My Thoughts about Game Nerfs

I know SOTA is not completely finished yet. It is still a work in progress. I love Shroud of the Avatar, but I am tired of being penalized because other players might or do abuse the system. Shroud has to understand that not everyone is an abuser of the game. Time after time the game is changed because of certain issues. An example is the Daemon. The rate which it respawns. If you have a large party it takes forever now. Most players can't fight the Daemon alone. There have been other happenings like this since I have been playing the game and I feet that it is very unfair to the majority of players.

Mining is so nerfed that you hardly get any ore anymore due to players previously using bots and other devices. This is sad to me because earlier in the game, a player could go obtain enough ore It wasn't easy, but it could be done. Now I am sure most players end up having to buy ore. Taming was tweaked because low level players could have a powerful pet. Drops are limited because of players gauging others. The drops are laughable. You spend a lot of time killing the troll and what do you get??? Treasure Chests are a joke most of the time. WHY PENALIZE all players? Please make the game more exciting with wonderful drops maybe even items from the add on store. It will not hurt the game one bit and will encourage players to stay playing the game. Would you want to hunt for a treasure chest that just had some mandrake and some other little items? I would like SOTA to handle what they feel are player abuses different. It is time for the responsibility to fall upon the shoulders of the abusers and not the regular players. Make rules against this and then enforce them. Instead of tweaking things, please inform the players that you don't want players doing certain things. Let players know what will not be tolerated. As SOTA supporters, we, deserve to be treated with dignity instead of being penalized for others that abuse the system. Weed the abusers out.

I think that there should be a committee of players of all levels to help SOTA understand what playing the game day in and day out feels like. Please maybe make a thread of polls and inform everyone to put their imput. I saw that you wanted feedback from new players and actually players that have been playing longer would know better than new players, imo. We are all in it together and we want the best game ever. Only the players can tell you how they view the game. It is a fantasy game, don't make it like real life. Many of us play the game to relax and escape the real world.

We try to do our best to support SOTA, please support us by making the game enjoyable and stop penalizing everyone for what a handful does. Most of us are not Super Players. There is nothing wrong with being a Super Player if you respect the game and rules.

Please show the Supporters, us, the wonderous things you can do in the game and shock us with wonderful loots of all kinds. This will allow lower level players to get things like artifacts. I am not asking that the game become easier to play, but give us nice things in playing the game also in return for supporting you. We have telethons, but I would like the telethons just as much if you would say this will be put in chests for the players to find.

It takes more than a great game to keep players, it takes enjoyment in playing the game. There are enough boring games out there already. Please help us all and make SOTA a Shining Star. JMO

 

You are right. But itsw 80% finished they say, its just 20% left to do ^^
Sorry to the poeple who now feel accued again, but its the powergamers and exploiters who drive the measures to the edge.
Here's what i do - trying to really not to compare me to others, finding and following my own pace to immerse into the world.
Thats rather difficult and it let you dismiss a lot of people, not forever or always, but to have fun again for the most of the time.
When i play the game i try to immerse and i run if i see a Troll and i dont want to be able to solo him, i dont want to kill him twice, three times, four times, switch modes...
When i play the game i want to talk with other Avatars, Outlanders, Novians... and maybe go for an adventure with them.
Explore a place, fight some Bandits if we have a cause to do it (we can create one) or trying to stop the Undead here and there.
I do no longer aproach to SotA as an MMO because the Community drives it to fast to further for me so that i losse fun playing.
I play for myself, sometimes i roleplay with others and adventure, but then its really slow paced and more about immersion than about progressing.

I don't know if i can have fun in the long term, i dont know if i ever be able to see specific content. Like PvP Areas or Highend Dungeons.
The way i did explore some dungeons and bosses with groups was always to fast and confusing to me and i felt worthless, so that was not much fun, beside i go with nice people. But i still want more roleplay, and i dont talk about PoT Partys or Events only, i talk about PvE emdedd in RP.
Its possible in this game, because we have lots of space in scenes where you weren't attacked and respawns are not too fast.

This orientation and priorization to the game pulls me as much as possible out of the "race" and bring back fun.
I dont know how long and i dont know what they really will do.
I would like they implement tons of Quests around every scene and get us deeper into lore.
I would like to find some people who play the game like me, but forget about this, i didnt find such people in 2 decades of gaming.
In the end everybody says, i want to get further and then everything about immersion and roleplay and all that is forgotten.

 

Spawn on the Daemon was 10 minutes. What is it set at now?

 

Don't worry, Stundorn. I'm in your camp about immersion and roleplay. The SotA world and its locations have a lot of lore from what I know of, just not put in game yet for whatever reasons (hopefully in the last 20%) to help spur roleplaying or general excitement.

