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Constructive Criticism
Winnower
✭✭✭✭
Constructive Criticism Thread #1:
I really enjoy this game, and have 2 long term Imperial edition subscriptions as a consequence. I already have 1 V12 character, 1 V2 character, and 14 other characters on the NA server, ranging from level 4 to level 20, each of which have been at least through the initial Coldharbour experience and have made it to the basic zones.
Through the course of my playing, which started the first day of early access (not counting beta stuff here), I’ve developed what I hope will be some useful observations regarding the game.
It’s clear that the company has been working hard, making constant adjustments. I haven’t seen groups of bots in weeks; neither in delves nor outside flying around from crafting node to crafting node. Quests have been fixed; some more have been broken, and some of *those* have been fixed. Various nerfs and buffs to things have occurred, and a host of other things are going on.
Here are my thoughts on some things I think need being paid attention to:
Item#1: ‘Tis better to buff than to nerf. Classes, some whole skill lines, some types of builds (like stamina based builds), some individual skills are out of balance. Overall, I believe that you’ll make a better game and make more people happier if you buff the weaker ones to balance the game than to nerf the stronger ones.
Clearly there are one or two skills that did need to be nerfed a bit. But if you can strengthen the balance rather than nerfing the balance I think that it would be better.
Item#2: Weapon based abilities clearly need some upward balancing to be as viable as spells. Hand in hand with this, stamina builds need some upward balancing to be as viable as magicka builds. Tanking builds need a little more *something* to be more than just survivability. I believe that a decent AoE taunt would answer that call. A decent tanking ultimate as an “oh heck” survivability button would round it out fully. There are reams of threads on this, I don’t need to belabor it.
Item#3: It’s not wrong to let some classes be better healers, better tanks, or better dps. No single character needs to be able to do *everything*. But each class should have some thing that they do as well or better than anyone else that is useful in groups and/or trials.
Item#4: Hirelings. At level 3, I am theoretically able to log in every 12 hours and reap the benefits of the hireling. But there simply isn’t enough time in my schedule of life to do so.
I put in a lot of my free time hours, but when I get up in the mornings early to go to work, I don’t have time to log in and go through the toons to activate the hirelings.
Plus, the 12 hour rotation as it stands appears vulnerable to time creep; if I log in at 6 am, then I can’t get them until 6:01 pm. And then 6:02 am – except that no one is that precise, and so it creeps faster in units of 5 or 10 minutes and rapidly it’s past the point where I can be there and so I lose cycles frequently.
It would very nice if we could reap the benefits as intended without unduly timing our life around it. I can understand why you don’t want people not logging in for a month and then doing so just to accumulate the stuff all at once; if for no other reason that it’s stacking up the mail system.
OTOH people are holding things in mail a lot anyway because of the bank / inventory situation. Maybe it would be possible to have mails come for 24 hours, twice without logging in. Or accumulate over a 2-3 day period. Or change the way it works. Maybe at level 3 you get twice as much once a day? Not sure what is possible, but some change to it would be nice.
Item#5: The new plush guar. I own a palamino horse. I have 2 imperial editions, and the explorer pack. I’m not ever; Ever; I mean *never* going to buy an out of game item in order to obtain the digital in-game thingy. I’m a dedicated player and a fan, and I’m telling you this is not the direction to go in. Not going to spend $100 on the books either. I’m more than half a century old, and I have no reason to accumulate dust-gathering bric-a-brac for a game in my house. I’ll buy in-game store stuff and spend real money on it. But I’m not shelling out for plushies and sketchbooks.
Item#6: Guild stores. At the beginning, I thought this was a good idea, just like I’m sure most of the game designers did. Unfortunately, for a few reasons, they aren’t working out. And I don’t think that the upcoming listed changes are going to help.
Reason#1: In non-purely trade guilds, I don’t like selling a lot of stuff to my friends and guildies. I’m more likely to give it to them.
Reason#2: Any fee, any fee at all, assigned to guild stores means that if I can sell the same stuff to a guaranteed buyer via guild chats in trade guilds, or general chat to the whole zone then I’m going to sell the same and make more money or cheaper and sell faster than I can in a guild store where I have to wait for someone to decide they want that thing. And my market is much smaller in a guild store no matter what.
Reason#2a: Making auctionable kiosks isn’t going to help that. As others have noted, just check the prices on the auctionable kiosks – those folks paid for that use, and have to make up the difference. Stand near one and sell what you have that they have for a bit less.
Having part of the fee go to the guilds isn’t going to help. Frankly, letting the guild master or some officers make money off a trade guild when the sellers and buyers don’t get an even share of it is just another way to make a few folks rich and others … not. It will also lead more to folks wanting to make that share themselves and therefore even more (and likely smaller) guilds, fractioning the market all the more.
