Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Mannhec, Oct 27, 2019.

  1. Duder Augur



    Yes, yes, and more yes.



    Stability and lag generate revenue in that they keep people subscribed. In years past, when I encountered issues with lag and performance, or other client based bugs that would not allow me to load the game without crashing, I simply gave up, unsubscribed, the game was unplayable, I certainly wasn't going to pay for it.

    So the answer is customer retention.
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  2. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Off topic a bit, but thank you for this. I think I may have forgotten to say that in the past.

    You may resume your regularly scheduled programming.
  3. menown Augur

    Xanathol, I strongly urge you to reevaluate your nomological network of the necro class. Longer duration DoTs has lead to the implications of the class requiring more and more spell-sets to contribute any significant damage. Every time there is an extension introduced, DoT damage values are readjusted downwards to account for the potential damage that the extension gives. And in the continuously faster and faster pace game we are playing, that leads to less and less potential damage realized. You cannot seriously believe that the extra DoT ticks were given out as free DPS.

    A case can be made towards keeping some DoTs extended, such as the ones that include debuffs. People hate having to recast these lower performing DoTs just to keep the targeted benefit from the debuff. For the necromancer class, this would include the Darkness (snare), Grip (STR/AC), and Leech debuff lines. Even using Tonic of Efficiency Affinity or the new Campfire/Guild Banner buffs still adds 1 tick to every DoT, which I am sure is accounted for when calculating the damage per tick values of DoTs.

    The goal is to still weave DoTs, and not become a DD based class with few DoTs. The absolute best way to do this, from a balanced perspective, is to reduce the duration of DoTs and increase their base damage per tick values. There still will be a ramp up time, but not to the extent that is takes 1.5 mins to reach your classes intended DPS values.
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  4. ~Mills~ Augur

    Disagree entirely, him doing this is one of the easiest options to correct the necromancer problem. There are multiple paths they can take but honestly at this point I don't see one any easier. The way this aa line is coded it seems like he could play around a ton on his own to get it right or just point the needle more in the direction they want. Adjusting how much base damage is added as well as how much duration is removed based on each individual base dots duration. He can handle 30s dots one way in terms of damage added and duration removed, 42s dots another, 50s dots another way and on and on. He could double base damage for 30s and cut all duration focus from them and leave the rest alone and test it. He could cut 18s off all dots and boost just 30s and 42s dots and see how it works out. He could leave 30s dots alone and remove 18s duration from all others while adding in more base damage. There are lots of options.

    But dot duration very much impacts what weave is maintainable and best for a situation. No one wants to become a delayed nuker. But you can still maintain the classes style while catching up more with the pace of todays game and not requiring 18 dots. And him tweaking 1 AA line for each duration dot individually which only impacts later in the game is a ton more likely than Aristo retuning and rewriting like 500 dots from 115-1 when you factor in ranked spells.
    Skuz and menown like this.
  5. InnerDruid New Member

    I've not noted any problems with lag and such during raids. You can blame your computer, your router, your ISP, the internet backbone in your part of the world, whatever. But my system, while decent for a six year old computer, is not stellar and I have no problems with lag.

    My main gripe with things being stealth nerfed has to do with Feign Death. I've played a monk a lot of years. In the days when I was pulling I was FDing a lot more than I am now. I would get maybe one fail a week, in 40 or 50 hours of play.

    These days I get many of them every night. Something did change. It may have changed slowly, possibly over years, but it was surely never announced. Possibly before any of the existing dev staff was hired, but it changed. Fails were negligible. Now they are a major part of the game. When the mobs can melee kill a current raid equipped, max level, full AA MELEE CHARACTER in one shot. This is unacceptable. It makes even Imitate Death too slow as a backup.

    And Refuse Death, even at Rank III, is a joke, anything hits you on a raid and you are generally dead before you could hope to key it in. Human reflexes are worthless against things that happen in under a quarter second.