 

@Pikegirl Yeah i hope so and some things happened that kicked off some more immersing RP for germanspeaking players.
Drachenfels started a sort of PoT "Campaign" where i am involved a little, although i do not live in Drachenfels.
I stayed in Drachental the neighbour village, but moved one of my houses to Gladsheim.
As a viking based character with an primary Affiliation to Air, Moon, Water (Ice), Life i like the Snow Biome of Gladsheim and the Governour @Lasazarr is germanspeaking too
Vauban Pass hast held me off exploring a lot. Not because i cannot Pass it. Was just to anoying to pass it all the time and this Held me off doing a lot of things.
Now i have my main base where i start my explorations from in the snow covered lonelyness of Gladsheim.
I love it!
And i always visit my Vendor Manfred Drake in Drachental if i can teleport to another roleplayer there and go visit Drachenfels to buy the latest paper, maybe visit the Oracle, although as a Seer i often laughed at it, but anyway i feel something about it is rather strange and need to be observed.

 

I understand the pain of being nerfed, but what is considered abuse is very much a matter of perspective. To me, being able to "farm" a demon in a game that was claimed to not be based on the grind seems awfully much like an "abuse". And I don't understand how that's unfair to the "majority of players"? Or are the "majority of players" farming the demon too? I'm guessing not. But in a surprising twist, you may actually be in the realm of the "power gamers" that Port is watching. Your example seems to indicate so. I haven't even fought the demon once and to hear that others are grinding away on it sounds a little off according to the expressed vision for the game. It's anybody's guess whether that vision will be realized, but I truly hope that this game doesn't continue to be a grind-fest where the only concern is how difficult the grind should be.

 

20 minutes

 

What I see happening is devs responding to players that are considered to be grinding/farming and gaining XP at an accelerated rate because of their playstyles. All resulting in nerfs to popular builds/scenes for high level players but there is a domino effect here... and everyone feels it. Balance is feeling very odd still. The daemon is just one boss - the dragon that everyone farms is still on a three minute timer (unless it's changed recently). Because of this dragon's timer, haunches are cheaper than ever before now and Dragon Stew is now more affordable/available than ever before. This is a top tier magical food that increases combat regen for focus and health. Using it shapes how you might play the game, it's a consideration when deck building and if/when the dragon is put on an increased minute timer there will be cascading effects.

Farm a boss, modeswitch, farm a boss, modeswitch, farm a boss, modeswitch, farm a boss, modeswitch... flood the market with top-tier rares and establish precedence and market value. Devs come in and nerf in an attempt to curb farming and call it balance. Players just find a new boss on a fast timer with decent XP and loot and start farming/modeswitching again. Why are timers on bosses different? Make them all three minutes... Make them all 24 hours... Why are bosses in friends only, and single player modes on separate timers? Why is a grind game that has no skill caps targeting game content to curb high level player advancement? It all comes across as very haphazard and at times, punitive as balance goes. I'd love to think there were objectives in mind for game balance, but it always ends up looking like the coyote trying to catch the roadrunner to me.

 

Dont understand why they not ban for this.
But there is a good alternative: you can teleport to other boss. If now daemon restarts in 20 minutes, you have 20 minutes for teleporting. : daemon, dragon, ravensmore troll. They can be made solo in 20 minutes(troll and daemon can be done with closed eyes but dragon is really strong btw) if you very high level and use good tactics. I heared once that there is another daemon in pvp zone somewhere, but didnt find him. 2 daemon and troll could be made solo in 20 minutes with teleport easily.
If you extremely powerful as a god you may add to those list 3 dragons in grunvald
Sure it is still very profitable.
P.S. PvP zones need phoenix and daemons.

I`m a good miner, my record yesterday was 412 gold&silver ore per hour(20k igg btw per hour), in few months i think will be able to do 450, not sure it should be 600. 300 per hour can be done by average avatar and it is not bad I think.

 

Where and how are you getting that much ore?

 

Welcome to the MMO world, this has always been a hard balance issue. The main issue is that game dev's have to plan for the 1% 'ers who have 18+ hours a day to play the game and max it out. Casual players end up getting screwed over because of this. The OP mentions cheating, I haven't really seen any cheating, just people spending a lot of time in the game, learning what is the over powered flavor of the week and using it to min/max. Unfortunately our dev's have shifted the balance to far and even causal hard cores like myself are giving up on things like crafting.

Stop and think what you would do to satisfy the 1% and the casuals. Its not easy and MMO's have always had issue with it.

