Feedback Current Expansion.. What went wrong ?

[Barmy]

Ok people .. this is going to turn into a bit of a long winded ***** fest , but lets start off with what was done right when Ballards of Zimara was released.
At the start of this expac I saw a lot of players return that haven't played in years and it was reasonably easy for them to get back into the game and get
into heroic zones as the resolve requirements were a lot easier to reach this year compared to last expac where it was a struggle for many.
So.. it started well with many people coming back and doing pick up groups etc but sadly we are 5-6 months in and now the games turned back into a
ghost town in my time zone with a lot of folks quitting again or taking a break..
Now for the complaints that I have heard a lot of people bring up for their reasons.

1) Premium Edition rip off.. with previous premium editions if you forked out your hard earned dollars you got a celestial mount/merc etc that was worth
using all your training pots on and would be good for the rest of the xpac and the chance of an upgrade would be very slim unless you got lucky with a
rare raid/heroic drop . This time around you could research something better after a few weeks and have to level it up from scratch again which was a big
kick in the teeth for those that had splashed out on the premium and felt like a huge waste of money.

2) Chrono Zone nerf .. Good idea originally . It was nice to revisit these old zones again and many people would run the weeklies and many on multiple alts
to farm the coins for reasonable upgrades . Then the zones you could farm the coins in got nerfed and the coin amounts reduced . All the pick up groups
stopped and despite many posts on these forums the answer was not to respond to the players but to introduce a pay to win pack on the market place
instead . You dont introduce something to a game , remove it and turn it into a full time grind or charge dollars for it instead and not expect that to leave a
bad taste in your players mouths.

3) Economy/Broker limits/Krono Prices.. Where do we start on this ? Certain people are paying 10 billion plat plus now per krono and some are buying as
many as you can sell. How the hell can you make 10 billion plat with a 50 million broker limit in a reasonable time ? Plat seems worthless and people wont
generally sell masters for plat but will either trade for masters they need or expect krono's for them. I would like to see the broker limit raised again so at
least there's a way to make these billions of plat that krono's are going for now.. Or at least look into some of the people spending 100's of billion on
buying up all the krono they can as something fishy is going on there. There's no way an average player could make enough plat in a month to buy a krono
to pay for their sub for the month . Well not that I can see anyway.

4) In game currency/coins/status etc.. Way to many types. Want to upgrade your adorns you need to do chrono zones. Want to upgrade your weapons you need masks and marks. The grind is real and i've seen a lot of people just lose interest out of pure frustration. It wouldnt be hard to add a merchant that would swap 100 heroic coins for 10 raid ones or be able to swap a million plat for a million status or whatever . Swap your raid coins for masks or chrono coins .
As it is now with returning players they go and farm one thing then you tell them..but now you got to go farm this to upgrade for that.. and now you got
to go and do all this stuff on top of the other stuff as well. When all they want to do is try and catch up and not be burden so they can get groups and raid.
Too many different coin/currency grinds. There has to be a better way.

5) Merge all the live servers.. Nuff said.

6) Darkpaw Rising .. mmm .. I dont know anybody in game that said they enjoyed the original Splitpaw and this new zone seems to be the straw that broke
the camels back and since this game update came out hardly anyone I know has logged in. I can see the appeal for some but I dont find it enjoyable content.
The contested zone last xpac was great and was full of worthwhile upgrades and rewards and people wanted to log in and farm it. I've basically seen zero
interest in anyone doing this zone and its not going to hold up as content for people for the next few months.

At the end of the day these are the main issues that seem to come up when im chatting with people in discord about the state of the game and the reasons
they cant be bothered with it anymore and are cancelling subs. It's a shame as it did seem pretty promising at the start.. That is all .. Peace and love xxx

 

[Evilary]

I agree with the mount fiasco. I bought the 2nd tier expansion and the mount we got from the tradeskill questline was better. The only real reward that I received that was nice was the Tree house item that teleports you to the Splendor Skye Aerie town area directly. Prestige home looks nice but just 2 big rooms and a teleport to a little island that isn't directly connected to the rest. I personally like to decorate rooms so not so much fun.

Didn't do the Chrono zones so I cannot say much on those except I did see a lot of complaints about the nerf on the forums.

The broker limits, economy, krono prices aren't tied to this expansion except it seem like more plat was duped since it was released. Went from 2-4 billion for a krono to over 10 billion in the span of a few months. There isn't any way that amount of plat was made honestly.

In game currency I don't really see it being too bad except for the grinding, grinding, grinding to get all of it. That has really burnt players out. I think the Year of Darkpaw was a nice idea in theory but they added too much grinding to it for it to be enjoyable for most anyone.

