These Are My Issues With This Dying Game. What Are Yours?

1. SIN/PSY issue: the inclusion of the new skills were meant to bring balance but in truth only 4 classes got any real help. archers, barbs, bm's and wizards all made out okay but everyone else got fail skills. the most fail was clerics. psys and wizards both have a heal. even seekers got on a crappy one with the expansion, but clerics being the best healers in the game, can't heal during metal mage form? and to add insult to injury their hp is decreased on top of that. did anyone even play test these skills? why not disallow the heal over time heals and the aoe heals and allow them to use blessing of the purehearted [a skill that no cleric i know has found a use for] or wellspring surge? the idea of a cleric in pk is pointless. the sin attacks with aps are just disgusting. who's bright idea was it to include zerk on a aps weapon for a class that has high crit/damage? PK is dead....aside from a few enterprising individuals or a full r9+12 barb you play a psy or a sin to pk. why? cause there are sins with scrupulous morals that enjoy farming people for kicks, so to be able to defend yourself from overpowered stealth attacks you need to be one of these classes: psy, sin or barb. i would say tone down the tideborn but that leads to the next issue....

2. lazy gm's/code monkeys: As a fledgling code monkey i understand the intricacies of game design [fatal conflicts, coding issues, priority command resolutions]. you can't fix the classes because the original team of designers are no longer employed there. so what's a guy to do.....CHANGE THE BROKEN MIDWARE.......yes this means practically a complete overhaul but honestly are you just gonna keep trying duct tape to fix a leak? all these little anti sin additions are great [theater of blood was sin owned before] but until you redesign the concept to tone down the tideborn and aps dominance over channeling, whatever you do will be a stop gap measure.

3. scaled xp: it should not take you a year to gain a level. the goon glitch was abused and those without the moral strength to resist are all level 105. i personally quit the game during that time. so how does PWI reward those that abstained from cheating? [crickets echo]. make quests level specific with diminishing returns if you chose to do them past the level you are able to obtain the quest. for instance, quest x becomes available from level a-e. if you do it at level a you get 3% of your xp bar filled, for each level past you lose .5%. so if you decide to wait til level e to do the quest you will only get 1%. [you can tweak this of course, but this is just to explain]. the oht and culti's could be changed not to give xp but give a decent amount of rep and lots of spirit instead since those you'd want to remain open so they could be done whenever the character got around to it. this way even if you make the quests at level 100 plus give .5%, people will do them cause the can see an end [dangle the carrot in front the mule].

4. community care: you need GM's that aren't here for a paycheck. it is extremely frustrating to have an issue and plead for a gm only to find out there are none on. there used to be a way to call in an issue. you removed it. then you could talk online to a person, you remove that too. anyone with a lick of common sense will view this as disinterest. if you continually keep creating distance between you and your fan-base, why would we put food on your plate? no interaction eventually boils down to no money going in the game. MMO's aren't supposed to last forever, i get that. if you are trying to keep the party going however, you can. I know personally 50+ qualified people [understand the game, hold a college degree, certified in conflict resolution] who absolutely love the game because of what they remember and what it could be and that would be GM's for free. i convinced about 20 of them to apply. not even a thank you for submitting your application, blah blah blah...... was sent. people post on forums all day. but giving us a place to vent without any follow up is simply a means of placating someone with an issue. that may work on kids and even adults that act like children, but for the rest of us.......we see you. you're not fooling anyone. at this point i play when i am getting ready for bed or have nothing [and i do mean NOTHING else to do. is that what you want?

5. server accessibility: this one is big. the market is uncontrolled [big mistake] so greedy merchant and scams are overly abundant here. way more so than in any other game i've played. because of this the economies of different servers are at different inflation levels. e.g. item x cost 3x as much on server a as it does on server b. this in turn restricts you from moving you account to a different server if your lifestyle changes [work/school schedule, you moved cross country or any other real life event] that would alter your playing time. end result? people leave when the events the are interested in no longer fits into their schedule. who wants to take forever to level a toon only to not be able to play the events because of the time the are given? i used to live on the west coast, now that i am in new york i find that doing an event means staying up late during a work/school night so i don't get to do them as much anymore [which is why i play before bedtime]. even if you had to put a charge on the cost of moving an account you would find doing so will only help increase the interest since now you could pick a server based on your needs and move it when your schedule demanded it. in other words, fix the market so players can travel.

these are the main issues i have come up with after conducting over 100 surveys with players off-line [both active and non-active]. i have all the contact info for these players and am willing to share any and all information gleaned from the results. the opening question was has the game gotten better or continued it's decline. the answer: no, the game has not gotten better and aside from those that enjoy bullying people or don't care about pk and events and tw and....well, basically aside from those that don't care about a thriving game community, the game is already dead. once enough of my friends on here leave i will be leaving too. i invested hard core but because i wanted a challenge [i didn't r9+12 a psy or sin] i find i have no chance in events or pk against someone who did. so no pk, no leveling [my main toons are all at 102 w/o goon glitch], no events. my friends are what keep me here but more and more of them leave each day so very soon...no me.

I'd like to see your responses and gm's [past and present] are encouraged to shed some light on this. Let's make some real resolutions instead of just complaining all day.