Rorne
The sad fish is a reactionary creature; an enemy o
This is probably going to turn out real long so I'm sorry.
This thread is for your ideas, as a player, of how you would improve SoD or what you think the current problems are. I recently came back and started playing for a bit, for a long time I thought the population talk was a bunch of hype but in playing for a while again I realize it's very true and I have spent countless hours on a fairly fresh level 65 character trying to find anything to do other than solo at a depressing pace. Whether it's the natural course of the game to eventually fall in decline as it shows its age of it people have been driven away I can't say but lets see what we can come up with as far as improving the game and maybe attracting and retaining some new blood.
I ask that you use this thread to post your ideas or thoughts and not to comment on the ideas and thoughts of others. If you support an idea just include it/echo it amongst your own and maybe give credit to the original person saying it so we can get a rough idea of how popular an idea is but please don't derail this into disagreements and commentary on how wrong someone is. If their sentiment isn't valued we won't see it echoed.
BUFFS
1)Who likes loading a million dudes to buff for a group. We have become so used to rocking every god damn buff when exping they're practically considered default past a certain point in the game. A lot of kooky ideas have been thrown around about how to fix this like making buffs wear when a class drops the group but I think that is going the wrong direction. Most buffs are no longer a part of individual class balance, they stay on for hours and having them on has very little do with the casting class beyond briefly loading them in to cast that spell, they are no longer assets to the classes that can cast them so here is my proposal: Split off a large portion of the stats we get from buffs that players have innately such as HP/regen/mana regen and give part of those stats to the player directly as they level. A buff that gives, say, 800 hp would be split down to 400hp and the remaining 400hp taken off would be something the player gains as he levels up. The net total would be the same but the buff itself is providing him less benefit vs his base stats. This creates less dependence on buffs and in turn makes players feel freer to go without. Does this reduce the power of the buffing class? No, because as we talked about before that power isn't even owned by the class as it stands. It doesn't benefit them directly to cast that buff and 9 times out of 10 it doesn't determine their placement in a group (very low duration buffs like cunning withstanding).
2)Rebuffing is terrible and a big time waster, this doesn't add a single thing to the game it just adds time you have to spend casting a bunch of bullshit if you're unlucky enough to be a shaman or a beastlord or something, here is what should be done about that if it's possible: A buff cast by a class while in the group stays up for as long as that class is in the group and the countdown for wearing off only begins when they leave, this is effectively the way it is already just that some poor sap has to sit down for a second then spend half a minute recasting everything then sit down again. It's really unnecessary
3)Low duration buffs (sub-1 hour) combined with lack of group versions makes playing at lower levels really terrible. I'm definitely thinking of shaman here. Show some damn kindness, once again recasting a buff every half hour adds nothing meaningful to your experience, I'm sure someone will disregard the thread purpose and tell me that someones live and wife has been saved by being on the ball and recasting a 30 minute buff right before it wore off but whatever.
CHARMS
1)Charm farming sucks dog balls. That's the reality, it just does. It was a really poor idea to use charms as a plat sink but what is done is done. Lets look to the future and the poor saps who are starting on this daunting road of farming more digital money than they will ever see in their lives because if they have a supreme they probably don't have a job, although I guess they could be lottery winners... but you get my point. Here is my stupid awful idea that someone will tell me to shove up my ass: Since charms are primarily beneficial for raiding anyways implement some kind of credit system where killing raid creatures within brackets allows for a discounted purchase of a tier-appropriate charm. You'd still be able to farm just like you were and straight up buy a charm above what is classified as tier appropriate but this way you can earn one in a more natural way as you progress. As for people who bought charms already give them an exp bonus or something that equates to the charm they bought. This game is way too afraid of giving players exp but I am getting to that
QUESTS
1)Is the purpose of quests at 65 to A) earn an item you will use B) earn nothing at all, or c) earn something you will immediately put on the destroy button and you probably only did this stupid thing for faction. If you're not sure either welcome to the club. Call me crazy but I have always felt that a quested reward should be slightly better than the gear you'd need to be wearing to complete the quest itself but sadly this is often not the case for a lot of them. Many 65 quests (ikisith especially) where I have managed to use the reward has been because I either got the item on an alt with the help of overgeared characters or the reward had some kind of value outside of being worn like being a clicky or whatever. The reality of the game now is that you can spend days camping for quest pieces or you can often spend less days camping for money and just buy something pretty damn near OR you can just not fucking quest at all and raid and live in fear of the day when you're going to have to do something really really stupid like refuge faction or the vah. How gross is plane of lore, oh just what was needed another low stat ring item (p.s. please stop making magic rings as rewards). Oh damn let me just get my guild together to kill this total bullshit so I can get something I won't use by time all the planets have aligned and I have all the drops and a month has passed. Enough!
