Multi-Clienting Temporarily Disabled - Discussion

armoftheland33 wrote: »

greenfire312 wrote: »

armoftheland33 wrote: »

I don't agree with stringing along people in the hopes that they will get that 0.01% chance drop, or making them do events that will get them 499/500 required tokens before the time expires, or make them charge the cost of a car for woods for g17 from the boutique. And i don't agree with making progression available for the rare few. Because then you get into situations like this where we have like 20 op toons across all servers who will grind/purchase/exploit progression and the rest decide that 0.01% and the cost of a car is not worth it to them to even bother playing. I guess i have a fundamental disagreement with the game since r9 was once this way, too. But the more this happens (events that you can't earn promised prizes in, calendar year rewards that aren't provided, login rewards that don't function correctly, useless ticket staff who won't bother correcting incorrect tickets for time spent online or cash spent for reward events) the more it compounds.

Would i make changes to g17 and its availability? Yeah i could write an essay on ideas I have that would open up parallel progression in the game. Is it worth writing or reading? Not likely... Because feedback falls on deaf ears, and even if the game was suddenly perfect there are multitudes of other issues that would still keep players far away.

This may be a fundamental disagreement between you and me, then. Because when you say "progression," I hear "power creep."

Rank 9 was always a pay-to-win set (even before R9S3 came out). As long as you have that on the table, someone is going to have an unfair advantage. That's the nature of F2P games (even though PWI got along fine without it). But personally, I'd enjoy NW a lot more if there were only a dozen or so players that I knew I needed to avoid, rather than, say, 60-80% of them. Increasing availability of R9 transformed it from a rarity into a commodity. And you can see the results in-game - gear elitism and "bare minimum" thinking are rampant, weapon links are demanded for at least half of the random high-level instance runs out there, and in general it is assumed that everyone wants to get Rank 9 eventually (I've been in factions where I told the officers I had no intention of ever going R9 and they'd look at me like I had two heads).

So, no - I do not want to see g17s5 go in that direction. I don't think you can make an argument for it that doesn't essentially boil down to "I want to keep up with the Joneses" (that being the companion mentality to power creep which makes it so dangerous to a F2P game).

Okay, let's remove progression, or power creep.

We farm end game, we have r9 cards whatever. Homestead is max. What should we do in the game?

Roll another class :P But that's just me.

IN all seriousness tho..if it wasn't for my 8x Mains..I would've quit long ago. If I'd made the mistake of focusing just one char, sure, I would have NP 2nd rb and absolute maximum gears and maybe even 2x G17.5 weapons..but everything would be so god damn boring and challenge-less. Nah, Nah. Playing a new class can remedy most people and revitalize the fun in the game.

greenfire312 wrote: »

when you say "progression," I hear "power creep."

You seen to want a level playing field between all players, no matter whether they're new or played on the game for years. You could set up a new server with no R9 and no 10*s as you've mentioned and the original PW (no expansions)... a year down the road there's still going to be players going around in +6 TT90 or TT99 with semi nice shards and they're going to be really OP compared to anyone who's a bit slower to catch up or new players.

And so it should be. Those "OP" people earned their advantage because they put more hours into levelling, farming their gear, and so on. If playing the game doesn't progress your char in some way, and some noob can have the same gear as you when they only play 1 hour a day compared to you playing 6 hours a day, then what are you gaining from playing those 6 hours a day? You may as well not bother. Join the server a year later and say "Oh look, I have same gear as you and I put in no effort". There's no point to playing then.

Anyway, I have come to realise from reading this thread that most of the conflict and negativity comes from the fact that a third of the posts are all yours. I tried to comment before and, even though in most regards I was agreeing with you, you still shoot me down for it, as you're doing to everybody else in this thread. Not that I'm surprised by that, I well expect that by now, but what offends me more than anything is when you then make comments like, quote, "Funny thing is, I don't know what I ever did to you". You troll everybody who dare disagree with your ridiculous ideas.

