Caww wrote: » the grind is overdone and should not be considered good gameplay, it's not even an original or fresh concept, which a lot of AoC is supposed to be premised on...
nanfoodle wrote: » Skills for crafting taking longer then it takes me to level. Waiting for nodes to catch up to our crafting so that we can sell items to players. Finally making level 10 gear when people are level 15-20, it does not feel organic as a whole. Grinding for hours and walking away mostly empty handed and feeling like the only gain I made was some exp ~snip~ What is your pain point?
TheDarkSorcerer wrote: » Caww wrote: » the grind is overdone and should not be considered good gameplay, it's not even an original or fresh concept, which a lot of AoC is supposed to be premised on... I feel you on this. Grind doesn't make a game a good. I understand it takes time to become a god-like player, and it should! But a game that feels like a chore with repetitive content is such a turn-off. "Run to this mob and grind it for 4h, then go to this mob for another 4h" and so on.
daveywavey wrote: » But yeah, this time on Shol has been pretty darn grim.
SmileGurney wrote: » I played some pretty grindy games in my time...but yeah, Ashes progression paths are simply NOT enjoyable. This doesn't press any of my buttons. There is no feeling of reward or progression. Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear. Resource cost and crafting COMPLEXITY of crafted level 0 and level 10 gear have to be far lower. The same should apply to early node progression and buildings. Stop pushing the grind where it doesn't belong. This is part of the reason why the whole game is just falling apart.
SmileGurney wrote: » Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear.
Ludullu wrote: » SmileGurney wrote: » Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear. If this is real and is factual info of how the current client works - yeah, it's a whole mess No mob should have 335 fucking items on their loot table. And yessss, "it's a work in progress, first pass, basic lvl implementation", but holy hell dude. Even if we go purely by lvl brackets and consider each bracket as its own mob - the fucking lvl<7 Aggressor has 54 god damn items. If I wanted to 100% a crafting line and wanted to get all the recipes for items, so that I can make those items for myself - how many alts would I need to go through to successfully roll the loot gacha to get the correct 1/54, before I overlvl the fuck out of those mobs? And sure, one might say "just buy it from a lucky person who managed to get it", but do you really think that majority of people won't overlvl these mobs faaaar sooner than all those recipes drop reliably? And this is not even considering that whichever recipes DO drop won't just go to their guildies or friends, instead of on the market. Here's a lvl7 mob from L2 He drops money, 2 basic crafting mats (valuable at literally all lvls), a crafting recipe and 2 full items at fairly low chances. And you can spoil him for a specific weapon crafting material and 2 recipes. He gives 250xp and at lvl7 a player needs 8k xp to level up, so 32 of these dudes would get you to lvl8, where you can still keep killing them for normal drops/xp. These were fairly abundant, so at those rates, on average, there'd be a single drop of each of those items per 3 people who'd level on these mobs. And if you wanted a specific recipe (say, Leather Stockings) - you'd start with that mob and then could move onto just a few others, if you were unlucky This gives players a direct goal, a direct execution of actions for said goal and a theoretical competition, if someone else has the same goal. I'd be reaaal damn interested in seeing how exactly Intrepid plan to spread their drop tables across all their mobs. I dearly hope that we do get the promised "nodes control mob lvls", with each region (hell, if not each node) having their own mobs with their own loot table. So the current fifty fucking four items from a single Aggressor could be spread across, say, 15 different mobs (this spread assumes that these mobs will also drop the crafting material for their items and potentially some general crafting mat as well). Which would create an insentive for people to go to other nodes, if they wanna craft smth or get something very particular. Also, as for the recipe itself, here it is. 2 specific mats and a dozen general ones, with tables of mobs that drop each (up to the lvl of the last mob that drops the specific stuff) Basic and straightforward, as lowbie crafting should be. And while chance of that loot appears to be low per mob, don't forget that these all were hunted by the hundreds across the entire server, so these mats would be abundant enough to craft stuff. My assumption this whole time has pretty much been "we'll get something similar, but with much more depth". So far we're barely even one step towards THIS, let alone any amount of depth below it, especially when it comes to player behavior and motivation.