    But the big thing is, Feign Death was nerfed with a much greater chance to fail. I can't prove it, I have no metrics going back fifteen years, but it was.
  6. Xanathol Augur

    If the base damage and costs are set appropriately, there is no need (or even a way, once lniked) to weave as many dots. Changing the duration AAs to more damage is just hampering set swapping by duration and not addressing the real issue - not to mention, exactly how big do you expect (or even want) those ticks to get? Ramp up time for max damage output is a function of DoTs by design and needs to exist to some extent. The game's turn to 'burn it all down, all the time' is a function of content as much as anything else and can be addressed as such (see TDS).

    I do agree though - getting Aristo to do anything is highly unlikely.
  7. menown Augur

    But that is not how this game works. The spell dev coordinates with the AA dev, and together set a goal of what a class can do. For example, all of your focus tab AAs are calculated with the spell data to achieve the damage goals that the devs want.

    All the extra spell duration AAs are doing is shifting the damage per tick down to the extra ticks added. Ranks 4-6 of the AA line have already been changed to add damage back to the original DoT instead of duration. The process would be the exact same for ranks 1-3.

    This AA line can then be reevaluated once Aristo has time to do a true Necro DoT revamp and consolidation.
  8. Duder Augur



    FD is the same, get the tin foil cap, the RNG is out to get you! And also, there is an upgrade to refuse death...
  9. pm me elvish women Journeyman

    The defensiveness of the devs responding in this thread is actually hilarious. It is blatantly obvious that absolutely NO ONE on the dev team plays this game at any respectable level of progression raiding (prove me wrong). It is also ridiculous that the balance changes INTENDED for TLP effect Live server code base.

    The devs have absolutely no idea how the game is being played at high end levels, and their recent design choices and development projects proves that.

    I respect the devs, and the passion of the team... but let's not pretend that they have the skill knowledge needed to understand any changes they make. I'm sure they're great theory crafters and math wizards, but if they don't have the in-game knowledge then all that number crunching is pointless.
  10. kizant Augur

    And who really does? Just playing the game isn't enough. It sounds like you want them to be experts at all classes and happen to agree with your viewpoint. You can just look around the forums and see plenty of people that playing in top 10 guilds who've been playing for years who still don't know what they're talking about yet will argue till the end that they're right.
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  11. enclee Augur

    Has anything like this ever been communicated to players?
    Duder likes this.
  12. Anlak Journeyman



    bet you dont want the same DoT nerf as enchanters , or am i wrong ;)
  13. Dahaman Augur


    Pardon my ignorance, but how true is this? And how true has it been in the past?

    The specific reason I ask is that heroic characters of level 100 have been deemed a MOUNTAIN of a task to add, equivalent to adding a whole new zone in an expansion. It seems like the majority of the work for heroic characters for level 100 has already been done.

    What am I missing?
  14. Tucoh Augur

    I think they have a higher bar they want to meet for how streamlined and unique the heroic characters are. Personally I totally agree with you and everytime it comes up I just say to give us higher level chars with older expansion gear and a bunch of AAs and don't worry about anything else.
    Vumad likes this.
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    There is a single template for each 5 levels, so basically for beta you just type /betabuff wizzy 110 and you end up in beta with the default race. you need to do /spells to get your spells upated (I asume abilities as well, don't do melee in beta so no idea), you need to speak to another NPC who will give you X amount of AAs (increase your level to max, sometimes) for you to asign to your char. Sometimes it is enough to max out your char if we have a level increase sometimes it isn't, depends a lot on what needs testing, sometimes things change during beta.

    This is a far cry from setting up 16 classes with heroic gear for each and every race, and asigning AAs to each class and setting up the spell books and AA abilities.

    A lot of the other stuff you can purchase from an NPC for 0pp.
  16. Crystilla Augur

    Been reading the posts here.

    Having been lucky enough to visit Daybreak earlier this year and see the Dev/Coders hard at work, I can confirm what Dzarn says about the passion these folks have about the game. Trust me, you wouldn't work in this unstable industry without a passion for what you do.