@jsxshadow @greenfire312 i think its great you guys get so much out of having multiple characters, but there does come a time when that well dries up. If we shelve the fact that pwi is already seeing a huge drop in volume and we pretend it could be a profit maker forever, there would need to be something new eventually to keep people playing.

For some its quests and new quest content but to be realistic, those players by and large are already content because you don't need much to complete quests and quests are added every update anyway. This is the same for those who play purely for social reasons. Others play for pvp which is keeping up with the Joneses in and of itself. And for still others, the classic mmo goal imo, it's building a character (or characters) and progressing them.

Both of the latter i would argue requires some sort of something "new" to do to keep interest. Pwi has a lot of progression available but it's still finite. PVP can keep people going for quite awhile, especially if you have a group stirring the pot, but eventually fighting the same people with the same gear gets old - look at coughcoughprivateserverscough. Most last a few months or a year because most of them give people all of the gear for all classes. You log, get gear then get bored and never log again. Very few keep going back and many times it's just to test builds or theories. The one exception to this that I've seen anyway is one that requires just as much grind as the authorized version.

There has to be change or new goals to keep things fresh and keep people interested. New quests for the questers, new people for the social butterflies, new competition for the pvpers, and new progression for the character builders.

If we go cold turkey on updates and pwi stays as it is, I don't believe everyone would just grind new classes and somehow pw would make money off of that.

BTW @implode I'm pretty sure at least 50% of the negativity is from my posts. Mostly because I'm watching this ship sink and I can't believe no one at pwi is doing anything to stop it lol

armoftheland33 wrote: »

There has to be change or new goals to keep things fresh and keep people interested. New quests for the questers, new people for the social butterflies, new competition for the pvpers, and new progression for the character builders.

In resume: devs focused in build a healthy ingame comunity instead only a wealthy one.

greenfire312 wrote: »

I'm a little bit confused on why you seem to separate alt-users and "character builders." I would think they're one and the same - if you hit a wall on your main due to a deliberately-steep progression curve such as g17, then go for a more obtainable goal on an alt and progress on that.

I actually didn't separate character builders/alt users. I had four types of players: Questers, Social Butterflies, PVPers and Character builders. I purposely made one point for them because I believe they are very similar. But you're right. I do think there are two very different groups within that umbrella: those who will simultaneously level/improve a large number of alts at a relatively "lower" (in comparison) level of gear and those who prefer to improve one or two characters to the highest level they can afford with either time or money.

greenfire312 wrote: »

And let's be honest, we all hate primals after the first hundred times doing them. But to me, that's progression. That's a goal, a project. More importantly, it's a project every character can do, one where you can't just rely on farming alts to buy your way through it. It's a great equalizer for everyone who can put in the time to do it, and ultimately it slows the effect of power creep by giving everyone access to the same new resources - making those who complete the quests no different in power relative to each other than they used to be (Spirit-boosting gear notwithstanding). By and large, the returning Archosaur Studios devs have followed the best possible path they could follow with this progression IMO.

That's where the two are different.

One player will say "We all hate primals after the first hundred times, but to me, that's progression" and that player will keep on doing the same story lines over and over whether they like it or not to achieve that goal, and run the same content with multiple characters.

The other will say "We all hate primals after doing them the first handful of times, and **** it. I'm not doing it anymore. And you know what? I'm not doing UPD ten hundred times for the next set of gear either, I've spent 10k on this game and I'm not spending another dime on this 0.0001% RNG grind. I'm done."

The first type of player mostly generates very little revenue for PWI because they don't need to spend to grind primals on multiple characters. Some of them will, It's not a hard and fast rule, but there's not much need.

The second type of player may or may not make a profit for PWI. A lot depends on the player, how much money they have, and their tolerance for RNG and grinding. With recent changes, there is definitely a strong curve. Either you need to have already gotten rich when farming was an option, you need to start exploiting things or swipe cards to make headway after a certain point.

