Belaric

I do not care about this exploit.

 

I have not used it. Thought about it a few times. One of my guildies has done it once. And didn't lose that many levels. He loses more levels just hitting people for gold and getting bountied TBH.

 

I naively imagined if I did delevel I would be hunting my way back up - the smashing Champions thing seems more than a tad dull. Can that be altered/eliminated without screwing up other game mechanics? If so - fire away and do it Hoof, I'll not be sad.

 

When content was very thin on the ground for 3-4 months earlier this year - delevelling was looking like becoming necessary for me in order to gain gold for my guild - new content came along from October on to change that wildly for the better and to the extent that people are not now keeping up with content, though I imagine quite a few are assuming a double XP event will come along and help them catch back up. I personally would not be sad if we did not get a double XP event this Christmas/New Year - just to shake us out of our expectations, but that is off topic, and a purely personal preference.

 

If top guilds are having delevelling races in order to gain more XP and maintain their places in the top 250/top 100/50/10 whatever, well I still don't care, and my guild has a shot at making it into the top 25 with some luck. I think claiming you could do nothing else with your stam or were FORCED into delevelling by lack of content is totally disingenuous by the way - I've been at EOC for some time and have not felt FORCED to delevel due to stam overspill, and my stam bank is now quite petite in comparison to some of the behemoths out there. But it does depend on playing style and what you choose to do with your stam outside of levelling, so maybe I am being too hard on folk.

 

Extra GXP - does it unbalance the game or the mechanics of the game for anyone? Not that I can see.

 

I would have/may yet delevel and relevel in a content drought, but for gold, not XP, to keep my guild afloat. I do not want that choice taken from me, to be honest.

 

Having said that I can see the gaining of gold being a more persuasive argument to be used against deliberate delevelling and relevelling - if it could be shown that the extra gold gained is being used to distort markets. I don't think it is - but that would be a more serious and game altering problem than some people gaining outlandishly huge amounts of GXP.

 

There are more significant game issues to be addressed than this.

 

Improving composing interface.

Rotating arena gear regularly and expanding its scope and increasing tourneys to try to re-energise that section of the game. I don't even play arena and I want it given some love.

Keep that content coming.

Continue the epic quest.

Creation of new SE sets using old SE drops as components.

etc. etc. I'm sure you can think of more.

 

GXP gaining - big whoop. AM 500 abuse on champs? Do we want to lose AM 500 because of this issue? I don't think so. But if it went away I'd live.

 

Sorry I went on again. About something I supposedly am not bothered about I apparently do have a few opinions. Oh well, thank you for your kind indulgence.

I'm all for making the new legendary sets difficult to make WITHIN the EVENT that spawns them. Having the new sets suddenly require arena pieces and/or PvP token items... come on, that strikes me as rather obvious profit seeking among those who suggest such things. Only the subset of players who do all three activities (the actual event, PvP ladder, arena) can suddenly make the new items? I think this is unfair on all those who do not do all three activties. My opinion only.

In truth I have little problem with the new items being straight dropped as they were in the old days, but I have got used to inventing LE items during recent events, and that is okay - but it may be harder on the lower level players who may have less carrying capacity for the drops they will need and a harder time getting high FI or high RF to get the drops they need, and then high Inv buffs to max their inventing chances - any inventable Legendaries favour those with the resources to maximise their gain of drops, ability to hold drops and components, have the ability to get into max invent gear (funny how there are so many requests for master inventor as an enhancement on the new gear!) and use big Inventor and inventor 2 pots to maximise creation of new items. All these factors favour players like, well, me. None of these factors favour a casual player just getting by who might fancy trying to get a new set or two.

So there needs to be a balance. I think the balance gained in recent zorgrom and hallowe'en inventable legendaries is fair - the drops are plentiful enough that anyone who wants to make a set can, and those who want to harvest a bunch of sets and seek some FSP profit by doing so can also. Adding in arena or PvP token items does not make a lot of sense there, to me, it merely makes the items more exclusive and therefore more expensive. Cui bono?

 

And ditto SE items. I want SE items reused and made more valuable, but shoehorning them into a new event is not a good way, IMHO - better to create '2nd gen" SE items and sets made from the primary SE resources, but that would be another thread....

I like the idea of an end of game, but it would be the END of the game, not a step into an alternate/reset/dressed up continuation of the game, all of which sound at this point like far more work for HCS than the status quo, which is more levels.

