I love Diplomacy. It was one of the things that drew me to Vanguard, and the first Sphere I levelled. However while levelling it I have came to understand why so many players see it as a grind, something to be left until PoTA faction grinding requires it. Diplomacy is easy. While it is desirable for number of tactics to be viable, it isn't desirable for every tactic to be viable in every situation. Currently level 50 parleys can be beaten by spamming Comments and I find it hard to believe this is intended. Lack of levelling content. Diplomacy is half-finished. There is a huge derth of quests in the 20 to 45 range leaving the only option as grinding civics to progress. While I'm a Vanguard player and as such enjoy a good grind as much as the next man this issue is exacerbated by the next issue. Lack of character progression. This is a little harder to explain, but stems from the fact that Presence is a restricting, not enabling factor. In the Diplomacy sphere gear (for the most part) doesn't make you any better at diplomacy, just allows you to talk to different people. Add this to the fact that cards are useable at any Diplomacy level and you're left with the feeling that diplomats don't improve as they level. And when you've levelled? Welcome to the end game, you get to grind more civics. There has been almost no Diplomacy included in game updates and diplomats have no other way to generate cash, or other benefit to themselves With F2P coming up I don't expect any resources to be devoted to Diplomacy (or to a lesser extent Crafting), but decided to make this post anyway. The community was asked for input on 'content' and if Diplomacy is to be part of the F2P offering it deserves at least a single post in it's support.
i understand most of what you are saying, i find diplo relaxing and pushing civics pre raid is both fun (we tease each other) and a pain. I agree that there are a limited number of quests in the mid range, the only really extended one is the tawar galan quest for the high shaman staff. Since diplo caps at 50 , the magi hold and pota quests are pretty much it for high end diplo, along with the god parlays, and it is needed for the Shendu fight. Jansan did some amazing work on diplo, not sure if there is anyone on the dev team now that has his background. My long time peeve about diplo was its total uselessness as an income stream. The two methods in game, deeds, and regional trade wind up costing you more than you can earn. (this was heavily nerfed after an exploit was squashed). It takes a lot of diplo to earn a few silver that any adventurer can earn with a single trash mob kill. still am a big diplo fan, wish there were more quests.
I agree with the fact that Diplomacy is useless as a way of generating cash, but I wouldn't mind if there was something you could do with it. The Magi Hold content is extremely limited and I don't consider PoTA to be Diplomacy content, just a use of diplomacy in the adventuring sphere because of the Adventuring requirements to gain access to the parlays. I am a huge fan of Diplomacy as well, I just wish it was .. useful
Senjalle wrote: The quests (excluding Diplomacy Saga, PoTA, and Magi Hold) are actually fairly numerous given the original design for diplomacy. The quests originally gave no XP... because diplomacy was not originally an XP based system. It was changed to an XP based system, and additional quests were not added.. as the population had already dropped severely, and focus was prioritized to the adventuring sphere. In addition, the requirements vs rewards for many of the old diplomacy quests are horribly off-scale. Especially after the change to diplomacy "level" vs diplomacy "skill". They did add a way for diplomats to generate cash.. it was severely "exploited" and nerfed to uselessness. As for "character progression," it does occur. It occurs every time you attempt a parley. Try one five levels below you, then equal level, and finally 5 levels above you. Take note to how many turns you need to win and how many turns your opponent needs. That is a built in feature. On top of that, level 15 grants the use of diplomacy masks, level 25 grants Smelly Cat items, 35 grants the Sign of the Exemplar item. The IoD charm increases in power as you advance it. At level 50 adventuring you can get the KDQ starter/finisher bracelets. There are at least two decent handhelds earned during the second portion of the diplo saga series. Magi Hold, APW, and PoTA all offer a bag with stats.. the PoTA one hadds a starting bonus to parleys. There is room for improvement, no doubt, but I feel you're over exaggerating a couple points just a little bit.