Reason#3: Given the proliferation of selling in zone and guild chats, anything short of making alliance wide auction houses available to all is simply not going to make a significant impact on how things are done currently. And making alliance wide auction houses would allow fairer competition, more stabilized prices, and a better buying and selling experience for everyone. Ultimately I expect more people would enjoy the game more if there was an alliance-wide auction house that charged no more than a 1% - 5% fee for posting things to it. Make the fee dependent on time posted in the auction house, say 1% for a 24-hour posting, 2.5% for a 3-day posting and 5% for a 7-day posting and there you go.
Reason#4: Guild stores come and go in participation and interest. Guild hopping to different trade guilds is time consuming and frequently frustrating, and it takes away from the guild experience of being in guilds with folks you enjoy the company of that have other goals than being a trade guild. Trade guilds are boring and I have only 5 guilds that I can be a member of on one account, and they take up valuable room for other community building, whether they are RP guilds, PvE or PvP content guilds, or just social guilds.
Item#7: Difficulty. I am one of those people who enjoyed the boss mobs like Doshia pre-nerf. I prefer default content to encourage grouping; if not 4 or more folks, then 2-3. I *liked* that VR content was more difficult than 1-50. The current difficulty of default VR content is overall, too easy. It’s not right that I should be able to solo those skull&crossbones mini-world bosses on level. 3 people are sufficient to do a dolmen on level. Public dungeons in VR content can be done now by 2-3 people *easily* on level, or soloed if you are several levels higher.
I left SW:TOR because it became the Cartel Market game. I left LoTRO to come here because they nerfed the difficulty of all content to the lowest common denominator possible. At the end of the day, games are fun to the extent that they provide a reasonable challenge which results in an actual feeling of accomplishment when you are done.
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” -Gandhi
Summary:
As I started off saying, I thoroughly enjoy this game. Providing feedback and constructive criticism is the best way I know to ensure that I and others continue to be entertaining by it.
P.S.: The same day I write and plan to post this, I notice all the broo-ha-ha about *the Steam Dog*. I've already posted my somewhat irate response to that fiasco in the official discussion thread about it. No brownie points for Z today.
I really enjoy this game, and have 2 long term Imperial edition subscriptions as a consequence. I already have 1 V12 character, 1 V2 character, and 14 other characters on the NA server, ranging from level 4 to level 20, each of which have been at least through the initial Coldharbour experience and have made it to the basic zones.
Through the course of my playing, which started the first day of early access (not counting beta stuff here), I’ve developed what I hope will be some useful observations regarding the game.
It’s clear that the company has been working hard, making constant adjustments. I haven’t seen groups of bots in weeks; neither in delves nor outside flying around from crafting node to crafting node. Quests have been fixed; some more have been broken, and some of *those* have been fixed. Various nerfs and buffs to things have occurred, and a host of other things are going on.
Here are my thoughts on some things I think need being paid attention to:
Item#1: ‘Tis better to buff than to nerf. Classes, some whole skill lines, some types of builds (like stamina based builds), some individual skills are out of balance. Overall, I believe that you’ll make a better game and make more people happier if you buff the weaker ones to balance the game than to nerf the stronger ones.
Clearly there are one or two skills that did need to be nerfed a bit. But if you can strengthen the balance rather than nerfing the balance I think that it would be better.
Item#2: Weapon based abilities clearly need some upward balancing to be as viable as spells. Hand in hand with this, stamina builds need some upward balancing to be as viable as magicka builds. Tanking builds need a little more *something* to be more than just survivability. I believe that a decent AoE taunt would answer that call. A decent tanking ultimate as an “oh heck” survivability button would round it out fully. There are reams of threads on this, I don’t need to belabor it.
Item#3: It’s not wrong to let some classes be better healers, better tanks, or better dps. No single character needs to be able to do *everything*. But each class should have some thing that they do as well or better than anyone else that is useful in groups and/or trials.
Item#4: Hirelings. At level 3, I am theoretically able to log in every 12 hours and reap the benefits of the hireling. But there simply isn’t enough time in my schedule of life to do so.
I put in a lot of my free time hours, but when I get up in the mornings early to go to work, I don’t have time to log in and go through the toons to activate the hirelings.
Plus, the 12 hour rotation as it stands appears vulnerable to time creep; if I log in at 6 am, then I can’t get them until 6:01 pm. And then 6:02 am – except that no one is that precise, and so it creeps faster in units of 5 or 10 minutes and rapidly it’s past the point where I can be there and so I lose cycles frequently.