 

If you propose an end which is just a twist to make diehards either replay the game from 1 with extras, or enter an alternate dimension of evil game play, you have just doubled the amount of work for the cows while halving the number of players who take each option, assuming there was a 50/50 split. That seems entirely unworkable to me, however attractive it may seem initially. I would think if any player chooses to become the Shadowlord then that should be it, game over, (unless the game suddenly morphs into Dungeonmaster) what new challenges should he face other than a bunch of 'heroes' trying to take him down - heroes who would be far more powerful than the old Shadowlord if they are hard enough to challenge the player character - which plainly doesn't make much sense as why then did they not trash the Shadowlord already? That is a plot issue and not really the point.

 

The point is why do you want the game to end? Are there other games you can point to that have ends and work well, and are still going? Rowbeth nailed it with her comment that you are asking for an end to the current game and then the creation effectively of a new game under the FS umbrella. I do not think HCS have the dev power for such an approach.

 

 

So why not stick with more levels? Yep - we'd like them to be more interesting. Yep, levelling is "boring" (I disagree), but if you have an end with a twist and the twist does not work, people walk away anyway. No game has any right to eternal life, and FS has survived longer than many other online efforts. I also like the idea an end of game at say 2500, with 300-400 levels of content with solid storylines and genuine excitement building up to a finale worth playing through. Doubt I'll get that though. The Dreadlord resurrecting Xindy as his catspaw against the Shadowlord is a top plot device. I like a returned Xindy all on his own as a great idea (see my bio blurb), but I'll not get sidetracked for once...

 

What is the incentive for HCS to kill the golden goose by creating an end? If it is not an end but merely the start of a new storyline post Shadowlord, then how is it substantially different from now - there would still be carping about getting the new content of the new storyline out there.

 

I have no problem with an open ended game, if the content remains intriguing. This comes down to plot lines and quests, for me. The replay the game as evil would require all the games quests to be rewritten - why not channel that creativity into having the new content questlines really work well and play out over hundreds of levels to satisfying conclusions? Like the Lishka storyline squared or cubed. That could rock. And have rewards created as part of the storylines, building towards a finale, if it must be done. The starting at level 1 with an epic sword and hardwired stats - how interesting could that be? I'm not thrilled at that idea. I don't know if it would induce me to play again, and what happens when you have run through twice?

 

Finally. RJEM's Quest for the Fallen Sword idea is too good to forget. Shards of the sword are found all across the realms (at any level) and must be brought back to the catheral to be remade. When the sword is remade, events happen, but the sword is unstable and shatters, so beginning the process again. This is such a fabulous mechanic I just had to mention it again. This could be used to open end of game content for a limited time, so players who want to have a showdown with the Shadowlord can have a go - they can then finish the game, heave a sigh of relief and be done. Only one player each time, whoever possesses the Fallen Sword when it is remade. There could be a tournament to earn the right to wield the sword, or it goes to whoever found the most shards (FOUND - not bought from finders!), or it could be utterly random, so that the sword could go to a level 5 noob who cannot defeat the Shadowlord... this time. And indeed the first time out the SL may be far too hard to kill, we see his stats, realise we need another 500 levels of stats and sexy gear to be able to nail him, and wait for our next chance. The portal closes, the sword shatters, the Shadowlord is reborn (if killed - for can evil truly die?), the rest of the game goes on as before. There is an end if you want it. The slayers of the SL go onto an all time list of conquerors of the game and there you are. Does that have an appeal? 

Is this a divide and conquer thread stream? Two threads on the same topic so half the ideas can be discussed at once? LOL!

 

For me titan hunting is working fine as is. The 13 titans are gone now. Titan hunting slows down during globals, slows down before big seasonal events - in my experience.

 

If you go to 48 hours to kill post secure or the titan disappears (but you keep TKP) you are reducing the open nature of titans. Now many guilds and many individuals can gain TKP, more segments of the FS population have a shot at acquiring their own titan epics through long, slow, work. And it is. I TKP harvest. I know. Being one dude running back and forth across the screen takes a long time to do 3000 hits. Do I want that changed to make my life easier? Not really. Because this way keeps it open to everyone, including my own inefficient self!

 

People are impatient. I think they have to live with that. The epic market is now rather mature. There is not going to be the same rush on titans as once there was, but all the titans (even gurgriss) do eventually go down. 

