> there also hasnt been a post by the devs which support the stuff you are saying.
> Run it with whatever setup you like. And if you dont want to do it, dont do it. No need to complain about it.
i said that lionheart was over a year old and people need to just get over it, it wont be BIS forever. then i gave my opinion on why lionheart did not need to be buffed (in reply to someone elses post about it being buffed) and then I was asked if i had completed tomm, i explained why i hadn't and that i have no desire to complete it.
where do you get this idea that i'm just complaining?
I'm merely expressing my personal opinion on the subject that was already being discussed.
maybe some people don't want to spend 30 hours to learn how to beat up some homeless guy for 15 mins?
I certainly don't, and won't.
this does sound like complaining to me, if you dont want to put in the effort, dont do it, but dont sit here and complain that it requires effort to do something.
get off me. you are the most toxic elitist ive ever seen ingame. i remember back in mod ~14 you were running CR and wouldnt let anyone in the team unless they had masterwork 3. people like you are why this game is in a bad spot.
im pretty sure i have never met you before, i dont and did never demand any special items for CR, or any other dungeon. I have no clue whom you are mistaking me with, but im definitly not the person you think i am.
ok, regardless of that, get off me...,you aren't the barbarian Natsu? If not then I sincerely apologize
i never had a barbarian named Natsu...
1
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
It's very difficult to draw any conclusions as we miss a large part of the information available to developers. Cryptic is a business and will do whatever makes the most money for them in the short and (if we're lucky) in the long term. Judging from their recent behaviour it seems that content like Tomm and Zariel is not really good for them probably because a large part of the players is not participating in those trials and just gave up. What we see now seems to be an effort to improve the percentage of people actually doing that content (weapons with higher damage, constitution hp bonus now applying to all hp and not only to base, etc.). Tomm and Zariel have a mechanics-based approach that requires a lot of testing and training. Some people here said that you need to train 30 hours to understand how to do Tomm properly. What percentage of the playerbase do you think will do that? (this is a real question, I'm not trying to be sarcastic). Those who are not willing to do that will just give up and will not even think about spending money to gear up. That's bad for Cryptic and in the long run for us all. Content has to be perceived into reach for a reasonably large percentage of the playerbase so that more players will try to close the perceived (or real gap) by spending money and after a reasonable effort they will actually be able to do it. What does "reasonable effort" mean? This depends on you playerbase and once again Cryptic has way more data than we have in order to understand what that means to players. My gut feeling from having been a guild leader for years and from playing the game is that a mechanics-heavy approach will not work for the vast majority of players in this game. The original dungeons of the game had a more effective approach. Some bosses had one or two mechanics, but all the rest was just standard abilities of bosses and mobs (dodge or block red areas) and the approach was more tactical (into the fight) than strategical (plan ahead for each mechanic).
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
6
tassedethe13Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 806Arc User
@gabrieldourden I was the one who said it needs at least 30 hours of training. That's from what I had to do to learn, and after I tried to teach to some of my alliance, which took a little more than 30 hours for everybody, but now they teach to other people and so on, and more and more people are able to get their weapons because they see friends with weapons, ask them how did they get their weapons, and the answer is simply "Come to training, learn mechanics and it will be OK".
Is the percentage of player base able to get weapon important ? Absolutely not imo. Is the increased number of people training and learning and improving themselves important ? Yes, still imo.
TOMM, and Zariel, are end game goals to achieve. Some players will want to reach it, and try to do so even if it take time, and succeed. Some players will come to one training expecting being carried, failed miserably ( which is normal on 1st attempt ), take a big slap on the face and never come again. Some players will not do anything and complain that only 1% can do it, that's bad for game yada yada....
But you know, I don't think this is bad for games, because end game players will spend to get the last shiny companion, mount, and zen spender will open lockboxes to sell to them. The numbers of scrolls, wards, health stones, is important too, so more zen spent. The endgame player wanabee will spend a lot more too.
Lot of people think about endgame players as elitist pricks, but in fact who give to the community guides, builds, tips and trick, help with training ? That's them. And the only thing they ask, is people getting the correct stats, and doing the mechanic properly, and being friendly.