It would very nice if we could reap the benefits as intended without unduly timing our life around it. I can understand why you don’t want people not logging in for a month and then doing so just to accumulate the stuff all at once; if for no other reason that it’s stacking up the mail system.
OTOH people are holding things in mail a lot anyway because of the bank / inventory situation. Maybe it would be possible to have mails come for 24 hours, twice without logging in. Or accumulate over a 2-3 day period. Or change the way it works. Maybe at level 3 you get twice as much once a day? Not sure what is possible, but some change to it would be nice.
Item#5: The new plush guar. I own a palamino horse. I have 2 imperial editions, and the explorer pack. I’m not ever; Ever; I mean *never* going to buy an out of game item in order to obtain the digital in-game thingy. I’m a dedicated player and a fan, and I’m telling you this is not the direction to go in. Not going to spend $100 on the books either. I’m more than half a century old, and I have no reason to accumulate dust-gathering bric-a-brac for a game in my house. I’ll buy in-game store stuff and spend real money on it. But I’m not shelling out for plushies and sketchbooks.
Item#6: Guild stores. At the beginning, I thought this was a good idea, just like I’m sure most of the game designers did. Unfortunately, for a few reasons, they aren’t working out. And I don’t think that the upcoming listed changes are going to help.
Reason#1: In non-purely trade guilds, I don’t like selling a lot of stuff to my friends and guildies. I’m more likely to give it to them.
Reason#2: Any fee, any fee at all, assigned to guild stores means that if I can sell the same stuff to a guaranteed buyer via guild chats in trade guilds, or general chat to the whole zone then I’m going to sell the same and make more money or cheaper and sell faster than I can in a guild store where I have to wait for someone to decide they want that thing. And my market is much smaller in a guild store no matter what.
Reason#2a: Making auctionable kiosks isn’t going to help that. As others have noted, just check the prices on the auctionable kiosks – those folks paid for that use, and have to make up the difference. Stand near one and sell what you have that they have for a bit less.
Having part of the fee go to the guilds isn’t going to help. Frankly, letting the guild master or some officers make money off a trade guild when the sellers and buyers don’t get an even share of it is just another way to make a few folks rich and others … not. It will also lead more to folks wanting to make that share themselves and therefore even more (and likely smaller) guilds, fractioning the market all the more.
Reason#3: Given the proliferation of selling in zone and guild chats, anything short of making alliance wide auction houses available to all is simply not going to make a significant impact on how things are done currently. And making alliance wide auction houses would allow fairer competition, more stabilized prices, and a better buying and selling experience for everyone. Ultimately I expect more people would enjoy the game more if there was an alliance-wide auction house that charged no more than a 1% - 5% fee for posting things to it. Make the fee dependent on time posted in the auction house, say 1% for a 24-hour posting, 2.5% for a 3-day posting and 5% for a 7-day posting and there you go.
Reason#4: Guild stores come and go in participation and interest. Guild hopping to different trade guilds is time consuming and frequently frustrating, and it takes away from the guild experience of being in guilds with folks you enjoy the company of that have other goals than being a trade guild. Trade guilds are boring and I have only 5 guilds that I can be a member of on one account, and they take up valuable room for other community building, whether they are RP guilds, PvE or PvP content guilds, or just social guilds.
Item#7: Difficulty. I am one of those people who enjoyed the boss mobs like Doshia pre-nerf. I prefer default content to encourage grouping; if not 4 or more folks, then 2-3. I *liked* that VR content was more difficult than 1-50. The current difficulty of default VR content is overall, too easy. It’s not right that I should be able to solo those skull&crossbones mini-world bosses on level. 3 people are sufficient to do a dolmen on level. Public dungeons in VR content can be done now by 2-3 people *easily* on level, or soloed if you are several levels higher.
I left SW:TOR because it became the Cartel Market game. I left LoTRO to come here because they nerfed the difficulty of all content to the lowest common denominator possible. At the end of the day, games are fun to the extent that they provide a reasonable challenge which results in an actual feeling of accomplishment when you are done.
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” -Gandhi
Summary:
As I started off saying, I thoroughly enjoy this game. Providing feedback and constructive criticism is the best way I know to ensure that I and others continue to be entertaining by it.
P.S.: The same day I write and plan to post this, I notice all the broo-ha-ha about *the Steam Dog*. I've already posted my somewhat irate response to that fiasco in the official discussion thread about it. No brownie points for Z today.
VR14 Templar, VR14 DK, VR8 DK, VR7 NB, VR1 Sorcerer;
All 3 Alliances;
2 Pre-order Imperial Accounts, yes that means 16 characters on NA alone
All 3 Alliances;
2 Pre-order Imperial Accounts, yes that means 16 characters on NA alone
2