 

 

In a system where the titan must be killed within 48 hours of being secured, the guilds that can secure, can also kill, and will if they have to, or see a profit in it.  (As the guilds who are built to win titans are not doing it solely to supply themselves with epics I suspect. I suspect they may be earning epics for sale. Even I have managed to secure enough epics via TKP (our guild has manged all of three secures, the rest of our items are TKP based) to sell a few.

 

So, these guilds that are looking to win epics and sell them might not kill off titans if they think the TKP gain route is more profitable!! That way they'll still get the most TKP, and the supply of items into the game will slow, but a dominant guild could still gain most TKP... and thus perhaps maximise return on stam expended to get #1 kills by NOT killing titans as the slower release of items into the game will increase their value! (I think we are quite saturated in epics anyway given our player base and the number of guild shared epics) Just a mad theory - but weirder things have happened in the FS economy. I'm really saying that if we cannot predict what will happen with a change, and the present circumstance is not actively damaging to the game, what is the impetus for change? Cui bono, baby? If it can be demonstrated to me that the community as a whole will benefit, I'll happily change my view.

 

I say leave it as is. I'm not seeing a demonstration of any fundamental flaw in the Titan universe, just an unhappiness that drops don't come as fast once they've been earned, via secure, or via hitting a TKP threshold and stopping hits. I waited almost 2 weeks for someone else to finish off a Guardian of the elements after I got to my 12K TKP target and stopped hitting it with about 1800 HP left on the titan. Such is life. There are a lot of epics in the game. Not everyone who plays even wants one, or nine. Titan hunting is fun (despite the time and stam involved there is still a sense of hard earned achievement as the medal totals and TKP totals inch up), and is open to all currently, lets not alter it and see it become less open.

 

See my screed in the other thread that says the same thing, if you want your eyeballs to bleed.

Cool. (I'll be right around max stam!) This is just the beginning of your marathon.... load up on Monster drinks!

TKP harvester here.

 

After a while you do not have the time or stam to finish off titans. It takes hours on your own. But I kind of say having all the titans sitting around is a hazard of the current system, and an indication of falling incentive to hunt them as sale prices have dropped.

 

I kind of say sod it - leave it as it is - hell mend those who won't do more than 50.1%, they can wait. And if no-one finishes them off and they sit waiting... well that deals with the supply and demand side of things too - the new items come into the game slower precisely because the titans are being killed off more slowly.

 

Where is the problem except for the impatient?

 

Who are the impatient? The folk who secured, or hit a TKP target and don't want to spend more stam!! They'll just need to wait, as I have done when I got enough TKP and stopped hitting.

 

Nuking the titans or making them despawn with no-one getting any items is tempting, but I think would reduce the open nature of titans - the fact that they are all sitting there is very democratic to me... smaller guilds, or individuals within guilds who want to titan hunt have a great opportunity to rack up kills now. More TKP and more items for more people, introducing time limits will mean titan hunting guilds will have an advantage as they are better built for securing, and for finishing off titans, if they are forced to finish off titans, they will, but the prices to buy them will go up... which I don't really care about personally, but I imagine it is nice for some players to see they have a chance at buying these items.

 

Finally....

 

People are saving stam for Hallowe'en. Titan kills drop off before events. The Hallowe'en one is typically the biggest of the year, rapidly followed by Christmas, which is also huge - folk are conserving stam for them.

 

The seasonal titans will not sit around, I can guarantee that.

 

If you are a new guild getting into titans, or an individual wanting to get your medal upgraded fast and make good progress in TKP harvesting for your guild, now is a great time to rack up kills on these titans. Go for it and take the chance that you'll still have the stam for the upcoming events.

@joeinvegas - I like that idea, but it is a whole lot of new content and quest creation. It is a game within the game, and not a small one - lots of work. I think Levy had an idea for 2000 levels of 'mirror' content - a rerun through the areas that currently exist but with upgraded monsters and different quests, minus unique locations like Xindy or Karthak. I would not be really enthused by that - but right now I'd take it if it meant room to roam, and it would suddenly open up the top 100. Sadly I can see the 2000 new levels being done in a month (substitute absurdly short time of your choice) by someone, and there we are back to square 1. New content needed. New buffs demanded.

 

I just want to keep it simple and extract a promise of a content release at least 1xmonth. That should not be too hard, and if it is, our cow team has its resource allocation out of whack, IMHO.

 

Any suggested huge revision is going to be exactly that - huge, or at least huge looking and be intimidating to take on.

 

So just give us 25 levels/month HCS. Just 25 levels a month.