nanfoodle wrote: » Ludullu wrote: » SmileGurney wrote: » Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear. If this is real and is factual info of how the current client works - yeah, it's a whole mess No mob should have 335 fucking items on their loot table. And yessss, "it's a work in progress, first pass, basic lvl implementation", but holy hell dude. Even if we go purely by lvl brackets and consider each bracket as its own mob - the fucking lvl<7 Aggressor has 54 god damn items. If I wanted to 100% a crafting line and wanted to get all the recipes for items, so that I can make those items for myself - how many alts would I need to go through to successfully roll the loot gacha to get the correct 1/54, before I overlvl the fuck out of those mobs? And sure, one might say "just buy it from a lucky person who managed to get it", but do you really think that majority of people won't overlvl these mobs faaaar sooner than all those recipes drop reliably? And this is not even considering that whichever recipes DO drop won't just go to their guildies or friends, instead of on the market. Here's a lvl7 mob from L2 He drops money, 2 basic crafting mats (valuable at literally all lvls), a crafting recipe and 2 full items at fairly low chances. And you can spoil him for a specific weapon crafting material and 2 recipes. He gives 250xp and at lvl7 a player needs 8k xp to level up, so 32 of these dudes would get you to lvl8, where you can still keep killing them for normal drops/xp. These were fairly abundant, so at those rates, on average, there'd be a single drop of each of those items per 3 people who'd level on these mobs. And if you wanted a specific recipe (say, Leather Stockings) - you'd start with that mob and then could move onto just a few others, if you were unlucky This gives players a direct goal, a direct execution of actions for said goal and a theoretical competition, if someone else has the same goal. I'd be reaaal damn interested in seeing how exactly Intrepid plan to spread their drop tables across all their mobs. I dearly hope that we do get the promised "nodes control mob lvls", with each region (hell, if not each node) having their own mobs with their own loot table. So the current fifty fucking four items from a single Aggressor could be spread across, say, 15 different mobs (this spread assumes that these mobs will also drop the crafting material for their items and potentially some general crafting mat as well). Which would create an insentive for people to go to other nodes, if they wanna craft smth or get something very particular. Also, as for the recipe itself, here it is. 2 specific mats and a dozen general ones, with tables of mobs that drop each (up to the lvl of the last mob that drops the specific stuff) Basic and straightforward, as lowbie crafting should be. And while chance of that loot appears to be low per mob, don't forget that these all were hunted by the hundreds across the entire server, so these mats would be abundant enough to craft stuff. My assumption this whole time has pretty much been "we'll get something similar, but with much more depth". So far we're barely even one step towards THIS, let alone any amount of depth below it, especially when it comes to player behavior and motivation. My dream that I posted a while back. Is that loot tables change with Ashes. Mobs should drop fully usable items but what should drop more often is crafting supplies, mats that augment a weapon to be more powerful and much much more. These items should go from low end con right up to Legendary and off the right mob, Red con for Artifact. Even if you are not a crafter, earning these should be so important that become part of the trade system. We should be wanting to bring these things to crafters, maybe even earning all the drops needed to make that Bow you need. So you can say hay crafter can I pay you 50 silver to make me my level 10 bow? Till that day comes they work out how they want this to work. We should not be suffering trying to level and find gear, unless they are testing something. We have tested the drop rate and our reaction was not good. So IS just made it even harder. I get a game being challenging but thats not what this is. Its unnecessarily complicated. This needs to be balance with fun and not just the hard core player. This game will not make it without casuals. Casual players should be able to earn gear that makes them feel good for the effort put. Casual players get they will never be top tear but they will not be happy with getting level 20 and 90% of their gear is grey with a few greens and getting one shooted every turn. Something needs to be balanced here.
Azherae wrote: » The only solution to this sort of thing is seasonal server states and even the games that do those still hit the same problem.
Azherae wrote: » In the end, MMOs are played by more types of people than they're designed for.