@gabrieldourden I was the one who said it needs at least 30 hours of training. That's from what I had to do to learn, and after I tried to teach to some of my alliance, which took a little more than 30 hours for everybody, but now they teach to other people and so on, and more and more people are able to get their weapons because they see friends with weapons, ask them how did they get their weapons, and the answer is simply "Come to training, learn mechanics and it will be OK".
Is the percentage of player base able to get weapon important ? Absolutely not imo. Is the increased number of people training and learning and improving themselves important ? Yes, still imo.
TOMM, and Zariel, are end game goals to achieve. Some players will want to reach it, and try to do so even if it take time, and succeed. Some players will come to one training expecting being carried, failed miserably ( which is normal on 1st attempt ), take a big slap on the face and never come again. Some players will not do anything and complain that only 1% can do it, that's bad for game yada yada....
But you know, I don't think this is bad for games, because end game players will spend to get the last shiny companion, mount, and zen spender will open lockboxes to sell to them. The numbers of scrolls, wards, health stones, is important too, so more zen spent. The endgame player wanabee will spend a lot more too.
Lot of people think about endgame players as elitist pricks, but in fact who give to the community guides, builds, tips and trick, help with training ? That's them. And the only thing they ask, is people getting the correct stats, and doing the mechanic properly, and being friendly.
I don't know what to believe as nobody of us has hard data (only Cryptic has them). Anyway looking at what they have been doing recently I think that that type of content (Tomm, Zariel) is probably not that successful from a financial point of view as they seem to be steering away from it. That's the only thing I wanted to say. I have personally nothing against endgame players, I was one of them until SKT (I was one of the 5 players alive at the end of the first successful run at Master Svardborg), but my feeling is that they represent only a small percentage of the game and are probably not the main source of income for Cryptic.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
tassedethe13Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 806Arc User
I'm not part of those who tested TOMM in the first instance, but they said that some classes need some buff, this is them who found out the wrong damage formula, not cryptic. This is still them who make the guides on tomm, on damage formulas, and giave a lot of feedback to cryptic. You can't blame them for the rework of classes and the underperforming of some dps classes, that's not right...
You can be jealous of the loots they sold, but at the time there was a german team who not beta tested it who trained of preview and succeed in beating TOMM, should someone who succeed be the target of your hate ? That was the first time a trial needed some training, and only 2 teams took it seriously from the start, followed by numerous other teams the weeks after.
For Zariel, a lot more teams started earlier the training, because they knew that it will require some training to beat Zariel, and as a result a lot more people succeed beating Zariel at start than TOMM.
Please do not mix what the dev do, and what the player do.
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited August 2020
Few things,
First - I didn't made fortune from rings, nor finished it early or whatever, and yet I was and is one of those that saying that unbound loot can be one of the few things that can fix the economy. Unbound loot will erase AD through AH, and more importantly create direct incentive for people to convert ZEN to AD. The issue is that some other easy to do conditions need to apply, which could have been easily done, but they were not. It is also a good incentive for players to do content, without generating AD via RAD.
There is beyond person gain or inability to gain of a player or a subgroup - and it's the whole economy and game health.
It is also players choice to pay sums for items. I wouldn't and didn't buy rings for millions, nor should anyone else, and it is always the players choice and what sets the price via supply and demand.
The only reason you managed to gear up in Tong like you describe is because it had unbound loot.
Second - There are only two ways a loot item can have value, low supply or large demand. In Tong it was both. The initial price of those marks was a million or so, and dropped down to hundreds of thousands when more people completed it, stabilizing at about 100k for a while.
So going back to the point, either the item will have low RNG in easy content, or it will have okish rng in very hard content. Otherwise the loot has no economy value. So pick your poison running the same HAMSTER thousands of time until a person can do it in their sleep and hope to get the item, or spend the time training and improving until managing to complete it. End result is the same, time spent vs loot. I'll prefer the second, I've slept enough during ToS repetitions.
Last but not least - There are a lot assertion about stuff, about percents, and how closed beta works, and so much more. Where always those numbers come from, 1%, 90% or whatever? I know people from several large alliances (the major) and somehow my impression differs. But more importantly I've been in a couple of those closed beta, and I have no clue where those "facts" about who says what and how it works come from.
2
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Lot of people think about endgame players as elitist pricks, but in fact who give to the community guides, builds, tips and trick, help with training ? That's them. And the only thing they ask, is people getting the correct stats, and doing the mechanic properly, and being friendly.
