A Treatise on a Core Design Issue and Why the Community is often Divisive

Perhaps divisive isn’t the best word, I think the conversation and points have been civil. I just mean to point out how different the perspectives are of the very elite and the rest, and how both are important to consider.

Id really like to see the opinion of players who are not as experienced as those who have played in beta including myself as i think these opinions really skew the end product result to the top 1% and that isn’t going to help grow the community.

I think that there are definitely groups hitting a wall that is making it harder for them to catch up.

Hey now… We generally try to do shard groups and raids with one or two newer players all the time… I might be a bit critical with feedback when playing with newer players… But I try my best to help everyone I am playing with get as good at the game as they can. I want to see the community get bigger and grow and I want to grow people. That’s basically my main motivation in the game as long as it helps grow my fellowships community too. Elitist maybe a bit I can’t deny that… But with the attitude that if you can push hard and do it… we can get better together and it benefits the community as a whole.

I have said a few times in various posts that we should have a much less punishing system for failure that is for sure… I also think a way to change the roll of the shard you got might actually reduce the ‘wall’ for newer players that we are observing and give newer players a chance to skill up (like we all did… we all went through that wall and it was painful; just some of us have an insanity threshold set too high).

@Riley_D I think this is probably ‘the wall’ for newer players.

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I know alphabet takes the less experienced people with them to higher shard dungeons and i do apreciate it and consider it a good thing(some of my guildies got tier 5 to tier 9 gear epic/legendaries because of some of your guild (members).

For what its worth i would consider alphabet as a whole maybe elitist a bit heck u even say so yourself but still very much in tune with the community as a whole. As your post also proofs.

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This is how it’s supposed to be imo. Alphabet has always been willing to help. They are EXACTLY what I want to see in this comunity. They get stuff done but are down to Earth enough to help other players. Nova is the same BTW. We are much smaller but we run hard mode raids ect and still manage to run with low levels. These guys had me fully geared by the time I dinged 17. I KNOW that I wiped group’s and had shards fail because I was there. They took me anyway.
Check out discords. Post in open chats.
Hell Nova is looking for tanks right now. You have to reach out. I think it’s a bit of a cycle. You don’t talk to us because you think that we are elete and would not give you the time of day. We don’t talk to you because we think you don’t want anything to do with us.
The top guys are all pretty dang nice and almost always up to chat and help. Give them a chance.

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We don’t use potions for normal raids and we don’t use them for shards under about 7.
You really don’t need them unless you are doing the very hardest stuff.
I can’t speak for pvp. I strongly dislike pvp so I never really do it.

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I do think the 5th boss on the raid (normal mode) is a huge wall for most of the fellowships. I know some of the bigger fellowships can take it down in about 10-11 minutes, but that’s with full T10 gear, with groups having T5, and slightly less skilled, the 15 minutes enrage timer makes it close to impossible at this point. I’m not saying the enrage timer is the issue, just that the last boss is a bit overtuned right now (at least this is my impression about it, others might think it differently)

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Interesting… 20 chara

Edit: Wanted to add to the convo…but thought process stopped…I just like to be included :slight_smile:

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I’m not going to say how I know such things… But an 8+ gear lvl musky and ranger are basically invincible against a group of 5 non/low lvl shard geared people. Add another geared dps and I wouldnt be surprised if you could 3 v 15…

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I can agree with G. I think boss 5 for normal mode is still overtuned. It feels like a T7 or T8 shard. The boss upstairs still hit pretty hard, mostly for the mages. The enrage timer is short if people don’t use potions.

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I am fully confident that a group of 3 people who were able to run shards to get full, or close to full T10 (And T12 now) gear, could win a 3 v 15 vs people with base lvl TM gear. Hell, im not even sure 15 would be tough… Its like that AskReddit question - How many 3rd graders do you think you could fight at once? … a lot.

It would be silly, but not in the way you’re thinking.

You would have a ZERO% chance to win that fight, unless you all used invis pots and cremated at least two of their players at the start.

I’m in Bart’s guild, 500+ hours in, we are always around 10 actives. But if I see it right he is the only one who is now left from the guild mates I started with. I played with roughly 50 people or more during last months who, by now, all quit, not the guild, but the entire game. And I am also pondering, no longer a daily player since there’s simply too many ‘walls’.
So I wondered what are the “walls” I am seeing, right now. This is just a personal list, some would be solvable by devs, some are not.