2)Don't tie low level quests that have multiple steps to poorly planned out rare spawns. Take the centaur ranger quests where you have to kill a specter at the skeleton camp for some crap. So okay, we can presume you are intended to do this quest while leveling. Skeletons are what, blue until level 12 or so? So we have a rare spawn, who only spawns at night, are you beginning to see the problem here? Why should anyone ever waste their time? I could spend my time earning hard cash in athica cybering players and buy a million better items in the time I could hypothetically be waiting for that one stupid specter to spawn. It's okay for quests to be work, it's okay for them to be challenging, but there are ways to accomplish that beyond throwing the player to the whims of a purely random system. Why can't there be some kind of condition that says okay if this asshole kills 45 skeletons the stupid mob spawns as a safeguard? Is that somehow babying a player? (Hello grognards). Would that not be enough chorework and pain for a piece of green chainmail or whatever the hell? This is just an example but I'm sure it applies in a lot more situations!
MORE TOMES THAN A BOOKSTORE AND THE EXP MONSTER
1)So, I probably don't even need to state this one but I guess I may as well. The goal posts in this game are insane and it's daunting as hell to take on the exp requirements that only ever seen to go up. There are people that play that, they take breaks occasionally, but they play the game like a job and they end up as the standard by which you can be measured. Not always, sure, but it can happen and I'm sure if we're being honest we've all been in position where we've realized just how retarded standards have become. How much time investment is really required. Don't get me wrong, if you want to be #1 you can definitely get there, I'm not saying you can't, but it could be a little less painful to be like... #12 or something. Why is exp such an enemy? There is so damn much to use exp for in this game does it matter if we get it a bit faster? I can almost hear the dudes saying how that will lead to the ruination of the game and that's "easymode" or whatever but if the current way is so great, why does it seem like the server is dwindling? Maybe it has SOME relation to that? People want to take part in content but as the population has become lower and some characters never leave circulation where is the place for the shitty dude with 100AAs? How does he get to 200AAs? Why should he even bother if it's just going to be a constant struggle
ADEPT ALTS
1)I have no problem with you guys, I really don't care at all how people play the game. The problem this IS creating though is that for people who don't know about this subculture or who don't want to partake they are up against some seriously well-equipped and AA'd level 65s when these guys finally decide to jump out of the small pond. I mean they probably emerge as what used to be about tier 4 right when they hit 65, in contrast that is going to make a real fresh 65 look like chopped liver. Is this a problem? Does it matter? I don't know but I have seen a few fresh 65s around and those poor guys can't seem to get a group for the life of them. Something is up here
Anyways those are a bunch of my awful thoughts nobody will probably read.
This thread is for your ideas, as a player, of how you would improve SoD or what you think the current problems are. I recently came back and started playing for a bit, for a long time I thought the population talk was a bunch of hype but in playing for a while again I realize it's very true and I have spent countless hours on a fairly fresh level 65 character trying to find anything to do other than solo at a depressing pace. Whether it's the natural course of the game to eventually fall in decline as it shows its age of it people have been driven away I can't say but lets see what we can come up with as far as improving the game and maybe attracting and retaining some new blood.
I ask that you use this thread to post your ideas or thoughts and not to comment on the ideas and thoughts of others. If you support an idea just include it/echo it amongst your own and maybe give credit to the original person saying it so we can get a rough idea of how popular an idea is but please don't derail this into disagreements and commentary on how wrong someone is. If their sentiment isn't valued we won't see it echoed.
BUFFS
1)Who likes loading a million dudes to buff for a group. We have become so used to rocking every god damn buff when exping they're practically considered default past a certain point in the game. A lot of kooky ideas have been thrown around about how to fix this like making buffs wear when a class drops the group but I think that is going the wrong direction. Most buffs are no longer a part of individual class balance, they stay on for hours and having them on has very little do with the casting class beyond briefly loading them in to cast that spell, they are no longer assets to the classes that can cast them so here is my proposal: Split off a large portion of the stats we get from buffs that players have innately such as HP/regen/mana regen and give part of those stats to the player directly as they level. A buff that gives, say, 800 hp would be split down to 400hp and the remaining 400hp taken off would be something the player gains as he levels up. The net total would be the same but the buff itself is providing him less benefit vs his base stats. This creates less dependence on buffs and in turn makes players feel freer to go without. Does this reduce the power of the buffing class? No, because as we talked about before that power isn't even owned by the class as it stands. It doesn't benefit them directly to cast that buff and 9 times out of 10 it doesn't determine their placement in a group (very low duration buffs like cunning withstanding).
2)Rebuffing is terrible and a big time waster, this doesn't add a single thing to the game it just adds time you have to spend casting a bunch of bullshit if you're unlucky enough to be a shaman or a beastlord or something, here is what should be done about that if it's possible: A buff cast by a class while in the group stays up for as long as that class is in the group and the countdown for wearing off only begins when they leave, this is effectively the way it is already just that some poor sap has to sit down for a second then spend half a minute recasting everything then sit down again. It's really unnecessary
3)Low duration buffs (sub-1 hour) combined with lack of group versions makes playing at lower levels really terrible. I'm definitely thinking of shaman here. Show some damn kindness, once again recasting a buff every half hour adds nothing meaningful to your experience, I'm sure someone will disregard the thread purpose and tell me that someones live and wife has been saved by being on the ball and recasting a 30 minute buff right before it wore off but whatever.