I saw this posted on the forums, I believe it was @sharpedge who said that these classes could get in but cleric only as healer, barbarian only as tank, fighter only as tank, and warlock only as healer.
Hi Parwen, not tired of evading forum bans handed out by @kreatyve yet? I never said you could only get in on those classes, I might have said you would have difficulty, but I have never said, "such and such class cannot do this piece of content."
i specifically remember @sharpedge requesting that TOMM rings be sellable (they were bound to account at first).....and then when TOMM went live, every day i look on the AH and he has like 20 for sale (for 5-20x what they cost now) that disgusts me. I'm not jealous at all, I don't need AD for anything, I don't use the ZAX, I don't use VIP, and I don't need any gear. I am upset with the way the situation played out though because when i was gearing up tong was the newest dungeon, it was new and still pretty hard for the avg player, but i jumped right into it and started farming Ultimate enchanting stones, and selling them. I was running 5-10 tong a day, and in a matter of months i was able to gear up to full rank 13 enchants. But with the way these new dungeons have been I see this isn't possible for new players anymore, the dungeons with rewards they could get to sell are too hard for them to complete, so they are stuck with farming zuma bags, running RTQ and REQ once a day and then doing all the old boring campaign dailies and weeklies for these new boons which are little more then IL for people who dont have it from gear.....or busting out that wallet$$$$. I have seen a MAJOR shift from this game being progression based to being wallet based for new players. because there is no content thats rewarding for new players to run.
It disgusts you why? Tell me, if anyone bought it for that much AD, don't you think its probably because they have that much AD to throw around? Anyone who has 20m AD to spend on a ring, does not need your sympathy, nor do they need you to feel disgust on their behalf. You know who bought a scepter for 20m? I did. It was the first scepter that sold. I bought it from a member of my own team, who if I had asked for it, would probably have given it to me for free. I bought it because his character only had rank 12's and rank 13s and it would help him to upgrade what he had.
Understand this, when items were listed on the auction house for 20 million, regardless of whether you personally think they were worth that or not they were not aimed at you. Different people are willing to pay different prices for the same item and if someone thinks that the price is fair (and there were quite a few people who did), then it is their decision, not yours and they do not need your remorse on their behalf.
Furthermore, the dungeon was, from the outset not designed for new players to begin with. You cannot simultaneously design a piece of challenging endgame content and expect new players to be able to finish it. That is a contradiction.
Content like ToMM is beneficial for the game and I believe that its difficulty has to be maintained. I can cite IC as an example, it was relatively difficult content, but today it is already possible to load someone weaker, which I think is bad for the game, since you get equipment that makes you move faster than you should.
This is the opinion of a player who can call himself a veteran and who never submitted ToMM.
No, altering existing content to "maintain" difficulty is the act of only the most unqualified terrible excuses for game developers.
Aside from level scaling, the content itself should not be nerfed, as players get better gear it will become easier on its own.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
1
tassedethe13Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 806Arc User
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
3
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
I distinctly remember there being many threads about the game being too easy, opened both by me and by others in the past. Is the, "fact that we had that discussion," also proof of that claim? Anyone can open a thread about any topic, just because there is a discussion around a topic, does not make it true. It just shows that a contention exists.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
And the problem is that ToMM and ZC are made so hard that a too small part of the player mass wants to do them.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use. Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.
4
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
And the problem is that ToMM and ZC are made so hard that a too small part of the player mass wants to do them.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use. Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.
You are looking at the short term here, in the long term, this type of content will have more relevance than the majority of all the other content aimed at mid game players that only sees 1 or 2 mods before it becomes a brain dead random dungeon. ToMM is already starting to see a wider audience as other gear becomes easier to get. M19 brought better weapon sets that are not as powerful as what is found in ToMM but is still much better than what you could get before. This alone lowers the skill level needed to complete the content and ToMM becomes a stepping stone towards ZC being more accessible.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
And the problem is that ToMM and ZC are made so hard that a too small part of the player mass wants to do them.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use. Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.