 

I agree with Lady Cind's sentiments. All of us have to pay because a few abuse. Also there have been stealth nerfs which devs dont even make a mention of. The worst part this make the game pratically unplayable for the newbies. They always get the short end of the stick no matter what.

 

So, we kinda have to make a choice of what we want; easy access to all content for everyone (thereby flooding the game with 'stuff' giving it no value and essentially giving the game no meaningful economy) or restricting content (hopefully in a fair way) so that everyone can eventually access content, but limit that access so as to not allow a small group of players to unbalance everything. I'm for the latter.

Most MMOs I've played use long timers as a way to gate access to high level content. I think all these bosses should have a week long lockout after you defeat it once. I think that's probably the opposite of what the OP is looking for, but it ensures that your turn to defeat the boss is just as meaningful as the other folks who would otherwise kill that boss 50 times a day. By gating like this, you could guarantee the drop rate, so that every time you kill the boss, you get meaningful loot. And now that loot is evenly distributed amongst all boss killers. If you put a lock out on that troll, you can guarantee a rare drop on every kill.

I think treasure chests sucked for a long time due to a lack of itemization. There simply weren't enough 'things' to provide balanced loot. But now, with all the new potions and recipes, etc., loot in chests should (and is: example bandit scene treasure chest is improved) get better.

For the issue of mining and resource gathering in general, this is a tough issue to balance, but I would rather them spend time collecting data after a change and makes small, incremental changes rather than swooping ones that radically impact gameplay and the economy. One of the goals for the game has always been to have a robust and meaningful economy; someone who is not interested in this aspect of the game will likely find a lot of the resource balance confusing, as they want you to have enough opportunity to make progress, but not to be self sufficient. The goal is to have players interact with the economy to make progress (otherwise there is no economy). Certainly, though, you can go to far limiting resources, but I still don't have that much issue getting the ore I need on my own.

I definitely would agree, though, that balancing the game for the .01% is folly, and instead the goal should be to remove (and revert) any unintended features that allow them to advance at an unintended pace.

 

I was talking in guild chat about this very thing yesterday. Atos himself has said that he follows around the 1% guys and nurfs the things they find. This is actually a good thing.

But lets talk specific examples. Death spells have been uber now for 6 months. People high in death (lich ring) can kill almost anything since they can manage their focus and health forever. Death has also become the primary PvP build. Before death it was air for quite a long time. Everyone runs death for this stuff.

So I got lucky, Earth magic for a month was uber and then they nurfed the hell out of if for R40, yet death is still epic and people are able to chain kill these boss mobs because of it. The death bunny... easy.

Im not advocating nurfing it, but in the least, other class's should have such power. This is assuming that the dev's have purposely left death powerful like this for a reason because they know all of the solo boss kills are being done by death (and all the big PvP players are running death) and may be doing it for testing.

In a way I think they are foced to keep death powerful because the game is still a mess when it comes to forming a-typical parties (tank, casters, dps) to take out a big mob.


Devs: you know how this can be fixed? Give the life tree some valid spells to boost longevity, especially focus. I have 3 GM's in life and almost 90 in the self heal passive and my heal over time frankly sucks. Boss mobs are slamming me for 400 hp (even with 60%+ resist and 60%+ avoid) and my heals barely pop me for 50 hp (with near 800 total attunment in life).

 

Same question.... Are you using three characters on three computers or some such?

 

Exactly these things like that let me decend into my private world.
I just never was the high-end raid content player.
If you try to catch up with people you maybe loose fun playing the game as you cannot keep up or just haven't fun playing this way.

I like the Idea of 7d respawn timers.
Or let the Bosses FM only and then have individual timers for everyone!
Because if a boss just spawns once a week and the powergamers did it, some others will never be able to fight it.

i doubt something will change significantly, so i stay in my private bubble and try to deal with the nerfs.

 

One character, mining skills 115+, light armor, fast aoe mob killing, blink and run, hundreds hours of practice.
Average many hour rate is less than 400. When you dig for many hours its hard to maintain same very high speed for long time.

 

Best way to farm ore for a casual. Take an alt into The Epitaph while you are out doing your normal stuff on your main. In between rests, its easy to farm it out. You may only get 50 ore an hour but it is done with the least cost of all and very little time (keep your focus on your main). The ore does accumulate well over time.

 

Yes, I guess I can see it. In fact I am going to try it today. A lot of work, but 400 seems like a mini quest I can set for myself.

 

Here, I recorded this a week+ ago. This shows you how to farm ore with your alt. At about the 19 minute mark, I add my alts screen to the video down on the right corner. I actually start farming xp around the 55 min mark.

You can see how I bounce between the two.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/132968931