Ferocity and Defiance

Discussion in 'Developer Roundtable' started by Wigin, Oct 28, 2013.

  1. Leavwiz Well-Known Member

    I think Taka has hit the nail on the head here. COW is not an extension of the game we already play. It is a new game designed to make it easy for a very small dev team to build encounters. In the process we give up virtually everything we had before in the form of civics, clickies, gear sets, buffs., and knowledge of how our stats work in the interest of having new content. It boggles the mind that none of our current augs are part of the new scheme. It strains credibility further to think that the aug sets and gear we have been shown to this point will somehow make us want to redo old content and cow in the hopes of having more success in COW. Are we just supposed to forget about POTA, COB and all previous content so that we can swap out gear and start the "new" game? I am not saying we won't enjoy the game, and its nice to not have to try yet another game from scratch when our friends are here, but the bottom line is that COW is redesigned content to meet dev needs, it has very little to do with expanding telon and progressing . I would trade most of what I have seen so far for encounters in game that work as they are supposed to and new ones that challenge us.
  2. Gresteh Active Member

    It doesn't have to be like that, with some tweaks all perceived problems can be fixed but the team has to be interested in doing these tweaks. I’m not certain about it but I think current CoW gear implementation will be improved even further thanks to player feedback. VG’s devs are busy fixing problems but once they feel that the optimizations are ready they will focus on CoW and they will be more receptive to gear tweaks.

    For all we know, the gear available in the test server may be the most basic version of it, it may be gear you can get without much effort. Raid mobs may drop better pieces with more slots and better augmentations that will close the gap between current gear and the new system.

    My biggest gripe with the current implementation is the lack of a spendable pool augmentation slot, slots for Energy, HP, endurance and their regens, without these augmentations tanks are going to lose a lot of HP. Another problem is SDF, HF and AC. Basic armor should be enough to reach the current cap SDF and HF and AC should be equal to PotA T3 for tanks… after doing that they should move the augmentations that increase these stats to core slots, if you want you to go over the current cap (or baseline for AC) you should sacrifice core stats slots instead of enrichment slots.

    I don’t see any insurmountable obstacle here, just something that needs some tweaking, and with that tweaking they may be able to fulfill both objectives, making things easier for the dev team and providing gear upgrades for high end players.
    Naiha likes this.
  3. Grunther Member

    Gee, an awesome way to transition folks would be to use the etherance type slots to handle defiance augs.

    Old gear would remain useful until the new gear was more powerful, or more perfectly tailored, etc.

    I'm sure if this were the real world someone would invent a duct tape method of attaching the defiance widgets, gnomes must have similar technology somewhere. Probably why they blocked of Mekalia...
    Gresteh likes this.
  4. Gragorie Member

    I personally view this gear as a way to make up for deficiencies in my character in the way he is currently geared. Take 3 or 4 pieces of this new gear and use them to replace the weakest of my old gear with the stats I want.

    This armor does look great for making meat suits and wisdom suits. Putting 90-120 con or wis in one piece of gear will reduce the amount of crap I have to carry around.
  5. Wigin Developer

    We expect quite a lot of this actually and is a big part of how we designed the system to not trivialize old content right away but not make everyone switch to the new gear right away.

    We still are thinking about other tweaks and are going to be adding an HP enrichment .
  6. Wigin Developer

    Not a bad idea at all. They as powerful compared to the new gear augments but we can make a defiance->etherance augment.
    Leavwiz likes this.
  7. Torveld Active Member

    I feel like if you do that, that recreating our characters from the CoW gear set would result in a clear net loss for almost every raid geared character. Of course there will be defiance, but in terms of how we handle non defiance content we will be worse off for it wearing this new armor under these circumstances.

    I don't know what the dev teams goal in terms of how powerful our characters should be with max CoW gear in comparison to our old characters, but one thing that has to be kept in mind is that lifting stat caps is an inherent large buff. To try and balance CoW gear against what we use in today's game is wrong in some ways. Because the gear we use now will not necessarily be the gear we use when there is no stat cap. We will adapt and change it and become stronger because of the lifting of restrictions.

    I would be interested to see what the devs expect in terms of player power from the new CoW gear when compared to their old item sets. My personal view is we would get about 10% stronger overall with the new gear, in addition to gaining the defiance, but maybe I am wrong in this assumption and we are actually not supposed to get stronger but remain the same or get slightly weaker. I feel if the devs intend for this to be a net loss or an overall push in power that it is a mistake, because it isn't just a few items in a set that players have to gather, its an entire new set that requires 70 + augs to fill. To put in that much effort for no gain or a net loss would be disheartening for some people, I included.
  8. Gresteh Active Member

    An HP enrichment... not a horrible idea but is not the perfect solution, as it stands, for a caster the new armor means that our stats are similar except for the loss of EE’s and reduced HP… In order to have a similar equipment, gear should have more slots to accommodate spell damage focus, healing focus, HP and AC

    I don’t want a trivialized game but I don’t want to be forced to use subpar gear in order to venture in a new area, I want to be able to replace my current PotA T3 gear with CoW gear even if it doesn’t happen right away. I want the promise of better gear, I want a sense of improvement, of advancement… and right now I’m not feeling it. I feel that I’m being sidetracked, that we are not going to advance in the new are and the only advantage we are going to obtain from the new gear is Defiance and that’s not enough, not by a long shot.

    I want to see CoW gear and feel the same way I felt by comparing APW gear with PotA T3 gear or Swamp gear to APW gear.
  9. Gresteh Active Member

    Being able to add defiance via etherence to current gear would woud be a nice soluiom that combined with several tweaks to CoW armor in order to make it more powerful may actually work. That would allow players to replace gear when they find a better piece rather than replacing it as soon as posible to progress thorugh CoW.

