One mans view of 2.0 and neccessary changes.

[junius]

Judge it when its complete. If you cant wait that long then leave and go play another game. Certianly there is one out there that you would be happier with.

Instead of fleeing with apathy I am proposing positive changes that can make things whole again for all of us.
Also please refer to my section about constantly changing game mechanics. I would argue that these 2.0 changes given the history of the server will never be complete and as such your standard would allow for noone to ever judge the server.

 

[antihelei]

There's an emoticon strictly for posts like this.

is it :what: or or is there an emoticon for tl;dr

 

[Jun]

I figured he meant syduck:

 

[Xeldan]

This is probably going to be long, replying to most of the suggestions:

- Return of the 36/40 player cap on most major raid content. The exceptions will be new 18/12/6 player zones akin to cmal.

This isn't my call, but I honestly don't care what the raid cap is. I much prefer a smaller cap though because of the reasons we've given. I can design encounters for pretty much any size raid so it's just a matter of that more than anything.

- Removal/reimbursement of the 1mil charmsthey are entirely out of line with EVERY other item in the game especially with RvR balancing and item effects cap trivialization

I agree to an extent here. The extremely expensive charms are a bit silly, borderline outrageous. But if they're removed, we have a ridiculous amount of plat sitting there on players with nothing to spend it on. We need good suggestions for moneysinks other than charms to counter the suggestions of removing the top tier charm.

- Make all existing charms no drop.they are not cash sinks as the plat invested only changes form and it is not removed from the economy. They are more like home equity where the plat invested stays in the charm and can be resold to reach the next charm level.

I don't really have a problem with this.

- No longer allowing Duel clientage. 1 char per person.

Dual-clienting is a necessary evil. I don't hate or enjoy doing it, but I don't think removing it would help the situation at all.

- Life tapping weapon procs of significant damage.

Why? I'm not sure I see the reason for this.

- Overall sane balancing of itemization

Again, emphasise further on your suggestion here. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this.

- Increased Raid zones with linear progression of a month to 2 months each.

This isn't exactly easy to do because there aren't many large zones left. The upper sections of Thazeran's Tower will be harder than the lower for sure, so it may take some time there.

- More axe’s to the item db.

Are you talking about axes as in the weapon type?

- Testing any changes before patching them/stop hotpatching exploits, start enforcing those who willingly choose to disobey.

Why do you want us to stop hotpatching exploits? We don't have the people to police the possible exploits if we leave the server up when they're found. Suggesting we don't fix something which causes at most a 5 minute downtime is silly. I wouldn't have a problem with testing stuff before patching it though, but again it's not something easily done right now.

- Recruit staff to fill testing/enforcement roles from broad spectrum of the community.

This would be a no-brainer if we started testing changes on a "test" server.

- Return of endless quiver and increase cap of Game arrows that work with this AA.

Not happening. Endless Quiver in its live form was a stupid talent. This offers the chance for a lot more variety of arrows.

- Removal of RANGEr 3x attack returning them once again to archery. making botting easier should not be enforced.

I agree here, I'd like to see archery more viable for a ranger than meleeing.

- Keep Ch removal changes and healing changes.

This is a no-brainer. I doubt you'd see CH ever come back. It's a terrible spell and makes the role of clerics really hard to change in raids. They're always expected to heal in CH rotations if it's available.

- Increase HoTs

This is being done.

- Remove critical changes to paladins. Give them cleric group heals/raid heals at a much higher level to attain than clerics.

Why? I disagree that paladins should be a gimped cleric. 100%.

- Change bandage mastery AA to 3 levels of mitigation enhancement for warriors.

This isn't really possible unless we change the AA for everyone. I'd love to be wrong here though, but I don't see why warriors need help with mitigation.

- Main hand agro weapons spread throughout the itemization for warrior agro problems.

It's pretty unlikely you'll see mainhand aggro proc weapons, regardless of the tier they come from. From raids I've seen, warriors haven't had aggro problems at all other than on encounters/mobs designed to have loose aggro.

- Give rogues double backstab to return their dps levels to the wizard area.

Rogues are pretty damn close to wizards now after the attack power changes. I don't see them needing double backstab. Ponden was parsing at 600+ dps on some mobs in the earth wing in Thazeran's Tower.

