Some suggestions from a lvl 100

Ok so I recently hit adventure level 100 and feel I have a good knowledge of the game mechanics to post a few suggestions to the developers. I'm very discouraged by the direction the game is going and some of the changes that have occurred and that are incoming with R34.

- No reason to ever play a tamer
-- Started as a tamer, GM x3 skills, taming got nerfed, pets so weak compared to magic or ranged
-- Refunded 5+ mil xp and put it into magic, don't plan on ever going back

- Started as ranged, great single target and pvp, pointless for xp grinding
-- Nice single target, awesome dps while mobile
-- Refunded 6+ mil xp and put it into magic, won't be going back until there's more pvp in pvp zones

- Had great times in EVL doing Sanctus CP as a group, that's gone now
-- Great group content, happy making 250k xp/hr while hanging out with friends and chatting
-- R33 nerfed Sanctus - no reason to ever go back there, horrible XP rate w/ 4k HP mobs even w/ high-lvl group

- Solo fire build CP running far more effective than group CP
-- Able to run Eastreach groups but depending on group skill 500k-1m xp/hr
-- Solo Brightbone CP 1.5-1.8m xp/hr w/ ring of fire build (1001 points in fire, RoF 118, 163 fire attunement)
-- Solo Superstition CP 1-1.2m xp/hr

- Moral of the story - DON'T NERF the CPs, make them more viable for group content
-- Adjust CPs for various skill level groups, ex. Sanctus for level 60+ groups, Superstition for 70+ groups
-- Adjust xp gain in groups, make grouping up MORE rewarding so people play together

- 1.8 mil xp/hr isn't that much, really
-- Given that each level requires 10% more xp than the previous
-- Took since start of persistence to hit level 100
-- Dramatically slower level rate now, given above, each level is 10s of millions of xp, so hours of solo grinding per level
-- BORING!! Need to encourage group play!

- Incoming focus changes are incredibly stupid
-- They want to create a demand for food and another gold sink for crafters
-- This will make it impossible to tackle group content and sustain CPs at full speed
-- Solo play will be awful, kill a mob, wait a few minutes to regen
-- Good way to nerf XP and gold gains
-- Makes fire DOT build even more attractive - why play any other skill set? Most focus efficient.

- Gold nerfs, loot tables
-- Notably harder to amass wealth after last several patches
-- Hit 1,000,000 gold the other day, some mobs worth farming:
-- Lich @ Ravensmoor or Troll @ Vertas
-- Single-target burst earth build - kills lich/trolls in 10-12 sec
-- Approx 2m respawn rate at Ravensmoor and Vertas
-- Best loot in game (gems, scrolls, good weapons, potions)
-- BORING AS HELL - need to update loot tables across the board so we don't have to farm the two best drops to amass wealth

- Skill degeneration, a horrible idea
-- This is a grinding game, no way around it, I personally love grinding games (obviously)
-- This will discourage any gameplay that risks death, be it PVP, or pushing dungeons, why bother if it means I lose hours worth of work? I have to grind MORE to make up for what I lose trying a new hard dungeon?
-- Make NO XP LOSS for PVP
-- Path of Exile is a great grinding action RPG, but once I realize my build/gear can no longer advance (because of XP loss), I end up giving up on the game until the next season

- SOTA is a level-based game
-- Played UO (Atlantic) for years, by far the best MMO I've ever played and feel very nostalgic every time I think of it
-- No way around it, unlike UO where you had a fixed number of skill points to work with, SOTA is an xp and level-based game
-- I had like 50 hotkeys mapped out to play UO, since you could access every skill and spell at any time
-- No critical hits, damage was all about skill level vs resistances, making PVP less about luck and more about skill, you knew if someone was casting an e-bolt or explo you needed to get ready to heal 30ish points w/ a g-heal or several mini heals if you missed interrupting them
-- Honestly, I wish SOTA was an exact copy of the UO skill/leveling system but with modern graphics, too bad LB sold the intellectual property but can't blame him cashing out on his hard work

Anyway, that's my feedback, there's more but tired of typing now. Hope devs see this and make positive changes rather than just nerfing the **** out of everything as has been their recent trend. Should give some of y'all hints on how to grind xp and make more gold too, if you can sustain the boredom.

Study Break / Massive Trauma

 

Sorry to be so negative, on this but it is way to late now, but 100 level in two months is then major problem in the game. Game is already screwed, only fix is a wipe and figure it out. Persistence is / was one of the worst ideas for a game in development ever.

 

Dev+ thread titles for r34 scare me. No access to actually read the posts.

Let's hope the feedback works!

 

From your feedback it seems the only way to earn a

is that you need to be a mage, and anyone that isn't is at a serious disadvantage. I am an Archer with a little magic and i would imagine i could theoretically make about 180k an hour, but in practise id think it would at most be half of that....say 75k an hour. It seems to me this adventure pool xp thing where it can be stored and used on any skill basically is a bad design move as it forces players to play one playstyle to feed the other if they want other skills to raise at a competitive level.

