I didn't say failure. I said "widely unpopular." It works the way we intended. All indications is that the intent is unpopular. The basics are "It's Hard". Perhaps... it's hard too early. Perhaps it's too hard period. Of course to some... it's easy. So... Opinion differ. And note. On the subject of changes due to feedback. We reduced the replay time of trials of smoke due to feedback.
Try something totally new. Cool. Love it. But when it is badly received change it. This should have happened a while ago. "But Corwyhn we couldn't change TBL we were busy with GMM then the new expansion came up" Ummmm.... maybe this was NOT the time to go totally off the rails with a new experiment if you aren't able to adjust things. Just saying. "So... while we may not do it that way again, we are also not making efforts to change TBL itself." DON'T DO WIDELY DIFFERENT THINGS IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO FIX THEM WHEN THEY GO BAD Once simple fix. Change the smoke trial flag to be obtained by finishing one smoke trial not all of them. It is highly unprofessional to experiment big then say but we're not going to change anything. Let me say again. I get it you are under the gun you had to do GMM now you are rushing to get the new expansion out. DON'T EXPERIMENT WHEN YOU KNOW YOU WILL HAVE NO TIME TO FIX THINGS.
When I did beta I saw the same thing. But I would at least expect the game devs to clue in on that and take it into account. Thing is it does not seem devs do well taking that into account. I hope they are taking that into account. But to be fair maybe it is just too hard to gauge how much easier things have to be using regular group gear compared to raid gear.
Since the purpose of an expansion is to please the players and make them want to play widely unpopular be a bad thing all on it's own. Reduced the replay time on smoke trials. Of course you don't mean you have to redo them more often to be able to pass through right? Because that would probably be seen as a very bad negative by those who can't get them all done and only do one to pass through. If you are now requiring folks to do them more often to pass through the zone then you really need to work on understanding feedback. EDITING TO ADD THIS Ummm Its too hard for some and too easy for others? Yeah you do get that such content will ALWAYS be too easy for the hardcore players (mostly raiders) right? Of course you take all that into account and after so many expansions must have a handled on dealing with the difference between end game raiders and the general populace. I hope. And ummm... we aren't changing TBL but btw we changed something.?????
It's hard though as a casual to do that. If they go play beta they're not improving their character. Most "casual" players have things to do in game like leveling and aa'ing or getting group gear. If you're 110 with max aa and all tier 3 group gear. You're probably not casual
I think beating one smoke trial should just let you through the zone forever and then the lockout should be changed to 6 hours like normal missions to encourage people to do them for loot which would let more people through the zone.
Yeah you see a lot of raiders aren't given the option of doing beta their guilds push them to do it. Why? To ensure they can do their raids get the bugs out so they can push to beat other guilds out of the gate. Sure there are going to be some just doing beta testing to make things better for everyone. But ummm.... raiders are't angels they are the same folks as group players so I have to assume there are just as many group players testing beta for altruistic reasons. In general, groupers don't do beta hard because they aren't playing the game competitively and aren't seeking that competitive edge. Now don't get me wrong casuals benefit form a lot of the beta testing the raiders do. Not all because most of us aren't trying to beat the expansion asap but we do benefit. It's like how everyone benefits from unions pushing for fairer work conditions etc. It trickles down. But in the end casuals don't have the drive to "do beta hard". If raiders didn't have the competitive push they wouldn't be "doing beta hard" either. Group players do have to acknowledge things might not be tuned for them right out of the gate though. And devs need to realize they will probably need to do a tuning pass on casual/group content a month after the expansion is out and plan for it.