- Change bard relic death save song to raid wide 80hp lifetap combat innate, does not stack with R:BoW.

Why? It doesn't really make any sense for bards to give a lifetap proc. If anything, this should be a necro suggestion(and isn't a bad one to give them raid utility).

- Removal of healing FD changes. Enforce no PL policy, see removal of DClienting.

In a perfect world this would happen. Like I said about the exploits, we don't have the staff to enforce it right now, and it's hard to build a staff of volunteers to do it.

- Change effect of tiger claw to 1-5% over stacking slow. Monks should not be
tanking at the level they are

This wouldn't do anything at all other than helping monks in the xp part of the game. We'd simply increase the slow mitigation on raid mobs.

 

[Lufia]

Rogues are pretty damn close to wizards now after the attack power changes. I don't see them needing double backstab. Ponden was parsing at 600+ dps on some mobs in the earth wing in Thazeran's Tower.

Not trying to derail, just addressing this point directly. I've created another thread about this, but the fact is that rogue DPS scaling is WAY out of line with Wizards. It wasn't until I looted the Twilight Rapier that I even came close to reaching Wizard DPS. Our Wizards pull 350+ DPS per and with a 16dmg mainhand and a 16/20 offhand, I was sitting pretty between 160-180. Sure, maybe the rogues are in the same league as Wizards at 65/150aa's/17dmg mainhand, but otherwise it's not even close.

I already created a balance post for this but didn't get a response, fyi :tinfoil:

 

[Zaos]

I really hope that people take this post a little more seriously. Especially the comments on guilds and raiding.

Guilds are more than just a team of uber, best of the best raiders, they are a community whose social fabric is woven with the society of the server at large. They are tradeskillers, questers, gossipers, group mates and family. Decreasing the number of players who can participate in the main function of a guild decreases the amount of players in total on the server as players with no more end goal available to them, i.e. massive multiplayer raiding .

With less players on there are less groups which account for less people with aa’s, less people logging on except to raid and a spiral of declining interest as a whole in the server.

Guilds and raiding are the cornerstone of MMOs. Breaking this down into smaller numbers breaks down communities and the desire to "hang around", further discouraging progression through AA's and other activities.

I believe a lot of this has been unintentionally caused by catering to a small group of min-maxer’s who do not have overall game balance in mind

No doubt.

As far as some of the individual class suggestions are concerned I beg to differ on a few but they seem sound for the most part. I don't think ones opinion on these matters should cast a shadow over the more important issues stated above. Paladins are finally a well balanced class (most people are still too scared to give them a whirl) with great dps and the ability to offtank and provide supplemental heals. (Although after the 2.0 patch melee dps was screwed leaving my avg hit almost 100 dmg less than prior to the patch -- I don't know if this has been fixed and, frankly, I don't care to find out under the current circumstances)

 

[Elysium]

Dual-clienting is a necessary evil. I don't hate or enjoy doing it, but I don't think removing it would help the situation at all.

Even if it was just disallowed in raids?

 

[Gea]

@Thread-opener

Sorry, I can't read your message. Please try again with punctuation and stuff ok? I really can't read it.

@topic

2.0 is for what? Wasn't it to counteract mudflation in the first place? Because staff didn't want to design the next 450 HP/Mana item? Hm, What's left?

There has been a lot of goals in the first post I remember. The only goal that's been achieved seems to be the destruction of higher end raiding guilds. If that is what you wanted, you didn't fail.

 

[volvov2]

Currently Raid size is my biggest beef, I would much rather have a 24 cap at *least* because an 18 man raid is really restrictive, as Azrate pointed out, 15 classes means 3 other classes to pick from in an optimum situation, generally you need 1 of every class at least, and when you do that, you typically fill the last 3 slots with another cleric, another druid or shaman, and a wizard or rogue, because 90% of the top end encounters cant be done with 3 healers, because you have AE's to worry about, or at least offtanking, and 1 wizard and rogue is going to leave you DPS light, I hate the fact that we have to exclude classes. "Sorry, no room for a ranger, you are not enough DPS for this encounter, but please cast call of the predator on your way out, also, Mr. Beastlord, cast SV as you gate so we can stick another shaman or druid in the raid" Its really silly to have to turn away people because you need the DPS on the new tier encounter, (of course once youve killed it a few times and gotten started on the next tier THEN you can invite the ranger) an 18 raid limit when there are 15 classes essentially guarantees you will never have the balance you would ultimately want.

