your own group, you just all have to qualify for the dungeon/skirms in the queue group, right? The verbiage states:
"For instance, in order to queue for Random: Epic Dungeon your group must have no more than 3 DPS, 1 healer and 1 tank."
It also states that you can potentially earn more than you currently can? Sounds like it just prevents people from finding super quick dungeons to speed run to generate AD and salvage, or private queuing level 12 dungeons just to get AD.
If you can't handle ultimate end game content, why are you queuing for it to make your daily dungeon/skirm AD? Sounds like it's a time net/net to me. Harder dungeon with more AD reward takes longer, easier dungeons with less ad rewards can be run faster, you just don't make as much, so you can hit 'em again to supplement with your salvage scenario?
Doesn't seem too terrible? Honestly, not being sarcastic about the AD dungeon queues, I'll read up more as time allows.
Doesn't seem too terrible? Honestly, not being sarcastic about the AD dungeon queues, I'll read up more as time allows.
The key is that it is implied that the daily AD will only be available IF YOU RANDOM QUEUE we have been asking the devs to tell us if we can still get the regular daily AD through other queues but they have remained silent about that.
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
While I think most people can agree that Bonding Runestones are overpowered, it also cannot be denied that people have either paid real money or huge amounts of time to get these, and they have been in the game like this for a long time. They do need adjusting, but considering the time and money put into these by players, I would hope the devs would take a more measured and careful approach to adjusting the power of these items. Please, by all means, do something about them, just take baby steps when making changes. Why not adjust their power by 10%, and see what the effect is? If you feel that is not enough, another 10% in the next patch? It seems unwise to lower their power and up-time by such a huge amount in one fell swoop.
@aelfgarmt The thing is, it's not overpowered by any means. Make comps not get buffed by power share and you'll see how much harder a dungeon is when you don't have 250k power. Power share is. Well, not overpowered, but broken. Just simply broken. Stop power share from affecting companions and you're good.
I would like to make a case to the devs for account bound RP.
In traditional D&D the GM was somewhat opposed to the players. They were adversaries and to at least some extent the GM was trying to kill them. But the GMs were bound by rules made by the makers of the game. They couldn't simply change a rule to make it easier to kill the players.
In video games, however, the devs play both the role of GM and of game makers. The result is that often devs fail to recognize the difference. The change to bondings is a perfect example. The devs think, "It's too easy for them, so let's change the rules on how they work," instead of, "Well, let's make bosses target companions so players lose their bondings and are forced to consider augments," or something of that nature. The player base gets so upset with such changes because they inherently sense that this is unfair.
I don't say that to complain. In all fairness NW isn't very bad in this regard (except perhaps when it comes to nerfing gear and classes into the stone age because someone figured out a way to excel within the confines of the current rules). I say it to make this point: I have played games where they made things tedious, annoying, and unnecessarily difficult and called that challenging gameplay. I don't want to spend 45 minutes running to the other side of the world just to get to the dungeon. I don't want to click something 1000 times when it could have been coded to click just twice. That isn't fun, it's boring. That isn't difficult, it's physically painful. Anything that causes players to waste time doing the mundane rather than the enjoyable is missing the point of what the game designers are trying to sell to the players. Is this challenging in a fun way or just something to make players waste their time? Is the challenge related to exacting combat/party mechanics/puzzles or the result of a cumbersome user interface? Etc. The day someone creates a game devoid of all such annoyances is the day I settle into a single game for the rest of my life. That notion should be the driving philosophy in all new development.
I can give a number of examples of failures of that philosophy that are currently in the game that really should be fixed, but I'll skip it to focus on something a good number of people have already suggested here.
You should unbind the new RP currency. At least, don't bind it to character and keep it account-wide.
Currently there are steady sources of RP that are bound to character. Thaumaturgics are the perfect example. We get character bound thaums from invoking and from - IIRC - Sharandar. But what is the point of having bound thaums? I stick my weapon enchantment in my shared bank, hop toons, feed their character bound thaums into it, put it back in the bank, hop toons, feed again, wash, rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants. The stones are bound but the RP becomes unbound the moment I feed it into something that isn't bound. The result is simply tedium. The only effect of the bind is to make me waste my time hopping toons (and presumably to put extra load on your character server).
So what is the point of binding stones to character at all? I have always assumed that some dev team way back when thought it would be a clever means of forcing people to buy more bags from the Zen store. But here you have stated some of the purposes of the refinement changes are to help free bag space and simplify the process. If that's true - and since you gave us a separate inventory for keys I assume it is - there's really no point in binding the RP from the various new stones. We will be able to pass enchantments to pull RP from any toon we have anyway. So please, just simplify the process, remove the time sink and just keep it an account-wide pool of RP.
