Soft Wipe for Episode #2 ? ?

Great thoughts and comments...I am hoping we will get more details, maybe as soon as the Friday Live Stream...I expect we will soon have more information...Until then thanks for all the thoughts...lets hope that whatever they decide the game moves forward and we all continue to share a wonderful game... (fingers crossed)

 

Can you explain what you would like to see?

 

Yea, for them to make level matter less -- not meaningless, but less important than it is now -- make the game less of a grind rail, where tactics are more important than level and achievement isn't measured by numbers and endlessly pushing up XP. Make it so a level 100 player can have fun in a low-tier scene, because he can be defeated by low level monsters if he isn't careful, and where a low level player can defeat high level monsters if he's clever enough, and design a big portion of gameplay where players of different levels can group together.

 

That sounds good to me. The curve needs to be flattened more it's doable but people who hit big will freak out, even if monsters are scaled back as well. Tough one to pull off.

Gotta sack out. Night!

 

What they need for EPS 2 is more interesting places for people to explore and actually have fun. Dungeons such as Ruined Keep, The Rise, Ruins of Ravensmoor, etc are all interesting areas that are worth exploring. Back when UO was releasing expansions, people didn't get their skills stripped away, yet players were happily spending hours and hours in the newly expanded areas.

Soft wipe at this point may just kill the game at its current state.
As for UT here's hope that it gets nerfed by the time EPS2 gets released. Or at least make the newly developed high level zones give enough rewards that people will be going elsewhere instead of camp in UT all day long.

 

Before folks get too bent out of shape I'd note that beside the "Soft Reset" Chris also mentioned that a meeting was scheduled in the near future to discuss this issue. These many comments are sure to be discussed. Don't be throwing in the towel just yet.

 

not a fan of this idea episode 2 should all be high level areas

 

Lol well nothing is happening. Chris was just talking and people are reacting which is normal here well most anywhere. Imo there will be no wipe but this thread will go on for pages of reaction

 

Well, "just talking". Its THE dev, whos most visible here and he clearly stated that they are thinking of somekind of wipe, either soft or hard. He said that and it was not just something he casually mentioned, they clearly have been thinking about it and he even asked interviewers opinion about it.

Right now, are we just gathering double xp pool for EP2? Some have put thousands hours to get that xp and now they think wipes? I think answers ( or QA about this) from devs would be great. For me, character progression is everything there is, wipe would not be fun at all.

Back to wipe topic.

As I said before, there's other ways to handle this:

Instead of disallowing gears, add new stuff that turns current best gear to mid level gear.

• introduce new materials
• new skills to use them
• new properties to gear

Instead of wiping skills, allow respec, scale scenes

• add scenes that are scaleable
• add scenes that are certain level
• add scenes that are so hard, that they just can't be done without full group of players.
• change loot system so, that it considers groups size, so being solo, does not grant you same as the 8 players get. ( then you can start tweaking the loot )
• if skills are broken, tweak and balance all and allow respec

EP2 Should be next tier area. Assume that there will be high level players. Assume that players still start at EP1 areas. Embrace the high skills, don't fear them, don't block em. Its too late for that, let them have their fun. Modify loot system so, that if the players is alone, doing damage alone, getting kills alone, he only gets loot and xp. Leeching should not be possible when lvl 120 takes lvl 50 for a ride. Everyone yells about immersion, but none sees nothing wrong that you can "study" super high level player in action and get huge amounts of xp, literally doing nothing. How much can white belt ninja learn, just by sitting and watching black-belt ninja do his magic? Everything according to SotA logic. Figure out ways to prevent leeching and it will hold average xp levels lower.

In every other MMO I have ever played ( ok, there might be some exceptions yeah), killing monsters that are lower level than you, is not profitable. Loot and xp is so bad after you are very high when compared to mob.

There are so many other ways to implement softcap, that even thinking about cleaning character progression, is sad.

 

Well, can't say I like the idea of a wipe, since ive always thought ep.2 was the next part of the story and not an other realm..

If i cannot move equipment around, this means alot of deco will have similar issues.. What about moving my houses?

I was gonna bring everything to my town in episode 2...

For the new players, they should finish episode 1 before going to the next, so i find it stupid making it easier for them..

It's not an easy task for sure.

 

I can't quote this one often enough.
Scaling is pretty much the solution for almost all raised issues here!

 

Agreed !

 

Although the issues are mainly self made by Pot.
you could quite easily have an extension of the story for levels 60-70+ as the main story line. (increasing with each episode)
You could quite easily change the balance in the number of the scenes from t1-4 up to 5-9 with an increased number of 10+ scenes than in episode one again scaling up the way for each episode without removing all low level content.

As most have said already, fix the engine first!

The question they need to answer is
Will a soft wipe upset people?
or
Will no wipe upset people?

I could take a wild guess at the answer and in a game with an already low pop, getting it wrong is a massive risk.​

 

True. Getting it right is important.
The issue here is that "our" version of "right" is highly subjective ^^ we are all biasd because of time, money. adv lvl, grind and whatnot.

Non the less i really think a good scaling system is the way to go.
Just add a invisible power level to all skills/items and let it calculate the players "power" in the background and scale the scene to that power level.

 

I dont like grinding and given i dont like having a huge ammount of versatility i would end up jsut leveling the same way again.

But i could deal with a soft wipe. It wouldnt make the game as it is now any different, there'd jsut be a new area (or server, whatever it is) that i have to essentially start over on, but with already having good gear. And the gear will make it a breeze to zip back up yo 80 again so that i can do all the content.

I think scaling (or scene capping lower tiers) is an interesting idea because you never lose the challenge for lower level places. Making me not able to afk-nuke an entire zone wouldnt bother me at all and id still be max strength in the hardest areas.

I DONT think makign the new lands super high lvl only is a good idea. That would absolutely cause the situation i saw when i tried WoW where allt he action is in 1 place that newbies cant go to, and newbies are too busy runnign around grinding levels in the old (now "usless" ) land to interact with each other. The hardest places should remain scattered all over like they are now, with a mixure of difficulties within the same scene

 

why?

 

If they could scale every scene that would be awesome, Warhammer online scaled the PVP well. Still requires fixing the engine first.

 

Or, dare I say, his blog. That'd be easier to search/reference/quote. The live streams tend to have a lower signal-to-noise ratio without a lot of substance. Supposedly that's going to be picking up again.

 

Folks are already bent out of shape. I agree people need to chill because they haven't even had a meeting about it yet (according to @Chris). But people like to freak out about anything and everything and make into the worst situation possible. While Port has made some questionable choices in the past, they have also listened to their player base as well. I think they'll see this 10 page thread (currently) and probably take that into account when talking about this.

 

Wipe, soft or not, is a deal breaker. You can't just take away weeks/months/years of a player's time (yes, time spent earning the XP, and applying it into skills) just because you're lazy.
Yes, it's LAZY to just take away XP to level the playing field. I said it.

And no, I'm no high level player. I have 7 GM's, all at 100, and they're all in crafting. I play casually. It's not right to zero out everyone's progress because some people are insecure about others (who have put the time in) being higher level.