Either way the argument that the first type of player will never run out of things to do if updates stopped is probably true given the actual life span of the game. If you think the devs did well for that type of player I think thats great. But it doesn't really address my argument for what it is, which is that at some point, the second type of player most certainly will run out of things to do if they aren't given reasonable incentive to keep trying.

And let's be honest, how many of the first type of player actually ENJOYS running primals 12 times? It seems like you don't really like it THAT much. Wouldn't you rather do new and different content, if there was an endless supply? Sure, alts are always an option, but if there was no point like g17 where the grind got stupid, would you keep playing the same character? Thats where I think parallel progression has possibility.

There is a reason there is increased activity when new patches go live. New content is good for business, it draws old players back, it draws new players in, and it encourages casual players to log more often and for longer. But new content that neither player can complete is a waste. And one type of player without the other will be playing an incredibly lonely game.

Let's face it its going to need codein so that a few weeks testing. Another few days if ur lucky. Bug fixes a few weeks. Etc.

Annoying as it is and I agree they should just update us. Their May be reasons they have not.

Also I won't give this info out often but this issue is down as Critical. The highest lv. So the impact is known.

Thanks.

sugarplumfairy#3892 wrote: »

Lets really face it? Do you think also it took time for PWI to*code in* this overnight sneak attack on the player base ?? It was long in planning I am sure for this change. Also...this lack of information is a disgrace from PWI....does kalyst think the community will suddenly forget her wall of silence????

Community Mod=NOTHING

Should be ashamed having such title attached to your names after this disaster.

You are sorely mistaken. Here are a couple of definitions to help clear things up a bit.

Community Moderator
The moderators (short singular form: "mod") are users of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).
In the case of PWE, we are not employed. We have almost no voice in decision making. We do not have any extra information outside of what the rest of you guys have.

Community Manager (Kalyst)
As part of the Perfect World Entertainment (PWE) Communications team, the Community Manager (Community Management Specialist) will develop and implement community engagement programs for current and upcoming PWE games. In addition to community activities, the community management specialist will be responsible for creating and distributing content for games through owned channels including blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other community channels. This position will report to the Director of Communications.

Responsibilities:

• Develop positive working relationships with internal stakeholders across PWE including creative and product marketing teams
• Monitor, assess and recap community sentiment for games in the PWE portfolio
• Plan, draft and distribute community focused content through blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other channels
• Act as an evangelist for games in the PWE portfolio through regular activity
• Serve as an in-house editorial staffer through disseminating and redistributing messages from developer and publishing team members to the community
• Create a positive community experience for players
• Monitor key trends in the industry space and provide analysis

I just took that last bit straight from PWE's application page since the role of a CM can vary by company.

tideborn20090 wrote: »

I just want to point out there was a point in time many years ago that mogs came from dq points. idr how many dq points, but there was also one xmas where every snowman firework was worth 1,000 dq points also. I personally got all of the mogs for my cleric and my veno this way. Add onto the fact there was glitch you could stack the mogs from cash shop with bound ones from dq points and then sell your mogs from dq points as they were now unbound and you could essentially *farm* your gsts also.

There was a glitch in hh that allowed you to spawn all 3 high level bosses in once instance as well.. 3-1, 3-2, 3-3.

Then there was the frost glitch.

I know numerous ppl that took advantadge of and exploited all of these methods, though some of them were not well known till after the fact and *farmed* their op gear.

You know, I completely forgot about the DQ to MoG exchange! So I stand corrected that there was never a way to get them legit, but that was so long ago that you'd have to track down someone who used that stacking glitch in order to buy a legit one today (I use "legit" in this context to refer to farmed via non-CS means, not so much free of glitches). So functionally speaking, there is no way to get one today which does not come through the CS.