If you really wanted to go the extra mile, you could have two currency listings. One for character and one for the entire account. Then allow us to easily transfer currencies between them (none of this bank deposit/withdraw nonsense, give us a right-click -> transfer to account/character). I suppose there might be players that would like having both types. Personally, I'd rather have a single shared currency across all toons. Same thing with Tarmalune bars. Same thing with companion upgrade tokens. Same thing with pretty much all currencies. (Hell, do you know how much I would love you guys if you'd allow us to transfer campaign currencies between toons?) What exactly is the point of making us transfer gold and AD between toons all the time? You guys want to rethink things to improve quality of life and make it simpler for new players? Account-wide currencies would go a long way.
But for now, please just seriously consider keeping the RP bound to account. Don't create a hurdle that adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game, that presents no challenge beyond extra clicks.
Thanks for your hard work and thanks for your consideration.
I was referring to the bonding nerf. I don't mind the R14 thing, the refinement change this is fine as well.
We'll need more coal wards tho. R13->R14 - 1% chance. Also, ultimate marks of potency, which are 125k a pop. 1.25m AD in marks, and that just increases inventory clutter.
Oh, gotcha. OK, I think I see where you're going. (Text is sometimes a poor vehicle for conveying the nuances of a conversation, because written word doesn't give you the inflection/tone of voice that spoken does. Sometimes I sound snarkier than I really am, so apologies.) However, I disagree with the clutter comment, as we go from 14 or more RP materials now to 9, so clutter should reduce.
By R13-R14, you're referring to refining the Bondings, right?
OK, so a few things I think a lot of us keep overlooking... Enchants and Enhancements are all getting buffed, so even at current levels, we're gonna have higher stats than now. Yes, with the reduction in Bonding transfers, we'll net less from our companions, but seriously - is it *really* going to be *that* game breaking, since our existing itemization will give us more base stats than we have currently? And with (shudders) all the "power share" shenanigans, is it *really* gonna be that damaging a blow? Didn't I see somewhere that this might end up being roughly a 20K loss of power out of a pool of 200K+ power?
Also, there are two paths that have to be considered, yes? Current state, and future growth. Current state is my GWF, Pally, and OP that I *can* (not have to, can) upgrade my bondings to R14 to approach my current states, *assuming* that it's not going to be narrowed by the increase in stats of other stones before upgrading them to R13/R14.
R12-R13 is 3% chance. Requires *1* Ultimate Potency, 125K AD if you have to buy it outright. It could still come from other sources, a la GMoP and SMoP do now. Remains TBD, but I'll go with your model for now. You could use Pres Wards, but we'll go with a Coal Ward just for worse case scenario. So yeah, approximately 600K AD.
R13-R14 is a 1% chance. Requires 2 Ultimates, and 3 Superior Gemstones. 250K AD, 1 Coal Ward. So about 700K AD.
So getting from R12-R14 is gonna be about 1.2-1.3M AD, not that much just to get from R13-R14.
So yeah, we're gonna spend some AD (myself included) to turn our R12 Bondings to R14. Now, future state - I have other toons that I'll be playing at some point. How about a little credit for the process in that overall, it's going to cost me about the same to get to R14 as it does now to get to an R12? In other words, going from R5-R12 (apples to apples):
Rank 5->6 is currently a 40% chance of success (60% with new system). Both still use a single blue Mark of Potency. Win to new system. Rank 6->7 is currently a 30% chance of success (50% with new system). Both still use 2 blue Marks of Potency. Another win to new system. Rank 7->8 is currently a 25% chance of success, a Greater Mark of Potency, AND you need another Rank 7 of the same type. New system - Greater Mark of Potency, 40% chance of success. Win to new system, *again*. Rank 8->9 is currently a 20% chance of success, 2 Greater Marks of Potency, AND a Rank 8 of the same type. New system - 2 Greater Marks of Potency, 30% success chance. Winner - new system. Rank 9->10 is currently a 10% chance of success, 2 Greater Marks of Potency, AND another Rank 9 of the same type. New system - 2 Greater Marks of Potency, 3 Enchantment Stones (3 converted Green? Blue? Assuming Green.. Marks of Power/Stability/Union), 20% chance of success. Winner - new system. Rank 10->11 is currently a 5% chance of success, 2 SMoP's, 1 blue Mark each of Stability, Union, and Power. New system - 10% chance and *1* Superior Mark Of Potency. New system is winner, again. Rank 11->12 is currently a 3% chance of success, *4* SMoP's, 1 *each* Greater Mark of Power, Stability, and Union. New system - 5% chance of success, 2 SMoP's, 3 Greater Enchantments (assuming converted Blue Marks of Power/Stability/Union). Again, new system is clear winner.
So, overall this means: Old System: 1 Rank 5, another Rank 7, another Rank 8 (2 7's), another Rank 9 (4 7's), 3 Marks of Potency, 5 Greater Mark of Potency, 6 Superior Marks of Potency, 1 blue Mark of Potency, 1 blue Mark of Stability, 1 blue Mark of Union, 1 Greater Mark of Power, 1 Greater Mark of Union, 1 Greater Mark of Stability. New System: 1 Rank 5, 3 Mark Of Potency, 5 Greater Mark Of Potency, 3 Superior Mark of Potency, 3 "Enchantment" Stones (Green Marks of Power/Utility/Stability converted?), 3 Greater Enchantment Stones (Blue Marks of Potency/Stability/Power converted?).