You are looking at the short term here, in the long term, this type of content will have more relevance than the majority of all the other content aimed at mid game players that only sees 1 or 2 mods before it becomes a brain dead random dungeon. ToMM is already starting to see a wider audience as other gear becomes easier to get. M19 brought better weapon sets that are not as powerful as what is found in ToMM but is still much better than what you could get before. This alone lowers the skill level needed to complete the content and ToMM becomes a stepping stone towards ZC being more accessible.
I think that most non-TOMM ready players would be more willing to accept a 5-year-plan look at new content, if it were not the only new content that they were getting.
1
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
And the problem is that ToMM and ZC are made so hard that a too small part of the player mass wants to do them.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use. Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.
You are looking at the short term here, in the long term, this type of content will have more relevance than the majority of all the other content aimed at mid game players that only sees 1 or 2 mods before it becomes a brain dead random dungeon. ToMM is already starting to see a wider audience as other gear becomes easier to get. M19 brought better weapon sets that are not as powerful as what is found in ToMM but is still much better than what you could get before. This alone lowers the skill level needed to complete the content and ToMM becomes a stepping stone towards ZC being more accessible.
I think that most non-TOMM ready players would be more willing to accept a 5-year-plan look at new content, if it were not the only new content that they were getting.
If they aren't ready for ToMM, there is plenty of other content they have yet to complete...
As far as mechanics, a lot of FF14 players would consider ToMM easy, compared to that games "endgame" offerings. I think the NW community has just got too used to content being very light on mechanics.
The fact that we are having this discussion at all is solid evidence that ZC and ToMM are a less than successful approach to providing high-end content.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
For me TIC is a failure, nobody wans to run TIC, pretty useless, and loot system is bad because you run it 2-3 times by week to get boss loots until you get armor then never do it again.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
And the problem is that ToMM and ZC are made so hard that a too small part of the player mass wants to do them.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use. Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.
You are looking at the short term here, in the long term, this type of content will have more relevance than the majority of all the other content aimed at mid game players that only sees 1 or 2 mods before it becomes a brain dead random dungeon. ToMM is already starting to see a wider audience as other gear becomes easier to get. M19 brought better weapon sets that are not as powerful as what is found in ToMM but is still much better than what you could get before. This alone lowers the skill level needed to complete the content and ToMM becomes a stepping stone towards ZC being more accessible.
I think that most non-TOMM ready players would be more willing to accept a 5-year-plan look at new content, if it were not the only new content that they were getting.
If they aren't ready for ToMM, there is plenty of other content they have yet to complete...
What percent of that content offers rewards which actually help in that progression. And no, Blue RP do not count.
Comments
Judging from their recent behaviour it seems that content like Tomm and Zariel is not really good for them probably because a large part of the players is not participating in those trials and just gave up. What we see now seems to be an effort to improve the percentage of people actually doing that content (weapons with higher damage, constitution hp bonus now applying to all hp and not only to base, etc.).
Tomm and Zariel have a mechanics-based approach that requires a lot of testing and training. Some people here said that you need to train 30 hours to understand how to do Tomm properly. What percentage of the playerbase do you think will do that? (this is a real question, I'm not trying to be sarcastic). Those who are not willing to do that will just give up and will not even think about spending money to gear up. That's bad for Cryptic and in the long run for us all.
Content has to be perceived into reach for a reasonably large percentage of the playerbase so that more players will try to close the perceived (or real gap) by spending money and after a reasonable effort they will actually be able to do it. What does "reasonable effort" mean? This depends on you playerbase and once again Cryptic has way more data than we have in order to understand what that means to players.
My gut feeling from having been a guild leader for years and from playing the game is that a mechanics-heavy approach will not work for the vast majority of players in this game. The original dungeons of the game had a more effective approach. Some bosses had one or two mechanics, but all the rest was just standard abilities of bosses and mobs (dodge or block red areas) and the approach was more tactical (into the fight) than strategical (plan ahead for each mechanic).
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Is the percentage of player base able to get weapon important ? Absolutely not imo.
Is the increased number of people training and learning and improving themselves important ? Yes, still imo.
TOMM, and Zariel, are end game goals to achieve.
Some players will want to reach it, and try to do so even if it take time, and succeed.
Some players will come to one training expecting being carried, failed miserably ( which is normal on 1st attempt ), take a big slap on the face and never come again.
Some players will not do anything and complain that only 1% can do it, that's bad for game yada yada....
