Explanation and update on balancing efforts for R74 and Q1

@Chris Just hoping for my dream of having 40 zones to choose from that give approximately the same experience. I really want to ask "where do you want to get XP tonight" and have 40 options depending on what we're feeling like and what kind of loot we're looking to get... choices

 

I haven't played this game in years.

I left for dozens of reasons I wont go on rant about as it seems none of that matters now with new management and all. The only thing on my mind right now is, can I play the game without having to build into all the various skill trees. When I originally played. My play-styles made it impossible, or rather it limited the content I could enjoy. Sometimes I like to play pure fighters, etc or just weird builds that are gimped. I understand nothing can be perfect, and that by doing this I am limiting myself. It just felt like I couldn't enjoy any content at all.

So my question with all said in mind, are there going to be some real major combat changes and more means to specialize character builds?

 

Have you played since specializations were put in?

 

@Sharriden there are also element warding skills in each magic tree now. For example, the one in the water tree will give you fire resistance.

Much better than the crazy old system where a water mage is forced to take fire skills to beef up his resistance to fire.

Summoned elementals also have more hp, more resistance and deal more damage provided you take the right skills for this in the Focus tree. Fzol's earth elemental reportedly crits for 500 dmg though he's probably geared to bits for it.

 

Can we get a look at the adv levels for 80 to 120 - its kind of an unfun grind area. A lot of UT people do not want sub 100s in their groups and since you beefed up some of those mid zones to have higher end mobs, this level area is lacking in interesting and fun places to go.

In Chris's post I have not seen the mention of artifact armor being addressed - there is still a concern that this is the real power creep. You need to test these skills at higher adv level with only basic crafted armor to really test if they need adjusting. Many MMOs adjust armor benefits down when it gets out of hand an not necessarily the skill itself.

I still think it needs to be addressed that full mages have no auto attack and the increase in focus is really punishing to them over all classes; especially with a summon or a pet to further drain. Also the increase in reagent cost makes skills even more expensive versus melee skills. The cost vs damage should come into play.

While we add raid stuff I would like to second a call for smaller group content of 2 to 3 players instead of full 8 party groups. Sometimes you just want to run with a spouse or a couple friends.

 

Shhhhh

 

Is it really that difficult to have both balanced? I mean all you might have to do is take average player stats and convert them from time to time into monster stats.
If a lvl 120 heavy armor using avatar has in general a damage resistance of x also monster that fall into the heavy armor categories of that lvl should have a comparable damage resistance…or are the values of players who are playing alike "roles" really that different? The same for resistances, health and other values. This way there would be no big difference between fighting a player or a monster aside of the AI.

To make some monsters different the monsters could have sometimes bonuses. E.g. monsters who have “hardened” in their name have a higher than normal armor, a monster with “burning” in their name would have a higher than normal fire resistance and so on. For monsters with multiple bonuses and to avoid too long names they could get word combinations displaying multiple bonuses e.g. “hardened” + “burning” = “carbonized”.
Monsters with those bonuses would spawn randomly between normal monsters or always at predefined spots and would offer slightly better rewards. E.g. near an unholy shrine also the spawning wolves could normally have a "unholy" bonus making them more resistant to death magic.

Of course it would take time to value player stats and convert them to monster stats and the difficulty of monsters might change especially in the beginning from release to release but it sounds like a possible fix for balancing skills for PvP and PvE.

 

Yes this please .. this is totally the point here. I don't have endless time to try and gather all this stuff or the endless coin to go buy it off of someone else. I should be able to have difficulty, but usually win in an even adv. level mob fight open world. I should be able to get loot based on the increased level of that mob. Right now a tier 5 mob will still give you tier 1 loot.

High end group/raid content is a whole other ball game. It requires better gear and more people.. we all know the term raid gear/dungeon gear well enough. Please pay attention to the other zones to make them fun and interesting for the single or small group players that don't have a high item level (insert high combined artifacts in as many slots as possible).

You have some interesting zones with quests, but when the quest is done... the zone loses its luster. We have an old fashioned grind game here.. players have to sit in an area and kill repeatedly to gain experience. It needs to be more interesting than it is right now for the casual, as well as the group guys or high end, players. You have spent many releases on the high end .. trying to bring groups back to what used to be group zones, that you have lost the single and small group people.

