Item Rebalancing

don't think anyone expects 4.3 to be the best for any class, but it'd be pretty cool if it was better than lower tier stuff. i'm pretty disconnected from this argument, but it would be nice if those of us who farmed the robe were able to actually use it over spires bp, queen robe, etc
 
Silosobi said:
Any personal communications have just been ignored, whenever I have attempted to join goonsquad IRC, which is, apparently, where you guys do talk about game/item changes, I get banned by slaariel without even having said anything (and this was before I even knew him or had given him reason to dislike me)
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[21:22]bloog just make a meat volcano filled with cheese
[21:22]slaariel maybe i will do that in the future
[21:22]bloog yea deep fry the entire thing
[21:22]jumbers No you gotta bake it after it's all smoked
[21:23]bloog oh
[21:23]bloog also it should be covered in cheese
[21:23]jumbers Ah, the term is Engastration
[21:23]jumbers Good word
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This is bloog talking to staff in goon squad chat. From here, the conversation seems to shift to team fortress. Not an elegant segue.
 
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cian2 said:
don't think anyone expects 4.3 to be the best for any class, but it'd be pretty cool if it was better than lower tier stuff. i'm pretty disconnected from this argument, but it would be nice if those of us who farmed the robe were able to actually use it over spires bp, queen robe, etc
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Obvious solution: nerf queen robe proc rate or merely replace it with a focus and elemental damage, increase mana of 4.3 robe to be higher than spires bp / solanerus. There. This is my dev app.
 
Obscenitor said:
Obvious solution: nerf queen robe proc rate or merely replace it with a focus and elemental damage, increase mana of 4.3 robe to be higher than spires bp / solanerus. There. This is my dev app.
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Make solanerus actually fucking drop so its a viable gearing path too. The item isnt good enough to be worth being that rare
 
Silosobi said:
You pulled a marza quote that just isn't really relevant to the points I bring up... I specifically stated that marza does communicate well. What is concerning, is reading that in conjunction with the other marza quotes from that thread which essentially overall say "i dont think this change makes sense, or agree with it, but my boss said so, so deal with it"
.
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You are right I personally did not agree with the changes that were made on the 4.3 robe at the time, but what is wrong with that? I think having disagreement among the dev team is perfectly normal as long as a consensus is formed, and one was, one which I am perfectly fine with it. Honestly it was a problem that I created to begin with because I was making items under my directive only when in reality the other people on the dev team really needed to have input on them as well, especially when I was creating something as ambitious as the original 4.3 robe.

So really it was mostly my fault because although maybe I was communicating with the player base, I was not communicating with the other devs, which is also a problem and not one that can be ignored.
 
donfolstar3 said:
Exactly? I mean, isn't this the basis for pretty much any MMO?
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Well, in most games the player isn't afforded this kind of access to the staff, nor does the staff actually listen to player feedback to this extent.

Because of this rather exceptional circumstance, the players are more angry here because their feedback is only considered most of the time and not all the time. This is as opposed to live eq where Absor would tell you to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut for your suggestion.
 
Waldoff said:
You use words like "intention" and phrases like "this robe *should* be the best for me." Those mean nothing except that you are trying to bring some sort of authority to your desire to have the robe changed to how you want it.

When Marza says that he has talked to the other devs and we decided not to use your suggestion, that means you did have communication with us. Unfortunately, instead of saying "well they looked at what I wanted and communicated to me their decision", you decided that this means you must go on a crusade to right the horrible robe injustice and get detailed and explicit proof of why this robe is no longer the best robe for casters. Worse yet, you keep talking about how wrong it is for all the other devs to change another's creation like there is some sort of sacred space around each devs work that even the collective of all other devs can not touch. That sort of idea is part of why we are in this mess at the high end to begin with.

So that quote is actually extremely salient. You wanted it changed, you were told no, and you decided to start complaining about communication.

You can talk about rarity all you want, but no item should be the best in a slot for every class. That is the Thaz Syndrome, and has been well shown to be horribly problematic.
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Marza said:
You are right I personally did not agree with the changes that were made on the 4.3 robe at the time, but what is wrong with that? I think having disagreement among the dev team is perfectly normal as long as a consensus is formed, and one was, one which I am perfectly fine with it. Honestly it was a problem that I created to begin with because I was making items under my directive only when in reality the other people on the dev team really needed to have input on them as well, especially when I was creating something as ambitious as the original 4.3 robe.

So really it was mostly my fault because although maybe I was communicating with the player base, I was not communicating with the other devs, which is also a problem and not one that can be ignored.
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I'm just going to leave these two things here as what is, to me, a perfect example of good dev communication vs bad dev communication.

