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Mod 15 Workshop Of Broken Toys ?

This is strictly coming from my personal view of the upcoming mod.

When you saw the Pax video previewing Mod 15 were you excited ?
Did the Shriner beholders have you laughing and waiting for them to drop ?
The Penny Arcade people have you chomping at the bit, to try the new Acquisitions Inc material ?

Were you actually thinking wow they are going to do some good stuff for professions that will make it more interesting, when you read about the overhaul ?

When you saw that leadership was being eliminated did you feel you had been sucker punched in the gut ?
When you heard that you were getting nothing for it did you feel like you had been kicked in the nether regions ?
When you found out that part of the goal here was to get people out of crafting did you think there goes that part of the game till it shuts down and a new one comes out ?

What's really sad and annoying was with the good things I saw featured in the pax video, I actually hoped that the changes to the profession system would be good as well.

Look at what could have been added just from what we see now
1. We could have had a new profession that would make consumables for improved crafting.
2. New classes of characters within the existing professions
3. Alternate routes to mastercraft and crafted items instead of AD (Another use for gold stead of this)
4. New consumable items
5. A new fashion crafting profession that would craft items with transmutes attached.
6. New Recipe items only available from lockboxes

Instead of getting a fun overhaul or even an expansion it's a destruction. Cryptic is coming in and breaking toys we have been playing with. Collectibles still in their boxes are being smashed. Legos are having their nubs sanded down. Lincoln logs are being fed to the wood chipper. What is going away is being replaced with knockoffs if at all.

Looking at the aftermath of the changes.
1. The profession system now has a tutorial that is longer than the tutorial for the rest of the game. (takes me about 20 minutes to get a PC through the current intro). Hell just getting through early parts on test took an hour 20 most of which was waiting around
2. There is no account unlock for the tutorial so people who have alts have to go through it again and again (and again)^N. I can see this working out well.
3. It's now even more difficult to break into masterwork professions. Well that will make a smaller number of people proportionally more happy with the crafting system. At least for a little while.
4. People are going to come into the game and find things they paid real money for effectively vaporized. As I said up top this is a personal perspective but I started playing this game when it first came out and left, because I felt that Cryptic had a bad case of rectal cranial inversion. I came back because one of the people I play tabletop with wanted someone to game with, and I figured I could at least give him my stuff. I decided to stay because there was email in my box from Cryptic that roughly said "Sorry we had to wipe out your stuff, here's some things we hope will make it up to you". I read that and thought hey maybe they are starting to get it ? Doing that cost next to nothing but at least said they realized there was an obligation that cut both ways. Now it's back to the old ways with a vengeance.

So i guess what I see with this mod and the various changes, is that Cryptic is still very divided between people that want to gain customers because people enjoy their product and want to enhance their experience, versus people who think the players are going to be here no matter what they do and they can increase revenue by inflicting pain upon them and offering not to for a price.





Comments

  • ecrana#2080 ecrana Member Posts: 1,654 Arc User
    In answer to your first batch of questions, I can honestly say that there was not a single thing about M15 that sounded exciting to me. From teaser trailer, PAX, watching vids of the new skirm, etc. It was all just complete trash.

    It seemed like nothing more than a way to rope in a new audience. Absolutely nothing about the mod sounds exciting to me. When they announced the professions overhaul I knew, and stated what it would mean. The end of professions for a number of people.

    Time will tell if the game will improve over the next few mods but they obviously...hopefully....have a plan in place. I think they're going to lose some players over the coming changes but maybe they'll gain more than they lose and that's the ultimate goal.

  • empalasempalas Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 802 Arc User
    I had actually grown quite bored of leadership even when it was still giving RAD. It got to the point where it was just mindnumbing. Especially once the gateway shut down. Not sure why the gateway didn't seem to be as bad as it was in game to cycle through and switch characters. That process is just painful to my brain. So I'm torn in that yes I liked how easy the old system was to get RP once you leveled leadership but I will also be glad I will no longer feel bad about not cycling through my alt army to do my leadership tasks every day.
  • mechjockeymechjockey Member Posts: 265 Arc User
    Well from what I have seen gaining RP is going to be a slower process and there are going to be less ways to accelerate it
  • nunya#5309 nunya Member Posts: 933 Arc User
    I'm with @ecrana#2080: There is nothing about M15 that sounds exciting. I've disliked Penny Arcade for a long while now. Their work isn't funny and has little redeeming value. To have an entire campaign designed around their rubbish just means the campaign is going to be rubbish. Will I run the campaign? Sure. The boons are nice. Will I enjoy it? No. I'll get through it as fast as I can and never touch it again. I don't even know if I'll run it on my primary alt.

    As for the professions overhaul, I still don't understand why their goal is to get even fewer players to engage with it. Already, most of the people doing professions are just doing Leadership. There are some of those people who are like me and use professions to generate resources for their guilds. Even fewer people engage with masterwork crafting. The devs have said they want to generate trade and get people making things to sell to other players to use in crafting. I can't see how that will work out when they're making it so that fewer people will do professions. You get more trade when you get more people engaging with a system. Thus, it seems to me that their design goals are diametrically opposed to one another.

    I'm also with @empalas in that I'm looking forward to not having to log in multiple times per day in order to tend professions. Doing so is a real slog that takes 20 to 25 minutes for me four times per day. Of course, I'm generating lots of guild resources by doing this, which is the motivation. I'm just ready for it to stop and I'm already relaxing about it today (and probably the rest of the week) since we are in the final week before launch.
  • ecrana#2080 ecrana Member Posts: 1,654 Arc User

    As for the professions overhaul, I still don't understand why their goal is to get even fewer players to engage with it. Already, most of the people doing professions are just doing Leadership. There are some of those people who are like me and use professions to generate resources for their guilds. Even fewer people engage with masterwork crafting. The devs have said they want to generate trade and get people making things to sell to other players to use in crafting. I can't see how that will work out when they're making it so that fewer people will do professions. You get more trade when you get more people engaging with a system. Thus, it seems to me that their design goals are diametrically opposed to one another.

    Strictly looking at the redesign from the outside it seems to me that the goal isn't to encourage more people to interact with professions or encourage more trade opportunities.

    The ultimate goal is to limit the amount of RP that was being generated by players. The way to get to that goal is to drive them away with a mundane system that's cumbersome, boring, eliminate a large amount of progress/assets some people have made over the course of years, etc etc.

    I have 8 toons I play played on so I used leadership to support upgrading things for all of them. The new system doesn't sound like anything I'll be interested in using so it'll be back to fully relying on double gems and enchants for RP. I won't be surprised when they change QMs, Fey and Dragon Hoard enchants to drop only RP straight into your bank instead of leadership bags, or unbound RP items.

    Over on XB1, I know a few mastercrafters that have already started unloading their tools/resources and packed it in because they're not interested in the new prof system at all. So when they start leaving and there's fewer crafters and the prices start going even higher the community will gripe and moan and maybe changes will be made. Doubtful but maybe.
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