Azherae wrote: » nanfoodle wrote: » Ludullu wrote: » SmileGurney wrote: » Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear. If this is real and is factual info of how the current client works - yeah, it's a whole mess No mob should have 335 fucking items on their loot table. And yessss, "it's a work in progress, first pass, basic lvl implementation", but holy hell dude. Even if we go purely by lvl brackets and consider each bracket as its own mob - the fucking lvl<7 Aggressor has 54 god damn items. If I wanted to 100% a crafting line and wanted to get all the recipes for items, so that I can make those items for myself - how many alts would I need to go through to successfully roll the loot gacha to get the correct 1/54, before I overlvl the fuck out of those mobs? And sure, one might say "just buy it from a lucky person who managed to get it", but do you really think that majority of people won't overlvl these mobs faaaar sooner than all those recipes drop reliably? And this is not even considering that whichever recipes DO drop won't just go to their guildies or friends, instead of on the market. Here's a lvl7 mob from L2 He drops money, 2 basic crafting mats (valuable at literally all lvls), a crafting recipe and 2 full items at fairly low chances. And you can spoil him for a specific weapon crafting material and 2 recipes. He gives 250xp and at lvl7 a player needs 8k xp to level up, so 32 of these dudes would get you to lvl8, where you can still keep killing them for normal drops/xp. These were fairly abundant, so at those rates, on average, there'd be a single drop of each of those items per 3 people who'd level on these mobs. And if you wanted a specific recipe (say, Leather Stockings) - you'd start with that mob and then could move onto just a few others, if you were unlucky This gives players a direct goal, a direct execution of actions for said goal and a theoretical competition, if someone else has the same goal. I'd be reaaal damn interested in seeing how exactly Intrepid plan to spread their drop tables across all their mobs. I dearly hope that we do get the promised "nodes control mob lvls", with each region (hell, if not each node) having their own mobs with their own loot table. So the current fifty fucking four items from a single Aggressor could be spread across, say, 15 different mobs (this spread assumes that these mobs will also drop the crafting material for their items and potentially some general crafting mat as well). Which would create an insentive for people to go to other nodes, if they wanna craft smth or get something very particular. Also, as for the recipe itself, here it is. 2 specific mats and a dozen general ones, with tables of mobs that drop each (up to the lvl of the last mob that drops the specific stuff) Basic and straightforward, as lowbie crafting should be. And while chance of that loot appears to be low per mob, don't forget that these all were hunted by the hundreds across the entire server, so these mats would be abundant enough to craft stuff. My assumption this whole time has pretty much been "we'll get something similar, but with much more depth". So far we're barely even one step towards THIS, let alone any amount of depth below it, especially when it comes to player behavior and motivation. My dream that I posted a while back. Is that loot tables change with Ashes. Mobs should drop fully usable items but what should drop more often is crafting supplies, mats that augment a weapon to be more powerful and much much more. These items should go from low end con right up to Legendary and off the right mob, Red con for Artifact. Even if you are not a crafter, earning these should be so important that become part of the trade system. We should be wanting to bring these things to crafters, maybe even earning all the drops needed to make that Bow you need. So you can say hay crafter can I pay you 50 silver to make me my level 10 bow? Till that day comes they work out how they want this to work. We should not be suffering trying to level and find gear, unless they are testing something. We have tested the drop rate and our reaction was not good. So IS just made it even harder. I get a game being challenging but thats not what this is. Its unnecessarily complicated. This needs to be balance with fun and not just the hard core player. This game will not make it without casuals. Casual players should be able to earn gear that makes them feel good for the effort put. Casual players get they will never be top tear but they will not be happy with getting level 20 and 90% of their gear is grey with a few greens and getting one shooted every turn. Something needs to be balanced here. It's not a type of balance most people can do, not because it's impossible, but because it's a choice. Most games try their best to sit in the middle, desperately holding onto as many people as possible and responding to each complaint. Unfortunately Intrepid is probably never going to know why most of the people who just lose interest, do that, or what it would have taken to retain them. You say 'casual players should be able to earn gear that makes them feel good for the effort put', but at the end of the day, 'casual players' are also the people complaining 'I ran this dungeon 3 times and I didn't get a single BIS gear piece for my specific class, this game is such bs on droprates'. The only solution to this sort of thing is seasonal server states and even the games that do those still hit the same problem. In the end, MMOs are played by more types of people than they're designed for.
Noaani wrote: » ....Another theoretical solution is to give casual players best in slot gear, but in a way where it is only best in slot for casual content....
