Non-non-item nerf thread

[Rrowrr]

I'm not going to say what you can and can't talk about in this thread but I really want an answer for this question: In the absence of real beta-testing (which we can not have, ever, <i>on so small a server</i>) how would you guide development to stop this from happening in the future? I know it's awful to have a thing for a year and then have it change. If there were 100 people doing that content from the start instead of 20, this change would have happened a very very long time ago because the server would have hit critical info mass very quickly. But we did not have that.. <i>we had one guild doing this content for a year, slowly.</i> The info is slow to come in and we were slow to react to it..

I'm not slamming the high tier guilds for doing what the game allows. But when the game content allows for one guild to do cerntain level content and keep the respective level content (and access to that content) killed regulary it leaves no room for another guild to do that same content. What we end up with is not only a Tier of game content but also stratified Tier of Guilds/players with only one or two guilds at each Tier, and no way for anyon else to achieve that level of game play.

I'm not complaining about the Tier system, nor the ability of a guild to control a Tier, but your admission that the game play of one guild can and does dictate the game rules for the rest of us pretty much vindicates a lot of the complaints I hear and read.

Sever population has been slowly dwindling for some time and maybe this has some manner of influence on this phenomenon. It can become discouraging to people when they find out higher end game success has as much to do with being lucky enough to join that select few of high Tier guild than it does with knowing the game and being a good buttom pusher.

 

[fuwok]

To be fair, the reason there aren't more top tier guilds is a player skill and ambition problem. I feel that both exodus and CW could be very far ahead of where they are but they seem both content to backfarm/stagnate endlessly.

FWF spent a ton of time essentially beta testing content - everybody else could be better off for it but they aren't exactly ripping through that stuff now that FWF is all but totally defunct. This isn't for lack of time commitment either, Exodus and CW both have a ton of playtime on their raid toons, I think exodus even raids twice a day?

edit:

It can become discouraging to people when they find out higher end game success has as much to do with being lucky enough to join that select few of high Tier guild than it does with knowing the game and being a good buttom pusher.

It is hard when guilds don't try new content and want/need to be fed the strat or they won't even try. It is a huge time commitment to learn new encounters and without undertaking that, there will only be the people who are willing to learn new encounters, and the second tier people who get told how to do it when that first group is tired of getting all the loot and partying on top of dragon corpses.

 

[Rrowrr]

Aside from that making future content isnt going to matter if no one is playing this server. No one can lie to themselves and say its not dying anymore and it is mostly due to the shear amount of nerfs and removals. Not most of the people left are only tied down here due to this is where thier group of friends is.

I disagree that nerfs and removals hurt the game. Balancing is balancing.

I agree that the few people left at the top tiers are here primarily becuase they have people that show up regularly to game with them.

There is no lack of content in this game. There is, however, a limited number of people who can tackle any given content at the same time. When the game is strictly Tiered and stratified at the high end, requiring defeat of one zone before another can be accessed, it effectively stratifies the people who can access those zones. And as long as Raids are limited to 18 people (for balance) it also limits access to that content to those 18 people doing it. (or the the raid of 9+ people boxing up to 18 toons.)

All of these limitations to access a given piece of content limits individual progression and ultimately limites the population the server when people reach a point they can no longer progress. Effectively, the game has a lot of content that is simply out of reach of most of the server and on a small sever like this it creates a lot of choke points forcing limitations on viable server population.

Placing new content and then placing a variety of limits on that content becomes an interesting conundrum. And trying to rebalance all that becomes a virtualy impossible task.

>>>

I understand that most of thelimitations are in place because some people seek to cheat the game and just in general don't play nice in the game. A few people causing the implementation of rules and limits making it not fun for the rest of us. And I think it would suck being an Admin/GM/Dev on this server while trying to also be a player.

 

[Rrowrr]

To be fair, the reason there aren't more top tier guilds is a player skill and ambition problem.

What is unfair is judging other player's ambitions and claiming that nobody else has been trying. I also know that a number of people currently raiding with the higher end guilds got there on the coat tails of others, or often on the backs of others, or simply just knew someone at the top who took care of them in.

Whatever stratification of Guilds control any given Tiers or zones it effectively stratify the entire game below them in respect. Adding new high level content doesn't change this. Adding new "similar" content in which one guild can't control an entire Tier, will change this, until enough guilds are geared up and then the problem of stratification reemerges again.

Limiting raid members to 18 and limiting access to zones causes the server population to stratify and that restricts that population to whatever workable maximum the overal limitations can effectively support.

This is the conundrum of effective control of the game versus anarchy within the game, either way somebody is going to be unhappy.

 

[fuwok]

You'll note that what I said was either they are not ambitious or they are not good players. You say they are ambitious, which I kind of doubt but will grant you for the sake of argument.