CHARMS
1)Charm farming sucks dog balls. That's the reality, it just does. It was a really poor idea to use charms as a plat sink but what is done is done. Lets look to the future and the poor saps who are starting on this daunting road of farming more digital money than they will ever see in their lives because if they have a supreme they probably don't have a job, although I guess they could be lottery winners... but you get my point. Here is my stupid awful idea that someone will tell me to shove up my ass: Since charms are primarily beneficial for raiding anyways implement some kind of credit system where killing raid creatures within brackets allows for a discounted purchase of a tier-appropriate charm. You'd still be able to farm just like you were and straight up buy a charm above what is classified as tier appropriate but this way you can earn one in a more natural way as you progress. As for people who bought charms already give them an exp bonus or something that equates to the charm they bought. This game is way too afraid of giving players exp but I am getting to that
QUESTS
1)Is the purpose of quests at 65 to A) earn an item you will use B) earn nothing at all, or c) earn something you will immediately put on the destroy button and you probably only did this stupid thing for faction. If you're not sure either welcome to the club. Call me crazy but I have always felt that a quested reward should be slightly better than the gear you'd need to be wearing to complete the quest itself but sadly this is often not the case for a lot of them. Many 65 quests (ikisith especially) where I have managed to use the reward has been because I either got the item on an alt with the help of overgeared characters or the reward had some kind of value outside of being worn like being a clicky or whatever. The reality of the game now is that you can spend days camping for quest pieces or you can often spend less days camping for money and just buy something pretty damn near OR you can just not fucking quest at all and raid and live in fear of the day when you're going to have to do something really really stupid like refuge faction or the vah. How gross is plane of lore, oh just what was needed another low stat ring item (p.s. please stop making magic rings as rewards). Oh damn let me just get my guild together to kill this total bullshit so I can get something I won't use by time all the planets have aligned and I have all the drops and a month has passed. Enough!
2)Don't tie low level quests that have multiple steps to poorly planned out rare spawns. Take the centaur ranger quests where you have to kill a specter at the skeleton camp for some crap. So okay, we can presume you are intended to do this quest while leveling. Skeletons are what, blue until level 12 or so? So we have a rare spawn, who only spawns at night, are you beginning to see the problem here? Why should anyone ever waste their time? I could spend my time earning hard cash in athica cybering players and buy a million better items in the time I could hypothetically be waiting for that one stupid specter to spawn. It's okay for quests to be work, it's okay for them to be challenging, but there are ways to accomplish that beyond throwing the player to the whims of a purely random system. Why can't there be some kind of condition that says okay if this asshole kills 45 skeletons the stupid mob spawns as a safeguard? Is that somehow babying a player? (Hello grognards). Would that not be enough chorework and pain for a piece of green chainmail or whatever the hell? This is just an example but I'm sure it applies in a lot more situations!
MORE TOMES THAN A BOOKSTORE AND THE EXP MONSTER
1)So, I probably don't even need to state this one but I guess I may as well. The goal posts in this game are insane and it's daunting as hell to take on the exp requirements that only ever seen to go up. There are people that play that, they take breaks occasionally, but they play the game like a job and they end up as the standard by which you can be measured. Not always, sure, but it can happen and I'm sure if we're being honest we've all been in position where we've realized just how retarded standards have become. How much time investment is really required. Don't get me wrong, if you want to be #1 you can definitely get there, I'm not saying you can't, but it could be a little less painful to be like... #12 or something. Why is exp such an enemy? There is so damn much to use exp for in this game does it matter if we get it a bit faster? I can almost hear the dudes saying how that will lead to the ruination of the game and that's "easymode" or whatever but if the current way is so great, why does it seem like the server is dwindling? Maybe it has SOME relation to that? People want to take part in content but as the population has become lower and some characters never leave circulation where is the place for the shitty dude with 100AAs? How does he get to 200AAs? Why should he even bother if it's just going to be a constant struggle
ADEPT ALTS
1)I have no problem with you guys, I really don't care at all how people play the game. The problem this IS creating though is that for people who don't know about this subculture or who don't want to partake they are up against some seriously well-equipped and AA'd level 65s when these guys finally decide to jump out of the small pond. I mean they probably emerge as what used to be about tier 4 right when they hit 65, in contrast that is going to make a real fresh 65 look like chopped liver. Is this a problem? Does it matter? I don't know but I have seen a few fresh 65s around and those poor guys can't seem to get a group for the life of them. Something is up here
Anyways those are a bunch of my awful thoughts nobody will probably read.
