Multi-Clienting Temporarily Disabled - Discussion

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  • jsxshadow
    jsxshadow Posts: 1,414 Arc User
    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
    greenfire312 Posts: 269 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    tek1nig wrote: »
    Pay to win means its not available from in-game means - R9 is fully farmable from in-game merchanting and farming.​​
    While it may not seem like pay to win in the classic sense, consider: where does one get Medals of Glory? I believe the original "rare TW reward" method is long gone, so that leaves direct from the cash shop and (according to PWDB) from certain packs. So whether they're bought directly or merchanted, they have to come from the cash shop at some point. That's the entire reason for their existence. PWE is paid, and someone "wins."

    I'm not saying people can't be proud of farming that much raw coin (even if that does seem less and less plausible with each passing year, due to losses of coin farming methods). But R9 people always seem remarkably quick to brag about that, as if all that coin passes into some ethereal space where coin goes in, MoGs come out. IMO the issue is less how you personally got it and more that there's never going to be a true way to farm the MoGs that doesn't ultimately come from the cash shop. If you've ever had a MoG in your inventory that wasn't put there by some F2P event I'm not aware of, then you're part of that system, and you've no doubt had to make your own peace with that. I can respect that you farmed the coin, but it all comes from the same place.
    tek1nig wrote: »
    @kalystconquerer#0876 Still waiting I hope something is announced today.​​
    Seconded. Is the festival over this week, I wonder? It would be nice to stop assuming that all PWE staff has 2-3 weeks off just because CN does.


    EDIT:
    jsxshadow wrote: »
    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.
    Exactly this. We have to remember that in an MMO, everything is for its own sake. You farm gear to have gear, you level up to have a high level character, and all of this is in service of playing the content and maybe PVP if you're so inclined. But the end of the road has to come sometime, and if you try to grease the wheels in the name of "progression," then you'll just hit the end of that road that much faster, and stay there until... surprise... the next gear comes out which represents the next step in the power creep. Alt-playing is the best way of preventing this.

    (8 mains though? Really? I thought I was nuts telling people I'm a dual-main... I mean I have an alt of every class but I don't play them often enough)
    Mains: Miugre / LigerKing
    Etherblade server
  • implode
    implode Posts: 82 Arc User
    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.
  • greenfire312
    greenfire312 Posts: 269 Arc User
    implode 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.
    So you've made three posts in this thread that I can see (according to search): first you responded to Kalyst about people drawing their own conclusions - which in my next post, I supported and mentioned you by name. Second you commented tangentially on the "lore" discussion - which I did not reply to. And now, this. Am I forgetting something? Was it deleted? I have been posting a lot, that much is true, but if I "shot you down" on something earlier in this thread, I'm genuinely going to need a refresher on what that was. Or is this related to your mock-up Arc launcher thing in the other thread (an idea that, while I admit to poking fun at you a bit for, I do genuinely support)?

    At no point did I suggest everyone should have the same gear. At no point in any recent thread did I suggest a PWI server without any expansions, if ever. And while I'd love to say that I have no idea where you're coming from with these accusations, you and I both know that we have a history in-game, you knew me at a much earlier time in my PWI history, and so I have to assume you're basing this off of things I told you years ago (given that the last time we were in a faction together, it may as well have been the stone age). With that being said... if you have a personal issue with me, you know my characters. Mail me, PM me, whatever. You can yell at me about "[my] ridiculous ideas" until the cows come home, for all I care. Until then, let's stick to what's actually in this thread and try to leave the personal attacks out of it, shall we? By a glance at the last page or so, after I posted my hypothetical server, only one person responded to it directly and it was a positive response.

    I love how I'm supposedly responsible for "most of the conflict and negativity" in a thread about one of the most hated changes PWE has ever done, though (perhaps surpassed only by the base changes, and when I made a thread about that, it was also well-received).
    Mains: Miugre / LigerKing
    Etherblade server
  • armoftheland33
    armoftheland33 Posts: 84 Arc User
    @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
  • greenfire312
    greenfire312 Posts: 269 Arc User
    @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.
    [Separated portion on PVP/pservers, quoted below]

    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.
    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 have a BM, veno, sin, cleric, mystic, and wizard who all variously need: gear upgrades, money for skill learning, homesteads, primal passives, better cards and charts, or various levels of culti (to say nothing of my pillbaby psy and seeker who need all of the above). I think it's safe to say that I'll never run out of projects, should I ever find the time for them (which is usually the problem). :tongue: But would you describe this as "progression" or "grinding?" I'm genuinely curious as to where you draw the line between the two.