Edit: I have never before seen the max xp i could get in an hour but have just done Deep Ravenswood solo, killing everything as fast as possible, with no looting. I ran out of arrows with about 8 mins to go on the hour but i think would have reached about 160k in that hour.

 

Meh, the cap is 200 right? At this point gaining 1 level is 7 hours of grinding, then the next level will be 8 hours of grinding, etc. Huge diminishing returns. Eventually people will catch up and the level difference will only be a few levels.

And that was exactly my point. Once I realized how powerful magic is in this game I dumped taming/ranged and moved all that XP to magic.

 

Yes the cap is 200 and diminishing returns are meant to help....However when it takes me who is quite efficient and productive with my limited build, it still takes me 20* what is does you to raise a level.
Say it takes u 7 hrs now at level 100, when i eventually get there, it would take me 140 hours....when it takes u 8 hrs it would take me 160 hours..and by the time i get there i think I'm level 75 at moment which would take me multiple hundreds of hours, you are still gaining a level quite easily meaning diminishing returns will never really help other players unless they are using the same levelling build.

Disappointing...

 

I whole heartedly agree with this post, first off I started as a tamer, and had to completely start over since, I couldn't use my pet. A LARGE RED spider STILL takes 170 focus, I am JUST NOW getting to where I'm not dying repeatedly. Now you are going to screw up the focus. First problem, IMHO, all tiers of food SHOULD be released at the same time. Not onesie twosie. Second the focus nerf should not be in place until all foods are in. I've talked to several people whom feel this game is stuck in the early days of MMO's and I quote, " That game feels old, and boring." You have to realize a lot of players are USED to grinding and levelling, they are USED to banging their head against walls while learning raid bosses, dying over and over. The game seems to be taking a step back in time, mind you this is not all bad but you have to reconsider some of the changes you are making. Taming is STILL broken, and there is pretty much no use even having a pet out. There is very little utility, and they take far too many resources to use.

Also consider this, forcing higher level players to use such things as, higher tiers of food, etc etc, reagents, nerfing focus, nerfing gold, is doing NOTHING but hurting the lower level players TRYING to get ahead, but we just fall further and further behind. Please reconsider these changes, as well as the incoming skill loss as well, as it will further increase the gap.

Also further consider how many hours these players are playing, I know friends of mine are on hours upon hours, (all night long) and then take a short nap and are back at it again. I myself play for 8-12 hours a day , because I can, but there are some who can only devote a couple hours a week to play, you have to stop and consider them as well.

 

That's why instead of nerfing the group content (CPs), they should encourage it so you can group up with similarly level players and dramatically boost your xp gains vs what you could do solo. This was the case w/ Sanctus but then they nerf-batted it. There should be a CP for each level range so people group up and play together!

 

Loot and group xp changes are already being worked on. The focus regen changes arent that bad unless you refuse to manage focus. Sitting idle is not neccessary. Food cost is extremely low and lasts an hour.

Lvl 100 and those near it are a low minority. Those are folks who enjoy grinding thru levels as quickly as possible and this game is not trying to cater to that

 

Even using tap soul and alternating passive/defensive stance, full-speed group control points like Eastreach in 'domination' mode are tenuous at best with a full 90+ group in terms of focus management. By domination mode I mean sitting at mob spawn points and killing them the moment they spawn, which is how you can max your xp gains. Any significant change will make it non-viable.

 

Its not intended to be dominated. And out of combat focus regen is gonna be faster. And more ways to manage focus regen in combat, and folks who grind like that can very easily afgord the food buffs

 

We will find a way .

 

All these posts should be placed in R33 feedback where it will be seen by those that can do something about these problems. @Berek

 

Amen. Study Break - I agree with 99.977732% of what you said up top.

The nature of this is that Portalarium's endless effort to nerf the top 1-5% of current Shroud game players only hurts the 95-99% of the rest of players. The 1-5% are simply going to be and stay too far ahead and it just widen's the gap.

V/R Brickbat

 

Finnaly people will realize that deep ravenwood or the rise are far from being most effective place to go

I'm adv 103 and I agree with your post
I have 20 million pooled exp cuz im waiting to see how bad is skill decay

 

I suppose Passive Stance will become mandatory for focus regen

 

What I took from your original post is that your idea of fun or the quality of a game is based on how much rewards you get from doing certain activities based on how much you grinded and/or farmed.

 

Gix, what I beleive he's trying to say is, he wants more areas spread across the levels, and that control points are almost impossible as it is now, the focus change will make those worse. Also that the gap between players will increase. Skill decay will also increase this gap, not only slow down those at the top, but others as well and sooner or later you will instead of levelling be gaining xp to just maintain Especially those of lower levels who squish easily, also those exploring new instances or cps, and then no one is going to want to risk death to take the hit to skill loss.

 

Personally, as someone who can read those threads and some dev responses to those threads, I don't think it's going to be as bad as some of the thread titles in there may seem to suggest to put it simply. At least that's how I personally feel about the upcoming release. What's on the QA server right now does not necessarily indicate what will be in the release as they will be changing things based on some concerns.

 

I don't have much to add, except congratulations to those already level 100 or better. That takes a whole lot of work.