This is the new user experience you really need to think about. Most new players can probably rocket to adv level 60 in a few days, but what happens after that? The UT groups wants post 100 adv level or they carry a player. Carried players see how awesome those high end players are, but then they learn all they have to do to get there..... There only option is to buy the gear at this point.. they don't have coin for that.. they can become sellers.. that requires countless crafting leveling hours and gathering to support and they probably still won't compete with existing crafters. So they try to get the coin by grinding lower adv level zones for even lower level loot to try and catch up.. then you release the next new cool artifact or power creep... Most games have a top level; a new player knows that there is a ceiling and they can get there some day. Here we keep raising the ceiling.

For example.. ohh taming looks fun says the new player.. old player says you are going to need a TON of silver.. okay new player starts mining... and mining.. and mining.. and.. well you get the idea.. think they are bored yet? Heck, I am not new and I can't stand more than an hour at a time and only have a few hours a week to play. Now they get all this silver.. but wait there is a new taming artifact out, if you don't have it, you can't raise your tame level high enough to ever tame the better pet. After probably spending a solid month farming silver hour after endless hour and then learning it really won't get you anywhere near what you need once you get all the exp you need. Then you find out not only do you need that new artifact, but you need to get more of the exact same one and combine them to make it better.. you do see how monotonous that sounds don't you and how daunting to a new level 40 player who is either wearing some hand me down (that broke by now) or has tried using all their coin to acquire that lower priced 40k armor piece on a discount vendor in Elrond's town... just to find out Chris nerfed what you were working toward and your money is all gone now... do you think they are pissed and have had enough?

I have played over a thousand hours on steam alone.. and I haven't even used that to play the game in the past year. I spend my couple hours logging on and running encounters for some rescourses and Tier 4 areas to make some coin to pay my deed tax and try and build up coin for better armor.. so yeah you can make a couple thousand in an hour.. but a discount pice of armor, which won't get you very far and is not an artifact, will still cost you 20 to 40k. It usually has low durability to boot. So with three hours a week, I can only make about 6k.. maybe more if I am lucky .. how long will it take me to get a full set of new armor and artifacts that I need to upgrade???? So you can see here how painful it is for a casual player when big nerfs hit the game. What is my build.. bow with a smattering of AEs for groups of mobs. Oh and I should mention it took me two play session just to search the vendor towns to find the best price on a my crafted +14 bow.. with aimed shot increased damage.. which I am sure will be nerfed in another few days. None of that is fun... it really isn't.

Instead here I am spending .. what should be my sleep time.. trying to make people see a little reason when it comes to other players, not because I hate the game or want it to fail, but because I want it to succeed. Because I have been here, even when everyone I used to play with, has left. I am still here and still trying and still feel like I am banging my head on a brick wall. Chris I get that you are working very hard to make a great deal of improvements and it is all on your shoulders.. You have my utmost respect for that undertaking. I just think you are biting off your nose to spite your face sometimes.. these nerfs.. you are giving me whiplash.. and the lack of focus on fixing the quest journal.. again banging my head on a wall over and over.

Example of nerf whiplash...
Attunement in one school negatively impacting other - oh wait no.. - oh wait well sort of
Fire magic nerf - lets give some love to fireball
Death magic nerf - boost to death ray and touch - nerf again to other parts of it
Ferocious red spider and taming nerf (we don't want anyone to have to play one thing to be successful) - taming pets buffed and more added because we all like pets
Bow nerf one; then whoops a little to aggressive - unnerf too aggressive (actually I think bow has been hit multiple times despite Chris admitting it performs much lower in PVE)
we need to pay attention to focus, so quick glyphs will cost more focus and charged will cost less - now the change to largely negate the usefulness of charging and just make focus painful
earth root perma rooted players in PVP.. nerf.. now earth magic gets stronger
I can go on here guys...

