New Season Suggestion: Remove ToA Items

[zonks]

I'm not sure what the plan is for the new season or when that may happen but since its goal is to bring back more players and hopefully inject new excitement in the server. I have a suggestion I think could help bring back players. Most people believe that ToA ML is what caused people to stop playing live back in the day but after playing on Eden which has ToA items/bonuses but no ML, I think its both ToA items/bonuses and MLs.

I think the need to template as much ToA items into your template to get the most stats is a need and if you do not do it, you are at a bigger disadvantage over someone that has. Trying to hit max stats, resists, and other bonuses is a challenge and not everyone has the time to do this. I think the diff between a very good template vs someone with an okay template should only be a small benefit and not a great advantage.

The same goes for running special charges from ToA items to get as much benefit as you can and repeat using it to find fights. Not everyone has time to go find these items or want to micro manage so many things to just go out and solo, 2 man, etc. Again should be a small benefit and not a great one.

I think what this causes is more casual players to find solo or small group fighting very difficult vs others who spend way more time in the game getting as many advantages as they can. This then drives them to run with the zerg, switch to playing in lower level BGs or just not playing anymore.

I could be wrong about this and I know many people have spent a lot of time getting items and the perfect template but if it is a cause of people not wanting to play or sticking to zerg or lower BGs, I think it is something to consider. And I know a change like that maybe too far for what Eden is aiming for. But this is just my opinion from a more casual player who spends a few hours a day after work when I can.

[Doublefrost]

The way I see is that the devs decided to shorten the road to 50 and increase the time needed to template up. This total pve needed seems to be a reasonable amount to me. You can't make everyone happy. People who only have 1-2 hours per day will not be able to make more than a few temp'ed 50s by this point. As the devs have discovered with Celestius, some pve is part of a successful doac server.
However, there is a problem that NA times can't field enough people for raiding. I know that the devs are working on this. An idea I have is to award 10 universal currency every time you die in rvr, and reward up to 10 universal currency for killing someone in rvr (10 divided up by the people who participated in the killing). This would solve the issue with people who don't have a single temp'ed toon to do the solo/duo/small/8 quests for currency, because dying is easy to do in rvr. And giving people suicidal tendencies would help soften the generic uptightness people have about dying in a rvr zone. The bad side effect is that this might make people stop raiding.

[zonks]

I think the issues with not being able to find enough people to raid is just an issue as a result of many people already leaving. The goal is to avoid getting to this point and hoping to keep people around. I think the more we adopt from live like Toa stuff is making the game more complex and less fun for new players and for players who cannot play as often to learn the complexities. I think its a common issue with retail MMOs that keep having to add more and more new content and systems to the game that for the max level players is great but can be less fun for new players. I think pre ToA is where it was at for having enough systems but also simple enough to master. Class balance should stay pre ToA and everything else can bring in newer features like NF zones, better crafting systems, sieging systems and so on. But that is just my opinion.

[Fin / Valar]

I agree. Remove Toa items/bonus, remove so many different currencies, make it easier to get credits (or better remove the credits system or at least make them account/realm wide so you just need to make those awful raids once), remove RR5 RA because they are totally unbalanced. Put another endgame medium difficulty dungeon together with sobekite (high difficulty) with a 24hr timer to give some interesting but not OP rogs, remove xp and rp off from BGs, stick to one patch level, not like now that stuff is taken from different patch levels without any order and reason but following some random instructions from players. And above all... do not mix PVE with PVP, or mix it with extreme caution, because it is so frustrating when enemy players just wait for you to be engaged with mobs to inc, there is no fair fight at all in this, it just makes one want to log off lol.

Then you can keep everything else, even the Epic and Drakes quests that are a real pain but can be done, and the eventual second season will probably have a better start and more longevity than this one.

Ah yes, and make events! Events are what can keep a 20+ yo game alive, not some odd siege changes that, as good as they can be, they just took too many time and effort to work properly and in the end they were not worth it population-wise, imho.

[Vladamire]

I agree. Remove Toa items/bonus, remove so many different currencies, make it easier to get credits (or better remove the credits system or at least make them account/realm wide so you just need to make those awful raids once), remove RR5 RA because they are totally unbalanced. Put another endgame medium difficulty dungeon together with sobekite (high difficulty) with a 24hr timer to give some interesting but not OP rogs, remove xp and rp off from BGs, stick to one patch level, not like now that stuff is taken from different patch levels without any order and reason but following some random instructions from players. And above all... do not mix PVE with PVP, or mix it with extreme caution, because it is so frustrating when enemy players just wait for you to be engaged with mobs to inc, there is no fair fight at all in this, it just makes one want to log off lol.

Then you can keep everything else, even the Epic and Drakes quests that are a real pain but can be done, and the eventual second season will probably have a better start and more longevity than this one.

Ah yes, and make events! Events are what can keep a 20+ yo game alive, not some odd siege changes that, as good as they can be, they just took too many time and effort to work properly and in the end they were not worth it population-wise, imho.

Leave xp off and rp off alone. You have your crappy garbage frontiers. Some people only like the battlegrounds because garbage pve frontiers doesn't offer anything.

[Fin / Valar]

I agree. Remove Toa items/bonus, remove so many different currencies, make it easier to get credits (or better remove the credits system or at least make them account/realm wide so you just need to make those awful raids once), remove RR5 RA because they are totally unbalanced. Put another endgame medium difficulty dungeon together with sobekite (high difficulty) with a 24hr timer to give some interesting but not OP rogs, remove xp and rp off from BGs, stick to one patch level, not like now that stuff is taken from different patch levels without any order and reason but following some random instructions from players. And above all... do not mix PVE with PVP, or mix it with extreme caution, because it is so frustrating when enemy players just wait for you to be engaged with mobs to inc, there is no fair fight at all in this, it just makes one want to log off lol.

