I hesitate to post this because I am not negative towards the game and hope none take this as such. I feel less and less confidence that things are always right. For example over the last three releases, music is not functioning correctly. In a completely random (apparently) mode, my fleet flute does not play. It functions properly as to buffs and timing, it just stops playing until I relog. As another example, I routinely solo the upper tears room. I will play it 4 to 8 times in a row until I get bored and very seldom die. To me this is normal. Then sometimes I Iog on with the same build, buffs and gear and get creamed wave after wave. This continues until I relog. Then it's usually back to normal. So my subjective feeling is that I don't trust the number crunching any more. I do not know if all the healing is working as designed every time, or any of the other multitude of buffs, skills and you name it. The work involved in trying to characterize the problem by digging out all the numbers is too daunting for me. So if things don't seem right, I relog and hope for a correction (which usually works).
Instruments are bugged. Very unfortunate since it's sooooo close to being one of the most solid systems in the game. Not sure about the rest.
Yep. With the instruments you know there is a problem, and since it has been recognized as such, you work around it as it is not game stopping. The OP is to point out an increasing feeling on my part that other things may not be working right either. Nothing game stopping, but not easily identifiable. Being that instrument experience and game play experience are analogous as to relogging to get back to normal makes me uncomfortable.
I've noticed something similar. In my case though, it almost feels like if my character needs a warm up. I get in game, and for some reason it's really tough to kill some mobs. An hour goes by, I have no issues killing them anymore. I go to another map and it's like going through butter. I am not sure what's going on, either this game is just based on some odd RNG foundation, or there is a ghost in my machine ...
I have that same impression since the beginning too. Often tought my char was just broken. I actually recognized that problem while farming krul monkeys, i mean its always the same 3 monkey and sometime it was just so hard i was always getting wipe, other day i didnt even have to heal almost... Not sure whats going on really. Its just a slight difference that make all the big change but yeah, there is something.
I have the same experience. Most times I can runs into groups of mobs in my heavy armour avoidance gear, but sometimes the mobs (especially the archers) take my health down as if I'm naked with no skills applied. Switching decks a few times seems to solve it sometimes, but not always. I have even had it remain bad after relogging.
I get that with dragons. They still kill me maybe a quarter of the time, but some times I die a half dozen times pretty quickly when I first started, before settling into just dying occasionally.
Hmmm.... I'd like to see some damage metrics on this. Either the game, or players, seem to need to warm up before the fight. Could it be we just need to stretch first?
When I try to see what happened by looking at the log, I try to count the total damage my toon takes. I start with about 1100 health, I see hits on me that don't add up to 1100, which would kill me with no healing going on. It's frustrating to exactly track what happened, and the reason for my hesitance to blame a bug. Like I say, I get back to normal soon enough and am looking for a reproducible situation. Perhaps there are more hits occurring than are being logged, but I swear I am aware of what is going on. I see 500 or so health and by the time I blink, I am a ghost wondering what happened. Glad to hear that others are having similar experiences.
The downside of constant updates is constant bugs. With every update we get added content and not just fixes. The game has changed so much since it started and not just by correcting errors but by implementing new ideas that often are player suggested. I try to keep this in mind as I deal with yet another frustrating thing in-game that has yet to be fixed.