R35 Feedback

I logged in inside of Pericaliya (island PRT) and the first thing I noticed was that there were more deco items. The magic shop had some ornaments, skulls, etc, and I think there were some other things added. I don't always notice stuff like that, so I guess it's possible that it was added in some other update, but I'm pretty sure it was new. I thought it looked pretty good and glad to see a PRT zone getting a little bit of attention.

I think the new blue enchantment glow looks better than the previous Sinestro look, but I also think having set color enchantment glows is not so great. The player base of this game is probably more into aesthetics than most, so giving them a set color glow that will clash with a lot of their stuff seems like a bad idea. If glowing is a must, it would be cool if there was a sort of gear matching glow to prevent clashing. If that's not possible,having some kind of custom selection available would be nice.

I don't like the new skill decay system. I realize that it's fairly inconsequential at this point for most players, but I just don't like the mechanic. I'm not opposed to there being penalties for death, but a lot of things would make more sense than getting worse at skills because you died. I'm also not against having some form of skill decay, but I don't feel like it's a necessity, and I also think that if it exists that it should be somehow related to skill use.

I think the roving encounters are a little bit of an upgrade over random encounters, but the current overland experience just makes the game feel more dated to me compared to not having any encounters or travel speed changes. I think the map looks really nice and is good for a navigation mode, but it's lame as a play mode and is basically a very uninteresting and unnecessary mini game that brings the game down a little bit.

I haven't been to all the different mines yet, but it looks like mob respawn time is faster in Spectral than before, and others are reporting that Owl's Nest is also guarded a little bit better now. I think these are good changes and hope that mining will be brought into balance with other gathering and production skills. It's been far and away the most efficient engine for production xp for everything craft related for a long time.

edit: I also forgot to mention that I noticed that now when you loot a node or a corpse, everything is instantly looted instead of 1 at a time like it was for a while. That is appreciated.