You surmount one hurdle, then they spawn three more in your path. I decided this year for sure that I'm finally, truly stepping away. Maybe even permanetly. After my current contest is over, I'm going to begin selling/giving away nearly everything I've accumulated in Norrath since 2004. I'm considering popping thru the void portals from Earth periodically for seasonal or holiday events & contests, but other than doing that for the player community I won't keep doing the same thing(s) on repeat with no hope for improved outcomes. All this make for a sad Micro-Gnome.
Is there a difference in flight between SE and CE? Or are there still many hoops to jump through? :-/ Uwk who doesn't buy any level of expac until it goes on sale and most of the bugs are gone ;->
Oh, I dunno; if you know you have players who can fly, why not make the layouts interesting for folks like that? The lines at Nazca in Peru seem to only be visible from the air, or at least from mountainsides, and it's highly likely that the elites, at least, back then could have flown using the equivalent of hot air balloons, even in pre-Columbian times. Regardless, we know we can in Norrath and beyond, so rather than penalizing us for an ability we've had for 40 levels, why not make the overflight areas more cool for folks who do fly? It'd be an intriguing mystery if it were something at least somewhat visible from the ground for lower levels; give them inspiration to finally get in the air. Also, if the devs are worried about folks just blitzing past everything, there's always zone "walls" and "ceilings"... Anyone remember how low the flight ceilings are in Thundering Steppes? How impassable some mountain ranges are in Darklight Wood, and you have to go around them (and possibly run across aggro things at low levels)? /shrug Uwk
This flying discussion was going on in beta and it was settled then, with the players losing the argument (discussion if you prefer). I didn't buy the "trivializing the Adv sig line" then and still don't but that is neither here nor there. Denmum has done an amazing job since she took over, but she is not the final say more than likely. But she does what she can and has been a huge asset. At least we have someone who understands crafters and has for many, many years. I did not read anything in Bhayar's post to indicate anything ugly, rude or negative about Denmum. And it has been painfully obvious to everyone that does tradeskilling that for several years there was no interest in crafters at all. Who, why or why at this point is moot. Perhaps if DB would spend a few bucks and ADVERTISE THE GAME, they would get more paying/playing customers and hire more good programmers. Perhaps not.
Amen to all in this! There was a rumor going around (which PoP pretty much substantiated, imho) that there was a dev who detested crafting, thought it was a useless waste of time, and should never have been implemented in the first place. Considering what went on with PoP ("If you DON'T give us something new for tradeskillers, we're gonna rage-quit to a game who cares about us... >:-/"), he/she must've been in charge of that expac. I, also, thank the gods the Powers finally wised up and gave Denmum an official job, after all her years of unofficially working her feet hair off for us, and if nothing else, I do think there's at least a fraction of the gaming market out there who would be interested in the crafting and decorating here. I hear the decorating, at least, is way better overall than in many games... ;-> Hell, just the idea that PvP is an option, rather than a requirement or an expectation, is a major selling point for me. ;-> Uwk
I have finished the Sig line with three level 12's. Denmum fixed the nodes. It is now easy peasy with the only thing a pain is not having escape on the wee ones so a little bit more running around. She said she would fix it and she did.
I'm gonna miss all of you, too!! When 'the kids' were visiting for Thanksgiving, I sort of lost time to even do much forum logging on, let alone spend any time logged into Norrath. Then I realized that Frostfell started, three days after the fact! Not only had I not gotten my toons parked at closet locations, I wasn't bothering to get gifties from Glug, buy recipes, nada. I sort of saw that as a bellwether event. But, I'm REALLY looking forward to the entries for "It's Tinkerfell Time!" and giving out prizes!!
I believe regarding harvesting, the higher level zones were available based on harvesting skill level, not tradeskill level. They are not one and the same. Now you can go in and harvest in any level zone but you may stand there for unknown minutes till you get something from the node. As your click to harvest, your skill level is increasing and the higher it goes, the faster you get your reward from the node. I could craft level 30 items but I could not harvest lvl 30 materials is an example of what I am trying to say. I had to depend on a main or another toon to do the harvesting of the mats.
In short, they removed that 'lock' that originally prevented harvesting in zones you were not harvest level enough to harvest in.