 

New buffs - none to 2000 - we are getting through 200 levels like it is nothing nowadays. I think the buff gap needs expanding again - again because that does take a lot of work, implementing new buffs. If we really think new buffs are desperately needed then introduce them as potions - in chests or from new inventables, or as new arena prizes. (How long have arena players been asking for improvements? Since before the roadmaps, and here we are...) We have a lot of great ideas in this thread, but I admit to fatigue in imagining HCS has the time to do them. We have waited on upgrades to things before. I don't want my chain yanked again - that is what the roadmaps are supposedly for - firm dates, action seen and resolved on time.

 

So commit to 25 levels a month. Keep it simple. No overhaul to the game required, no new rules to implement, just do the basic function of content creation on time, every time, every month. If 25 is too much make it 20. We are coming up on 7 years in this game. 7 years at 25/month would be 2100 levels. At 20/month it would be 1680 levels. We are right in that range, so that has been your batting average. Obviously there have been big releases of content, and there have been gaps in releases of content. The gaps suck.

 

Regular content. You know it makes sense.

I have to say I agree with dowuones. Yes we were 105K away from crystal when the timer ran out. that sucks, but it is what it is. It should just end as advertised, no confusion, no mess.

 

If BG wants to be nice and run the event until we hit crystal then end it, fair enough, but the top 100 should be frozen at the end of the alotted time, it really isn't fair for people to think they are in the top 100 when the clock  hits zero, think they are secure and medal attained, and then the event keeps running and someone knocks them out of the top 100. It isn't going to effect many players, but the ones it does will be HIGHLY irritated. Is that worth it?

 

Who knows? Maybe it is a glitch. And how sad is it that even in being potentially nice, all the cows do is get complained at. However, that would not happen in this case if they just ended the event when it was supposed to. The memory of just missing out on hitting a tier achievement would hopefully motivate more of us next time to make sure that does not happen.

 

14 million for an event that got 6 million last time shows us and the cows how low the bar was set before, even for this supposedly low value reward global.

Versair for the Win. All this crap reminds me why I should give up playing.

Did nobody point this out before we implemented it?

 

It seems HUGELY obvious to me now.

 

By allowing fragmenting we have allowed people to control markets for items.

 

If you had 75  (semi) worthless items before you can now fragment 74 and gain benefit, and have #75 hanging out there as FSP bait. (Maybe 76-85 if no-one else has them...) You will still benefit by using your 74 fragments to invent whatever the Cows decide can be made. Win/Win. Until then you can SQUEEZE the market and INFLATE prices. THIS is happening NOW!!

 

To the show me the evidence crowd I say this: Bite me.  I cannot prove this behaviour. But I ask you, my fellow players, to tell me I am wrong in key valuable item markets.

 

The proponents of this system repeatedly said it would require frequent legendary and spine events. The dissolution of items was started on its own. BEFORE replacement systems were in place. In a finite system profit would be easy to find. I would like to say I told you so............ but I did not see it happening so quickly. But it has. I argued that no benefit should be added to FF dissolution precisely to slow down this abuse.... but I did not see the full effect in advance.

 

HCS introduced fragmentation independently of the rest of their new system. Their choice. They wanted to show us players, as greedy and shortsighted, as venal and self defeating as we are.. that they are still thinking of us......

 

 

That was a HUGE mistake. It meant folk could buy then fragment many items cheaply, and then control a suddenly inflated market.

 

 

 

Did anyone see this coming? If so (other than the clever boys and girls who knew this would make them FSP, and to whom I can only bow sardonically to and hope they will give me a glass of wine) : I wish I had heard you. I did not see enough on the forum clearly enough to make me shout out against this idea.

 

Should we have seen this coming?

 

Yes. Maybe.

 

Should the game designers have seen this form of opportunism arising? Yes. It is your JOB!

 

 

 

Is my analysis wrong? (maybe)

 

 

 

Is everything fine? (maybe)

 

 

Talk back and discuss. Please.

I do not think adding more chests is a real incentive to get to ruby. I suspect that HCS realised they were way overgenerous with the chests from the third global through fifth (the abundant 500 level multi potions), and have backed off. As has been speculated, with such awesome free potions floating around they may have seen a dip in donations. They have to balance that out. 3 vs 5 at ruby isn't so bad. I still have a royal chest from last time out, and a bunch of vampiric chests too. I'd have more if I had not missed out on the last global. I cannot be the only one.