  • Player Inventory: Playing 3/4 classes I have no space for their mag/phys gear, constantly overencumbered, so I need to move stuff around every time I want to farm. This alone keeps me from playing. The House Chest is much spacier now (thanks!!) but I can’t even carry all dungeon gear with me. Often enough we asked someone to switch and he can’t, because he left gear for this class at home.
    Poss. Solution/Help: Up player inventory weight, significantly. 40 weight are permanently occupied by gear, if one wants to plays all classes; with 4-6 rings, 3 dragons, reagents, unbending/normal weapons, even more. Perhaps at least tied to class level, like, you get 10 more weight for every class which reaches 20.

  • Potions: I never saw certain mats like bloody flesh, not for sale, not in the wilds. I stopped trying since there is too many areas where the Aberrations get me, players are less an issue compared with them.
    Poss. Solution/Help: 1) Areas in the wilds where you can farm potion mats without a group. 2) Much more mats spread over the areas. Even if I farm the wilds a whole evening in groups, 2 shrooms per person is just a too poor outcome for the time spent. 3) Or, pure “farming instances” where a group can farm mats in an PvE context.

  • Fishing: Related topic. Stuck in the fishing quest before we get to the “special fish”, guess it’s just not for me, the amounts seem so high, it’s too time consuming to even start, plus I still got no clue how to even fish the specials once I am there.

  • Trade/Money: My money is stuck around 20k since a long time. Some of the most time-consuming tasks like fishing could be overriden if I had an option to sell some of my unneeded stuff to others and buy stuff in return.
    Poss. Solution/Help: Auction House

  • Raids: Hardmodes are for the Elite-Guilds, I don’t mind that. But even normal mode Boss 5 is impossible for us, not because of strategy but of damage/gear needed to bring him down in time, the thing is, it’s pointless to try. Tokens are a nice idea, but the amount of them and of gear overall is not worth the time spent.
    Poss. Solution/Help: 1) Remove enrage timer on boss 5; why are we punished if we hold out for so long, for new players barely geared holding out shows their skill and it should be rewarded. 2) Up random drops in the Raids significantly, or introduce a guaranteed weekly drop, additional to tokens.

  • Dungeons: The most critical point, I played with a number of fresh players unable to play their class, warriors mainly. No solution for this, but ofc these wipe whole groups until they quit or switch to other classes. So far we spent alot of time to “train” people, assisting them with a backup-tank etc., since we are a friendly, not too-progress-oriented guild. But often it’s a physical issue, just not working out. And then a lot of time is spent for nothing, and they are gone.
    Also I stopped ‘leveling’ new people. Too many hit 20 and when it gets serious (and a little tedious) with dungeons and all, vanish again.

  • Player Availability/Groups: EU timezone got one main problem, it is very hard to find enough players, in the morning it’s around 20 people online on the whole server, in the evenings 50 to like 100; only at my bedtime server starts filling up more. So we often ran dungeons with 4 people or lower than 20s, for this reason.
    Poss. Solution/Help: 1) Much easier random group system which allows to enlist yourself as a player lfg, not the other way round, and, by a press of button, ports you right to the leader of the group which added you. 2) Working group voice chat and/or improved message system.

  • Waiting/Running Times: Wanna play a dungeon or raid? Well, let’s run and idle a while first! I stopped the time it takes me to get to the Raid dungeon from Highsteppe, it is 6 minutes. Now with 10 people waiting for each other this quickly adds up to half an hour waiting time or more, also sometimes in the midst of raid when people need to be exchanged.
    Poss. Solution/Help: 1) Instant port to the group you are in, 2) Much more portal stones, like one right inside the TM, one right outside the Raid.

  • Technical Issues: There’s barely any dungeon run where nobody dc-ed, had to relog or such, lately the stuck-in-combat bug forces relog of all raid members even. I am glad that this is being worked on, but perhaps there can be done more because it ruins so many runs and shards.
    Suggestion: At least remove logout-timers outside the wilds, have players always respawn where the crashed, never at the beginning of dungeons and guarantee a loot chest for those crashed/dc-ed. All them exploits which were possible in former times (who cares if people switch class to get gear anyway) are not worth detrimenting game experience for the 90% of players who just wanna play.

  • Runetiles: Not really a “wall” since I theory-craft them by now, but most I know are doing same, sadly skipping the most interesting part of figuring your own playing style, crafting accordingly. Getting someone else to install/learn a recording software and all, outside the game, and assist repeatedly with it is far more than it should be required for a normal ingame boost.
    Poss. Solution/Help: Let us see our own runes, like, right in front of us when a potion has been taken.

Whew that was long. But yea, that is it, other than that I like the game very much, else I wouldn’t have stayed so long, it is the only VR game I got more than 10h in and the only one I come back to play regularly, at all.

