They Fixed Control Points

And by fixed I mean neutered the xp gain rates. All the doors also don't seem to be opening in vertas pass.

 

Patch 522 Notes
Control Points: Removed all control point chests except the last one. Reduced the loot package on the remaining chest. Greatly reduced the respawn rate on the remaining chest.

This is actually a great change! Now the CP group has an easier chance to loot it.

 

How does making less lootable items, that spawn less frequently, "easier" for the CP group?

 

so just to clarify, the spawn rates of the creatures for the control points and therefore the xp you can gain from it is still the same right? It's only the loot that has been changed?

 

Nope.. Slower Waves at ramp up speed.. Less exp.... Starting to think that port likes to take away all the fun... In Vertas seems like they took away the 2 elven warriors with halberds... Wonder if that was for a bug OR just to take away another fun thing "gold/xp"...

 

It's a shame really. The cp's were the only real group content available to us, I thought they were fun and well done. Yes there was room for tweaking but breaking them is the wrong approach.

Instead of making them unplayable to all but a few, they should be making them available to all. Why is there no 2 or 3 skull cp points for lower level players to enjoy? This could be done fast and easily by letting the group choose the difficulty before starting the cp. Click on the flag/banner and select the difficulty to start the waves.... and you'd have everyone in the game able to enjoy the work done by the devs.

As it was and as it sits now.. their hard work making these is largely left unappreciated.

 

We had a lower level CP... It was sanctus spine.. They had about 400-600 hp? Full party you would get about 250k.. It was very fun and brought a bunch of lower levels together. They didn't like how people were using pets and dominating the point in a full group.. SO they decided to change the mobs into 3k+.. 6x+ the hp as they were before.. Once again.. The trend is to strip any fun everyone does. /sadpanda

 

Just disappointed, CPs cost alot of money reagent wise to hold and it gave people a reason to play together, especially those that were approaching high adventurer levels it gave them something to do. With the xp cuts, in some places not even 1/10th of what they were before, there is no reason to spend 5k on reagent per hour and group with others to do them any more. People will budget their time and money appropriately and when something isn't worth it any more they'll move onto the next thing so I guess we just need to find the next spot that supports group play that gives a decent chunk of xp.

 

I see the need to reduce the xp/loot, but reducing it so much, when this have been the one thing getting several groups from various guilds together, I think less of. From all my time in here (yes this account is new, but I sold a pledge a year ago), The cp's have been the only consistant thing I met new people and had a blast playing as a group with. Now its more of a thing you force someone to come help with once, and then its back to DRW. Something gotta give, but when will we have more group challenges?

 

That is what I saw too Lanfie.

I've witnessed a wonderful multi-guild community, of 4-5 guilds, come together around these cp groups... all working together, sharing group members, having fun and generally enjoying a Multi Player Online Game. My time at these cp points has made me feel like a part of the sota community as a whole, not just a member of 'my guild' but a member of 'this game'.

If one forgets about the xp/gold numbers for just a moment and looked at Vertas Pass, you'd have seen a healthy game with 20+ people sharing an instance and having a blast. This sight is good for sota and what it needs to strive to be.

The cries of 'exploiters' and /gasping! at 1 million xps an hour are completely unwarranted. Every group I joined or watched was doing it legally.. and a mil per hour isn't as drastic as it might seem to an outsider. I grind for an hour .. and my Train Intelligence goes from 98 to 98.8. This is serious grinding too, furious non stop action... no time to chat or respond to tells or anything, not even looting which leads to the next point.

No one was filling up these zones to block pvp attackers, as claimed by some while calling for very serious actions like account bans to be taken. What was actually happening? There was a group of 8 players, often from multiple guilds, holding the cp. Those 8 members have not a single second to spare on running for the chests. So our friends, guildmates, random people in the zone and even our enemies were welcomed to come help themselves to the chests.... it didn't take long for a zone to fill up because everyone there is friendly and has friends and with multiple guilds in the group it shouldn't be all that surprising to people.

Anyone standing on the sidelines screaming the sky is falling... would be better served joining this community of friendly sota players, I'm quite certain you will be welcomed. This is what a multi-player game is all about.

 

Definitely agree with you here and this has been one of the biggest problems on these forums and one of the biggest pet peeves of mine lately.

There is a number of players and guilds and groups who have figured out optimal builds and optimal group play in order to do high level content. This is completely normal and what is SUPPOSED to happen in a multiplayer game. There is nothing illegal or exploitative about it and any player or group of players could put in the same effort to skill up and gear up and learn a better deck to play and etc.. The content is there for everyone to play the same.

The problem comes from a very vocal group of very entitled people who see that others are getting more xp or loot than them and immediately cry foul because they aren't as good, or haven't figured out a good grinding group for themselves yet. So these people see a group of players getting 1 mil xp per hour and they just don't understand the effort that goes into that high end content, or they don't understand that it's not even that much xp compared to the cost of regs and time and effort put into it. So rather than go and do it themselves they cry nonstop until the game is nerfed to be more down at their level.