Then you can keep everything else, even the Epic and Drakes quests that are a real pain but can be done, and the eventual second season will probably have a better start and more longevity than this one.

Ah yes, and make events! Events are what can keep a 20+ yo game alive, not some odd siege changes that, as good as they can be, they just took too many time and effort to work properly and in the end they were not worth it population-wise, imho.

Leave xp off and rp off alone. You have your crappy garbage frontiers. Some people only like the battlegrounds because garbage pve frontiers doesn't offer anything.

Frontiers are garbage because of PvE (that's why I said that first of all they MUST remove the PvE/PvP mixing in NF leaving only something like POC, a rotating DF and little else) and because of people sticking in the BGs instead of doing some "real" PvP/RvR... anyway it could be possible to leave one or two BGs with lvl and xp off, but not the entire set from 1 to 49, because BGs exist to give some more fun in exp not to let templated and RA capped people farm expers and tell each others how strong they are lol

[Megrim]

The way I see is that the devs decided to shorten the road to 50 and increase the time needed to template up. This total pve needed seems to be a reasonable amount to me. You can't make everyone happy. People who only have 1-2 hours per day will not be able to make more than a few temp'ed 50s by this point. As the devs have discovered with Celestius, some pve is part of a successful doac server.
However, there is a problem that NA times can't field enough people for raiding. I know that the devs are working on this. An idea I have is to award 10 universal currency every time you die in rvr, and reward up to 10 universal currency for killing someone in rvr (10 divided up by the people who participated in the killing). This would solve the issue with people who don't have a single temp'ed toon to do the solo/duo/small/8 quests for currency, because dying is easy to do in rvr. And giving people suicidal tendencies would help soften the generic uptightness people have about dying in a rvr zone. The bad side effect is that this might make people stop raiding.

Indeed, i think currency and raid system was good setup for the beginning, people that joined later the server struggled because very few ppl do still PVE as it is not needed when the chars are leveled and temped. Imho you don ´t need more then 2 50s chars on this shard, as it has seasons anyway there is no need to have so many twinks. Maybe 1-2 Chars for rvr and one for farming in the beginning when both rvr chars are not able or good for PVE farming.
So ppl who might join later shall have the chance at some point where the majority only does RvR to buy everything like encounters with gold or BPs for example, helping new ppl to close the gap. Devs already noticed that problem and made it easier to get encounter credits.

The thing what could be done better is the leveling system, doing these kill tasks is boring as hell and for many chars not viable, I leveled a bard solo this way and it was a pain. For season 2 I would like to see, EXP loot, EXP scrolls and more level spots with decent respawn timers and maybe some bonus xp for leveling in frontiers for example and a bonus system that gives exp when killing some mobs of same mob type, for example when you killed 20 insects you get a boost.

About the toa stats, I think it ´s ok, most shards have the old stats system, so it ´s nice to have something different on Eden.

[Vladamire]

I agree. Remove Toa items/bonus, remove so many different currencies, make it easier to get credits (or better remove the credits system or at least make them account/realm wide so you just need to make those awful raids once), remove RR5 RA because they are totally unbalanced. Put another endgame medium difficulty dungeon together with sobekite (high difficulty) with a 24hr timer to give some interesting but not OP rogs, remove xp and rp off from BGs, stick to one patch level, not like now that stuff is taken from different patch levels without any order and reason but following some random instructions from players. And above all... do not mix PVE with PVP, or mix it with extreme caution, because it is so frustrating when enemy players just wait for you to be engaged with mobs to inc, there is no fair fight at all in this, it just makes one want to log off lol.

Then you can keep everything else, even the Epic and Drakes quests that are a real pain but can be done, and the eventual second season will probably have a better start and more longevity than this one.

Ah yes, and make events! Events are what can keep a 20+ yo game alive, not some odd siege changes that, as good as they can be, they just took too many time and effort to work properly and in the end they were not worth it population-wise, imho.

Leave xp off and rp off alone. You have your crappy garbage frontiers. Some people only like the battlegrounds because garbage pve frontiers doesn't offer anything.

Frontiers are garbage because of PvE (that's why I said that first of all they MUST remove the PvE/PvP mixing in NF leaving only something like POC, a rotating DF and little else) and because of people sticking in the BGs instead of doing some "real" PvP/RvR... anyway it could be possible to leave one or two BGs with lvl and xp off, but not the entire set from 1 to 49, because BGs exist to give some more fun in exp not to let templated and RA capped people farm expers and tell each others how strong they are lol

It's not about flexing on people in the bg's. It's the point that the bg's are more fun than anything you could ever do in NF. NF sucks, it always has and always will. I'd rather level up a few characters in different bg's and enjoy what little time I get to game, than to ever step foot into NF ever again.

[zonks]

I think some like the BGs over level 50 is not the map itself but the simpler times. You do not need a crazy template or run charges/pots to compete and still have fun. Most classes are not overpowered or cast super fast since very limited on how many toa bonuses they have at that time and lower RR abilities and so on. The more complex it gets the fewer will enjoy it. Some will really like it and master it but they are the minority and will also not have fun when there is not enough population. I myself have decided to just take a break because lvl 50 RVR is kinda not fun at this time, on multiple lvl 50 char. Going to wait and see what is in store for season 2 and also make sure I dont lose my house.

[Fin / Valar]

This is my point.... the complications of endgame, both for pvp and pve, for lvl 50 toons are what made people leave the server, imho. Just remove all those useless complications, toa bonuses, currencies and so on, and things will be much better in endgame, especially for small-scale rvr