But you know, I don't think this is bad for games, because end game players will spend to get the last shiny companion, mount, and zen spender will open lockboxes to sell to them. The numbers of scrolls, wards, health stones, is important too, so more zen spent.
The endgame player wanabee will spend a lot more too.
Lot of people think about endgame players as elitist pricks, but in fact who give to the community guides, builds, tips and trick, help with training ? That's them.
And the only thing they ask, is people getting the correct stats, and doing the mechanic properly, and being friendly.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
This is still them who make the guides on tomm, on damage formulas, and giave a lot of feedback to cryptic.
You can't blame them for the rework of classes and the underperforming of some dps classes, that's not right...
You can be jealous of the loots they sold, but at the time there was a german team who not beta tested it who trained of preview and succeed in beating TOMM, should someone who succeed be the target of your hate ?
That was the first time a trial needed some training, and only 2 teams took it seriously from the start, followed by numerous other teams the weeks after.
For Zariel, a lot more teams started earlier the training, because they knew that it will require some training to beat Zariel, and as a result a lot more people succeed beating Zariel at start than TOMM.
Please do not mix what the dev do, and what the player do.
First - I didn't made fortune from rings, nor finished it early or whatever, and yet I was and is one of those that saying that unbound loot can be one of the few things that can fix the economy. Unbound loot will erase AD through AH, and more importantly create direct incentive for people to convert ZEN to AD. The issue is that some other easy to do conditions need to apply, which could have been easily done, but they were not.
It is also a good incentive for players to do content, without generating AD via RAD.
There is beyond person gain or inability to gain of a player or a subgroup - and it's the whole economy and game health.
It is also players choice to pay sums for items. I wouldn't and didn't buy rings for millions, nor should anyone else, and it is always the players choice and what sets the price via supply and demand.
The only reason you managed to gear up in Tong like you describe is because it had unbound loot.
Second - There are only two ways a loot item can have value, low supply or large demand. In Tong it was both. The initial price of those marks was a million or so, and dropped down to hundreds of thousands when more people completed it, stabilizing at about 100k for a while.
So going back to the point, either the item will have low RNG in easy content, or it will have okish rng in very hard content. Otherwise the loot has no economy value. So pick your poison running the same HAMSTER thousands of time until a person can do it in their sleep and hope to get the item, or spend the time training and improving until managing to complete it. End result is the same, time spent vs loot. I'll prefer the second, I've slept enough during ToS repetitions.
Last but not least - There are a lot assertion about stuff, about percents, and how closed beta works, and so much more. Where always those numbers come from, 1%, 90% or whatever? I know people from several large alliances (the major) and somehow my impression differs. But more importantly I've been in a couple of those closed beta, and I have no clue where those "facts" about who says what and how it works come from.
Understand this, when items were listed on the auction house for 20 million, regardless of whether you personally think they were worth that or not they were not aimed at you. Different people are willing to pay different prices for the same item and if someone thinks that the price is fair (and there were quite a few people who did), then it is their decision, not yours and they do not need your remorse on their behalf.
Furthermore, the dungeon was, from the outset not designed for new players to begin with. You cannot simultaneously design a piece of challenging endgame content and expect new players to be able to finish it. That is a contradiction.
Aside from level scaling, the content itself should not be nerfed, as players get better gear it will become easier on its own.
Content need to be learnable by 'on the job training', running it a few times in the production environment. High dps and healing requirements are fine, those generally are gear/rotation related and should not need excessive training.
As an example, TIC is working well. Some mechanics, but not more than it can be explained to new people during runs. Beyond that TIC challenge comes from dps and heal requirements.
TIC is actually getting too easy now, so it would be nice if we got the next level up, TIC style.
Everybody can do TIC, not everybody can do TOMM or Zariel, that's why we are having this discusion.
Spending valuable dev resources on something a so small part of the player mass want to use is a inefficient resource use.
Putting the best gear in the game in content so few players want to use creates an unnecessary division in the player mass.
Yes, there certainly are players that want to do ZC and ToMM and that would have left game without them, but if those resources were used on more available content it likely would have boosted the total player mass by much more than the loss of the small ToMM/ZC gang.
The difficulty of TIC seems to be more on line with what most people will accept and try to play. That TIC loot makes it uninteresting to run is another discussion altogether.