That leaves this pesky other part about being good? Skill is a very limited factor in this game that really amounts to:

"are you still awake after listening to that endless strat"

 

[Silosobi]

Guilds controlling zone/tier access is an issue, but I don't see it being a huge problem at the top now that CW got into spires. The fact of the matter is there are always progression mobs up that either guild is capable of killing as far as gear is concerned. The fact that instead they don't kill this either means A) they don't try or B) they try but don't have the skill/coordination/etc. I don't really mean this as an insult, the top few raid encounters in SoD are unlike anything before them, and I'm super fortunate to have had the chance to play with a group of really motivated and skilled gamers that had a lot of fun defeating that content. There seems to be this idea though that everything is locked down and defeated when that is simply not the case. There are end game raid mobs that never die, there are even mobs that FWF never managed to kill.

 

[Moraelintz]

Ontop of that there are plenty of ways to progress ones character outside of raiding. I challenge you to find me more than a handful and for the sake of argument that number can be 5 people who have final trader aug/mq aug (or at least as far as one can get without killing x raid mob) / supreme charm / vah back / all relevant times finished / diety aug / 20% diety spec, etc. for 99% of the ambitious population there are things to do if you nothing you can kill is up. There is also only 3 or 4 fights in the game that truely limit tiered progression. 1-nexus, 2-prime enchanter, 3-saitha 4-dota, and of these only 1 is highly contested and really preventing people from doing the content. No one guild from my knowledge controls certain tiers. I mean resergum probably kills some things prophecy would like to kill and prestige kills things resergum would like, GS and SB probably kill things prestige would like, and CW/exo kill things that both each other and goons wants to kill. It is all about getting a timer and being ready next time.

 

[fuwok]

I'm aware that "be better" is a really clichéd thing to say, but ultimately that is the difference in advancing versus stagnating. The guild that dedicates the most time while making the least mistakes goes the distance and the other guilds have to deal with it.

 

[Rrowrr]

- Healer weapons with massive group-heal procs were toned down. Combined with the huge healer haste from 3 items, these weapons basically redesigned three whole classes at once (with clerics being nearly unrecognizable). This is not acceptable from a design standpoint. If we want clerics to be able to heal exp groups without ever casting a group heal and just swinging a weapon, that should be a feature of the class at like level 1 on. This would not really be feasible. <i>Clerics' entire spell sets are focused on casting spells to keep groups and raids alive and to replace that with auto-attacking?</i> If a class needs a redesign, we can and will do it, but to redesign through itemization is ugly. Sorry this section is so long but I just want to add one more thing: when these must-have items exist, we have to look toward the future when they are eclipsed by other items. Then we have another 'Shaman Mask' situation where we now have to do something about this piece of former "endgame" gear and it just gets messy.

So Clerics really are just heal-bots for groups and raids. There is no intent to consider Maining a cleric for soloing, then. If that is the case then Clerics become pointless in the greater scheme of the game. Just combine Clerics and Druids, give Druids better group/healing, remove Clerics, and then we have a Healing class we can actually solo-duo with.

 

[Rrowrr]

You'll note that what I said was either they are not ambitious or they are not good players. You say they are ambitious, which I kind of doubt but will grant you for the sake of argument.

That leaves this pesky other part about being good? Skill is a very limited factor in this game that really amounts to:

"are you still awake after listening to that endless strat"

Likewise, I didn't say they are ambitious. I'm saying that judging people as not-ambitious is a subjective judgement call in this discussion, as is the subjective definition of what good means in this context.

 

[Moraelintz]

Clerics can solo just fine they generally have more ac and hps than Druids + yaulp + the spell that nukes and heals and rediculously good quick heals.

 

[Otcho]

As a rogue I think no other class should ever complain about the inability to solo outside of maybe warriors pre-fuckstick.

 

[Otcho]

Also I literally turned vent off when bango took 15 minutes to explain how to kill sharnee/rujik to me.

 

[Zaela]

So Clerics really are just heal-bots for groups and raids. There is no intent to consider Maining a cleric for soloing, then. If that is the case then Clerics become pointless in the greater scheme of the game. Just combine Clerics and Druids, give Druids better group/healing, remove Clerics, and then we have a Healing class we can actually solo-duo with.

If no soloing equals pointless class in the greater scheme of the game then I guess we should get rid of those pesky warriors, paladins, sks, rogues, and monks while we're at it.

Does anyone use those cheap cheap fast melee heal spells I added to Clerics anymore or at those completely irrelevant for exp at upper levels? I guess they're pretty much beneath mentioning in this whole debate. Certainly nothing that could be expanded on at all.