Also, I'm not sure where TT boss spawning and the frost glitch enter into this...? Though I will say I never heard of the snowman firework thing... or if I did, it must've been at the end of that year's event, because I would've farmed the DQ points religiously if I'd known about it (not for MoGs, but still).

armoftheland33 wrote: »

I actually didn't separate character builders/alt users. I had four types of players: Questers, Social Butterflies, PVPers and Character builders. I purposely made one point for them because I believe they are very similar. But you're right. I do think there are two very different groups within that umbrella: those who will simultaneously level/improve a large number of alts at a relatively "lower" (in comparison) level of gear and those who prefer to improve one or two characters to the highest level they can afford with either time or money.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time thinking of any people who fall under your "questers" label (is this like someone who just grinds up to 100 and immediately quits?). The "social butterflies" do exist, but I have to say I haven't seen many in recent years. That type tends to move on to other games more quickly, in my observations.

I guess my question is, by your definition of "character builders," is there no room for a system like g17s5? It would seem to me that if having a big time/money goal is what keeps you playing, than g17s5 (as it's currently set up) is practically utopian in its design - there's always something to shoot for, always that one star just out of your reach. I suppose there's a point beyond which it crosses over into an unrealistic goal, but let's be honest, that hasn't stopped some people. I know I've seen one cross-server system message announcing the creation of a g17s5, and there are probably a couple others who have it. Increasing its availability will only turn it into a commodity, and then you'll need a new goal to shoot for... and to provide you one, they'll have to take the power creep up another notch. So frankly, I think it's in your best interests as well as the larger community's that they stave off that commodification for as long as possible.

armoftheland33 wrote: »

That's where the two are different.

One player will say "We all hate primals after the first hundred times, but to me, that's progression" and that player will keep on doing the same story lines over and over whether they like it or not to achieve that goal, and run the same content with multiple characters.

The other will say "We all hate primals after doing them the first handful of times, and **** it. I'm not doing it anymore. And you know what? I'm not doing UPD ten hundred times for the next set of gear either, I've spent 10k on this game and I'm not spending another dime on this 0.0001% RNG grind. I'm done."

The first type of player mostly generates very little revenue for PWI because they don't need to spend to grind primals on multiple characters. Some of them will, It's not a hard and fast rule, but there's not much need.

The second type of player may or may not make a profit for PWI. A lot depends on the player, how much money they have, and their tolerance for RNG and grinding. With recent changes, there is definitely a strong curve. Either you need to have already gotten rich when farming was an option, you need to start exploiting things or swipe cards to make headway after a certain point.

Either way the argument that the first type of player will never run out of things to do if updates stopped is probably true given the actual life span of the game. If you think the devs did well for that type of player I think thats great. But it doesn't really address my argument for what it is, which is that at some point, the second type of player most certainly will run out of things to do if they aren't given reasonable incentive to keep trying.

And let's be honest, how many of the first type of player actually ENJOYS running primals 12 times? It seems like you don't really like it THAT much. Wouldn't you rather do new and different content, if there was an endless supply? Sure, alts are always an option, but if there was no point like g17 where the grind got stupid, would you keep playing the same character? Thats where I think parallel progression has possibility.

There is a reason there is increased activity when new patches go live. New content is good for business, it draws old players back, it draws new players in, and it encourages casual players to log more often and for longer. But new content that neither player can complete is a waste. And one type of player without the other will be playing an incredibly lonely game.

Nesting the rest of your post because this is already gonna be too much of a wall-o-text

Are you kidding? I can barely tolerate running them one time. I'm kind of between your "two types" in that respect. Most days, my opinion of primals is generally "uggh, I can barely stand to do these on my mains and I'm already Twilight 8/9 with most of my passives anyway so **** it... playing them on an alt might be novel, but I've got events and faction instances to run, so that ain't happening either."