Net: 1 less R7 (70K), 1 Less R8 (100K), 1 less R9(345K). 3 Less SMoP's (210K). I'm ignoring the Blue/Purple "current" marks as analogs to the "new version" Enchantment Stones. So, 725K less to create an R12 Bonding. Meaning, we can do R13 for the same cost(ish) as R12 today, with LESS RP point cost, and with higher success rates, use more Pres Wards than Coal Wards.
Factor in the reduced burden and overhead of refining points to get to R14, increased success rates requiring fewer Coal and Pres wards, making new stones will not be as painful as they are currently, financially, timewise, and refinement point wise, so New System - Win?
And ultimately, gear grows and progresses. We're gonna have new ranks of stuff, so future costs are something that are intrinsic to continued game growth. I mean, where would we be if we still maxed out at rank 7 enchants, right?
someone did the math, you actually earn less total than the current 2dung+2skirm. About 2k less iirc.
Anyways, this makes the game stupidly harsh on new players. They just don't get rewarded for playing the game anymore. Be top tier immediately or quit the game.
Doesn't seem too terrible? Honestly, not being sarcastic about the AD dungeon queues, I'll read up more as time allows.
The key is that it is implied that the daily AD will only be available IF YOU RANDOM QUEUE we have been asking the devs to tell us if we can still get the regular daily AD through other queues but they have remained silent about that.
Good info, thank you both. Even a small(ish) delta like 2K AD can add up, but I don't think it really is "harsh" to the extreme. 2K/day variance means that I have to run 11 days to make what I did in 10, roughly 60K/year loss in AD. Not earth shattering, but yeah - I can see (somewhat) your point there.
Good info, thank you both. Even a small(ish) delta like 2K AD can add up, but I don't think it really is "harsh" to the extreme. 2K/day variance means that I have to run 11 days to make what I did in 10, roughly 60K/year loss in AD. Not earth shattering, but yeah - I can see (somewhat) your point there.
And here is the real problem with the AD only being available with the random queue - you have to have ALL of the dungeons unlocked to random queue into that dungeon. Meaning you have to unlock both MSPC and FBI to random queue into Malabogs.
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
Comments
> We fully understand how big of a topic this is which is why we wanted to get the details out early to get feedback on all of the changes. And feedback certainly has been given! Although these types of topics can get heated due to the passion players have for this game, it is a good thing to see such involvement and discussion from our player base.
>
> There are valid points being brought up through out this discussion. Reading over all of this feedback, from multiple sources, has allowed us to take a look at different perspectives on the bonding issues. Bonding runestones do need an adjustment and we'd like to allow for other companion and runestone choices to not be so underwhelming compared to a bonding companion.
>
> Many of the points brought forward by you is that a 50% up time changes too many dynamics which will drive many players to feeling that an augment pet is the only correct route to play. That is not our intention and not where we want the game to go.
>
> 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, meaning that either slot will grant the stat gain (it does mean the AP functionality of the Eldritch Runestone offensive slot is going away). This allows players who would like to use an augment pet with Eldritch Runestones to have a choice in which augment pet to use.
>
> The concerns on dungeon runs/difficulty in the game with any changes to bonding runestones is not unnoticed and something we have been paying attention to internally throughout all of this. We have been doing internal testing on this and look forward to feedback during preview on this very topic.
Well played cryptic, well played.
The thing is, they shouldn't be nerfed. People balanced their builds BASED on it. That's like making a car that works fine, and then suddenly you can no longer use rubber tires but sponge tires. NO ONE would like that, because it's dumb. What should be nerfed (or rather, FIXED (cough*modsreadthis*cough)) is power share. It's just stupid. Nerfing DPS classes because DCs are overpowered? Errrrr.
Top tier groups SHOULD be able to do it stupidly fast, that's why we're grinding for it. This is just a bad call. There's no excusing such behavior on their side. Again, I don't mind the R14 thing, and I don't think anyone does - it's just a niche thing for the top tiers to do, so they aren't bored all the time. Because us mere mortals will do better things than upgrade enchants that cost 375 billion AD. And this is just a kick in the goolies for everyone who's actually still going up in the gear score because now they have to re-allocate their hard-earned AD, and they don't want to do that. And that's not good. And you should avoid making such ultimatums.
Might not need to condense them down to just one stone like you say though. Just make no proc and half as much for augments.
Bondings are too strong. In fact since they are leaps and bounds ahead of any other option and many consider them to be the single most vital thing to get - more than artifacts, relics, etc. - AND they only come from zen - Bondings are really the only aspect of this entire game that you could actually say is "pay to win".
