@Dravid: Oh don't get me wrong--I really don't care if the lorestones got nerfed per se, even if I had put in way too much time finishing them on many characters. Personally, I have not killed a single mob after lorestones that I had not already killed before. I do think we have become a bit overpowered on current content, but I do not want to see (characters being nerfed) equated to (new content), or see new content mirroring the difficulty of present content, as stated above by Gresteh. @ Gresteh and anyone else: I see two things here: 1. Even if nerfed characters find present content more difficult, we still have done that content umpteen times, and it becoming a touch more difficult will not make it more interesting. In fact, the thought of having to work harder to kill the same old mobs, that drop the same old loot, well, it kinda sucks. 2. If new content is no more difficult than what we have now, will it contain any real gear progression? I do not mean the piddly piece or two of jewelry progression--I mean gear progression that means we will toss the PotA gear aside in favor of something better. An entire new set of gear--not just a few mis-matched items scattered around. How many years are we supposed to stay in PotA gear? If new, better gear is included, won't that make us overpowered all over again, as the difficulty of the mobs would not have increased? Why would it be more difficult to introduce new content that is harder than what we have now? Why would it be easier to introduce parallel-difficulty mobs anyway? I really hope all this speculation has no basis in fact!
Things can go wrong in an encounter due to a variety of reasons. The lorestone buff difference will be at the bottom of the pile after failed player skill and execution followed by other external factors like server lag and bugs etc. There are two factors that determine difficulty requirements for an encounter - Skill Check and Gear Check. Currently with the level caps remaining as they are, the room for growth from gear is shrinking and pretty much with most of the 24 man guilds all being able to kill the same mobs, most guilds are equally geared. The only way to make more encounters more challenging is to elevate them up in the skill plateau and push the skill envelope. But Vanguard has its limitations as far as encounter design goes due to server side performance issues. But even if such a dungeon with hard encounters was designed what is the point of getting a reward for doing it that is subpar to what the lorestone buffs offer. That's the main reason why rewards should match content difficulty. Power and better gear obtained should be through content progression. Standing AFK at a dungeon for something to pop is barely called content let alone a form of progression.
Schiller, the problem lies with the stat caps, you cannot increase mob difficulty without increasing player strength and you cannot increase player strength without removing the caps… but doing that right now will cause some problems. If I were a developer and I had to balance VG I would start by changing the item creation tool in order to allow for items with more stats… once that’s done I would remove certain EE’s and add them to the gear, mostly those that give stats, hp, energy, endurance, regen and things like that. Once that’s done I would do a balance pass to the remaining EE’s and set bonuses, moving them to augmentations or doing something such as turning these effects into passives and only allowing players to “equip” a limited number of these passives… The only thing I would spare from that change would be the griffon necklace and its upgrades because that item is worn by a lot of people and because someone decided that putting that effect into a lockbox item would be a “great idea”… Since one of the upgrades comes from a lockbox changing how it works would be problematic (players have paid for that item) so regrettably I would have to make an exception. After that, I would have item creation and EE’s under control so I would move into removing caps… again, this would cause some problems with stats such as Damage bonus, so as part of that cap removal I would have to rebalance several stats. Doing all this would allow me to add better rewards to the game and therefore increase the mob strength. The problem is that such a change would be painful, many players would see most of those changes as nerfs (and rightly so), but it would lay a better foundation for future game progress… that’s if there are still players left after the changes… I suspect that the developers want to follow a similar path, perhaps not as radical as the one i propose, but they want to do something... in fact they need to do something.
I am just a simple layman when it comes to game design, but one thing I do know for sure. If there is no real progression, why will people even bother moving forward? Nothing past PotA/Magi Hold raid mobs makes any real difference in my ability to do my job. Other games have found a way to continue to progress, and VG needs to as well. If the plan is to continue to populate the entire world with one overland mob after another, all very killable in T3 PotA gear, until they turn out the lights one day (or one year) then please tell us now! It was my belief, based on past posts here, that the devs intend to remove/rework stat caps so as to make continuing progression possible. I do hope this is the case, and I do hope progression is not adding a few items that give +0.001 more than we get currently, and therefore makes no difference at all. I do not cherish the idea of languishing for another 2+ years in my old PotA gear, but I'm not going to work my butt off for some statistically insignificant "upgrade" either. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, as the old saying goes. I know other games have made progression possible in other ways. For example, the difference in 'best' group gear and raid gear for all 'normal' stats was nearly the same, but raid gear contained some additional stat that was absolutely necessary in the next stage of progression. As no red name has actually said anything about continuing forward with parallel-difficulty mobs, as far as I know, I consider it nothing but speculation anyway. Yes, they need to "get things under control," but they also need to look to future progression as post-PotA, not parallel content!