    I like it!
  10. Takamoro Member

    I know with 100% certainty that if a poll were to be taken asking "Are you willing to have your characters nerfed for new content?" you'd find most raiders saying no. They'd rather go on to another game than waste the half dozen and more years they've spent since APW building their mains. If that poll had an optional "Why should we have to?" response you would encounter a near 100% unanimous choice from the raiders.

    So you wanted to redo the way stats are capped. Caps currently exist. You wish to take caps away. It sounds to me like there is no way this could possibly require a nerfing in overall character performance, in fact it would most likely cause a performance boost for raiders. So why design a system that is going to nerf characters, even if it's for an interim? It actually sounds like there was a need to nerf characters for some other reason that you were afraid to bring public for just this reason... and again I'm left feeling like I'm a kindergartner.

    Why is Light's Preservation IV still broken? "It was too powerful OMGZORZ!" Why have no stat caps, but then implement a sliding cap system through some so called defiance/ferocity? "You'd be too powerful OMGZORZ!" You've left critical damage bonus uncapped for this long and it hasn't thrown off the game to mythical proportions. I constantly parse top 2-3 in the guild and I only own one of those blasted augs. Your definition of too powerful may be what's a bit out of whack.

    Just let the game flow. Make content like Ikik used to. Be creative. If you want to uncap stats, realize that your players will break it in areas and you'll knee-jerk into "too powerful OMGZORZ!". Don't screw up years and years of Vanguard trying to fix something caused by players instead of systems. And if this nerfing isn't about "too powerful".... then don't do it at all! Take snapshots of BIS gear, make it so that it can be upgraded 5-10% per piece through your new system initially, and further later... and stop pussyfooting around it.
  11. Leavwiz Well-Known Member

    given that I still have empty etherence slots on most of my characters, using them for defiance would be a major positive change.
  12. Shal Active Member

    if i have to put in defiance augs into my etherence slots, i will be losing out on raw hp unless there will be another way to make up for it
  13. Shal Active Member

    taka, the reason why they're doing this is b/c if they continue the way it is right now, almost all new gear would have stats that people are already capped. if we continue at the rate we are going now, the only way to avoid gear with stats that are useless due to the caps would be to raise the level cap, which the dev team cannot support, at least imo.

    all this stuff has been discussed. you need to catch up :p
  14. Leavwiz Well-Known Member

    many of us cannot afford twilights, and my sorc really doesn't need a bunch of 13 or 17 energy , so they sit empty. as do the slots on my monk (if I have HP I put them on my warrior). So for many, being able to put defiance in those slots would be great!
  15. Shal Active Member

    it wasn't my point to say that i have a bunch of twilights. i'm just trying to say tanks are going to take a significant hit in hp unless the con:hp ratio is tweaked if we have to put in defiance augs inside the ethereal slot
  16. Ghostchild Active Member

    Exactly the type of post i was going to make, should have known you'd beat me to it ;)
  17. Ghostchild Active Member

    My concern would be that they would never be able to create gear that proved to be better than the existing gear for the reasons outlined above, and therefore allowing us to add defiance into our existing gear would mean that players did that and only that, thereby bypassing most of the intended new grind and itemisation.
  18. Ghostchild Active Member

    My questions are:

    Will new items always just be blank with empty slots?
    Will Defiance be only available via attachments?
    The loot for the old level 50 revamped Defiance raids - will this be just defiance augs, or will it be entirely new loot with added defiance stats, or will it be existing mob loot with added defiance stats?
    How will you implement gear progression if the gear is all blank slots? Will progression now become all about getting better attachments?

    I have a number of concerns over how this new direction will prove to play out in practice, chief of which is probably how long it will take grinding augs before you get enough to warrant swapping a new item for an existing item - Having an item with no stats except +5 defiance might not be the best way to go. As Alimora pointed out, i can see people getting lost in the transition from old gear to new defiance gear, and then possibly getting frustrated and losing interest. I can see why you are making these changes, and in theory this should work fine, but in the past we have seen all to often how quickly things that seemed like a good idea at the time turn out to not be that good when implemented.
  19. Cummings Active Member

    Just gonna throw this out here....

    I know I initially was in the camp of tweaking CON and WIS to make sure HP and Energy levels were kept SOMEWHAT in line but I don't think it's a feasible option the more I think about it. Just imagine what your CURRENT toon would look like with those stats ramped up.

    At this point I think you either have to put these base stats (HP/Energy/Regens/etc) straight into the gear pieces or create Augs with those stats that are also available to the players to build out. Just my two cents. Not that it matters.
    Ghostchild likes this.
  20. Theun New Member

    Well ive checked out the new system and i have to say im sorry for any negative feed back i have posted anywhere before. now im not sitting here speaking for every class ,player , and so on. Just speaking for my self as a cleric. With this new system i can finally build a cleric the way i would like to play it and still keep my affinity. No more being stuck to same boring stats that ive been having capped that drops on every piece of heavy healer gear or having to wear tank piece just for the EE or mit. No more having to loose AC to equip a medium chain or leather piece because i wanted to boost my sad dps a little. Now in no way am i sitting here saying its a perfect system and as far as the rings,necks,face, and cloak sit atm. There is now way i would ever use them unless they where the only pieces i had and needed the defiance for a fight . yes the hp are lacking but it seems they addressing that issue. From where i stand with some tweaking and good positive feed back we could have a really good system and a hell of alot too do and thats what this game has really been lacking
    Grunther likes this.

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