Server Round Table (Community)

[Vaion]

Please feel free to post questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, etc. reference the server adjustments found here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11834

The developers have been discussing changes to the server to promote a more healthy progression curve, and as part of the community, everyone's opinion is important to us.

Please keep in mind, as with all other posts the forum discussion rules do apply here. If someone mentions something that you do not agree with, flaming, harassing or being disrespectful in a malicious way will not be tolerated.

[rasjaziz]

Thank you all for constantly evaluating the condition of the server and its content. The community is grateful for all you do.

I agree with the changes that have been made. I've recently been working on the Plane of Tactics and noticed a few things. The bosses here seem more difficult than the other T6 bosses. Specifically Vallon Zek with the damage he does (especially when he splits) and the dps required to kill Rallos Zek before he despawns. Both of these bosses seem more like T7 in difficulty.

Also I've noticed the Guardians of Vallon/Tallon hit significantly harder than any other mob in the zones (save the bosses). Sometimes clearing the instances to the bosses is more dangerous than the bosses themselves.

[Nizzy]

Thank you all for constantly evaluating the condition of the server and its content. The community is grateful for all you do.

I agree with the changes that have been made. I've recently been working on the Plane of Tactics and noticed a few things. The bosses here seem more difficult than the other T6 bosses. Specifically Vallon Zek with the damage he does (especially when he splits) and the dps required to kill Rallos Zek before he despawns. Both of these bosses seem more like T7 in difficulty.

Also I've noticed the Guardians of Vallon/Tallon hit significantly harder than any other mob in the zones (save the bosses). Sometimes clearing the instances to the bosses is more dangerous than the bosses themselves.

I could not agree more on this as I have posted is multiple times in the Tactics thread.

They are actually closer to T7 and RZ himself closer to T8. While RZ does not hit my tank that hard, the shear amount of DPS you need to kill him before the timer runs out is excessive for a T6 mob.

[Blique]

First, a few words for the group that makes THF work. Its a group ranges from Lillu and Vaion and Noren (and Devs who have stepped away) who produce and tweak our server and content, to the boots on the ground on the other end of the scale where players take the time to report typos and syntax issues in quest dialogue.

All of you together, doing these things, make THF a good place to call home.

Thank you for that.

As far as progression is concerned, and the necessity of donor gear...

One glaring area I see, is "gather mana" type items. The last tiers spells allow wizards to go dry on mana at an amazing rate. Granted this isn't an issue as much with mages or chanters, and really isn't at all with a necro, but wizards with a way to gather at a reasonable speed (cast time), on a retime with a reasonable rate (reuse timer), are worlds different than wizards without. The longer the fight, the more pronounced this becomes.

In game available items, the pearl, or the lower guk quested orb or summoned orb from the t6/8 legs, are all useful, but the gap between those things and the donor wrist click could stand to be narrowed a bit, IMO. Make the pearl able to be upgraded through a quest line maybe, or take the guk quested one and add it to a series of quests like the queens charm series. I have used all those things on multiple toons, and they work, but the cast times and reuse times/shared timers could stand some love. Theres the instant click that Zenurix (never) drops too.

In a nutshell, it would be helpful to have a larger group of in game dropped/quested items than we currently have, with better (shorter) cast times, and better (shorter) reuse timers, and reuse timers that play well together as a group (less/none of them using a shared timer), than we currently have.

That is my observation, I thought I'd throw it out there and see what others thought.

[peterigz]

I've always thought the progression on this server seemed very well balanced personally. I've never thought that I'd never be able to progress without donating. Our guild has the odd donator here and there but nothing major, I've only just gotten a death save shield on my main tank (competition prize ) mid-way through t8. That is the main item I consider to be a big ease on progression as it negates death touch (one of the more annoying boss mechanics).

If I think about why I donated, one of the main reasons was to make a class more worth while. We like having a variation of classes in the guild (even have a ranger!), but if we were to re-roll a raid and try the content without donators (something we've considered doing), I'd cookie cut the raid and drop the classes that don't cut it DPS wise. So by that rationale, rather then weaken the content, I'd give those classes something that helps make the content easier. eg monks/rangers get a crippling strike that reduces DPS output of bosses for example. You could even give both a variation of the same thing - 30 second debuff 1 minute recast, so then it pays to have both in the raid chaining them together.

I don't know, I'm wary of changes like these, people can just as quickly get stuck at a certain point and leave, as they can blast through content get bored and leave. It's a difficult balance I think it's better to give players a clear cut way of defeating content by making them think about how they're making the most of the classes at their disposal, rather then a blanket approach of make-everything-easier.

So I guess my conclusion is: making content easier by empowering key classes is a better way forward imo.

Off the top of my head, some handy debuffs that would be very useful for under-used classes to have:

Negate Knockback (where lev doesn't work)
Mirror Death Touch (or just negate )
Reduce Damage Output by %

[Ydiss]

I agree with peterigz.