Before I get hit with the you can't have any idea what MMOs are like.. I do.. have played MMOs almost exclusively since 1999. EQ, EQ2, WoW. LOTRO, SWG, DAoC, ESO, FF14, DDO, City of Hero's, Rift, GW1 and GW2, etc. - I have raided, I have soloed, I have done static groups, and yes even PvPed poorly. I know how they play and I know how they work. I even married a guy that worked for one of those games. I have experienced nerfs, but never to this magnitude and frequency. I am sure most of you can say the same with your gaming experience. The point is I am not a total idiot here.. I came to this game for the old school grind, the social interaction of player events and musical gatherings, the housing, the RP, for the Richard's famed questing, for the world interaction, and the solo side variety. The little niche game that would be interesting and fun with a taste of the old school that didn't hold your hand, but left you free to discover. Well these combat changes, the frequency and the impact on doing things in the game overall, are not fun. Please give a little love to the little person for a while. PLEASE!!

 

I think about month...

How long you need to play in other games (WoW, Lotro, EQ2 etc...)?

 

Been playing a few years now.

Gear drops pretty readily from ESO dungeons.. took me three weeks to top level and kit out for vet dungeons. WoW was a few months.. EQ2 the same.. LOTRO was another story, but hey you can buy top gear on their market.. so.

 

Yea but how many folks are running around in full meteoric platemail in pvp?? The armor piercing stuff needs a change i think. Not give everything armor piercing.

Doesnt knight’s grace remove rend? Even so it should start to just have a chance to be applied based on how much heavy armor is being worn

 

With meteoric would be much more, i'm talking about a simple bronze plate set and good skills level in heavy armor, earth, polearm tree.

 

Just wanted to chime in and say thank you for being constructive and considerate to each other's opinions during this thread. Much much appreciated Be sure to wish Chris well -- he's not feeling quite well at the moment and still working relentlessly -- https://twitter.com/catnipgames/status/1220379892723994624

 

I was not aware of this. It's been super long since I've played. So this is reassuring to see. After looking over the OP, I'm more hopeful for the potential future.

 

Theres another bludgeon break armor that stacks 3 times, but at that point your executing 5 attacks. But i do use this in groups as a go-to because it makes everyone in the party who is using a weapon hit harder

But at the moment, i use bludgeon to get most things done on my own because its the best balance of damage, armor busting and defence/offense with its crazy knockdowns. In pvp i been using it with a shield because the ammount of stuns and knockdowns is really irritating to the victim which lets me survive long enough to do some damage.

 

I’m flabbergasted about what some people says in this thread lol.. Its probably a ‘new generation of players’ thing that I just can’t understand..

Edit: As my post isn’t really constructive, let me add few more lines

After discussing with some guild mates yesterday, we’all agree that Christ & Team vision seems going to the right direction. Some was worried about the nerfs but they prefer to “wait, test and see” than expressing themself on something not yet implemented.

In big picture, good job to Christ and Team from the 5-6 of us who appreciate your hard work

 

I think this really gets at the core of my current dissatisfaction with Shroud. I don't hate or oppose nerfs on principle. I don't think I would care about nerfs if they meant going from fifteen viable zones to fourteen, instead of from three to two, or two to one. I understand and agree with leveling tapering off to a crawl after AL100. I like the soft cap idea. But there's currently nothing to do at that level except more of the same old easy tiers, because the harder ones are WAY too f'n hard. Every "balance" moves more zones into that category for the 100-120 casual player, while hardly making an issue for the 120+ players. (Yes, it does affect you guys too, but not to nearly the extent it hits lower level casuals.)

When I think about how long it's going to take me to grind out another fifteen levels to do end game stuff, I fire up ESO instead.

 

Freudian slip?

 

Banish Undead is fine. It takes a ton of exp and spec to be able to get good crit with JUST Banish. Not to mention the dual Ankh, which is hard to get and expensive. You are talking about a high level exp player with a big investment in Life gear and Spec to get that crit. They deserve to be that one trick pony. You have to be all in with cloth gear and probably 150 in Banish to get that. I'm at 126. Even in full life cloth gear I don't get 1800 crits. That is not a casual/moderate player. Top players will always dominate no matter the situation.

 

Ok if you put approval on it all is fine, Nothing to see here move on please.

Thats why you don’t buy them in Brit alleys.




(I’m sooo just poking fun, and 150s with sun spec breaks 2200. Pyro priest proves that every time you see him. But ur right it’s only vrs undead it can stay or go idc, might be good for xp farming alt toon even).