Of course I guess you can just wipe Shadowknights off the optimal class split, because you only need a SK to tank, what, 3, maybe 4 encounters on the server. So you can scratch the SK off the list except when you need him for those encounters, so I guess you can put in another wizard or rogue, or another healer if needed! Also Paladins, while decent DPS, are no match for a rogue or wizard DPS wise, and if you have a beastlord, you have 80% of the HP buff that SSS gives (if your guild HAS SSS).

These are silly sacrafices, and have made raids stupidly restrictive to what you need for what encounter, much like cmal4, which requires *exact* classes, meaning certain classes will probably never see cmal4 encounter first hand, and will just be brought in to loot rot loots (after they wait outside for the *right* group to kill it). But Cmal4 is another story

 

[phlit]

I agree with the OP on the ast majority of the things mentioned, particularly raidsize and the consequences. I can't be bothered to write out a long reply, and frankly the original post was pretty splendidly articulate.

Off topic, I couldn't believe I was reading and agreeing when I read the OPs name... When I realised the name confusion, it all made much more sense...

 

[junius]

to answer xeldan:

I meant axes as in the weapon graphic/type.

bandage mastery is a shared aa with monks and warriors only iirc, at its current state it is a useless aa, only there to punish warriors who seek the agro aa that follows it at a cost of 3/6/9. Show me another aa that costs 3/6/9 so completely worthless as bandage mastery.

Monks losing the agro proc from their tiger strike would make their tanking become less stable and I could not think of anything else to replace it with atm so I threw in slow overstack.

Duel clienting is not neccessary, it is a luxury. The server has 100+ ppl on atm but that will slowly fade away. I see a future sod with raid guilds not being made up of 20-60% bots, but instead mained toons single cliented.

As for linear raid zones, chardok , charasis, some more :Ldon zones, pow, pof, pog, ...

Sane item rebalancing. There is a huge leap from ntov/gotss to cod/prison gear that needs to be smoother with the high end toned down about 20% in stats. When I first came onto sod I was amazed that the items and raids were well balanced. Now previous progression raidmobs like lotd, keo kodal, wtov etc are being overlooked and guilds are jumping past immediately to higher tiers.

A lack of police / staff is caused by bad recruitment/ under-recruitment. The consequences of such should be fixed by the immediate cause, see previous sentence, not by hotfixes that break content and game mechanics.

We disagree about paladin roles. I would not frame my view of a paladin as a gimp cleric, but again as a warrior hybrid with cleric abilities similar to how a ranger is a warrior with druid abilities. The current paladin is being turned into a berserker from live imho and the cleric aspect of its hybrid abilities are being almost entirely overlooked.

The bard relic deathsave song really is useless. I agree the alternative I suggested would best be directed to the necro class. I welcome any alternative to this bard relic or anyone willing to bring light to its merits.

I believe the changes to attack rating were in some ways beneficial to all melee, but it is my opinion that the changes to how bs are calc'd are another in a series of hotfixes to larger problems. In this case the problem is that having lost double backstab rogues are no longer in the tier of wizards unless they have a significant amount of aa's. This loss of dps tier further complicates other melee balance.Previous rangers with Game and high aa's were doing low to mid level rogue dps(without 2xbs) causing their archery to be nerfed. If rogues were given 2x bs they would be melee similar in dps to wizards in the longrun, rangers would still be high dps with archery but under rogues, monks etc would fall in line also.

Tonite was a terrible time for our raid, we had to tell 4-5 ppl although they were online tonite ontime, they werent able to join the raid due to 1.) class limitations 2.) 18 man cap limit. Given that this process continues and the fact that they enjoy our company in the guild they will most likely not join another guild, create another guild or enjoy the 2.0 changes in any way. The reality of the situation is that these members who had a place before will stop logging on and eventually leave the server behind.

My main point from all of this is that 2.0 changes are 100% more detrimental to the servers health than will ever be beneficial. If the staff has lost interest in the server and its goals, please pass the torch or find others who will allow the spirit of the server to live on. Do not mutate the server to the whims and benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

 

[Jun]

Honestly, and this is a derail, I'd appreciate it if you changed your SoD Forum name.