I wouldn’t keep my hopes up for CoW as a real progression, at least not with the first part of the dungeon… the only way to progress is removing caps and removing caps will destroy the game unless they start by nerfing many stats and from what the devs have said they plan to do that after CoW... let's hope that they were talking about the first half of CoW instead of the whole dungeon. A new set of armor would be nice, PotA is getting old for many players, as they have been using the same pieces of armor for years. It’s just that I don’t see how they can do real progression without a large change in stats and I don’t think that the team is going to do that until after CoW. Of course I might be wrong, perhaps they will release the first part with another PotA-like grind for a set of armor while it may be just slightly better than PotA’s but it will be upgraded even further once they release the second part of the dungeon along with a stat rebalance and a cap removal. They could use that grind in order to buy some time while they work on the things they believe they need to be done in order to add real progress to the game.
I believe Krolk already brought that up in a thread here and he understands the problem from a practical perspective of leading a raid in today's content. https://forums.station.sony.com/vg/index.php?threads/level-increase.70545/ Ultimately you will need to increase the level cap or nerf PotA gear heavily. Otherwise you will just need to learn to be happy with sidegrades and augs for rewards. I know a lot will disagree with me on the level cap increase, but I just see no way around it. Nerfing PotA gear will truly hurt the progressing guilds. I can tell you for sure we wouldn't have progressed without PotA gear.
Getting things under control is key for future progression. The work going on right now is definitely to support character progression.
This statement used in light of nerfs is a half truth at best. A nerf always supports character progression, as the nerf sets the character/gear back down the progression ranks requiring alternate "progression" to reach the same freaking plateau you were at before the nerf. The progression therefore is enforced and illusory. If you wish to tell me that the latest series of nerfs (still waiting on Imbued Light IV BTW) is not of the type mentioned above and indeed has an agenda of pushing player progression past said plateau without making them start over again halfway down the mountain? Well "I'll believe that when my $#!||^ turns purple and smells of rainbow sorbet".
Was out of the loop for some time, can anyone explain please: some GMs are gone (people who kept this mess going), does it mean that SOE will pull the plug real soon?
SOE had a general layoff , mostly customer service people like gm's but also some devs and management , across all games. we still have devs and we share a gm .
Ofcourse why would you care, someone probably held your hand all along. It takes someone who broke through content to understand what a free 1% that stacked over cap meant.
Yes, you are right, someone has held my hand since launch, on my 15 chars, 4 accounts, and 10 , 55's. Get over yourself. Because I don't need a 1% boost in anything to make me a better tank? Hit me up, online , on Coadex, . Pft garbage men.
Sorry wrong choice of words. I should have said "end game" more specifically than "all along". I don't really bother about 1 to 55. Apologies on the poor selection of words. But I will still stick by my comment otherwise. If you are currently in Unleashed, keep in mind they have spent a lot of time gearing countless players like yourself. I am not trying to berate your skill. Whether you choose to accept it or not, you are being "carried" through current content especially if you are raiding with guilds like Unleashed. They can make Shendu seem like X77 as far as difficulty goes. As far as 1% goes, there's a good reason why a rune type aug that has 1.07% of a specific stat costs an arm and a leg. Why do people spend such outrageous sums of money trying to stuff that into every slot they have? Because ultimately it takes little drops of water to make an ocean (and not to mention that particular stat doesn't have a cap). Every little thing adds up to your character. Gearing oneself is a part of progression. You gear for what's coming up next in the line of difficulty. Not for trying to get through content of yesterday. Talk to anyone in your guild who has spent many hours trying to figure out new content or farming for augs. They will tell you why 1% of anything available for "free" (literally) is important.