The issue isn't diversity, it's the massive stat loss that just unbalances builds. Bondings aren't even close to pay to win. They were getting stupidly cheap lately. I bought by R9 bonds for 950k some time ago. Before the announcement, they were 460k roughly. What you're saying is something like "enchantments are pay to win". Well, yeah, you grind and you pay in AD, and you upgrade. That's the whole point of MMORPGs. If you want everything to be free and handed out, go play Garry's mod.
> Nobody consistently sees power like this in real dungeon runs. Please don't spread information like this without taking screenshots throughout actual dungeon runs.
>
> Uh... 200K+is perfectly normal and common in high-end groups.
>
> The highest-end content (ToNG) needs something like that for a really smooth and fast (30-40 minute) run. Sure, you can do the content without a massive power buffing like that, but it will just take longer.
>
> If you take away the power sharing you might also need to reduce the damage you have to do to finish ToNG. This would also solve the issue of negative damage - it is silly to see the main DPS at the bottom of the "damage dealt" list.
>
> That happens because the game seems to store the damage as a signed 32-bit number, which cannot represent anything higher than 2.147.483.647. When your total damage exceeds that, it overflows and goes negative.
>
> Quite frankly, a bug like that indicates an absurd lack of testing...but that is the subject of a different thread.
the key is consistently. it's easy taking screenshot of highest power achieved. i can do that too. but when there are dots or dozens of enemies hitting you at the same time. the AA powershare is not great as advertised here at all.
On one hand, I see over and over and over again, people griping and complaining and making (laughable) claims about how they've been defrauded, cheated, bilked out of all the "money" they've spent "buying" their R12 Bondings. Maybe I need new glasses - but ah, where's that magic button in the Zen store for me to buy R12s?
Don't give me the argument that the only way to create R12+'s is to buy a Zen store Coal ward or Pres Wards. If you think that's the case, let me introduce you to this nifty feature called the Auction House. There are pages of Coal Wards and Pres Wards for sale *right now* on this amazing game feature. All you have to do is make some AD in game, and awaaaaaaaay you go. Find one, click it, your AD is debited and sent to the selling player, and et voila! You have a Coal Ward or a stack of Pres Wards in your mailbox.
I've played since beta. I'm a semi casual player. I still have R12's in all my slots (well, a couple R9 Quartermasters, but..), 3 R12 Bondings, Loyal Gear, and a stable full of pets and mounts - and on more than 1 character!!! Am I BIS? Meh, close - I push almost 15K ilvl. So go ahead and delete your scrub, noob, and whatever other inflammatory and insulting comments. They're as pointless and empty as all the threats I see getting bandied about. I've purchased some Coal Wards from the AH, NONE from the zen store. Most of mine have come from invoke chests. Wow, a free way to get Coal Wards. Or go run dungeons. 24K AD or so per day from dungeon runs taking an hour'ish per toon, and then you can buy coal Wards fairly often at NO REAL LIFE DOLLAR COST! I mean, all you do are speed runs anyway, amiright? Do the daily game quests and make FREE zen, and cash it in periodically and get another Coal Ward from the zen store. Problem solved, your precious debit card never gets used, and/or you're not having to spend any of the precious allowance mommy and daddy give you.
MMO's change. Classes, items, spells, mobs, loots, dungeons, every aspect of the game gets adjusted up and down over time. Stop whining "fraud" and "money grab". It's spurious at best, and laughable in total.
As I stated before:
"Yes, I understand that NWO is listed as a Free To Play game. Yep, you can play it for free. Never spend a dime. However, let's all be honest here - at some point, monetization *must* enter the game in some fashion. You can not honestly and realistically expect the company to run on love. Salaries cost money. Data centers cost money. Capital expenditures cost money. Bandwidth costs money. Would any of you, for a moment, go to work for a job that pays you absolutely nothing? Yes, there are some items that are available from the zen store only. You can spend a lot of time and make AD and convert it on the ZAX to get those items. Oh, wait - there's always people talking about how they make a gajillion AD daily. So, AD isn't that hard to make. But salaries must be paid. Bandwidth must be paid for. IBM, Microsoft, and other vendors want their checks, too. So, in order to pay for it - someone has to buy zen, and that pays the bills. And it allows the people who choose to not invest (yes, INVEST) money in the game to get access to zen. There's even ways to generate zero cost zen, so claiming that only "whales" can get stuff is ludicrous. So please stop insulting people who do spend money on the game. They (Cryptic) have to earn a living too, and thinking otherwise is naive at best. So you can go the long and slow route and never spend a dime, or just like in real life - you can accelerate and/or simplify things with the expenditure of modest amounts of cash. I don't mock you for being...thrifty, so I would expect the same courtesy in my decisions to support the game, company, and most of all.. the employees.. who make this game."
How can any of you even remotely make statements of spend MOAR dev time fixing bugs, MOAR content, MOAR (insert whatever)... and then also complain that it's such a terrible thing to spend cash on a game, or expect that something you bought today will remain the by god top tier end game pinnacle item forever, or that Cryptic can't offer incentives to spend or motivate cash flow into the game. Read my above requote. You don't HAVE to spend a dime, it just facilitates things if you want to do it faster.
