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nekogirl
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
I have been reading in the game chat, That there are a LOT of unhappy people with the current changes to the game. High level characters complaining about being taken down in one shot by a creature, Bosses becoming to OP, etc, etc.... There are some things I like about the new changes, But there are more that I don't. This could lead to a loss of the number of players in the game if you cater to a certain portion of the players and ignore the rest.
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If it were more linear, or the costs to upgrade comp/mounts and refine enchants were more affordable, I'd be much happier. Put altogether and it's discouraging.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying, they took a ball-pein hammer sized problem and tried to fix it with a starship orbital strike.
I agree that the developers should finally listen to the normal players and not to a handful of high end players.
The situation is a dead end, probably.
I started playing like two weeks ago, and was really enjoying the game. I was spending most of my non-working, non-sleeping hours playing, and having a blast. The day before the update dropped, I told myself, "I'm gonna drop some money on this game this weekend because it seems that it actually allows you play without forcing you to pay for power-ups." I'm so thankful they rolled this out before I spent my $50.
I'm level 62, and I can't even ride past level 40 enemies without getting knocked off my horse. I know my gear is "trash", as the helpful users in chat have told me. That's because when you're levelling in an RPG, you replace your gear frequently and it's not worth spending currency on the Auction House for something you're going to throw away in 20 minutes (especially if sources of that currency are now in doubt).
I've seen the defenses of "git good!", or more eloquently, "you have to learn how to use strategy now!". There is certainly a context where those defenses would make sense, but in my opinion, that's not the context we're in. Four days ago, I was playing a game where you could ride past trash, and level by doing quests at your level with the gear you were getting from bounty material vendors, and you didn't have to be careful about pulling an extra group in a zone 15 levels lower than you. You didn't have to take it too seriously, and you could feel powerful and have fun. The game that I was playing four days ago doesn't exist anymore, and it's fine if you think this new, different game is fun for you, but don't pretend like I'm the jerk for being disappointed that all the parts that I liked got patched out. It's entirely possible this new game is a fun game for someone, but the people who were already playing were the people who liked the old game, and there's no reason to assume a person is going to like two very different games "just because".
I work in software development, I see every day how really dumb decisions get made and justified. That's why I'm not that surprised or even mad about this absolute disaster of an update; I honestly find it hilarious and comfortingly familiar. That doesn't mean I'm going to keep playing the game.
I really doubt anyone at the company will take any notice, but I still think there's value in giving feedback. That's why I created an account to post this (I was playing through an Epic account, which as far as I can tell has no way to connect to the forums). This was a truly awful decision to push this update; in my opinion it took all the fun MMO-y parts out, and I'm confident it lost them a lot of money from people like me. I hope they figure it out, or that the players who would enjoy this game find it, because I don't want people to lose their jobs even if they are this comically out of touch. I hope they recognize that if people are going through the effort of figuring out how to post on the forums, they've really missed the mark, but my hopes are not high.
I learned the hard way. I come back every ~2-3 mods now, see what's up, play like a casual, then leave. After all, there's no point in burning myself out.
I just think this there's not enough people working on this game anymore. Reworks are interesting, but are often broken so it's sad. Some things like companion rework do look good, but again everything is screwed due to current scaling formulas.
"As it stands now, there is almost no reason to run the highest IL gear (only if you want to run end-game dungeons and you can just keep a separate set for that) as a 40k char and a 50k char will do the exact same damage when scaled down for 97% of the content in this game. There is literally no real reason to try and progress anymore."
Having re-balanced my 50k IL rogue and done several skirmishes and dungeons it is disheartening to see my dps only just beating that of a character 10k IL lower. I understand the need for some scaling to make the older content more of a challenge but this is penalising end game players. The scaling needs to change. Why bother to invest all that time, grind and money if its going to be removed when you go and play anything thats not end game?
Also how to make most companions more than a collection of paperweights, etc.
However as usual, instead of addressing the actual problems with an actual solution, Cryptic just said "Hey guys let's break the progress people have put years and dollars into, shake it up and make them start over again as if they were noobs!"
The difference is, most good players look at these issues with the mindset "What would make an interesting game and a good play experience?". Cryptic is looking at it from the mindset of "We don't actually play so we don't really care about the experience. What will make players pay more money and spend excess AD, and what can we do with the 2 guys we have on staff who can actually change code without breaking more than they change, and what jives well with whatever corporate phrases our current producer likes to spout?".
When you compare those two mindsets you get very different outcomes.
Personally my aim would have been to create a setup where in any given situation, players that are low-level/low-geared for it face a significant challenge, at-level characters face a decent challenge, and over-geared characters find it relatively easy but not a cakewalk. You'd come out with a sort of bell-shaped curve of "Your gear/power level vs the content level" and I can easily code at least 3 ways of producing this. But then, apparently I'm not the sort of programmer or designer that Cryptic would hire.
"if you cater to a certain portion of the players"
I don't know a single person who likes these changes nor was hoping for something like this. So I think it is not good to state how Playerbase wanted this, or even a portion of the players in general. Nobody I know wanted this, nobody talked about this, I never saw anything even remotely similar in 10+ Discord channels I visited, I never saw anything similar in 10+ In-Game channels I frequented, nor I saw anything similar on the forums.
There is no explanation as in to why these changes are superior to M16 changes nor what is the focus for it. There was no discussion about it either so that we find some common ground. This change simply happened, and just like that nearly everything you've worked on in the past two years became obsolete. M6 vibes all over again. You'd think that they've learned their lesson from it.
The lack of transparency and adequate communication is what's killing this game, and it is not like the players have big expectations. Everything else feels like a marketing sham. It is like one of those "Not my job" memes happening within the company, I guarantee!
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