There was a time waaaaay back in the forums where a dev was talking about the fact that FD was never intended to be used for splitting mobs. They were actually surprised that monks were using it for this purpose. The dev mentioned he had an idea to curtail it. The idea was that if you FD, there was a chance that the mob(s) would nudge you with their foot. And if you failed the dice roll, you gave away that you were faking it. If that happened, they would not be fooled by your FD anymore until you left the zone and came back in order to lose that "faker" flag. I found this quite amusing for an idea.
No Reply to any of this means you realize this will be a problem and seem not to care. Bad Business decision. Those who have played this game for a long time, and have used the tools provided them, only to loose them later are becoming more and more disenchanted. It's a game, The tools really don't circumvent the intended purpose, they are used to split targets so you don't wipe a raid, or a group, or break it into a manageable cycle. Those of us who pull, have made it an art, it is not that easy, and you still die trying sometimes. You will loose your paying customer base, if you continue to remove the fun of playing. It's your glove, do you really want to take it home.
Exact same scenario with the Rain changes a patch or two ago. Silence. Sweeping changes came in with no warning or indication - Patched to Test, feedback given, no response, on Live a week later and the mystery will forever go on. At least this time we got some halfas'd reasoning of "we're making the game harder b/c you're not having fun". Whatever that's worth.
I dont like this part. My wizard uses a hole in space quite a lot to remove/reduce agro in a raid. Instead of reducing agro to zero you could reduce it to 1 (if the mob is overlevel) and that would do what you want to do with pulling and have less of an impact on the other valid uses. It still would be a problem in arx 1b as at a certain part I like to lose agro to absolute zero, but I guess I could just abscond when that is necessary.
Rarely the case, to be honest. But "We're reading your opinions and value the feedback we've gotten from this" is suicide because a) the response is usually skeptical in almost all gaming communities and b) it doesn't actually say anything, and players will pick up on that. And they can't make any hints at what, if anything, they will change in response to this. If they do, they will be a) misinterpreted and/or b) taken as promises, and thus any necessary changes become affronts to the easily-offended forum community. In the real business PR world, silence means "we're taking time and care and talking privately about what we should consider and what we should do" more often than it means "pfft, lol, don't care." What one could legitimately take as a negative is that they've already announced the change. That means commitment. They can't just turn around and not do it; that's for later patches to tweak. That was even the case after the outcry when they made cast interruption by MoB melee possible again, or when they fixed a bug so bards could fizzle again, because they can't just immediately back down on an officially-announced change. Such a policy does make them look like arsehats, but it's a necessary evil of being a business as well as a game. As far as silence in testing, maybe more of the people complaining about Live being used for testing should actually play on Test. They wouldn't have this problem to such a degree if they had a few hundred more regular testers.
Well, speak for yourself. As a fairly old-school player, I think aggro management being an important part of the game is a good thing, especially in raid encounters. nb: If you can just fade/whatever every time you steal aggro, that's not real aggro management. That's a crutch by which aggro management can be ignored.
When someone is on life support do you stab them in the chest with a knife? That is what DBG keeps doing with these off the wall pointless changes to the game. I simply do not get the point of jacking with pulling. Especial, when it comes with a bunch of unforeseen consequences that many of you have pointed out. The goal was to make pulling harder but the side effects are far more reaching. IMO abort this change.
Test patch notes also indicate increased mana use for bards so now the puzzle becomes clear. This is all TLP's fault, a GM was probably sternly talking to someone who didn't have a permit to kill whatever mob they've decided should only be for special ones, and said person got a bard to train the GM. The Empire Strikes Back! At least they gave us bards........nvm
So, since they took the time to give us the Rest/Breather lines to help us out with endurance recovery after deaths and when we pull the plug on our endurance pools with our discs and spam buttons..... and then they take away our one method of using them during a raid..... what, precisely do they propose we use now? Harsh language?
It was! I read it to my boyfriend, who plays a druid. He is very much less than amused. At least VP, Vinelash, and Flusterbolt lines weren't included in the fling nerf. >.< Here's an apple core .... stop revolting! ^.~
No I dont use it to drop agro when I steal agro. Thats absurd. If one tank dies I can go from 2% to 50%. If fade is down and the 2nd tank dies Im hosed. With this change Im just hosed. Really, if a hole in space isnt part of agro management then whats its function? Just for groups? edit: just to be clear, if Im giving a bad impression dont hold against my current guild as I havent raided with them yet.