    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.
    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.
    Yeah, you're never going to see any serious amount of participation in pservers until and unless PWI closes - and even then, the bulk of people searching will gravitate towards a "PWI-like" server and stay there (hopefully without the power creep, but probably not). Speaking from personal experience here, as the last game I played before PWI followed exactly that pattern.
    Mains: Miugre / LigerKing
    Etherblade server
  • zeevhaora
    zeevhaora Posts: 85 Arc User
    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. ;)
  • tideborn20090
    tideborn20090 Posts: 56 Arc User
    tek1nig wrote: »
    Pay to win means its not available from in-game means - R9 is fully farmable from in-game merchanting and farming.​​
    While it may not seem like pay to win in the classic sense, consider: where does one get Medals of Glory? I believe the original "rare TW reward" method is long gone, so that leaves direct from the cash shop and (according to PWDB) from certain packs. So whether they're bought directly or merchanted, they have to come from the cash shop at some point. That's the entire reason for their existence. PWE is paid, and someone "wins."

    I'm not saying people can't be proud of farming that much raw coin (even if that does seem less and less plausible with each passing year, due to losses of coin farming methods). But R9 people always seem remarkably quick to brag about that, as if all that coin passes into some ethereal space where coin goes in, MoGs come out. IMO the issue is less how you personally got it and more that there's never going to be a true way to farm the MoGs that doesn't ultimately come from the cash shop. If you've ever had a MoG in your inventory that wasn't put there by some F2P event I'm not aware of, then you're part of that system, and you've no doubt had to make your own peace with that. I can respect that you farmed the coin, but it all comes from the same place.
    tek1nig wrote: »
    @kalystconquerer#0876 Still waiting I hope something is announced today.​​
    Seconded. Is the festival over this week, I wonder? It would be nice to stop assuming that all PWE staff has 2-3 weeks off just because CN does.


    EDIT:
    jsxshadow wrote: »
    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.
    Exactly this. We have to remember that in an MMO, everything is for its own sake. You farm gear to have gear, you level up to have a high level character, and all of this is in service of playing the content and maybe PVP if you're so inclined. But the end of the road has to come sometime, and if you try to grease the wheels in the name of "progression," then you'll just hit the end of that road that much faster, and stay there until... surprise... the next gear comes out which represents the next step in the power creep. Alt-playing is the best way of preventing this.

    (8 mains though? Really? I thought I was nuts telling people I'm a dual-main... I mean I have an alt of every class but I don't play them often enough)

    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.
  • armoftheland33
    armoftheland33 Posts: 84 Arc User
    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.

    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.
  • sleeper1#0704
    sleeper1#0704 Posts: 70 Arc User
    is it bad that im watching this thread not for the update of @kalystconquerer#0876 .. but for the interesting comments of others. its almost three weeks of non playing now. i can never be happier. watched mo vlogs and money kicks. thinking if i spend that money on bitcoin.. i might have been super rich now..... MINDF.........new shop update = new content? hahahah gl to everybody.
  • heerohex#3018
    heerohex#3018 Posts: 4,795 Community Moderator
    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
    sugarplumfairy#3892 Posts: 13 Arc User
    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.
  • sylenthunder
    sylenthunder Posts: 3,061 Community Moderator
    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.
    582c1776c46eef7b527939a98b9d95a5.png

    Support Email: customerservice@perfectworld.com
    ​​
    Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
  • armoftheland33
    armoftheland33 Posts: 84 Arc User
    To be clear I think the witch hunt for mods is ill informed. But the rest of what @sugarplumfairy#3892 says is right. The proof is in the pudding. If it's going to take weeks to code a fix, then it took weeks to code the changes to arc.
  • greenfire312
    greenfire312 Posts: 269 Arc User
    edited February 2018
    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).
    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.
    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." :tongue:

    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." :tongue:
    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?
    Mains: Miugre / LigerKing
    Etherblade server
  • beast21g
    beast21g Posts: 631 Arc User
    heero200 wrote: »
    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.

    They couldnt update us cause they were partying for CN new year
  • opshrooms#2772
    opshrooms#2772 Posts: 14 Arc User
    Quite simply.....the damage is already done. Its been a long planned change that has killed its player base .
  • mistressani
    mistressani Posts: 101 Arc User
    edited March 2018
    Quite simply.....the damage is already done. Its been a long planned change that has killed its player base .