 

[Otcho]

I think its funny how people wont do sharnree and co because it reminds me of the time where everyone squatted thaz/tot because sanctum was impossible/too hard.

 

[Malicre65]

To be fair, the reason there aren't more top tier guilds is a player skill and ambition problem. I feel that both exodus and CW could be very far ahead of where they are but they seem both content to backfarm/stagnate endlessly.

FWF spent a ton of time essentially beta testing content - everybody else could be better off for it but they aren't exactly ripping through that stuff now that FWF is all but totally defunct. This isn't for lack of time commitment either, Exodus and CW both have a ton of playtime on their raid toons, I think exodus even raids twice a day?

edit:



It is hard when guilds don't try new content and want/need to be fed the strat or they won't even try. It is a huge time commitment to learn new encounters and without undertaking that, there will only be the people who are willing to learn new encounters, and the second tier people who get told how to do it when that first group is tired of getting all the loot and partying on top of dragon corpses.

The problem Exodus has had sence i joined is not the lack of desire to Progress, its the server continually shutting us down at every end, When i first joined, we had about 22-24 strong every raid, Fast forward a month, we are down to 10-12 Real life people logging in, So we are forced to recruit more, Back gear and then build back up to where we are at a point that we could attempt new Mobs. Then we loose our tank, So what happens yet again, we are back to backgearing a tank because we only have one SK that is active. These ninja nurfs and changes that you never decide to tell us about or why kill peoples drive to play this game and facesmash new content, or they dont want to backgear another main raider, Or RL is to busy for them to raid anymore, Theres alot of reasons why a guild dont progress, its not because they dont try, Its because of this type of server. And when you factor in nurfs, and changes in fights that make them so ridiculous to win its no longer fun. Changing the watchers hp on Custo from like 25-40k to over 400k was stupid, this means that when someone lags out on this fight, Its a complete wipe. Nothing you can do about it. At least before people had a chance to correct someone mistake and keep it going. Now they are forced to backgear another cleric because of some stupid ninja nurf. Its not the fights that limit a guild, its the group of players, if all of them keep the same drive and none of them leave guilds progress fast, but when u constantly backgear toons there is no progression. But then again how can a grp of people keep the same drive to play a game that they have no idea if all of there work they put into building there toon is going to be the same from one day to the next without any warning, Chance to defend it or anything whatso ever

 

[Rrowrr]

I challenge you to find me more than a handful and for the sake of argument that number can be 5 people who have final trader aug/mq aug (or at least as far as one can get without killing x raid mob) / supreme charm / vah back / all relevant times finished / diety aug / 20% diety spec, etc.

I know a lot of people who are close and/or working their way to that. And in almost every case these people spend most of their free time in the game, have odd-schedule or part-time work, are students or can log into the game virtually any time of the day or night.

If this is what we are calling necessary ambition, well, I call that not having a life, and one more limitation to the sever population.

 

[Silosobi]

T12 is the new T9

Also Zaela those spells are great!!! I think they got tuned down at some point because they were too efficient or powerful or something, so they arent as strong now but they still definitely have uses.

 

[darksabbath]

If no soloing equals pointless class in the greater scheme of the game then I guess we should get rid of those pesky warriors, paladins, sks, rogues, and monks while we're at it.

Does anyone use those cheap cheap fast melee heal spells I added to Clerics anymore or at those completely irrelevant for exp at upper levels? I guess they're pretty much beneath mentioning in this whole debate. Certainly nothing that could be expanded on at all.

I loved those spells when I boxxed my cleric, expanding them would be awesome. I have no idea if "mained" clerics keep them in their regular arsenal, or not, though.

 

[Rrowrr]

If no soloing equals pointless class in the greater scheme of the game then I guess we should get rid of those pesky warriors, paladins, sks, rogues, and monks while we're at it.

Does anyone use those cheap cheap fast melee heal spells I added to Clerics anymore or at those completely irrelevant for exp at upper levels? I guess they're pretty much beneath mentioning in this whole debate. Certainly nothing that could be expanded on at all.

I was refering to the reasonings posted for changes in the original thread. The text I noted specifically says that the primary purpose for cleric is group and raid healing.

Sorry, but having great healing doesn't do damage to any mob.

If you are talking about the spell that does damabe while healing at the same time, yeah those are nice, but not very useable past a certain level of mob. Cleric DDs AoEs while nice at lower levels have become pointless to me now. I do use Martyr's Intercession as much as possible but only if trying to solo or duoing. If we could get one more higher level of these that would be nice. Turn the refuge spell Diefic Brand, which I find mostly useless, into a higher level Marty's line, and that would be pretty solid.

I box a cleric, and I do try soloing with it, but it takes so long to kill anything it becomes pointless with respect to me pulling out one of my DPS/tank toons and killing the same thing much faster.