 

[articbre]

Honistly I somewhat agree with a slight uping of raid encounter size, I also highly agree with the removal of DCing on raid encounters. I've seen many guilds saying that they won't drop an alt wizard or rogue because they got build up and do more DPS then mained 65 of the respective type. So people are losing out their spots to bots because they have better equipment or because they are officers that arn't willing to give other people a chance, do to their own reasoning.

I'd say keeping in the cap for classes (or softcap) would still be a good idea for over zerging of wizards and rogues. but uping the raid limit to 24 would be nice to allow more classes a chance to get in, without worry about over dpsing.

 

[Minqe]

I couldn't read all of that post - something about the formatting - so my apologies to the original poster, however I'd like to respond to something Xeldan mentioned...

We need good suggestions for moneysinks other than charms to counter the suggestions of removing the top tier charm.

Just throwing out ideas here...my apologies if things I mention here are already implemented in some manner or are just plain stupid ideas that will not work...

1. Non-charm purchaseable items - Introduce a few 'uber' items for range slot (or other slot) that are scaled along the same vein as the charms are - offer items that cannot be player created, heck, even some of the 'special' little things that are sometimes gifted during server events. Sold only in major cities by certain vendors.

2. Tradeskills - Ability for tradeskillers to become 'grandmasters' (yeah, sort of stealing this from that 'other' game) - with the ability to become masters in two tradeskills (obviously ones that compliment one another) - max out two skills, then use them in conjunction to create new items that require both found (in higher zones) and bought items (expensive), other players would purchase...for hefty prices.

3. Tradeskills - cooking. Sounds silly, but money will be spent on items to create stat foods/drinks as well as by players to buy such products.

4. Ability to purchase housing/lease (instead of being donator-only).

Just a few thoughts.

 

[junius]

Honestly, and this is a derail, I'd appreciate it if you changed your SoD Forum name.

honostly I would appreciate if you read the naming policy

Stupid or Well-Known Names
No names from well-known, popular media. You can't be Aragorn, Gandalf or Garfield. Also, excusing it with that you spelled it Ganddalf or Garrfield will earn you a ban for sheer stupidity. On that note, no unrealistic or completely idiotic names either. "Rogue" or "Iksar" are not acceptable names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius

 

[Jinxat]

The main point that I agree with is having raid limit increased. Even if its only 24 that would make a HUGE deal, and I dont think encounters would have to be rebalanced all that much. Some of the other ideas are good, whereas some do not make much sense to me, but the raid cap at the moment is really detrimental as previous posters have all pretty much said.

 

[Elysium]

Duel clienting is not neccessary, it is a luxury. The server has 100+ ppl on atm but that will slowly fade away. I see a future sod with raid guilds not being made up of 20-60% bots, but instead mained toons single cliented.

Even if it was just disallowed in raids?

Seriously, there's not even close to enough XP groups out there to satisfy this change. I'm completely eye-to-eye with you about raids though.

 

[Jun]

honostly I would appreciate if you read the naming policy

Stupid or Well-Known Names
No names from well-known, popular media. You can't be Aragorn, Gandalf or Garfield. Also, excusing it with that you spelled it Ganddalf or Garrfield will earn you a ban for sheer stupidity. On that note, no unrealistic or completely idiotic names either. "Rogue" or "Iksar" are not acceptable names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius

My name was changed and approved by a GM. Change your forum name please, or at least make a sig. I don't want your rambling associated with me in game.

 

[HighLife]

I don't hate the changes, I dont love the changes. I agree with alot of stuff said in OP, I disagree with some.

Only thing that gets me is that after logging on night after night to raid with my guild, and being a member of the family for some time, I am sitting in Athica because we already have too many wizards. I just want to raid!

Instead I'm :toot: in Athica. Boo.

Tomil
<Ruin>

 

[Anhala329]

I agree with most of what whats suggested. But the biggest thing for me is the 18 man/3 per class limit. A majority of guild are alot more then 18 people, but dont have enough to form 2 18 man raids. which means alot of people get left out. Those who are "less geared" then others are ledt to sit out cause they have less mana/hsp or whatever. I think it would be a good idea to increase the raid size a bit (24, 30, or 36) and bump the class cap up to compensate for those classes that are more "popular" ie druids, wizards....etc

ps. Reducing recast on RV necks would be nice!!