If I understand the idea behind your "parallel progression" concept correctly, you're referring to multiple sets of gear each with advantages and disadvantages over the other, right? As in, unlike the hierarchy of R9 > g16 > everything else that we have now. Unfortunately, I think that ship sailed a long time ago though. We had balanced gear sets back in the early days of the game. You could make an argument for TT90, or for mold gear, or for OHT once the first expansion came out. None of that would result in a situation where one player could be totally untouchable by the other just on the strength of their gear. There was always the possibility that even objectively "lesser" geared players, like TT90 versus TT99, could overcome the difference with superior skill. But we both know those days are gone, and that's why PVP is dead to me.

To bring back "parallel progression" now, you'd have to start by establishing a new baseline power level above R9S3 (or else, let's be honest, people won't bother), build several distinct gear sets on that baseline, and then make them all equally farmable by the average F2P player. And while this could make sense from a PVP perspective (if you disregard access to +10-12 orbs which also weren't readily available in the early game), it would completely wreck PVE. We already have instances that basically expect you to have gear that would make anything that came before them trivial, and this would make the problem worse.

The only way I could see it working is if they made all of these gear sets PVP-only - by way of a new stat, much like Spirit but without any PVE benefit at all (basically the PVP equivalent of slaying/warding levels). Give the new gear a massive bonus in this stat, and then make it non-refinable. That would create a relatively level PVP playfield without breaking PVE, but it'd be a hell of a tall order for the devs.

I would agree that new content is needed (though not as often as CN tends to make it). I just strongly disagree that the new content should involve more powerful gear. And ultimately, it's up to the individual whether there's "no point" to pursuing any given project. I could arbitrarily decide that I don't want to do 170 more solo-runs of QSM55 to finish my penumbra set, and I doubt anyone would blame me. By the same token, you can decide that g17s5 is a tall enough order to not be worth it, and I wouldn't blame you either. But certainly some people think it's worth doing, or I wouldn't have seen that cross-server announcement a few weeks ago. You could complain that they're too hard to get, but if you make them easier, that guy is going to complain that the value of his weapon got cheapened. No matter what the devs do, somebody's gonna be unhappy.

Just remember that it's all well and good to complain about that grind and that RNG, but you only really notice them when you cross your personal line of "not having fun anymore."

heero200 wrote: »

Also I won't give this info out often but this issue is down as Critical. The highest lv. So the impact is known.

Interesting. I don't suppose they gave you any insight as to how rare a "critical" issue is?

Quite simply.....the damage is already done. Its been a long planned change that has killed its player base .

I'm pretty sure the intention was to get rid of the old players. The newer players who don't think this is a big deal just don't know what this game used to be. PWE doesn't want us oldbies.

opshrooms#2772 wrote: »

and also relationships which pwi seems to exploit this is what holds people to even log this game anymore.

Sadly not only on a Relationship basis but the entire gameplay has morphed itself in such a way that it demands more of the player to alter their RL in favor of an Alternative Life , with each passing update the fun content of the game has gotten lesser and lesser and the gameplay now feeds on the player's need of virtual escapism

so with all this talking it will be fix or not ?

@greenfire312 Ahh, I understand more why you are fearful of parallel progression now. I agree, releasing gear more powerful than what we have would be stupid. (Just saying that makes me fear for our characters considering recent developments). What I would have liked to see is not *more* powerful gear, but gear that is equal to what we have now. Same power; more options. So for example, if we imagine g17 weapons were equal in all other respects (defense/attack levels, same weapon power etc) to r9r3 and had only one effect, they would be a perfect example of parallel progression because what they offer is variety. Variety in weapon styles (you can be an end game cleric with a pataka for example) and proc types (you can be a puri barb instead of a gof barb). I could imagine a game where we could have heavy armor r9 venos, light armor clerics or heavy armor dusk blades, and maybe even shards that are both interesting AND powerful (no more of the same shards in every person's gear). Or perhaps even just a rebalancing to what shards we have to make them remotely useful.

In an ideal world I would have loved to see something along the lines of your PVP specific gear. In my opinion, the rerolled morai gear should be just another "parallel" to what we have. Imagine people want to recruit morai gear for dungeons! It's sad when pvp gear can simply do better in pve. Those are just a few examples of what I could think of, but the possibilities are endless.

