Is anything being done to avoid another disaster when KoS launches?

Stormhold went from 46 active raiding guilds in Desert of Flames to just 12 in Kingdom of Sky. Is anything being done to avoid this disaster, which Stormhold never recovered from?

I feel like if nothing is done to ensure a proper launch this time around, this server will end up just like stormhold with very few guilds struggling to get a decent raid force and eventually die out. Developers being open about their approach with the TLE server would be a welcome change too.

If the release schedule is still correct, KoS is released December 12th. Which is in 3 weeks.

Reasons why Stormhold died:

1) DoF was boring. Players left before KoS even launched.
2) KoS difficulty was out of wack. Both for questing, in heroics and raiding. Several attempts after launch tried to fix this but it was never really fixed.
3) Items were horrible. Few tweaks here and there, but over all there was nothing to raid for other than achivements.
4) People lost faith in DBG actually being able to improve the game.

I know they are busy with the expansion and all, but I was just wondering if they have any plans to not make it happen again.

I agree with most of your post, but it is a little more than 3 weeks until December 12th
(you skipped November)

Damn.

1) 46 active guilds in DoF, but #1 reason Stormhold died according to you is DoF was boring. Yet 46 active guilds played through it all. Im confused on what you're getting at here.

2) you're opinion based on a limited & subjective experience no doubt stepped in overly emotional reactions to changes perceived as negative because your slim slice of the pie is affected. Your experience is not indicative of the server's experience. Most folks who complain here on the forums are already biased.

3) see #2

4) People lost faith? Who? You have references? This seems like another emotional outcry to somehow prove people lost faith in DBG when its more than likely just you and a few other forum warriors who come here to constantly complain about everything. One thing shows up, complain. They change it and tweak it, complain. They set it back to what it was before, complain. They fix it exactly how you want... find something else to complain about.



My question to you... What are you doing to help the server and the population? What are you contributing to the overall success of the server? You have time and energy to come bash it... what are you doing to help it? "nOtHiNg! I pAy a SuBsCrIpTiOn!!! muh entitlement!" Probably.... /rollseyes

I quit during dof for lack of itemization... getting gear with no stats really ruined itfor me.

there are a lot of reasons why Stormhold "died" but let me address the ones you mentioned

1) DoF was boring
not much they can do about this tbh, I think people complained that the raid content was too easy but they seem to have fixed that for FG, at least. No more people clearing Godking in the first week, while wearing T5 gear. also what does this have to do with KoS anyway?

2) KoS was too hard
yeah they screwed up bad on this one, and I think it's why so many people left. casuals were also affected, since basically only DPS classes could solo. again as long as they don't go overboard with the combat mit and outgoing damage values, things should be fine. they ALMOST messed up again with the recent changes to mobs to make them take longer to kill, though, so I guess there is still a risk.

3) bad itemization
this was a problem for Stormhold's entire existence, but FG seems to be doing better in that department. if only they'd stop nerfing potency off of items....

4) people lost faith in DBG
lol what faith? DBG has been the brunt of snarky genchat comments for years now, way before TLE even existed. whether it's about the increase in bugs, the poor customer service, the increasing progression towards P2W, whatever, people are always going on about something the devs are doing wrong. me I'm like, if you hate this game so much why are you still paying them money. like someone who refuses to get a divorce no matter how much their spouse beats them...

it was pretty universally agreed upon that KoS was stupidly hard when it first launched. if you disagree you either didn't experience it or you're trying to put on your tough guy "hardcore player!!!" facade. and as much as i personally dislike casuals, i'm forced to acknowledge that they make up most of the server population and without them things just keep declining, until the ultimate result is the server becomes a ghost town with a single raid guild competing against....what, exactly? the server mechanics themselves? cause that's what happened with Stormhold, although you weren't there to witness it.

There will probably be a KoS beta test period, which will be your best bet for this kind of thing.

So far they have done a better job with FG from my perspective and DBG does appear to be listening to our feedback. Itemization while not perfect does seem better. Most of my guild and all of my friends quit playing due to the massive difficulty increase when KoS hit on Stormhold. At the time our SK tank couldn't survive group heroic encounters and we didn't have a Conjuror or Necro tank which were the best tanks at that time for some reason. This time around the balance seems better and I am hoping it continues.

I have no doubt there will be a KoS beta, however I hope it goes off much smoother. The train wreck that was DoF beta made it where very little got actually tested.

I do hope KoS is better this time around then Stormhold. KoS was fine the first couple days on Stormhold until people complained that it was to easy blah blah, then they buffed it. Stuff that I was able to kill the previous day, was now slaughtering me. I have no issues with content being made difficult for heroics and dungeons and raids, thats the way it should be, but simple open world trash was effected to. My whole guild I was in was in the same boat and majority quit a few days after those changes. Here is hoping it is better this time around.