I like the intent of these changes, just remember that if it's easier for non-donators, it'll be much, much easier for those who have donated. The core issue with donators is they have gotten stupendously powerful; the shield is, pretty much, a must have to progress for some people (not because you can't beat DT mobs with multi-tanking, but because it literally negates the need for it in many cases). And the chest/leg items are enormous; I can imagine they trivialise a lot of content, once synergised.

We haven't heavily donated, have avoided the chest/legs, and haven't felt we'd have needed to donate at any point. That said, we did have one shield (until recently) and we now run up to 27 characters in a raid, so that's enabled us to progress much further than we would have done and a lot quicker. Could we have done it with no donators? We think we could have and, as Rigz said, we had thought about trying it once we reached T9. But, again, we have a raid force in numbers and a strong knowledge of the server already.

I guess this will definitely help ease progression for a large selection of players. It'll also make it easier to progress without being in a large raid. I'm not against it but do feel it could have an adverse, opposite effect in making progression too easy for some with donators (and so some will still feel they need to donate to progress, before even trying to work out the strategies or get the right classes on board, first).

Not an easy task and I don't envy you guys.

Is it possible to set this up on the test server and create pre-made characters with pre-set gear, to test out each tier before releasing? Even if the characters were level 70, all AA, with NPC vendors that have a selection of gear from various tiers that we can buy and test with. Then let us also try using our current characters as well, for comparisons.

I imagine that would quite a job to set up. Just a thought, though.

I do agree that adding more ways to counter major boss brick walls with class re-design is perhaps a more elegant way of achieving the goal. But, obviously, much more work and much harder to test properly.

[xadien]

I'd like to say many thanks for bringing back a game that I loved playing on Live, with a better pace of progression than the previous mentioned.

I do have a bit of feedback about Augment Distillers:

Let me give you an example, So today, I completed my 3.0 on my cleric! Yay! So anyway... Now comes the task of where to put it, and how to augment it. I also recently got a few pieces of loot from DSK3, shoulders, and a necklace. I need to remove 4 augments per armor piece, so Range, Back, Weapon, Neck. I also need to figure out where to put these. Alas, I don't have any Distillers, and this is not a main character so I haven't donated on him. I'm faced with 3 options. 1, FARM AA's. 16 distillers by 125 or 150 aa's (not sure exactly but its close) That's 2400 aa's to farm. 2, donate 30$ for 20 potions (probably the better deal is a leaf that is better than any 3 augments that drop). 3. Grind out the HOH augs again that are not lore and that I can re-use. (I've put in the grind here to get my 6 characters into DSK3 before the reduction of points, so HOH grind shell shocks me).

If this thread is about removing the need to donate to progress, this is an area that I think needs a serious look. I have donated on more than one character, some very extensively, and I feel like I'm stopped in my tracks unless I want to whip out my credit card yet again.

1) Perhaps you get awarded distillers on landmark achievements, (Epic 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 2.8 3.0, Raid aura, 1k aa's, HOH access.. I don't know, pick something landmarkish, and set a value of distillers to get).

2) Give me an option to purchase with Platinum. Maybe its 10k a stack, hell 100k a stack. Something. There is nothing really for me to spend Plat on, other than Food and Water, and I quest those anyway. Most of the trade skill items are dropped, I have paid someone to farm for me, but other than that, I find myself giving plat away for people to buy tokens or bazaar fodder to help stimulate the economy.

3) Give an option to purchase with good deeds being reported on the boards? I have given away countless items and flags. This would be hard for you to track I know, and I'm almost always asking if I can help someone out.

4) Allow Them to be made with tradeskills. I would gladly spend time farming the ingredients to help someone make them, for their own profit, or to help the guild if I could get a stack for personal use.

5) Make them Tradeable. I could be wrong here, but the last time I tried to give distillers between characters they were not tradeable. Some of my more donated characters have stacks of distillers sitting idle in the bank.

I appreciate all you guys do, and please this is not a griping thread, but just for prespective. Here I sit with 3 new pieces of gear, A Shiney cleric 3.0, 2 DSK3 loots and one piece that needs to be shuffled, and I have to ask myself do I want to spend $30 bucks to move them around? Eh, maybe I'll just use them for clickies...

Voki

[Nilbus]

Distillers were tradeable at one time. They were made no drop cause they became the default currency instead of Plat. Selling of rare achievement items or illusion items was in distillers.

[Lillu]

Thanks for the decent ideas and feedback so far. Topic should be open again (oops ), please keep the ideas coming.

[Vaion]

Wanted to make a small post with the recent changes:

Tier 3 - Tier 9 Bosses have had the Min and Max DMG adjusted. The average increase per tier is now set at 15% for Min DMG and 20% for Max DMG.

Overall this reduced the Min DMG of bosses across the board by about 50% and increased their Max DMG by about 5%. This adjustment should make the average dmg per swing much more tolerable while not completely nullifying the difficulty associated with the Bosses.

Please keep all the feedback coming, the developers are having daily discussions over nearly every post so far