Games change. Gear changes. Classes change. Everything changes. There is both give and take. The new refinement proposal has give - and take, but there's a HECK of a lot of give over the take. At the end of the day, we WILL come out ahead more ways than not. I'm so sorry that what you have today isn't going to be meta in every future incarnation.
OMG... my epic weapon from vanilla EQ isn't the end game epic now, and you can get it in about a day instead of the 2 months I spent grinding it originally for my paladin. My cell phone bill has gone up but I'm not getting anything new. And that Droid X I bought years ago was sold to me as the most advanced phone ever, and now there are cheaper better phones!!! Someone find me a lawyer!!! (This is sarcasm for those who don't understand sarcasm)
We will have less RP items and materials to track and inventory. Butthurt that you spent money in inventory slots and bags? I bought them too, and for about 20 toons! Guess what... they'll hold gear and other things JUST AS NICELY as they did all these gajillion RP items we have today, as well as new RP until you decide which toon to convert it to points on. And with loadouts, especially once they are fleshed out a bit, you're gonna have more than one gear set. In other games, I've had tank, dps, pvp, solo sets I lugged around all day. Half my inventory was gear sets. No one took away your inventory slots, they've given you a chance to repurpose them for something other than hoarding RP.
With the increased success rates on enchants and runestones, it will cost substantially less to get stones up to R12 than currently, so in effect, you'll be able to probably get R14's with about the same cost you have to get to R12's today for new toons - you know, those new toons you have been complaining about having to gear up now? And can the "but I need $3,000 in coal wards to keep my main current" rhetoric. It's false, and silly. Your existing stones, again, will be as good AND MOST LIKELY BETTER, except for Bondings. And if you're so marginally able to complete current content that the retuning of the Bondings makes it impossible, maybe you need to step back a tier or so in content until you can.. catch up.
And the absolute ridiculous puling whines about dungeons taking a few minutes longer? And now you won't be able to complete ETOS in less than 2 hours? You guys kill me. Have you ever PLAYED another MMO? It should be hard, you should not be able to faceroll the current "top" content end game dungeon in under 20 minutes. I mean, seriously - people are whining that they can't finish ToNG in 20 minutes or so? Seriously???? This is the first MMO I have *ever* played that end game dungeons (heck, most dungeons) didn't take time and effort several times greater than what people whine about here. Yeah, they probably should revamp the loot itemization a little, but.. I've gotten +1 daggers of suck from boss chests in DDO, and Rift, WoW, and EQ didn't even drop loot for every person in every raid or dungeon, so... what's the problem?
Surely I'm not the only person who remembers Raid Points and DKP systems and why they took place......or day long raids to break Plane Of Fear, or multiple hour raids to get to bosses in WoW only to wipe and have to start over again? Oh, wait - how about 4-6 hour runs to clear Hammerknell or the all day Saturday raids for Infernal Dawn? And you want to talk brutal? How about dungeon crawls in DDO with limited heals, mana, and campfires? You can run NWO dungeons over and over until your eyes glaze DAILY. Many MMO's, you get to run a dungeon once or twice a day, sometimes less than that. Heck, some mobs only came up when servers were reset. And you're complaining that you gotta spend 30 minutes vs 20 minutes on a dungeon? What you're all saying is that you want to be able to load into a dungeon, press one button to kill everything, get the top tier BIS loot item of your choice every time, and also have unbound gear magically drop into the AH, sell itself for you, and appear in your bank.
So if you're gonna quit, just do it. I dare you, heck, I *defy* you to do so. Stop wasting everyone's time, because if you don't quit today, the next time you don't get your lollipop, you're gonna scream it again. It gets old. My kids learned this concept at about 4 years old.
Adapt and move on, because what you have today, will change. It's called evolution.
TL;DR?
Actually quit instead of threatening. Send me your gear and AD. Give me your creds as well, so I can change your account info to save you the temptation of ever logging back in.
Unless your name is Chicken Little, stop claiming the sky is falling. It's overcast, at worst, and the sun will shine in short order.
There is no Easy Mode.
Overall, there are more pro's than con's to the new system. Learn to work with the system, cause it's gonna come whether you throw a temper tantrum or not.
Things cost money. No, really - they do. Devs don't work for free to fix things, and new content costs money to develop.
Constructive input and criticism will get you much farther than threats, insults, and spouting incorrect info as fact.
Have a nice day.
Cthon
PS - my opinions are MINE. They are not the opinions of my guild, guildmates, friends, or my cat.
Well, maybe my cat.
Pros? Where? Versatility? I don't remember asking for it. It worked fine. It's like someone made a submarine out of metal, and the metal submarine works perfectly fine and became the norm, but then someone said, "Everyone makes submarines out of metal - let's make one out of bread!" and that's how they "fixed" power share issues which still HAMSTER-ing exists.