DoF does has its challenges. Primarily the entire thing is faceroll content. The itemization is ugly for some classes in particular, but its the content that is really the problem. With it being as faceroll as it is, there just isn't anything to 'work on', you just steamroll everything and run out of things to do.

It would be better if there were a few challenging encounters and contested x4s that required more than a single group of casual players to kill.

The hardest challenge of the entire expansion is simply all the object bugs related to DMP instruments (game dropping the moveable items under the floor, outside of walls, and in general causing the script to be unadvancable). That challenge isn't really challenge though, its more of an RNG luck roll.

In short, I'm sure we're going to lose a fair amount of players due to boredom, I know some that are already dropping out cause the xpac was 'won' so quickly.

The only answer to Fallen Gate not going the way of Stormhold is for DBG to put a half time resource on this server to keep the itemization 'sane' and tweak the content to be somewhat relevant. If they can afford to pay a junior developer 20 hours a week to work on this server, it should be able to survive.

I personally don't think they're willing to dedicate that much resource to it.

I agree that the server population will vanish if it's as hard as it was, and raid content was broken, but I remember there were threads made at launch with summoners very earnestly insisting that they couldn't kill solo mobs in Tenebrous Tangle, which was a complete joke. Heroic instances weren't easy, but zones like Nest were still easily easy to clear with a few levels and 15 odd AA, and HoF instances were still easy at cap, you just couldn't face roll and actually had to develop your character. People are just horrible at the game and it's unfortunate we won't ever see heroic content like that again.

What's funny is that people play on the TLE for nostalgia purposes but complain that the world doesn't evolve to the new live standards. What's the point of having a TLE server if you only want upgraded live stats on everything.

they want it harder etc... well the stats evolved, I never played the original and even I know that, then they complain it's too easy... even if you rolled out an exact copy from 2004 or whatever year it was, they'd complain it wasn't like it was use to be. dgb can only go so far to appease the raiders and the average players at the same time, or it becomes boring or unplayable for the others.

That is what these insatiable and always aggrieved players will feel. No matter what happens, no matter what is fixed, no matter what custom tweak, or "im smarter than the devs and they should do this"... it will never be enough. These few, yet loud, minority population players will never stop complaining the loudest.

Its not that really. Its that while it is TLE content, live mechanics are in play on the content. Things like combat mitigation for example exist in TLE that never existed when the content was originally built and balanced.

Some players have the expectation that some effort is spent on FG to have a similar to release level of difficulty. We see that with the experience differences, and we see it with the buff packages that mobs have been given. Raiders have some expectation that the difficulty will be somewhat similar to the original experience.

The Djinn master in the original release was almost impossible to kill. The contested x4's required 18 or so geared and moderately well played players to kill them. The current experience is significantly easier than the release difficulty level. When you add on that everyone is going into this content with an already known 'playbook' of how to beat it, when it is overly easy it appears even more trivial.

Its a tough job for DBG. To have content that still feels to have some form of accomplishment to kill in TLE without being overly difficult and virtually unkillable.

The one thing that stands out to me in TLE compared to live is there is no hardcore vs casual raiders arguing it up, as there really aren't any hardcore raid guilds on TLE. I believe that should make the task of adjusting the challenge level easier than it is on live, but because we're applying modern mechanics on old content, it does require some tuning and tweaking to yield a meaningful / rewarding player experience.

It seems most of the playerbase wrote off DoF from the get go, and alot of players have their hopes hinged on KoS. This thread I'm sure is just a cry-out to emphasize that the success or failure of KoS will also go the viability of this TLE.

no, the point of this thread, is to not repeat what they did with kos when it was released on stormhold. like it was stated, back then the raiders complained, 2 days later things became unkillable for most. no one wants to see a repeat of that.

I'm making another spreadsheet for loot, i'm sure it will get glanced over and they will go into mid-content expansion pack mode.

With channelers I feel like all the things that were impossible on stormhold will be totally killable this time around, we have as much HP now as people had in EoF plus familiars, pay to win expansion illusion etc.

I'm sure thats all that this expansion will really get, unless we get another beta where no one can test anything, which speaking of; if a beta is planned. Please read the feedback forum post for the beta, it covers basically every issue. Since we didn't get any dev testing with DoF, can we possibly get some for KoS?

I really hope this expansion is good, it's all really anyone in my guild at least is still playing for at this point. DoF is getting tiring really quickly, people quit before it even started because they already knew it was gonna be 2 1/2 hours of poets every week and running zones where ornates drops in raids.

Side note, silly things like necro pets tanking (lol) won't be a thing this time so at least this server will be somewhat not broken raiding wise hopefully.

If devypoo's are reading this, please consider looking at halls of the seeing because it wasn't cleared on stormhold until like TSO or something because it was straight bonkers.

Well BOB, maybe if the server we played on wasn't live with restrictions we could talk about this.