Woldaff nitpicks phrases which are irrelevant to the larger point I'm making, makes it into a personal issue in which I am misbehaving/wrong. If having an item be good for all classes is unacceptable, that explains the robe, although as I said the robe is one of many examples.

Marza on the other hand doesn't make it personal at all, addresses the issue at hand, and admits his part in the problem.

I know I am loud and obnoxious on these forums, if it seemed like I was a lone voice that just annoyed everyone I would shut up. The problem is that I am echoing the sentiments I hear over and over from other players, and basically everyone admits/knows that much of the player population distrusts/dislikes the way certain devs have been handling things.

I'm sorry I know thats hard to not take personally, but that is the state of the game. I really do want things to improve and I really think more open communication and give/take with players is the way to achieve that. Yes, sometimes you have to just ignore what players want/think, but there are also a lot of really good ideas, or different ways of looking at things, or balancing issues, etc that players might think of or point out that you may have otherwise missed.
 
You are generalizing again, and it does not help your argument. I am glad you have "many examples" of the same thing, but given that the you had ample dev communication about the robe, except in the way you wanted (which exasperated even your example of "good communication" dev), I am pretty sure you are not very indicative of how the server feels as a whole. I think most of the server would very much like to see further development, and I think that future players also would like to see that. The fact that a small swathe of the population benefited from extremely powerful items and very poor oversight makes it very easy for them to "hate" the people who are fixing the problems.

How easily items have changed in response to your type of "communication" is also part of what got us to where we are with itemization. Being loud and refusing to let issues drop when a dev response has been given ends up just making dev responses happen less, or at the very least makes devs less willing to discuss changes besides giving short responses.

If you feel like this is unreasonable, I have no idea what to tell you. The developer team is not here, and it is not our job, to balance the game in a big circle with the playerbase. Do we take suggestions? Sure. But we are not about to get harangued about changes we make to a free game that we volunteer our time to run. If you do not like that model of game, there are plenty of games where you pay money to have *less* of a say in what happens to the game.

Fuwok's post is extremely salient here. Players have always been given an inch more than in other games as far as staff communication has been concerned. For the last while, they have been given a mile, and that has been detrimental to the high end - because lets face it players want to be as powerful as they can be. Unfortunately, that mile is unsustainable, and going on a crusade when you do not get it is not something helpful or effective.

Finally, the worst part of your entire argument, is that the "good dev communication" example you gave above came after you spamming the boards, IRC channels, and the dev themselves for what, weeks? I am not sure how you expect to be responded to after a campaign like that over an item you are extremely biased about. It sure sounds from the exasperated marza post I somehow "nitpicked" in it's entirety that you had plenty of communication before the one you are espousing as somehow giving you closure on the issue.
 
The point here is not whether or not solosolki is wright or wrong. It is how can we best proceed to the greatest benefit of Shards of Dalaya.

Ample dev communication on the robe = only marza. Seeing as marza specifically stated he disagreed with that happened with the robe, I was hoping to get some input from someone who actually decided the changes needed to be made, and why that was decided.

I'm sure I'm not indicative of how the server feels as a whole, but I do interact with 50-100 people on a semi-regular basis through pugs and groups and random other activities, and there is without any doubt a problem with how players perceive dev actions/intentions/etc.

I honestly hear more hostility/resentment from random other players/guilds than I do from FWF, who theoretically should be the most upset.

IDK... the point of your post once again seems to detail how WRONG I am, rather than trying to work together to make the game better. As I said, I hope I am an outlier/minority opinion, but I fear that is not the case.
 
Silosobi said:
IDK... the point of your post once again seems to detail how WRONG I am, rather than trying to work together to make the game better. As I said, I hope I am an outlier/minority opinion, but I fear that is not the case.
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It seems a little disingenuous to go from "We need better communication: Here is a detailed example of bad communication" to "Stop trying to say I am wrong, we need to work together to make the game better." No one is disagreeing, and no one ever will disagree, that we need to work together to make the game better. The definition and methodology of "working together" that you want is what I am rebutting.

New thaz items should have been created instead of buffing old thaz loot. Its not too late to fix this.
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Out of around ~50 loots in new Thaz, 6 are old thaz loot and ~44 are new. Not sure where the rumor has gotten around that we are just reusing all the old loot, but we are only reusing a select few. Wherever we were not able to do a small buff, we recreated entirely. The one outlier to this would be the Thaz1 loot, which I figured (and still do) came from a fight with enough difficulty that a small buff was warranted. People farmed upper thaz like crazy, Thaz1/2 were not quite as big of pushovers.
 
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