They can make money other ways. R14 enchants thing is there. But bondings? The thing literally everyone uses? It's just bad design.
The change should be adjustement of the bondings curve with a diminishing return for higher ranks giving a marginal overall increase at 14 (i.e. r14 = flat 100% vs current 95% r12).
Then rework the other runestone bonuses in such a way that they are viable alternatives by massively increasing the stats they provide towards a point where they provide a yield exactly the same amount of stats bonding boosted stats provide (my current stats are 1000 arm pen, 4200 crit and 7200 power, those would be transferred at 300% with full bondings so total stats a r14 runestone should provide are 12400.
To further increase the viability of all other runestones using multiple of the same type of runestone could have the second one incur an effectiveness penalty of say 25% and the third one 50%.
But who am I kidding history proofs that this will go live as presented, we'll suffer for it and it will be fixed in half a year or later.
Pros? Well, let's see...
1. Less RP items and materials to track.
2. RP points aren't artifact type specific, so no more "loss" of RP because I've got no Union stones, or what have you.
3. Enchants are having stats increased, as are Weapon and Armor enhancements receiving buffs.
4. As per #3, your existing stones will give you more stats with no cost or effort from you.
5. Increased success rates for upgrades. Which will need less Coal wards.
6. Decreased cost of refinements to get to upgrade levels.
7. Decreased cost of materials overall to upgrade. Roughly 1.6M AD or so less to get something to Trans now.
8. No more double requirements of R7,R8, and R9 levels, reducing cost and number of wards needed.
That's just off the top of my head. Yes, yes... bondings have been "nerfed into the ground" and now everything will be unplayable. See above post, if you're struggling so hard with current content, then maybe you need to try something easier until you can handle it.
And if they down tuned power sharing, we'd have the same complaints and threats from people. If they buffed up everything to "balance" bondings as they sit, then everyone would complain that things are too hard. Or we'd end up with WoW bosses and combat, everyone does 2.5M DPS, and Bosses have 4.5B HP's.
Maybe that's what Cryptic should do, to placate all the people who think the only measure of their worth is more zero's on their dps, and create a new deity called the Paingiver that all the wannabe 'leets and powergamers can follow. God forbid we have to actually apply some effort. Instead of Holy Rollers, we can have Face Rollers.
So tired of hearing that people want to be uber, but then complain there's no challenge.
It should still be very possible to reach the mid 200k power mark.
So your per dungeon time just went up, to get the same amount of AD - or you just run dungeons the old way forgoing the AD and go for salvage.
Now you work harder to complete old content, for less reward after getting something you saved up for nerfed - and then have to save up even more to get more coal wards off the AH to get your character back to where you started - while earning less AD.
True bondings/augments need a rework - but please tell me how all of these changes lumped together makes a good time for the players.
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
Respectfully, Bondings can also be received from lockboxes. They are NOT zen only. And they are NOT exclusively PTW, because I can earn zen without spending any RL money at all, or by exchanging AD on the ZAX.
I was referring to the bonding nerf. I don't mind the R14 thing, the refinement change this is fine as well.
We'll need more coal wards tho. R13->R14 - 1% chance. Also, ultimate marks of potency, which are 125k a pop. 1.25m AD in marks, and that just increases inventory clutter.
I'm not struggling myself - I'm a pretty good player, my main is 14.2k and I can almost match same class players of higher IL - the 15.5-16k range. I can basically do stuff easily, but the thing is, Bondings are WAI, and power share isn't. So why fix something that ain't broke, instead of fixing something that's so broken that it resembles a body put through a wheel grinder?
The thing is, I make my own challenge. I try to improve my playstyle by doing mid-tier content solo (ELOL and so, I can't solo ETOS for example). And the issue here - it won't be hard to do some stuff - it will be impossible. Add to that the fact that some poor mid-tier players that aren't as lucky as me to be in a guild that can carry them can get into MSP or FBI in the random queue, and with bondings nerfed they won't be able to do HAMSTER there, and they'll just get the penalty for leaving 'cause they can't do it.
And again, I've said this 50 billion times and I'll say it again, this just pushes elitism to a new level. You'll see people requiring 13.5k+ people for ELOL in LFG. How are mid tiers gonna get past that ceiling? Where they're not good enough to get into group runs, so they can't earn AD from there, and they can't get into groups BECAUSE they don't have the AD to pay for an upgrade so marginal it's not even noteworthy. What I loved about this game is the visible increase after getting an upgrade. Eg from vorpal to dread - a massive increase for me. Or lightning, an alternative. That visible increase is what we want. This just sets our progress so far back that it makes literally EVERYTHING we've done in the last year redundant and pointless.
It should still be very possible to reach the mid 200k power mark.
I agree but still it won't be as high as it used to be. From what I hear from people in the discord for AC DC to be able to compete with the buffs DO gives. It will need 70k base power and even with full rank 14 radiants they will get 2700 more power than before.
Moderator edited out rule violation.