Graye@Xeth wrote: Good old skill based diplomacy, back when diplomacy was actually hard without all these overpowered cards that made it so easy (no signature or monster cards etc). Also a weird quirk of their conversion method led to a few (but very few still active) level 51 diplomats (which i guess would technically make 51 the cap instead of 50). Basically everybody got 10 skill pointed added then you were converted on 10 skill points = 1 level (because if they didn't if you were skill 1-9 you would end up level 0 diplomat which would probably break things). The quirk is that those who were previously 500 skill had xp in their bar past level 50. And when they expanded the level cap for some spheres to 55, those with said xp ended up as level 51 diplomats (which if your level 51 you don't even get any diplomacy xp and your progress bar shows full rest) 51 doesn't really get you any benefits though. A big downside is that you show as level 1 diplomat in a /who and a /who all......... /cry
Senjalle wrote: I fully agree with the above post. 1- Up until you get maybe the first 2-3 new card slots diplomacy is challenging, even for a diplo veteran. After that point, and especially when you get your first special card like Karma Burn, diplomacy turns into a non-challenging button pushing fest where you may only ever need to use 1-3 cards in every parley from level 20-45. This is rectified with the new diplomacy content, especially PotA, where the parleys actually become quite difficult. In an ideal world there would be a diplomacy revamp, increasing the difficulty of lower tier parleys and scaling as you are able to obtain and use more powerful cards. 2- There kind of is and kind of isn't a lack of levelling content, depending on your point of view. I have done every diplo quest in game on my shammy, but lack of useful reward for the majority of diplo quests mean i bypass them and just grind prestige factions from level 10 (post IoD) to level 40 (where i start the Executors quest-line). You need to grind out 10 prestige centres to get your Sign of the Exemplar of all Telon anyway, so there isn't a great deal of incentive to do anything other than xp and grind prestige. This is a shame because i found a lot of the diplomacy quests to be quite fun and interesting. Realistically, the only way to fix this is to revamp or introduce long questlines like the Executors, which keep you occupied and interested, and give you more xp and prestige than you would have gotten with the same amount of time spent grinding civic diplomacy. 3- Agreed, there is pretty much a lack of progression. Once i reach level 10 on the IoD with a new diplomat, that diplomat pretty much stays the same until i reach level 45 and get the top end gear. The only real exception to this is doing diplomacy in Tar Janashir, where you actually need to have a certain prescence level to be able to do the parleys. Most other centres have little to no prescence requirements, thus rendering the majority of diplomacy gear obsolete. To fix this you would need to introduce higher prescence requirements on all civic parleys, with possibly greater xp and prestige rewards for those diplomats with higher prescences. 4- End game for me is level 45+. Once you hit 45 you are eligible for the best gear in game purchased from lamplighters, with the gear basically allowing you to boost all of your prescences above 2100 (with 4 handheld items thrown in). Higher prescence allows you to move civic levers by 10, and allows you to access the highest level parleys (PotA and Magi Hold). But once you have purchased this gear at 45 there is little more to do in diplomacy outside of pushing civic buffs and doing God parleys for PotA T2 - T3 faction. I think the only real way to improve this is by introducing a long diplomacy grind for level 50 diplomats. Maybe have it as a once a day parley or series of once a day parleys. Of course you need to make the end reward worthwhile, but at least it would bring diplomacy back to everyday useage.
Ghostchild@Seradon wrote: I think its a little over the top but I agree with a few points myself and I also agree with you about level 45 being basically the end of the road apart from 2 quest line and PotA parleys, the quest line you don't need to do but are kind of fun if you like Diplo. I personally would love to see the cap raised to 55 and have a nice long detailed quest line to get us most of the way there, with a grind and nice reward at the end, even tweaking other Diplo content to incorporate this would be good IMHO, anything to bring the sphere alive again after level 45+. /chants Bring Back Jansen!
