5:13 pm, September 30, 2013
126
The buffs and nerfs
I know there are already hundreds of threads across the forums and gwguru regarding the recent nerfs/buffs to dungeons and so forth. But I do want to point out certain things I've noticed so far regarding dungeons, making gold, and so on and how I think it can be improved.
I've been level 80 for a little more than two weeks now and while everyone was complaining about the game not having an end game, I really didn't understand because there is so much to do in the game already. The problem I saw was that the prestige gear you could obtain through clearing dungeon runs were just too difficult. I understand that the gear should be hard to obtain to represent hard work and effort, but at the moment, all it represents is that we used all of our energy and patience to tolerate the repetitiveness of the runs in order to obtain the gear.
CoF
Prior to the nerf, I had already done enough CoF Magg runs to get my full set of armor as well as the greatsword. This means I did about 90 runs total and each run averaged to about 20 minutes, totaling up to 30 hours invested for the entire set. Even though I was able to get my set, I didn't feel proud of it because I expected a nerf to come and it was really just a trial of how well I could tolerate doing the run over and again. But the way that they had approached the nerf didn't seem right, instead of buffing every single part of the quests leading up to the boss, they should've made certain parts of the chain easier so we don't have to turn to loopholes such as the kiting part, if we stood there to fight even as a team we would get downed in seconds, not to mention how fast they spawn making it impossible to complete without kiting.
CM Explorable
After finishing the CoF runs, I decided to start trying out different dungeons and the one I chose to do was CM Explorable. Our group was made up of all level 80 characters decked out in exotic gear, and as soon as we encountered the first mob we were downed in a matter of seconds. Then after defeating them, we engaged in another fight in a very tight hallway filled with bandits and a boss at the very end who is capable of one shotting us. At the end of the dungeon, the boss literally wiped our team three times before finally killing him. As a reward for clearing the dungeon, I got about 20silver and tokens for completion. My repair fee was 15silver, I had broken two pieces in the process, and I have never broken a single piece of armor before. The run itself was not rewarding, and way too difficult. I can only imagine how much more unforgiving it must be for players who aren't even past level 50 doing the same explorable mode dungeon.
Dungeons in general should share the same motto as the other focuses of the game, utilizing our skills as players to accomplish the things we need to do. At the moment, dungeons seem to ignore our "skills" completely and instead test our ability to engage, wipe, engage, wipe, and engage again until we can finally drop enough DPS to take down the target before wiping another time.
We want the dungeons to make us feel rewarded for participating and investing our time and focus into and we want to feel like we are going to be productive doing dungeons, not make us feel that if we so desired the unique skins from explorable dungeons we need to assess how tolerant we feel at the moment and prepare ourselves for frustration and reward that is almost non existant.
Making money
In regards to money, I don't really see the need to farm up gold as efficiently as possible because it would only inflate the trading post making things cost even more. I know people need money to invest into their legendary items and cultural armor sets, but I agree with anyone who says that these items should be long term goals and not something you can get easily. I do wish that there were more ways to make money instead of dungeon runs which you barely make any from anyways at the moment. But certain things really should be reviewed such as the fee to teleporting, I mean the only purpose it serves is being a gold sink for the game but what do we need a gold sink for when our gold is already being sunk elsewhere? It really has become a problem for me personally and I actually consider myself to be middle class in the games economy (lol) I don't want to spare 3s just to teleport from one side of the world to the opposite side, 3s is hard to come by unless you're farming orr.
We want to feel that we're progressing, whether it's making money or running dungeons, we don't want to feel like we're being held back or punished for wanting to progress.
Anyways, I know the game is still fairly new and the team is constantly striving to achieve a balance for all the players needs, I just hope they do understand where all of us who are complaining on the forums are coming from. Except for the ones who are just bashing on everything the game has to offer, they are welcome to leave.
I've been level 80 for a little more than two weeks now and while everyone was complaining about the game not having an end game, I really didn't understand because there is so much to do in the game already. The problem I saw was that the prestige gear you could obtain through clearing dungeon runs were just too difficult. I understand that the gear should be hard to obtain to represent hard work and effort, but at the moment, all it represents is that we used all of our energy and patience to tolerate the repetitiveness of the runs in order to obtain the gear.
CoF
Prior to the nerf, I had already done enough CoF Magg runs to get my full set of armor as well as the greatsword. This means I did about 90 runs total and each run averaged to about 20 minutes, totaling up to 30 hours invested for the entire set. Even though I was able to get my set, I didn't feel proud of it because I expected a nerf to come and it was really just a trial of how well I could tolerate doing the run over and again. But the way that they had approached the nerf didn't seem right, instead of buffing every single part of the quests leading up to the boss, they should've made certain parts of the chain easier so we don't have to turn to loopholes such as the kiting part, if we stood there to fight even as a team we would get downed in seconds, not to mention how fast they spawn making it impossible to complete without kiting.
CM Explorable
After finishing the CoF runs, I decided to start trying out different dungeons and the one I chose to do was CM Explorable. Our group was made up of all level 80 characters decked out in exotic gear, and as soon as we encountered the first mob we were downed in a matter of seconds. Then after defeating them, we engaged in another fight in a very tight hallway filled with bandits and a boss at the very end who is capable of one shotting us. At the end of the dungeon, the boss literally wiped our team three times before finally killing him. As a reward for clearing the dungeon, I got about 20silver and tokens for completion. My repair fee was 15silver, I had broken two pieces in the process, and I have never broken a single piece of armor before. The run itself was not rewarding, and way too difficult. I can only imagine how much more unforgiving it must be for players who aren't even past level 50 doing the same explorable mode dungeon.
Dungeons in general should share the same motto as the other focuses of the game, utilizing our skills as players to accomplish the things we need to do. At the moment, dungeons seem to ignore our "skills" completely and instead test our ability to engage, wipe, engage, wipe, and engage again until we can finally drop enough DPS to take down the target before wiping another time.
We want the dungeons to make us feel rewarded for participating and investing our time and focus into and we want to feel like we are going to be productive doing dungeons, not make us feel that if we so desired the unique skins from explorable dungeons we need to assess how tolerant we feel at the moment and prepare ourselves for frustration and reward that is almost non existant.
Making money
In regards to money, I don't really see the need to farm up gold as efficiently as possible because it would only inflate the trading post making things cost even more. I know people need money to invest into their legendary items and cultural armor sets, but I agree with anyone who says that these items should be long term goals and not something you can get easily. I do wish that there were more ways to make money instead of dungeon runs which you barely make any from anyways at the moment. But certain things really should be reviewed such as the fee to teleporting, I mean the only purpose it serves is being a gold sink for the game but what do we need a gold sink for when our gold is already being sunk elsewhere? It really has become a problem for me personally and I actually consider myself to be middle class in the games economy (lol) I don't want to spare 3s just to teleport from one side of the world to the opposite side, 3s is hard to come by unless you're farming orr.
We want to feel that we're progressing, whether it's making money or running dungeons, we don't want to feel like we're being held back or punished for wanting to progress.
Anyways, I know the game is still fairly new and the team is constantly striving to achieve a balance for all the players needs, I just hope they do understand where all of us who are complaining on the forums are coming from. Except for the ones who are just bashing on everything the game has to offer, they are welcome to leave.