You guys better give an update on the status of this, my guild is falling apart. People aren't waiting until the change hits, they're leaving now so they don't do extra work for nothing.
Some guy earlier said "There's bondings that give about 27k stats, and power share that gives 100k stats." And which one is the issue that makes everyone overpowered? We'll still have 50 billion power in the end and 5k % bonus damage from the scaling enchantments, so literally nothing that needed to be nerfed has been nerfed, and everything that worked fine has been buggered up. It's just NOT a good call.
"For instance, in order to queue for Random: Epic Dungeon your group must have no more than 3 DPS, 1 healer and 1 tank."
It also states that you can potentially earn more than you currently can? Sounds like it just prevents people from finding super quick dungeons to speed run to generate AD and salvage, or private queuing level 12 dungeons just to get AD.
If you can't handle ultimate end game content, why are you queuing for it to make your daily dungeon/skirm AD? Sounds like it's a time net/net to me. Harder dungeon with more AD reward takes longer, easier dungeons with less ad rewards can be run faster, you just don't make as much, so you can hit 'em again to supplement with your salvage scenario?
Doesn't seem too terrible? Honestly, not being sarcastic about the AD dungeon queues, I'll read up more as time allows.
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
Teegle
The thing is, it's not overpowered by any means. Make comps not get buffed by power share and you'll see how much harder a dungeon is when you don't have 250k power. Power share is. Well, not overpowered, but broken. Just simply broken. Stop power share from affecting companions and you're good.
I would like to make a case to the devs for account bound RP.
In traditional D&D the GM was somewhat opposed to the players. They were adversaries and to at least some extent the GM was trying to kill them. But the GMs were bound by rules made by the makers of the game. They couldn't simply change a rule to make it easier to kill the players.
In video games, however, the devs play both the role of GM and of game makers. The result is that often devs fail to recognize the difference. The change to bondings is a perfect example. The devs think, "It's too easy for them, so let's change the rules on how they work," instead of, "Well, let's make bosses target companions so players lose their bondings and are forced to consider augments," or something of that nature. The player base gets so upset with such changes because they inherently sense that this is unfair.
I don't say that to complain. In all fairness NW isn't very bad in this regard (except perhaps when it comes to nerfing gear and classes into the stone age because someone figured out a way to excel within the confines of the current rules). I say it to make this point: I have played games where they made things tedious, annoying, and unnecessarily difficult and called that challenging gameplay. I don't want to spend 45 minutes running to the other side of the world just to get to the dungeon. I don't want to click something 1000 times when it could have been coded to click just twice. That isn't fun, it's boring. That isn't difficult, it's physically painful. Anything that causes players to waste time doing the mundane rather than the enjoyable is missing the point of what the game designers are trying to sell to the players. Is this challenging in a fun way or just something to make players waste their time? Is the challenge related to exacting combat/party mechanics/puzzles or the result of a cumbersome user interface? Etc. The day someone creates a game devoid of all such annoyances is the day I settle into a single game for the rest of my life. That notion should be the driving philosophy in all new development.
I can give a number of examples of failures of that philosophy that are currently in the game that really should be fixed, but I'll skip it to focus on something a good number of people have already suggested here.
You should unbind the new RP currency. At least, don't bind it to character and keep it account-wide.
Currently there are steady sources of RP that are bound to character. Thaumaturgics are the perfect example. We get character bound thaums from invoking and from - IIRC - Sharandar. But what is the point of having bound thaums? I stick my weapon enchantment in my shared bank, hop toons, feed their character bound thaums into it, put it back in the bank, hop toons, feed again, wash, rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants. The stones are bound but the RP becomes unbound the moment I feed it into something that isn't bound. The result is simply tedium. The only effect of the bind is to make me waste my time hopping toons (and presumably to put extra load on your character server).
So what is the point of binding stones to character at all? I have always assumed that some dev team way back when thought it would be a clever means of forcing people to buy more bags from the Zen store. But here you have stated some of the purposes of the refinement changes are to help free bag space and simplify the process. If that's true - and since you gave us a separate inventory for keys I assume it is - there's really no point in binding the RP from the various new stones. We will be able to pass enchantments to pull RP from any toon we have anyway. So please, just simplify the process, remove the time sink and just keep it an account-wide pool of RP.
If you really wanted to go the extra mile, you could have two currency listings. One for character and one for the entire account. Then allow us to easily transfer currencies between them (none of this bank deposit/withdraw nonsense, give us a right-click -> transfer to account/character). I suppose there might be players that would like having both types. Personally, I'd rather have a single shared currency across all toons. Same thing with Tarmalune bars. Same thing with companion upgrade tokens. Same thing with pretty much all currencies. (Hell, do you know how much I would love you guys if you'd allow us to transfer campaign currencies between toons?) What exactly is the point of making us transfer gold and AD between toons all the time? You guys want to rethink things to improve quality of life and make it simpler for new players? Account-wide currencies would go a long way.