As a new player, I feel there is a big disconnect between IoD and the rest of the game. I spent a lot of extra time getting my toon up to 10 diplo before leaving IoD, but as soon I got to Veskals Exchange, I couldn't parley with anyone because I didn't have enough presence. Naturally I just continued along adventuring, but as the gap increases between my adventure and diplo levels, it is less likely I will go back to keep them in sync (which would be ideal). In short, presence is a huge hindrance and it's less and less likely every day that I play that I will ever get my diplo level up. (this is all from a very low level player, take it with a grain of salt. But it really pisses me off because I wanted to level as a diplo)
Androsynth wrote: It is doable.. but the lower requirement parleys are in racial cities. Leaving IoD didn't toss you off there. On top of that, after leaving IoD as a lvl 10 diplo, you should have had enough pressence to continue on with the diplomacy saga up into your mid-late teens. The gear from the diplo saga is enough to do just about anything for leveling diplomacy, as well as many quests. A number of quests would still be a major pain... requiring 1.5k-2k+ pressence. That gear can be obtained through civic diplomacy, or wait until you're level 45 diplo and buy the cheese lamplighter gear that we're all wearing now.
Ghostchild@Seradon wrote: Interesting, I hadn't considered doing it that way round. I came off the Isle, completed the Executors and found I'd out-levelled the Mask quests. Started to grind out prestige and got the Exemplar title just before I was able to equip the rod, then had nothing to do but grind more XP to 50 because I lacked the presence to start the NT houses. I didn't find out about the Lamplighters gear until I was 49, at which point I had enough Information from levelling to snap purchace a full set of everything. I remember thinking at the time it was strange design to have levelling gear so hard to get, but end-game gear available to purchace. Graye@Xeth wrote: By the same token, there is bonus to accuracy, mitigation and so on against lower level mobs. If you keep fighting level 1 mobs that counts as progression in Adventuring too, right? Your right, I am overstating it a bit. Masks, the Exemplar Rod, IoD Charm and NT House Gloves all increase Diplomacy ability, as does the PoTA bag. However that is the sum total of item benefits available. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for Silius to add a pile of shiny new toys. If anything that would make things worse. I just wanted to make a point that if VG is going to be marketed as a game with 3 independent spheres then Diplomacy needs to be looked at, and probably completely overhauled. Yes I am aware how much work that would be, I'd just like it added to the 'to do' list, probably just below tails for Raki and accordians for Bards.
The spheres haven't been independent since 2007. :/ Everything was trumped by adventuring. Diplomacy difficulty was dropped, crafted items short of houses and boats are of no consequence. I don't think they are trying to, or ever will try to, launch VG as it was in 2007. They will give attention to the other two spheres, but they will never be true independents, merely add-ons for adventuring.
Graye@Xeth wrote: You are right that Diplomacy and Crafting were ganked in the effort to make the only end game raids, but I think that this can and will change. Crafting as launched was the tip of the iceburg, plans existed for a lot more. Same with diplo, if you believe the interviews given in 2007. If both these areas get ignored, then Vanguard has little aside from its vistas to compete with other FMMOs. Crafting and diplo are the breakouts that can drive the game. Look at Minecraft, 16 million addicted players. Get even 1% of these players interested in crafting for Vanguard at it will pay for itself 10 times over. Diplo quests themselves are inexpensive since they require little art and can shadow adventure quests.
The first thing that has to happen is to get rid of the idea that the best rewards can only be given for raids. Raids, due to their specialized nature and difficulty in pulling off (hanging out for hours waiting for the Cleric to log is a common experience, or dumping the Raid because you loose key players) will always be a niche - 5 to 8% of the MMO public. They demand huge resources to build and support, and support few players. They are worth dumping resources in because Raiders are dedicated paying customers, so this is not an argument against raids. However crafting, RP, guilds, exploration, and PvP all each command another 5-8% of the audience who claim they play primarily for these spheres. PvP is difficult because griefing actually looses customers, and PvP zones tend to be under utilized, but even this can be done well and make a segment of the population happy. (PvE is the big dog with more than 60% listing it as their main reason to MMO). The key to diplo is no one has it, or if they do it is a silly off-shoot of adventuring, and it could be another 5-8% niche if done right. Build three dozen new quests with at least three chains in each of the level categories. Create guild and regional diplo. Finally, creating interlocking areas is always a good idea. Diplo can offer crafting rewards essential to crafting the best gear. Crafting can make diplo gear of a wide range of effects and capabilities. Raiders can find diplo books or papers that can act as buffs. Guild status can give diplo buffs, while diplo can boost guild status.