Merging some servers might be a good idea. Maj'Dul seems populated enough so I don't see a need there yet.

I just came back last June from several years away and really enjoyed the tradeskill side of the expansion Renewal of Ro and the game update with it. Really enjoyed Shattered Unrest once it was released later in the year. I went into the Darkpaw Rising game update expecting nice quests and stuff and was really disappointed. I haven't went inside there with any of my alts and my main was only in there long enough to realize it was way too much work to unlock bosses on the adventure side and the tradeskill side wasn't much better. I got the weekly overseer quest unlocked and haven't been back.

I missed out on several nice expansions from the looks of it when I was gone. Come back to my first expansion being a meh...and grind grind grind fest that is really starting to burn me out.

 

[Sedient]

7. Failure to adjust content, mechanics, & class issues arising from or exacerbated by dwindling population. i don't play because i can't solo heal effectively as a fury. Feel free to explain how awesome you (whomever responds) are and how I'm doing it all wrong but the bottom line is that some heal classes are favored over others. at this point with the grind involved i simply can't invest the time and frankly money to get another class up to speed. From my perspective it simply isn't worth it. There are some simple changes to fury and other classes that could compensate for some (not all) of the population issues.

8. Re Server Merges. Merge Live servers and launch new live server without transfers. I'd rather grind with everyone back to 130, you also might find a dupe if there is one.

 

[Evilary]

Don't forget to add in solo dungeons, the mercenary healing is beyond useless. If not for the buff and maybe an occasional dispel, it would be easier to just run the dungeon without the mercenary since you have to rely on the Field Medic adornment. I do wonder how free to play players who bought the expansion would make it through since you have to be a member to get the panda rewards.

 

[Bentenn]

7. Failure to adjust content, mechanics, & class issues arising from or exacerbated by dwindling population. i don't play because i can't solo heal effectively as a fury. Feel free to explain how awesome you (whomever responds) are and how I'm doing it all wrong but the bottom line is that some heal classes are favored over others. at this point with the grind involved i simply can't invest the time and frankly money to get another class up to speed. From my perspective it simply isn't worth it. There are some simple changes to fury and other classes that could compensate for some (not all) of the population issues.

8. Re Server Merges. Merge Live servers and launch new live server without transfers. I'd rather grind with everyone back to 130, you also might find a dupe if there is one.

The only way to make all healers the same is to raise the HP of people exponentially or give everyone wards and if you have multiple wards as say a fury then again you're the premium class bringing all you do to the table. Raids still use furies believe it or not and furies can solo heal everything except H3. H3 is simply a chrol issue with how he does damage and mitigation in the zones period, and if it weren't for that reason then yea furies could solo heal that as well. He may say otherwise, but it's really not that hard to see lol.

 

[Bentenn]

Ok people .. this is going to turn into a bit of a long winded ***** fest , but lets start off with what was done right when Ballards of Zimara was released.
At the start of this expac I saw a lot of players return that haven't played in years and it was reasonably easy for them to get back into the game and get
into heroic zones as the resolve requirements were a lot easier to reach this year compared to last expac where it was a struggle for many.
So.. it started well with many people coming back and doing pick up groups etc but sadly we are 5-6 months in and now the games turned back into a
ghost town in my time zone with a lot of folks quitting again or taking a break..
Now for the complaints that I have heard a lot of people bring up for their reasons.

1) Premium Edition rip off.. with previous premium editions if you forked out your hard earned dollars you got a celestial mount/merc etc that was worth
using all your training pots on and would be good for the rest of the xpac and the chance of an upgrade would be very slim unless you got lucky with a
rare raid/heroic drop . This time around you could research something better after a few weeks and have to level it up from scratch again which was a big
kick in the teeth for those that had splashed out on the premium and felt like a huge waste of money.

2) Chrono Zone nerf .. Good idea originally . It was nice to revisit these old zones again and many people would run the weeklies and many on multiple alts
to farm the coins for reasonable upgrades . Then the zones you could farm the coins in got nerfed and the coin amounts reduced . All the pick up groups
stopped and despite many posts on these forums the answer was not to respond to the players but to introduce a pay to win pack on the market place
instead . You dont introduce something to a game , remove it and turn it into a full time grind or charge dollars for it instead and not expect that to leave a
bad taste in your players mouths.