    When drastic changes are made to existing spells or AA's, even with the 'why' being given, it has longer lasting reach and effect that I believe the Devs realize as classes aren't exactly played in a 'vaccuum'. We all don't play exactly the same, as for example, I've been a bit of an oddity since I started playing 18 years ago. As a cleric, from level 35+ I was often the puller for my groups (and still is the primary puller). So learning to use spells in conjunction with other spells, AA's or items was something I did. Especially since group makeup is so rarely "a good mix". So changes like the recent fade definitely affected my game play.

    While the 'nerfs'/adjustments may not completely fit the earlier comment (taken away to be given back) but just to share 1 person's view of these changes in the cleric arena from the last few years to name just a few:

    • The recent fade
    • The changes made back to the mana return AA's to link them and reduce their effectiveness. (I was part of the team working with the players and devs when the first AA went into game, at a much higher mana return rate than players were asking for - players asked for 5k, I think it came in at 15k? and then when Veturika's Preserverence went in.) While I can feel upset about all the adjustments, what still makes me furious is the change to Vet's AA. This was a special AA given to honor her, so in my opinion the modifications to that AA felt like a slap in the face and a disrespect to her.
    • Adjustments made to our "undead turn" AA from it's original nuke with a dot to its current incantation.
    Some of my bigger 'sadness' has come more from content adjustments (whether changes from post launch like Fell Foliage going live 'with bugs which needed to be changed' but from being doable with small groups (<6 people) to not being doable with those same small groups... to content being locked in a way that you can't get past the entrance zone unless you're doing full groups such as the current expansion. Similarly, any time raids are required in a specific order in order to progress (specifically in a single zone where there is no particular reason why they would have to be forced in that order for lore, etc.) that is another dissatisfier as it drastically limits options for the majority of guilds that fall into the 'non top tier/cutting edge'.
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  17. Dahaman Augur

    Okay, they already have....

    - the ability to set level (via /beta buff)
    - the ability to grant spells (via /spells in beta)
    - the ability to grant AAs (auto-grant up to expansion X)
    - the ability to grant extra AAs to self assign (via speaking to an NPC in beta)
    - the ability to grant gear from a previous expansion (yes per Vumad, purchasable per Yinla)

    (and per Tucoh, this alone would be desired)


    The only thing they are missing is... polish?

    - setting up spells in spellbooks
    - setting up AA abilities (on hotkeys?)
    - factions? flagging? umm...?

    Polish is important. I can't see that as being all that hard to do, albeit it is over 16 characters. Interesting.

    What else am I missing?
    MasterMagnus likes this.
  18. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh


    Bridging the gap between a character they find suitable to beta test a specific expansion with, to a character they feel confident in allowing any player to have and consume all the content that exists and may exist in the future.

    They might decide to completely re-do things even though it was sufficient for the current beta.
  19. Vumad Cape Wearer


    You are missing the part where you log into beta and type /beta buff <class> <level> currently working to 110. You are then disconnected. When you log back in, you have the character selected.

    115 was not working (it may be fixed now). The 110 beastlord I beta buffed to 110 had a full set of velazuls armor and many, many augs, max AA and all the important spells.

    As far as the heroic character mountain, honestly I was wondering the same thing.


    Complete missions, explore zones, hail NPCs, test for the functionality of the expansion. "Grinding" XP or raiding a past expansion on the beta server for gear accomplishes nothing. I'm not sure where you get off calling me a moron for saying that expecting people to farm armor from a previous expansion or pull mobs over and over for XP is ridiculous on a beta server.

    One of the people I know is using his time in the beta to explore every zone and has reported two glitches in geometry. That is what the beta TESTING server is for.

    Maybe I'm confused as to what you meant when you said people should grind on beta?
  20. Vumad Cape Wearer


    I didn't have to buy any beta gear. When I did my beta buff I was fully geared to EoK T2 group. I had bags, augs, weapons and armor on my character when I logged back from the disconnect. I only purchased the ToV stuff.