nanfoodle wrote: » Azherae wrote: » nanfoodle wrote: » Ludullu wrote: » SmileGurney wrote: » Extremely low drop rates from mobs. Crafting recipe drop rates should be improved, especially if crafting is supposed to be THE SOURCE of gear. If this is real and is factual info of how the current client works - yeah, it's a whole mess No mob should have 335 fucking items on their loot table. And yessss, "it's a work in progress, first pass, basic lvl implementation", but holy hell dude. Even if we go purely by lvl brackets and consider each bracket as its own mob - the fucking lvl<7 Aggressor has 54 god damn items. If I wanted to 100% a crafting line and wanted to get all the recipes for items, so that I can make those items for myself - how many alts would I need to go through to successfully roll the loot gacha to get the correct 1/54, before I overlvl the fuck out of those mobs? And sure, one might say "just buy it from a lucky person who managed to get it", but do you really think that majority of people won't overlvl these mobs faaaar sooner than all those recipes drop reliably? And this is not even considering that whichever recipes DO drop won't just go to their guildies or friends, instead of on the market. Here's a lvl7 mob from L2 He drops money, 2 basic crafting mats (valuable at literally all lvls), a crafting recipe and 2 full items at fairly low chances. And you can spoil him for a specific weapon crafting material and 2 recipes. He gives 250xp and at lvl7 a player needs 8k xp to level up, so 32 of these dudes would get you to lvl8, where you can still keep killing them for normal drops/xp. These were fairly abundant, so at those rates, on average, there'd be a single drop of each of those items per 3 people who'd level on these mobs. And if you wanted a specific recipe (say, Leather Stockings) - you'd start with that mob and then could move onto just a few others, if you were unlucky This gives players a direct goal, a direct execution of actions for said goal and a theoretical competition, if someone else has the same goal. I'd be reaaal damn interested in seeing how exactly Intrepid plan to spread their drop tables across all their mobs. I dearly hope that we do get the promised "nodes control mob lvls", with each region (hell, if not each node) having their own mobs with their own loot table. So the current fifty fucking four items from a single Aggressor could be spread across, say, 15 different mobs (this spread assumes that these mobs will also drop the crafting material for their items and potentially some general crafting mat as well). Which would create an insentive for people to go to other nodes, if they wanna craft smth or get something very particular. Also, as for the recipe itself, here it is. 2 specific mats and a dozen general ones, with tables of mobs that drop each (up to the lvl of the last mob that drops the specific stuff) Basic and straightforward, as lowbie crafting should be. And while chance of that loot appears to be low per mob, don't forget that these all were hunted by the hundreds across the entire server, so these mats would be abundant enough to craft stuff. My assumption this whole time has pretty much been "we'll get something similar, but with much more depth". So far we're barely even one step towards THIS, let alone any amount of depth below it, especially when it comes to player behavior and motivation. My dream that I posted a while back. Is that loot tables change with Ashes. Mobs should drop fully usable items but what should drop more often is crafting supplies, mats that augment a weapon to be more powerful and much much more. These items should go from low end con right up to Legendary and off the right mob, Red con for Artifact. Even if you are not a crafter, earning these should be so important that become part of the trade system. We should be wanting to bring these things to crafters, maybe even earning all the drops needed to make that Bow you need. So you can say hay crafter can I pay you 50 silver to make me my level 10 bow? Till that day comes they work out how they want this to work. We should not be suffering trying to level and find gear, unless they are testing something. We have tested the drop rate and our reaction was not good. So IS just made it even harder. I get a game being challenging but thats not what this is. Its unnecessarily complicated. This needs to be balance with fun and not just the hard core player. This game will not make it without casuals. Casual players should be able to earn gear that makes them feel good for the effort put. Casual players get they will never be top tear but they will not be happy with getting level 20 and 90% of their gear is grey with a few greens and getting one shooted every turn. Something needs to be balanced here. It's not a type of balance most people can do, not because it's impossible, but because it's a choice. Most games try their best to sit in the middle, desperately holding onto as many people as possible and responding to each complaint. Unfortunately Intrepid is probably never going to know why most of the people who just lose interest, do that, or what it would have taken to retain them. You say 'casual players should be able to earn gear that makes them feel good for the effort put', but at the end of the day, 'casual players' are also the people complaining 'I ran this dungeon 3 times and I didn't get a single BIS gear piece for my specific class, this game is such bs on droprates'. The only solution to this sort of thing is seasonal server states and even the games that do those still hit the same problem. In the end, MMOs are played by more types of people than they're designed for. Yes and running a dungeon three times when you are dressed in grey and green gear and walking away with nothing is not acceptable. You should walk away with more then I got some exp.
Caww wrote: » Noaani wrote: » ....Another theoretical solution is to give casual players best in slot gear, but in a way where it is only best in slot for casual content.... Another, possibly easier solution to enact and manage, would be to remove crafting restrictions and allow players to craft their own decent but not BIS gear. Also, stop the insanely long processing times, 1 minute per item??!!! Hell, I processed 25 timber and for 25 minutes I went out back and cleaned the rear deck. That is just insane, make people stare at the screen for no good reason, a process per item shouldn't be longer than 5 seconds each (I think I hi-jacked this thread a little bit to vent on how stupid the timetables are for processing).