That 'lock' was back when your skills were capped based on A>your adventure level, or B>your tradeskill level, AND>whichever of the two was higher. If you were a 43 monk, and 64 tailor, then the 64 tailor determined your cap. At that time, you were limited to which zones you could harvest in based on your base skill. I don't recall when, but they changed it so you can go to any zone, but you have to get skill ups to harvest and determine your rare harvesting amounts. So, in short, it's techincally been possible since the beginning to go harvesting in zones much higher than your adventure level, and therefore highly dangerous in some places, but I always managed to find a way to get what I needed before Qho was inflicted upon us all. LOL
Heh... ;-> The only aggravating thing about the present system, imho, is that while it's great we have a minuscule chance to get a rare in a zone where your 64th level tailor would have a 320 (to harvest anything at all back in the old days; highest level x5) harvesting skill and the minimum chance is like 315, it kind of sucks when they don't bother indicating any numbers whatsoever if there's no rares involved. Like either the Presents in Frostfell Village (and when was that raised from like 1 or 20 up to 90 to get anything??) or the fish schools anywhere else. :-/ Uwk
This whole conversation boils down to being able to do the tradeskill line in an hour. (If that, I honestly think you can finish it even faster then VoV.) If it unlocked flight at the end of that, let's say hour, and you then go to do the adventure line, flight makes the Delta overland zone way easier. To say nothing of getting around in Badlands. Requiring you to do the 15 missions isn't a big deal you can do it in roughly a day and a half if you watch the timers and total amount of time spent doing the missions is like an hour. So total you are getting flight for only slightly longer (total effort time) then you did previously.
Well, that's encouraging! (Still not getting the expac until it goes on sale near the end of its run and the bugs are squashed... Good luck, all! ;->) Uwk
I'd be loathe to implement any material changes to a product a week before go-live, although it's not clear to me whether you aren't trying to suggest the opposite..You did mention the beta testing timeframe, so I was unclear on that point. I listen to podcasts while I'm gaming, so the grinding aspects don't bother me as much. This content is intended to provide entertainment for a year, after all. I actually prefer not to fly at times, since one completely misses the detail and scale of the environments if one never goes through them by land. There are stone structures in this expansion that are best enjoyed from.both perspectives. A few days grounded after a new release doesn't seem especially onerous to me. Of course, I only rotate through 7 alts, so I don't feel the pinch as keenly as others apparently do. It is a fact of this game.that it caters to several different playing styles. I'm sure an inequitable balance to achieving flight between tradeskillers and adventurers would not sit well with a lot of players who have no interest in tradeskilling. There are a lot of teenagers playing the game with loads of free time and a very short supply of patience that will burn through content as fast as they possibly can, get bored, and move.on to other things. The longer they are away from the game, the less likely they are to come back, or try to get their friends to join them. I know it can get frustrating for those of us with jobs who play casually, but we're probably not the ones who pay most of the bills.
Also, zipping through the 15 missions is fairly trivial if you grab all three at a time, do your harvesting all at once, and cycle back through the zones turning them in. They are available every 3 hours, so whatever your schedule allows, you can probably get them done in two days at the most. After all, if you tradeskill, you probably want to spend some part of your time out harvesting any way, right? I'm a casual player. This expansion has only been out 3 weeks, and already completing this is far back in the rear view mirror. I can get the books for my alts from missions and drops playing on my main, the level cap wasn't raised, so there's no reason to even take them out until I've gone through all the content on my main. Clearly that doesn't match other players' gaming styles, so what is it that we are doing differently? I don''t ask that as a judgment; I'm interested in other people's expectations.
Apparently, one of the issues is that it's darned near impossible to safely gather materials without being able to fly, ironically, with probably (dunno yet; as I say, I'm not getting near this gobbler until its end-of-life in the fall of 2023) the same issues I'd found in just about every zone since level 100. I'd see its levels on the map, think, "Oh, it's maxxed at 115 or 120 [or whatever it was]; I'm only level 100-110 in Adventuring [depending on the toon], so if it's like every other zone, the base levels are gonna be where you come into it initially, and you can work your way up to the max both in level time and in space. Awesome!" Wrong. Get in there, and IMMEDIATELY face off against level 112-115 (depending on the max), all aggro. X-P Also, I'm not sure how popular we actually are with "the kids" (and even college students have to start to worry about budgeting their time or else); if we were that big a deal, they'd be doing a lot of our advertising for us on social media and so forth. Granted, I'm barely on Facebook, let alone any of the rest, but I haven't heard of too many ripples about us amongst the younger set. Either that, or us old farts are the more vocal for a change. ;-> Uwk