Said it before in another thread. The problem was and is the absurd spell effects you guys have been adding in the group game the past few expansions. Unresistable this or that, uncurable this or that, charm, mez, stun, inhibit casting, absorb all or most damage, etc. Its not fun dealing with this basically for every mob nor is it fun dealing with the hardest part of an expansion in the first zone or two. Its really simple; no more insane damage spells, stuns, runes that absorb 75% of your damage done, mez or charm effects on trash or basepop npcs. Limit these types of spells to named, quest and mission bosses and even then make sure that Tier 1 or 2 named, quests and mission bosses are not more troublesome than final tier bosses ie Smoke Trials for many or some Smoke or Stratos named due to their effects or how Cactus mission was in EoK compared to the Talendor mission and raid. Much of this was posted over and over and over in both betas and went ignored. Even now you guys are ignoring why everyone was flocking to GMM and are nerfing it, making it so people are just going to find the next best ways to avoid all the silly stuff. 3 tics of a dot that can kill you on top of melee isn't fun for a normal mob, half you hps going away every 10 seconds due to an AE nuke on top of incoming melee isn't fun for a normal mob, 3 normal mobs spamming this type of stuff over and over making it next to impossible when dealing with standard trash or basepop in the first tiers of an expansion is not fun. Nor is having class AA's just randomly ripped from under your feet or changed every other patch. At some point its just bye bye now. Lag has been horrible starting around the time that chat tabs, faction messages and all the random message changes you guys made. Yet here we are nerfing the hell out of riposte in the name of supposed performance gains and yet none of the fluff features seem to be touched.
I didn't say failure. I said "widely unpopular." It works the way we intended. All indications is that the intent is unpopular Were you successful in achieving the vision intended for the expansion? It would seem the answer is yes it was a success in that regard. Were you successful in creating a well received expansion by the player base. Stating that it is "widely unpopular" it would then seem the answer is that it was a _________ in that regard. People can fill in the blank wherever they want there. I think it is clear something can be a success in one way and a failure in another way. Now with all that the Devs do damn hard work. It's not an easy job and If I was the one doing it I can't say I could do better. I appreciate all the dev work and the work of all DBG employees. I had a bad experience with CS recently but mostly they come through for me and I appreciate the work they do even when it doesn't go my way. So when I am critical its not personal and it doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the work devs do on the game. And I get it must be very hard because after all these years it still seems difficult to balance expansions. Part of that no doubt is working with much fewer staff to get things done.
Good point. I remember /betabuffing to the sh*t (max AA, new expac raid gear) when beta testing TDS. Furthermore there is a perverse incentive for many people (casuals & raiders) to simply chase beta tokens for the beta reward. And, who wants to chase beta tokens with middling gear for non-event beta tokens?
Not busy enough to not go about looking at how to nerf GMM, neutering riposte mechanics, and messing with various other things though? Seriously, regardless if you liked it or not, most players don't (and I feel like most of us raiders that may not care personally in the sense it doesn't affect us as much, still don't like it) and it blocks people from playing. Either get rid of zone flag locks except for mearatas, or at least make it so beating 1 smoke trial is all you need to flag for static smoke permanently, just still require all three for the flag for the evolving items or whatever. Give these guys a small reason to celebrate (and maybe for some to buy TBL when you put it on sale in a month or two...).
Mark my words ... this riposte mechanic change is going to mess up a ton of crap, especially 19-ish years of SK mitigation tuning. How much time is that gonna take? I don’t really buy the “we’re too busy with the new expansion” bs.
With GMM it is pretty easy for casual players to do that though. At this point there is no excuse to not be fully leveled, even if you play once a week.
The mechanic has not changed, the way it is reported has. How does "mess up a ton of crap" for anyone other than those who are obsessed with parsing?
You need to learn what is happening. Right now you can riposte on what is a miss. Next patch you can't. If you don't get how that is different, then you shouldn't even be commenting. Whether it being healthy enough for the game to justify neutering it is a question only the devs get to answer, we just have to live with it.
There's not a small amount of aa, and while its easy to get all the off slots doing gmm missions it's still work to get the other slots. If you're max AA'd and fully tier 3 geared you're not what I would call "casual" You might still suck and might not play a ton but you don't get max AA playing casually, the casual players are not flipping gmm for super fast aa pulling trains. People here on the forums understate the amount of time it takes to get max AA and don't give credit how long it takes people to get groups that don't suck (go join a casual guild, there's 110's that xp in FM) Go join groups with pugs and follow them around playing passively on a non raid geared character and just do your job. Once you see how some of the player base plays you'll get a better appreciation, on top of spending lots of time finding a group most of these guys are not pushing 50aa+ an hour, they're getting 50-100 aa a day that they play.
Not to mention, "you had time to get yours" is simply sophomoric. That's along the same thought process of someone on a web forum harassing some new member for asking a well-worn question. Guess what? We all didn't start playing at the same time.
