Game Director Letter – April 2014 Discussion

[Kurt2013]

The gear is still ingame. So take a look at the stats and compare and judge for yourself what the implications of adding not only con, but also critigation, tenacity, AA, protection, dps, hit rating, crit rating and crit damage rating to the equation.
With khitai the crafted blue gear (which by the way you could trade or buy, the grind involved only getting money or getting friends) this shifted a lot and the gap between new 80s and others became larger.
I was totally new back then...and even me could hurt the top noth players back then on 1 vs 1. Try that now without exploiting. And when you got "oneshotted", it was a clear bug or exploit...not like now, when it has become a standard game mechanic. Taking down a raidgeared char took longer, you were not allowed for mistakes, but it was possible with specialization and focus, because not all stats were exponentially higher (only some). You were not a fly to be ignored, if they did this, even the new players could get dangerous. Again...compare now. This is what i meant partly by being caught in the d&d power loop (happens when gms give out too much power and too fast...players will become dependant on the gear and demand more and more).

Where is the drawback (except work, but this varies a lot on how you do it) in seperating pve progression from pvp progression???

You could have basic stats working everywhere, PvP stats and PvE epic stats working only in PvE. You also could add gear enchantment modifiers to zones (this would even be within the lore...places of power or dead magic zones), thus controlling the gear effect...and even create interesting variations on mini games or open world zones. As well as giving the devs an additional tool for pve difficulty they can use.
Especially when you create new gear anyway...the work amount of adding "epic only" stats should not be too high, because you avoid relaunching the whole database.

On a positive note, just from reading the letter, i see no clear statement, that they do not intend to seperate the progression or that they intend to repeat past mistakes.

[Rathothis]

Ok, i try my luck with ascii:

Before:------Now:
......._-------......._
....._I.-------......_I
.....I..-------..___I..
..__I..-------..I.....
..I.....-------..I.....

Gee, i hope you see my point...next time i will just link to a scan

Afraid I don't

I guess the second graph is supposed to show that PvP T1 gear is more powerful than it used to be. That's right of course. But I don't see it showing the fact that PvP T1 is now easier to obtain than it used to be.

I do agree with you that there shouldn't be a power creep in PvP, but as Joel has said that they won't do Unchained minis any time soon due to resource issues, there's not much point discussing that anymore. Unfortunately.

You are right to raise the point, in a later post, that the PvP gear changes don't exactly help new players in blues. Even if the time it takes for the them to be able to buy PvP T1 gear now is less than before, the prospect of being facerolled by overgeared vets (albeit for a shorter time than before) will be pretty daunting.

So when faced between a resource-heavy (according to Joel) solution which would have leveled the playing field between all players (Unchained minis), and a less resource-heavy solution which only addresses balancing between existing players (who mostly have been around for a while and have access to some gear at least), Funcom chose the latter. A fool to think that this doesn't just reflect their resource constraints, but also their expectations for the future of the game

[Kurt2013]

You still need pvp lvl3 to buy the first full set, that's why both curves start after two dots (though i have to doublecheck what happened with the old blue sets from the first vendor and in the old system you bought the first epic piece at pvp4, if i recall it right, i was not ingame when writing that "curve").
It is also not an exact representation, but you can still see, that the field under the new curve is larger than under the old as well (even if i did not give exact values).

Again, i am not saying it was a bad move, because it wasn't (especially the weapons). It just was not really a new player friendly move as some want to make it appear
And again...armorwise solveable, if they add a whole new set inbetween blue open world armor and t1/old world dungeon gear pve available at pvp0-2.

[Mellaus]

Will T5 gear be a direct increase in terms of stats compared to t4 ?
Please, say no, power escalation is a plague.

Apart from that, rest of the letter sounds good, especially the anniversary event, it will be nice to go back to Tortage.

[Naerri]

Will T5 gear be a direct increase in terms of stats compared to t4 ?
Please, say no, power escalation is a plague.

Lets hope not. Its not like Funcom can afford to ditch their recent datadisc a.k.a. Khitai and move to a new one with new raid tier.

[Bibik]

Last GD letter (march) said that they are working on alternative rewards for the T5. But tbh it's hard to do this way cause systems, game is powergear-based for a long-time. Playerbase is used to seek power as progression schem for years now, in pve or pvp. Look at the whole concept of minipets : it's horizontal progression and each time Cirith gives them in rewards they are either ignored (pve-wise) or criticized (pvp-wise).

The other complication is the alternative way to rewards players. New armors, yeah, but which alternative stats ? Cause RoTG already tried this way and it rarely delivered. Apart of the DPS armor (Brittle Blade, Tamarins Tigers), the other are rarely played. Everyone goes for the DPS one even though it lacks constitution.

Every new player is being told to go to the dps-faction. Even a new hox, saying he had trouble surviving solo in grasslands, have the "go for BB armor asap" answer. Many encounters gives too much importance to dps, cause linked to some sort of enrage timer or short-timed adds spawns/events. Which is could gives interest to Yun's medium armor with stamina tap stat or Cheng'ho armor with Immunity ? Answer, no one :P You take it for the lulz, for the vanity but never for the utility.

So gear changes must be linked to encounter's changes. Giving alternatives when the dps way is the king of all the fights in the game (group, raid, pvp, solo...) will be just another t3.5 fiasco rewardwise. That's, for sure, is not an easy task !

[Phil77]

By the way about leeching I don't need to mention cloud runs here, right?

Difference between cloud runs and you sitting down at a respad in a mini-game is that i can kick your ass to the lobby when i see you being a spectator.

[Phil77]

You think that you get a lot of tokens and xp by leeching in minis? lol, get a clue, with the amount of tokens and xp needed for top pvp gear it would take decades.

You're just proving the point here. You still get xp and tokens by doing absolutely nothing. Playing alone, without any gear or experience you can get the best available gear by sitting at a respad and reading a book.

[Shiwan]

You're just proving the point here. You still get xp and tokens by doing absolutely nothing. Playing alone, without any gear or experience you can get the best available gear by sitting at a respad and reading a book.

Completely disagree with your comments and suggestions in this thread. Well as anyone else.

And no players who went afk in minies don´t get their tokens simply as their mini group pretty much never wins. Beside that I do not know single PvP 8+ player who would only leech minies oposite to newbies in T4 gear...

[Naerri]

Beside that I do not know single PvP 8+ player who would only leech minies oposite to newbies in T4 gear...

Where exactly can you leech in T3.5 and T4 raids? Plus cloud farming is no longer and option unless you are a clown who wants to spend 10 weeks to grind relics for one small piece.