If the second tank dies, that's on the raid and adds additional risk to failure. Aggro management is a group activity. The weak need to watch their aggro and find a threshold to stay under. That could mean dialing back the damage when nearing it. Likewise, the strong need to keep themselves above a threshold. Being able to instantly fade off aggro really was a lazy (although very effective) means of aggro management. It will take some adjustment, but I don't see the aggro management side of this change as being breaking. I'm more concerned with other mechanics that have come to rely on fade to function that probably never should have been tied to it.
In my estimation, in a raid scenario, fades served the purpose of getting as many people out of a wipe situation as possible. Or pulling (for classes that can do it well, and raids that actually need pulling). They may or may not serve any function for most players in raids after this change, but that's fine. A lot of things that aren't damage/healing/buffs/debuffs have been limited to groups - like stun, snare/root, and in most cases mez - over the years.
Was sure hoping to see SK lifetap cast time lowered. Would be nice to be at least to the .3 sec cast time of pally heals.
DG set out to kill EQ, they are getting really good at it. I know a lot of players complain about how it will affect raids, and their groups with fade/fling changes, but does DG consider what happens to the people that don't raid or doesn't have groups? There are way too many players that are free to play, can't have a J5 merc, and you are asking them to handle mobs that they cannot pull by themselves? Pulling too easy? Yeah for raid geared, or certain classes, but what about those guys who cannot pull? They have to try to find someone to group with to pull. They can't solo anything, much less pull anything solo. Have fun trying to find groups at their levels. Right now the game is all about high level players, low level players, and nothing in between, those get rarer because those in between cannot find groups or solo. So the only way to satisfy the older players is to keep putting out content. Did they think that ALL players, FTP included, can do the last 4 or 5 expansions without help? Have they seen how many players are trying to look for group but no one wants to do the zone they are trying to do? This is where I see EQ fail. New players like the game, they are doing ok, leveling, then they hit a roadbump at 50+. No groups, only low level zones they can solo in. These guys are NOT older players, who know where to go, what to do to level. They LFG for awhile, an hour, 2 hours...log out. They come back in another day...LFG, no group, try soloing, die. Get frustrated, stop playing EQ. So many other games that are easier like WoW. You guys want to promote grouping...really? with who? So if they have to solo, at least make them able to solo without having to buy PP and selling kronos to get gear for their levels. For new players, how are they going to afford 15k per piece of defiant gear sold in bazaar? So instead of nerfing fade/fling, they should really be looking at #'s. At one point EQ had 500k players on at one time. I'd like to see those numbers now? How many zones are unpopulated always, why? How many people have inactive accounts because they no longer play? Why do they no longer play? The only way EQ survives is for new players to replace the older ones. If you cannot keep the newer ones coming up, if they cannot survive the higher zones, they give up. They could join raid guilds, but what fun is sitting out when too many, or too low level, or not skilled enough. Even I can't raid because the raids are at times when I'm at work. One of the reasons I box is so I can group with myself. So if you are going to make it harder for me to split mobs, and end up dying, and then waste more time for corpse retrieval, rez, buffs, med time. How do I do higher content when mobs are so close together that they get aggro, as well and now can't fade , puller gets hit, merc healer heals him, merc dies, so does rest of group. The reason I play is because I can. DG should be looking at the players who can't, and those are the players they will keep losing interest in game because it's too frustrating. If I can't do the tasks in TDS, why should I even try getting new expansion? Isn't that how everyone else thinks? If they can't even do mobs in HoT, why even bother getting the last few expansions at all? So stop the mentality of thinking raid players, raid guilds and end game, or this game ends, as not all players are playing the game to raid. That all players are raid geared and skilled, or veterans. That everyone or class can handle pulling 3 mobs at once, or FD. That everyone can mez the adds if too much on pulls. That killing mobs are as easy for lower levels than it is at higher levels. Think of ALL the players, i'm pretty sure that the majority of them are not in Raid Guilds or players. Start thinking of keeping the players playing, challenging, but not too easy, or too difficult. Right now in game there are NO middle levels except alternates of older players working on new toons. Why should people play for all access, if there is no one to play with? Might as well go to FTP.
