Recent Downgrades

[Yasden]

I am not a proponent of flaming...but this stance in itself of downgrading items is disturbing. There's nothing with downgrading an item if it is warranted. I spent 4 months gathering the items just for the helm, and have been attempting to get the items for the armor for about 8 now.

What you are claiming here from these posts is that only the zone elite deserve the best eq, not those who want to take the time out to learn quests.

That shouldn't be the case. The more that the mud powers to powergamers, the less influx of newbies you will see. It's the plain and simple truth. So you might as well stop writing quests if the quest items are going to be downgraded because they're "more powerful than zone items". It's not the risk vs. reward, it's the TIME vs. reward that matters.

Any 15 man group can spend 3 hours in Jot invasion and get a Surtur. It takes a lot longer than that to do the helm. The attic in monastery requires being done for the armor, which entails having to deal with a 15 minute pop time, high lvl mobs, and potential multiple spanks.

It's things like this that make me wonder why I even try to do quests anymore, when I can just mindlessly zone and get something far better.

This is by no means a flame, just expressing my opinion in something that is disturbing me. I love your zones Kel, so don't take this the wrong way.

Deathmagnet

[Dalar]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Shargaas:
<B>Ragorn: a little more than 10,000 actually. This is part of the reason why it is so hard to balance new equipment sometimes. There is roughly 20+ mid to high level items for each slot on both casters and melee. And then there are the items which are used by both and the hundred or so weapons.

Scorpion earring fills a particular niche (as -most- other high level earrings are +dam without any hitroll or vice versa)
Render cloak and ayuruk tears are good niche items as well, just very restricted.

Shells have already lost !summon this wipe and are still tough to beat, but I think the changes to the main rare in this quest slowed down the influx of those quite a bit.

Crystal eyepiece looks ok. It makes a nice item for people to bid on besides all the other good stuff from that zone.

I am not sure what you wanted in regards to kaz quest.</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

yea but you have to do like 5 10% rares or something in order to get 1 damroll, that's kinda lame.

i'll mudmail you with the kaz quest

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You group-say 'Go-chan looks like a man'
Sinusosaxiy group-projects 'if she is a man call me gay'

[Bipple]

I might be the only one who feels this way but I think ET earrings are way overpowered.. there's no way the best mage earrings in the game should come from such a simple zone. I've seen people stop wearing every other earring out there (Sky Metal, Rosewood Disc, Fireweed) simply because you can't beat the combo of prots, saves and hp. These earrings need to lose 1 of their three bonuses to bring them in line, probably the saves but making them around 7hp might work to.

Seems there are a lot of obvious balance problems that should be addressed before searching out the obscure ones.

[This message has been edited by Bipple (edited 08-20-2002).]

[Guest]

On risk vs reward.

understand this...there is alot to balancing fights for players....

there are lots of variables that have to be considered:

future spells or procs or items that make players stronger against x types of mobs

new items that make players stronger in general

new tactics that lets groups walk through certain areas

luck

skill

sure...we can balance the fight against players NOW, and make the eq worth the fights NOW...but, you need to remember, that we can't just think of the now, we have to think of tomorrow, next month, next year...we have to make sure that we aren't dropping in a time bomb that is going to bite us later.

Sometimes this means eq downgrades, sometimes this means upgrades (we have had so many new zones dropped in lately that you should expect to see more DG, than UG for a little while)...sometimes this means mobs get harder, or old tactics no longer work, whatever..

Risk vs Reward vs Difficulity vs Luck vs whatever else...its a big set of variables and equasions that are not constant...you guys just have to kinda roll with it as things get to where they are. I'm a player too, have been one for years, I know how it is, and having yer gear downgraded sucks, yes, I know..but sometimes its needed.

I really do love seeing the feedback, I do like that we've had a 50 some post forum with no real flames, no personal attacks, its great...please, by all means, keep it up :) We don't always see everything so let us know how you feel (nicely tho)

-G

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Gargauth the Outcast

[rachaz]

I am very pleased to see Imm feedback on this post. However, most of the posts ask for more player feedback. This is exactly what the players are doing here. Unfortunately, though there are many posts giving valid reasons why the downgrade is unwarranted (including posts by those who do not have the items or intend to) I do not see a response. The items remain with the downgrade. Before I post on this thread again, I would like to know, is posting here useless?

[zusuk]

I don't have a suit, and don't want to go through the effort ot questing for a suit (even before stat changes)... Yet I still feel that those that quested that long and hard, committed so much of their personal time and effort getting all the rareloads; for an item that didn't really seem to offset player balance... well why downgrade it? BTW, Surtur > warhelm (new or old), frickin' duh.

HAHAHHAHA Gyrx!!
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-Zusuk

[This message has been edited by zusuk (edited 08-20-2002).]

[Corth]

gargauth,

i only see 2 factors in your post. risk v. reward. difficulty is the same as risk and luck by definition can't be accounted for.

I think you guys do a good job with balance considering how many items and zones are in the game. If the mud was horribly unbalanced people wouldn't play it. I just think that you should stop fooling yourself with all these different factors. The only way for any game to work is for the reward (be it points in an arcade style game, or eq on sojourn) to reflect the difficult (or risk).

Corth

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Goddamned slippery mage.

[Dalar]

IMHO Luck is becoming a lame factor. Now that the coders have figured out how to not crash the MUD ( i believe within the past 2 weeks we've had 40+ hour reboots), rares are almost impossible to find in some zones unless you play all the time like me . How about making a rare system where it loads something while taking into consideration the uptime of the previous boot? Such as 40 hour uptime means chlora will load 10%?

Also, bottlenecks are annoying can something be done about them?! What i mean is that there are quests that need all but one item that is super rare.

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You group-say 'Go-chan looks like a man'
Sinusosaxiy group-projects 'if she is a man call me gay'