But for now, please just seriously consider keeping the RP bound to account. Don't create a hurdle that adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game, that presents no challenge beyond extra clicks.
Thanks for your hard work and thanks for your consideration.
By R13-R14, you're referring to refining the Bondings, right?
OK, so a few things I think a lot of us keep overlooking... Enchants and Enhancements are all getting buffed, so even at current levels, we're gonna have higher stats than now. Yes, with the reduction in Bonding transfers, we'll net less from our companions, but seriously - is it *really* going to be *that* game breaking, since our existing itemization will give us more base stats than we have currently? And with (shudders) all the "power share" shenanigans, is it *really* gonna be that damaging a blow? Didn't I see somewhere that this might end up being roughly a 20K loss of power out of a pool of 200K+ power?
Also, there are two paths that have to be considered, yes? Current state, and future growth. Current state is my GWF, Pally, and OP that I *can* (not have to, can) upgrade my bondings to R14 to approach my current states, *assuming* that it's not going to be narrowed by the increase in stats of other stones before upgrading them to R13/R14.
R12-R13 is 3% chance. Requires *1* Ultimate Potency, 125K AD if you have to buy it outright. It could still come from other sources, a la GMoP and SMoP do now. Remains TBD, but I'll go with your model for now. You could use Pres Wards, but we'll go with a Coal Ward just for worse case scenario. So yeah, approximately 600K AD.
R13-R14 is a 1% chance. Requires 2 Ultimates, and 3 Superior Gemstones. 250K AD, 1 Coal Ward. So about 700K AD.
So getting from R12-R14 is gonna be about 1.2-1.3M AD, not that much just to get from R13-R14.
So yeah, we're gonna spend some AD (myself included) to turn our R12 Bondings to R14. Now, future state - I have other toons that I'll be playing at some point. How about a little credit for the process in that overall, it's going to cost me about the same to get to R14 as it does now to get to an R12? In other words, going from R5-R12 (apples to apples):
Rank 5->6 is currently a 40% chance of success (60% with new system). Both still use a single blue Mark of Potency. Win to new system.
Rank 6->7 is currently a 30% chance of success (50% with new system). Both still use 2 blue Marks of Potency. Another win to new system.
Rank 7->8 is currently a 25% chance of success, a Greater Mark of Potency, AND you need another Rank 7 of the same type. New system - Greater Mark of Potency, 40% chance of success. Win to new system, *again*.
Rank 8->9 is currently a 20% chance of success, 2 Greater Marks of Potency, AND a Rank 8 of the same type. New system - 2 Greater Marks of Potency, 30% success chance. Winner - new system.
Rank 9->10 is currently a 10% chance of success, 2 Greater Marks of Potency, AND another Rank 9 of the same type. New system - 2 Greater Marks of Potency, 3 Enchantment Stones (3 converted Green? Blue? Assuming Green.. Marks of Power/Stability/Union), 20% chance of success. Winner - new system.
Rank 10->11 is currently a 5% chance of success, 2 SMoP's, 1 blue Mark each of Stability, Union, and Power. New system - 10% chance and *1* Superior Mark Of Potency. New system is winner, again.
Rank 11->12 is currently a 3% chance of success, *4* SMoP's, 1 *each* Greater Mark of Power, Stability, and Union. New system - 5% chance of success, 2 SMoP's, 3 Greater Enchantments (assuming converted Blue Marks of Power/Stability/Union). Again, new system is clear winner.
So, overall this means:
Old System: 1 Rank 5, another Rank 7, another Rank 8 (2 7's), another Rank 9 (4 7's), 3 Marks of Potency, 5 Greater Mark of Potency, 6 Superior Marks of Potency, 1 blue Mark of Potency, 1 blue Mark of Stability, 1 blue Mark of Union, 1 Greater Mark of Power, 1 Greater Mark of Union, 1 Greater Mark of Stability.
New System: 1 Rank 5, 3 Mark Of Potency, 5 Greater Mark Of Potency, 3 Superior Mark of Potency, 3 "Enchantment" Stones (Green Marks of Power/Utility/Stability converted?), 3 Greater Enchantment Stones (Blue Marks of Potency/Stability/Power converted?).
Net: 1 less R7 (70K), 1 Less R8 (100K), 1 less R9(345K). 3 Less SMoP's (210K). I'm ignoring the Blue/Purple "current" marks as analogs to the "new version" Enchantment Stones. So, 725K less to create an R12 Bonding. Meaning, we can do R13 for the same cost(ish) as R12 today, with LESS RP point cost, and with higher success rates, use more Pres Wards than Coal Wards.
Factor in the reduced burden and overhead of refining points to get to R14, increased success rates requiring fewer Coal and Pres wards, making new stones will not be as painful as they are currently, financially, timewise, and refinement point wise, so New System - Win?
And ultimately, gear grows and progresses. We're gonna have new ranks of stuff, so future costs are something that are intrinsic to continued game growth. I mean, where would we be if we still maxed out at rank 7 enchants, right?
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