As far as g17s5 being a good candidate for character builders... Yes and no. Like you said there are a handful who have completed this weapon already and probably two or three dozen more actively working on it. So...

Yes, g17s5 is great, but let's agree its great for the most hardcore of hardcore players. Most of the ones I have seen are the type that have been playing pwi since beta, have 100bill in coin stashed away, and multiclient 9x r9 alts hours a day to achieve that goal. Don't get me wrong I am not bashing these players. I admire their tenacity. But you absolutely have to be top tier and have coin or money to burn to achieve something that takes years of farm that quickly. But...

No, for the average character builder. Lets say we get nine of our best friends together to do UPD every day. We're gonna do it, you and me, we're going to farm zenith skull shards. You know what you're signing up for? At the drop rate of skull shards (least when I last looked, its been awhile), it will take our team about 6 thousand runs to complete all of our weapons. If we have lives and do one run a day...

That is 18 years. That is a larger commitment than most people make to a marriage.

So is g17s5 the perfect content for the character builder? It's perfect for those rich and willing to skirt the edge of the rules. But for the average player, the majority of that group, no. Because it's not even an option. You start on that quest and you'll be lucky if your third member gets their weapon before the servers close down. You have to be in it all the way, with money to buy any extra drops on the server and farm all options available multiple hours a day.


You mentioned it's well and good to complain about the grind and rng but to keep in mind that you don't notice it until you're not having fun anymore.... I think that's partly true... But i think it's also not just fun thats the issue here but time and money too. 18 years for one piece of the puzzle is too steep a price for me (and probably most) and so is 11k for the other piece of the puzzle (NP). I have a job, friends, family, I don't want to spend the next 18 years farming UPD. When you have multiple characters geared up to the point where that is your only option and it's time to pay up or give up i don't think its unreasonable to look at this and go "Man. 18 years and 11k. Thats ****ed up."


Anyway, Full disclosure, I'm not actually complaining I enjoyed our conversation, but I don't really care what happens with PWI because I quit long ago. I'm only here because it amuses me in some sort of twisted way (kind of like when you stalk your ex on facebook and see they lost their job and their dog died).

@greenfire312 and @armoftheland

i think you guys left out a small part to bring the whole gear thing together. the paid set is just too far away from anything that is possible to normally farm out the game. there should not be a player that can literally stand still and tank 30 lesser geared players hammering them. not talking about pre-100 players either. it is beyond unbalanced.

also before r9, we were farming time-independent instances for mats, and the amount of mats were actually reasonable. i dont see the need to make the mat req's in the thousands in instances that drop single digit numbers (resulting in 18 year grinds for gear that will be obsolete well before that).

why not simplify the mats that need to be collected, say roughly estimate what makes for 6 months of above average grinding daily and about 1.5 years of normal grinding. i find they do this explicitly to force cash shop transactions (and less so, to bleed some extra coin off the servers, dont think that is working though) because those numbers just dont sound reasonable.

stat-caps would also benefit this game though i dont think they will dedicate the time and effort to doing that, that being said, they need to let the free gear approach the paid gear a bit more. they have cards and charts now that are "free yet suck money at impressive rate". 4 out of 4 endgame areas of gearing cant(shouldnt) ALL require cash shopping.

all of this relying on this company and china actually giving a **** and doing something reasonable to support their game's community, namely giving us a response on this entire clusterf%#^ with some timetable of fixes. by the end of march everyone left will be back to throwing credit cards at the monitor, there just wont be as many catshops up.

armorisus wrote: »

I's say that is the last straw but I already had the last straw. Now it's impossible for me to play even if I wanted to, since I can't log in some accounts using arc at all because the emails for those accounts are inaccessible and I already had a nightmare experience just to get email changed for 1 account. No way am I doing that again. Goodbye.

I had 17 people quit in my guild so far .... I hope they come back when all of this is fixed​​