 

I knew some would equate not hitting target with game death. And thus ask for an easier time. Nope. At the first Global we were well under 1K a day population, indeed we were recovering from a low similar or worse than now in late 2011. (Go find the prognostications of doom posts from October-December that year - I believe we were hitting 400-500 here and there, depending on time of day) Numbers were picking back up healthily over 700 again by Zogrom Shroud I. Not so different from now, though I do not deny that numbers and activity are again falling, and from a player perspective it just seems a little quieter now... I attribute this to Eldevin beta testing TBH. See how the game feels when the beta closes, and then when Eldevin goes live.

 

The lowering of tier target idea. I ******* hate that idea. If we had not been pandered to in the past and had targets lowered we would not be so entitled now and be unable to imagine how to get by on free 400 level buff multi pots (the crystal tier reward we re currently on track for). Good grief. I almost feel that ruby should be all but impossible and take a huge community efort to get to. Kudos to the shoutbox incentive offerers. Droppping the targets in the past was a horrible mistake because it created an ugly precedent the cuckoos in the nest will always shout for later. Aaargh.

 

No stam use witch hunts. People are free to join in or not. During the first global there was a lot of "show us the names of folk who just hit minimum target", as if doing that was somehow wrong. At the time it seemed these folk might get PvP'd if named, for not showing enough 'community spirit'. That seemed way bizarre, and thankfully did not happen. Just because we might not make ruby does not mean we have a right to hassle folk into participating. This event caught people out - no advance warning, but that was because BG listened to folk on the forum and released this event as a result - he even avoided it being a darksun following feedback. Way to go BG for being so responsive. I'd have no issue with darksun by the way.

 

Changing tier requirements per stam bank size and stam present at the start of the global would be an idea, in FUTURE events, but would I imagine be a nightmare to code, and would be unfair to low stam bank players. The tier requirements are low to allow the global to have a shot at being democratic. It is a global. It is for ALL. In the hunt for more overall kills we are suggesting ways of making the rewards, certainly the biggest and best rewards undemocratic, available only to those who are already successful. That is a way to strangle the roots of the game. Yeah a level 75/low stam bank player (who could be level 1000 with persistance) may not have as much use for an AM, AL,LIB,CON etc. 500 pot, but can still use it currently and have a great time, a big fat rush at using the biggest multi potion in the game. But if he or she sees that there is no way to qualify for it, and others will, no matter how much effort that level 75/low stam bank player puts in, can you see how disillusioning that would be? Way to create an underclass. It tells them : "You are only worth the 300 levl pots, now run along and be grateful, you smelly low level and/or small stam banked oiks!" We are top heavy enough as it is as a community, no need to institutionalise it in our globals.

 

Maybe there should be more incentive, but an incentive is another way of saying freebie. So we want freebies for getting the freebies we get from doing an event that is free to participate in. Does anyone see that is a little tweaked?

I intensely dislike the utilitarian gray of the current forum. Feels like I am posting into a decaying industrial world on the edge of a bored imperium that last visited four generations back, but thanks us for our continued support in the form of taxes.

 

Can we have the old FS forum skin back? Is that an option?
 

Are there other forum presentation options I have not found? (On account of not looking and simply complaining first!?)

1st I'd like to make the VERY unpopular suggestion that the skill trees be revamped before level 1600 !! skills are introduced. We should have to choose what path we want and even have to put points into skills that we ordinarily would not want. We need to quit getting a "win button" in the buff selection category from level 800 up.

Skill trees do need to be reworked. I do not like the idea of specialisation as demonstrated in SS2 (I loved being a clone and taking all - at least to 150 when I gave up), but we had very workable trees in att/def/specials to level 700. If we are thinking about inserting some skills lower (gloat/honour - anti deflect has been suggested) in the skill trees, maybe we can redo the trees for all skills - makes sense for extractor 2 to be linked to extractor does it not?

This will minimise high level players being able to benefit from ALL buffs as they come along - the game suffers when the elite keep profiting - if trees make the new sexy buffs dependent upon some points in old unsexy, potion superceded buffs, then high level players will have to think about their options, and about which buff market to exploit, rather than now - when they can do what they want, and take all new skills and make shedloads of FSP before the herd catches up. (Herd speaking) The breakers of new ground will still corner markets, and, if they have chosen wisely in their skill points, maybe all, but it is another WIN button in the game, and one that has not been addressed.

On the other hand - ignore this post - I want to enjoy this unresolved WIN button if I get there. Buff system problems? Nothing to see here, move along.