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Im an active player, iv never made it past boss 3 i only have 6 raid tokens. Getting a group or finding a group can be a real pain. As for pvp im in the wilds all the time gathering mats i never see anyone out there.

This is something that bugged me quite a bit, I tried to make it so I could play all 4 classes and have my fishing stuff on hand in case I was waiting around for someone with water near by. This didn’t work, the game seems like it’s made so you can easily switch between your classes but if you take the time and effort to get them all to 20 then you find you can’t afford to run around with them handily available to switch to due to weight restrictions.

Adding 10 weight per class level 20 would be a really nice change to allow people to be able to switch as needed, I’ve currently given up on trying to play warrior or mage because I would rather be able to harvest and kill/loot stuff while I’m out and about and going home to switch gear over to then decide you need the other gear later on is a lot of hassle

Bloody flesh got changed last week so it is now able to drop from the normal trash mobs in the wilds like Shiny metal drops from everything in Lucian so you should have an easier time getting them now.

As for the other wilds ingredients I think if they got added to the loot table for shards rather than just “pity dram” then this would make it so people could carry on doing PvE content and still get some of the supplies they need without a huge need to grind the wilds, obviously it would need to be balanced so it’s not the better option than to go to the wilds

There has been so many threads/posts about an Auction house, I really think it will help a lot of people out to have one, I’m really hoping it’s on the next roadmap

The enrage on boss 5 got changed to 20 min’s on Tuesday, I did a run last night with people from Alphabet and Rebels and we had a 17min kill without hitting enrage.

I do think the RNG drops from the bosses should be altered slightly, but not make the % higher but change it so the boss will drop 1 item per kill, we cleared all 5 bosses last night and 0 people had an item drop, there was several dyes and that was it, it doesn’t feel very rewarding when there is no drops at all during a full clear

Another solution for this, if you have played MMO’s previously or have friends you think may be interested, reach out and see if you can sway them into getting VR or Orbus if they have VR already, I managed to get a few friends playing this way which helped with the EU numbers :stuck_out_tongue:

As for the group system, that is in fact coming on the 17th of September.

Completely agree, we need a quicker way to the raid, closer portal stones would be great! It’s a long run and causes unnecessary downtime while waiting for people if switching them around if they are not already logged out at the raid, as there is nothing to do there while waiting (a fishing spot would be nice) most people either have to stop playing while waiting or make everyone else wait while they run there

I have seen people quit because of this, and I have been close to quitting as well, it gets so frustrating when you fail on a boss because of something that is completely out of your control, if you mess up, fair enough, go back, do it again but better. But when you get 5min+ into a hard fight and then someone desyncs or crashes and there is nothing you can do, it feels like you have just spent the night wasting your time for nothing. I’ve been trying to make sure I send the logs now every time it happens, in hopes that it will help Riley come up with a solution which is what I’ve been trying to get everyone else I raid with to do as well

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I know exactly how you know such things. Thnx for yesterday :joy:

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I find it very difficult to find groups for Tradu, can’t even get gear to get to low lv shards.

I’ve reduced to playing once a week and my experience is as follows:
“Logs in, ask myself what I need to accomplish, answer is better gear to start shards, spend an hour walking around highstep and back and fourth to guild city looking for anyone who wants to group with me.
Don’t find anyone, realize I can’t progress on my own, log off”

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We appreciate the really great in-depth feedback and we’re definitely hearing you, keep it up! Reading different perspectives and what people would like to see more of or see differently always helps us design and improve the game.

Some of the points we see sometimes are things that are mainly possible to address over a long period of time and significant rework so we can’t necessarily comment on them (which is why our roadmaps thus far have only covered the few months afterwards), but absolutely take to heart for the future of the game.

However, in the short term we definitely recognize the difficulty of grouping up when you are a relatively fresh level 20 (or even while leveling for leveling dungeons) and we hope to tackle that issue head on with the LFG/queuing system that’s coming up and incentives associated with them, along with level scaling for players to be able to play together more easily.

Besides that, things like technical issues that have been recurrent problems while grouping up and running things together are our priority and we’ve done some significant and time intensive work behind the scenes to eradicate them, which we hope players will be able to reap the rewards of very soon (I think the first patch on that subject has been pushed already, but it’s far from the last.)

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/shiftyeyes /runsaway

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Also getting 150 pity dram even from a T10 dungeon doesn’t help either, while the price of the items are not in line with the way you can get dram in the game (for example accent dye from shop costs 5k dram, potion of forgetfulnes costs 500, so really don’t think the 150 dram for a T10 dungeon is a fair compensation)

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