3) Economy/Broker limits/Krono Prices.. Where do we start on this ? Certain people are paying 10 billion plat plus now per krono and some are buying as
many as you can sell. How the hell can you make 10 billion plat with a 50 million broker limit in a reasonable time ? Plat seems worthless and people wont
generally sell masters for plat but will either trade for masters they need or expect krono's for them. I would like to see the broker limit raised again so at
least there's a way to make these billions of plat that krono's are going for now.. Or at least look into some of the people spending 100's of billion on
buying up all the krono they can as something fishy is going on there. There's no way an average player could make enough plat in a month to buy a krono
to pay for their sub for the month . Well not that I can see anyway.

4) In game currency/coins/status etc.. Way to many types. Want to upgrade your adorns you need to do chrono zones. Want to upgrade your weapons you need masks and marks. The grind is real and i've seen a lot of people just lose interest out of pure frustration. It wouldnt be hard to add a merchant that would swap 100 heroic coins for 10 raid ones or be able to swap a million plat for a million status or whatever . Swap your raid coins for masks or chrono coins .
As it is now with returning players they go and farm one thing then you tell them..but now you got to go farm this to upgrade for that.. and now you got
to go and do all this stuff on top of the other stuff as well. When all they want to do is try and catch up and not be burden so they can get groups and raid.
Too many different coin/currency grinds. There has to be a better way.

5) Merge all the live servers.. Nuff said.

6) Darkpaw Rising .. mmm .. I dont know anybody in game that said they enjoyed the original Splitpaw and this new zone seems to be the straw that broke
the camels back and since this game update came out hardly anyone I know has logged in. I can see the appeal for some but I dont find it enjoyable content.
The contested zone last xpac was great and was full of worthwhile upgrades and rewards and people wanted to log in and farm it. I've basically seen zero
interest in anyone doing this zone and its not going to hold up as content for people for the next few months.

At the end of the day these are the main issues that seem to come up when im chatting with people in discord about the state of the game and the reasons
they cant be bothered with it anymore and are cancelling subs. It's a shame as it did seem pretty promising at the start.. That is all .. Peace and love xxx

2nd point was the most on point thing you talked of. A certain dev simply got upset people found a way to max out currency and it wasn't "supposed to be that way". Who cares. They put in an obscene amount of time to make sure we can never finish runes on multiple toons basically. They just need to make the quest top at completing a zone and giving you 130 coins, but you have to do the whole zone. Allowed to be completed by multiple toons and still trade currency and people would run them again.

The 4th point i had suggested on the old forums but they obviously have zero plans for that as the made more currency this expac lol.

Don't merge all live servers.. Lag is horrible enough at times lately and if you think your server is dead, then move servers.

Mount thing happened a lot faster than normal with the research function, but mounts always get upraded.

I personally don't like any of the researchers really, but hey some do and some don't.

 

[Kenn]

I remember at the Sony event in Vegas when Krono was about to launch, John Smedley said, I hope they sell those for a butt load. Boy was he right, but 400 plat was a lot back then.

I logged in to play Darkpaw and spent 2 hours running in circles in those caverns. That was frustrating and I logged out. Haven't logged in since. I'll play the Origin server instead.

 

[Sedient]

The only way to make all healers the same is to raise the HP of people exponentially or give everyone wards and if you have multiple wards as say a fury then again you're the premium class bringing all you do to the table. Raids still use furies believe it or not and furies can solo heal everything except H3. H3 is simply a chrol issue with how he does damage and mitigation in the zones period, and if it weren't for that reason then yea furies could solo heal that as well. He may say otherwise, but it's really not that hard to see lol.

Obviously I'm partial to furies and you are correct, I could and did solo heal h2 and raids. It isn't always pretty due to the dynamics of individual fights but my point was more that as an example furies need a few tweaks like fixing protective instinct and a couple other changes that would fix furies. Furies bring their own advantages and disadvantages and they aren't completely broken. There are other classes, mechanics and content that contribute to declining population. The alternative is the current. I'm not playing. I'm not trying to be obtuse but between everything else in the list and not being a first choice for whatever pugs might exist makes the game not worth logging into. I do love the game or maybe now just the idea and potential of it. Ce la vie

 

[Llopod]

remove ascension levels and stat crunch!

 

[GrunEQ]

Quit making Planes of Magic a gate, and let people level in any zone that would normally give them experience; if PoM is so fantastic people will go there willingly. All this gating is VERY frustrating to players, and requiring adventure signature line completion is taxing. Gating and researching is defiantly overdone.

 

[Hartay]

Quit making Planes of Magic a gate, and let people level in any zone that would normally give them experience; if PoM is so fantastic people will go there willingly. All this gating is VERY frustrating to players, and requiring adventure signature line completion is taxing. Gating and researching is defiantly overdone.

Plane of Magic gives me nightmares. +1