    Quite ageed all that's left now is the selected few extreme loyalist players who are in the denial of the game's current state or too afraid of accepting their years of CSing will eventually one day go up in smoke so they've choosen to hold on to the bitter end.
  • krunke
    krunke Posts: 4 Arc User
    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
    opshrooms#2772 Posts: 14 Arc User
    and also relationships which pwi seems to exploit this is what holds people to even log this game anymore.
  • mistressani
    mistressani Posts: 101 Arc User
    edited March 2018
    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
    Post edited by mistressani on
  • opshrooms#2772
    opshrooms#2772 Posts: 14 Arc User
    well it is what it is....a resounding silence...my only issue atm,is finding a game compatiable with my friends and we all will go to...its time to move on pwi ignores its community.
  • jey#1840
    jey#1840 Posts: 3 Arc User
    so with all this talking it will be fix or not ?
  • opshrooms#2772
    opshrooms#2772 Posts: 14 Arc User
    highly doubtful..the hangers on get to enjoy dead game now.... nothing else left but work and real life gives enough of that....i didnt play pwi to view and do as work.
  • armoftheland33
    armoftheland33 Posts: 84 Arc User
    @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
    greenfire312 Posts: 269 Arc User
    @armoftheland - Agreed that this is getting too much to quote now :mrgreen:

    So I think what you're trying to do is trip the "top tier" purists' OCD by making it impossible to conclusively decide which gear is the "best." :tongue: A valiant effort, to be sure. But here's the other problem: R9S3 is available to cashers, obviously, as well as some very dedicated F2P farmers, but the rest of the F2P community, for all intents and purposes, is priced out of it (except in the sense that some of them want to farm for it someday, in principle). Will your theoretical new gear sets match R9S3 in price point - thus leaving the bulk of the F2P community in a "donut hole" of only hierarchical progression until they get to your new plateau? Or will they be cheaper - a plan that would be extremely hard to push to PWE and the devs due to the loss of profit if people don't have a "best" gear set to buy?

    You'd have to find a way to flatten the curve on refines, too - even if everyone gets the new sets, they still would be steamrolled by the people who currently buy +12. You could just make the new gears equivalent in PVP power without having (or being able) to be refined, but that too would trigger The QQ Heard Round the World as the current R9S3s would call BS on their investments being "cheapened" (even though, cmon, how many years has R9S3 been king now? it's already lasted longer than most investments, so you can't say you didn't see it coming).

    But this goes back to the reason I'd rather advocate for a new server instead - no established gear loadouts for people to QQ over losing. Leave the original/legacy gears alone, then create a few parallel sets to, say, g15 Nirvana (you could argue g15s1 Morai and probably one of the r8 sets are already on par with that, but another option or two couldn't hurt). And then with the changes I suggested to that server's cash shop, R9 would functionally not be a thing on the new server (much like it is in CN today).

    I mean, you'd always have people doing pay-to-win stuff - that's how the company stays afloat these days, sadly - but they never had to introduce as much power creep as they did to achieve that. They could've made R9S1 have 10 attack levels instead of 30, and you know people would've still coughed up the cash for it, if it was the best thing out there at the time (and it was, because Warsoul was then what g17s5 is now). Hell, as long as ocean orbs aren't in boutique on the new server, you'll still have a couple of crazy people buying enough 5* orbs to make them anyway. You could even introduce progressively higher coin fees on higher-level dragon orbs at the jewelcraftsman - that would have the dual effect of making true "Joneses" you'd have to keep up with that much rarer, and also create a coin sink that doesn't squeeze the F2P community like most of today's coin sinks do.

    The playing field would never be entirely level. And the one nugget of truth in implode's post is that it shouldn't be entirely level (as long as we accept that F2P games are, by design, imperfect as they need a P2W element to stay afloat). But there's a sweet spot there somewhere, between "nothing worth buying" and "my cash can overcome your skill." Unfortunately that sweet spot can never be met on the current servers without massive nerfs to existing gear. Again - PWE boxed themselves into a corner here, years ago.
    Mains: Miugre / LigerKing
    Etherblade server
  • dagoddominator
    dagoddominator Posts: 218 Arc User
    @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
    armorisus Posts: 3 Arc User
    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.
  • tek1nig
    tek1nig Posts: 793 Arc User
    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​​
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  • amadhan#6486
    amadhan#6486 Posts: 6 Arc User
    This will not return to what it was,if was any intention to reinstate it would be mentioned,I am as so many,am just watching a game i enjoyed die and moving on and yeah isnt much more to say here except view