If this pattern continues, there will be no draw to stick with this game for any length of time because there will be no incentive whatsoever to build up a proper character or a proper group and push higher content.

 

Yes a great game with a crappy community will likely fail just as a great community in a crappy game will likely fail.

It's just as much our responsibility as it is the devs, to ensure that sota is successful.

 

So checked the chests, 1 chest at 12 min respawn with loot less than what they were giving in vertas before the change. Nice fix . Not even worth getting off the pad for.

 

Yep seems like the usual... To nerf things to the extreme... So no one enjoys anything that they work to over months or even weeks to achieve... A certain goal as a group or a guild to perform a certain task. Once they see a group achieve a certain task, they seem to nerf that task and hurt everyone that would, or want to achieve that as well... As it stands they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot and preventing groups and individuals to progress... They fail to realize that it takes hours and hours to actually level beyond level 100 for a minor increase in damage. Let's just keep punishing players who accomplish things... It's a matter of time before people or groups "guilds" get tired of the constant nerfs and set backs before most of us just give up and move on... Personally i don't understand why it has to come to this, when its just a minor increase in damage and attunement... As said before in a telethon by chris... It's just a 5% or so increase in damage for 20 or so levels in that skill from 80-100 or even 100-120. As it looks currently... It's going to take months or even years to get everything in a school of magic to 120-130+... Why must you cater to the casuals and nerf everything from gold/exp !! People want a reason to log on and play the game! If people want to spend time earning gold....So be it!... If people want to earn EXP! So be it!!! If people want to spend time earning resources...!! SO BE IT! Why Continue to nerf everything people enjoy logging into the game daily?

I see many guilds over the past weeks getting to the point of working together and defeating a obstacle that they never did before. It made them more active and stronger as a whole... Made them feel like they were progressing in the game that YOU made them believe in!! It's time to stop catering to the out cries of the casual players that don't even spend time playing the game and start listening to the players who actually login daily and play the game..

Sometimes i wonder if you actually understand the dedication and time it took to accomplish some of the tasks you brought to us..... Just to take it away or make it hard on the 1%?.. Do you not realize that others might look up to us and feel a certain strive to achieve the same goals? It seems like you only look at the top percent and swing away with the nerf bat... But fail to see that the ones you are really hurting are the lower level players the most. /EndRant

 

Couldn't agree more!

 

Just as an additional perspective- the "messaging" that I have received from various groups holding the CP at Vertas Pass is that my adventure level is "not high enough" at 60 to join the group.

So... it isn't really about people all getting together, teaching each other how to play the game, and having fun. It is about the elite players at the "top" of the xp earning curve continuing to earn xp at a breakneck pace, while everybody else is asked to stand on the sidelines and feel grateful that they were being "allowed" to loot the chests.

My recommendation if people want Portalarium to stop "nerfing the fun things" is to actually include other players and help them learn for themselves how to improve their play, and how to make themselves more useful to a group.

Finally- as the title to this thread suggests- the control points have actually been fixed. If they were functioning as intended, the dev team would have left them alone.

 

In the same way Taming was fixed? Something absolutely needed to be done about the chests much like something needed to be done to taming at release/persistence. It could be argued that they might have gone a bit too far.

 

Mmm not sure as I'm not a Tamer and aren't too familiar with changes to Taming. I recall some people being upset and others saying that it was simply another free-for-all that was going to end sooner or later.

 

At release taming was setup that anyone with no skill could use any tamed pet with no downside. Obviously broken. So a skill was required that can be used once every 15 minutes that had to be trained into the 60's to summon worthwhile pets. That right there is a pretty drastic solution but the pet power was also reduced and the focus costs to having a pet were increased. Result, tamers are extremely rare and port added books to refund the skill.
Control point chests used to be lootable by anyone every 3 minutes, obviously broken. Now there is one chest every 10 minutes with less in it, probably still with the broken lootable by everyone issue. Problem fixed or at least reduced but they went on to reduce the exp rate you get by holding control points (per reports here). Result is still to be seen but if there is better exp elsewhere grouped or solo CPs will not longer be used. They surely won't be done for the gold reward any more.

There is a pattern of fixing problems with a very heavy hand

 

Perhaps the hand just seems more heavy due to the contrast to a complete free-for-all.

My feeling is that the dev team has a fairly clear idea of how much maximum gold or xp a player should be earning at level X. As far as I can tell, all of the adjustments so far (however drastic) have been to bring things into alignment with this.

At the end of the day, I think any reasonable player would agree that the intention was never to allow a player to have 10+ GM skills and millions of gold within six months of starting a new character. So call me insensitive, but I have a very tiny violin here that weeps for all the players who are crying about geting "nerfed" when they know good, darn well that whatever they were exploiting an unbalanced game dynamic.

Also- for clarity- I have also benefited from these same exploit-y tactics, though not to as large a degree as some other players. I don't see anything wrong with "taking advantage of an loophole" however complaining when the loophole finally gets closed is in poor taste, IMO.

We have enough of a challenge with players whining and complaining about every little thing in this game, without having to deal with crocodile tears coming from a 10X GM with more gold than they know what to do with.