Update Discussion: August 25, 2019

[Sims]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2250-Update-Notes-August-25-2019&p=16360#post16360

Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.

[srand]

UPDATE: We rolled out a fix for this problem this afternoon!


If you are having trouble with the terrain in Rahu - if a blue thing is popping up through the ground in some places as you move - don't panic! We are working on this right now. In the meantime, we have a work-around:

In Settings, under Graphics, at the very bottom of the list of regular settings is a toggle for "Show Advanced Options". Toggle "Enabled" on. This opens a long list of advanced settings that you can tweak. About halfway down the list is "Show Horizon Terrain". Toggle this setting on, and you will see a new toggle to Enable/Disable the horizon terrain. The default is "Enabled". Toggle that to "Disabled". You will no longer see distant horizon terrain - or the weird blue plane in Rahu.

We'll have a fix for this out as soon as we can. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[ProfessorCat]

Under the changes to staff, it lists Blocking Stance as having changes, however the ability that was changed in game was Deflective Spin (Same description listed in the patch notes, just different ability name)

Beautiful new map! Thanks for taking your time to do it right.

[Dibbuk]

Fae realm has a low ceiling that restricts flight. Bug report already filed.

[DamageIncorp]

Not sure why power increases had to change given increased cost to future abilities. It was a benefit to getting bonus levels ect. Are other skills filling this void now?

[SassySusie]

So far am loving the new realm, especially not having to deal with the cold lol. Loved flying around with my bat taking some really cool screenshots, especially night time screen shots, even though you can not fly very high at all.

A group of us went down to GK to farm for favor items and power is such a crazy issue now. I guess once I unlocking higher levels of cheesemaking I can see what it is like then, But as far as now goes its really bad LOL.

[Coglin]

So far am loving the new realm, especially not having to deal with the cold lol. Loved flying around with my bat taking some really cool screenshots, especially night time screen shots, even though you can not fly very high at all.

A group of us went down to GK to farm for favor items and power is such a crazy issue now. I guess once I unlocking higher levels of cheesemaking I can see what it is like then, But as far as now goes its really bad LOL.

That is what you get stuck with when I am doing home remodeling all day Sue, and you do not have me to be your battery. Just sayin' :cool:

[Daguin]

A group of us went down to GK to farm for favor items and power is such a crazy issue now. I guess once I unlocking higher levels of cheesemaking I can see what it is like then, But as far as now goes its really bad LOL.

I was already having power issues in certain builds... The reduction in overall power and the increase in power consumption is definitely a double whammy! :mad:

[Yaffy]

Thanks for the patch! It seems like the team was working super hard on it. The new map seems really crazy and interesting so far. The mobs are kinda crazy in some places, (Those droaches in particular are pretty nasty) but I'm looking forward to poking at all the level 80 content.

One thing that I think might be unintentional though... It seems that bonus levels actually count towards the new crafting EXP penalty. I had level 60 cooking (Which was max) and 7 bonus levels, for a total of level 67 in cooking. Now that I raised my cap, it seems that every recipe I can make that's level 57 and below has the exp penalty on it. I assume this is because it's 10 levels lower than my total level. I would suggest changing this so bonus levels don't count towards this penalty, otherwise players are actually penalized for getting bonus levels because it'll be harder to gain EXP! Right now my pool of non-penalized recipes is very small because of how it works currently and because I don't have the new cooking recipes, so it's a lot harder for me to gain non-penalized EXP where as if I had no bonus levels, it'd be much easier.

[Ranperre]

Archery/hammer is pretty tough to manage power-wise now.

Are mobs supposed to be disappearing soon after killed (or even before killed?). You hit the hive, kill the elites, but then the elites disappear way too soon, way too often. If this isn't supposed to happen, it's a huge bug currently. Been reported.

[Yaffy]

Also just a warning for players. It seems that "BackFat"'s Mycology uncap training doesn't actually work. He'll gladly take your money and your jelly, but you won't actually uncap!
https://i.imgur.com/b8emiGV.png

Make sure you don't get scammed by this pig! I've heard from some other players that it also didn't work for them, so be careful! His other training options are seem fine though, I can confirm the Endurance and survival instinct ones work at least.

[Citan]

It is indeed unintended that bonus levels affect XP drop-off. Another bug: hoplology, phrenology, and similar recipes are not supposed to have XP drop-off at all; they just got marked incorrectly in data, and will be fixed in the next hotfix or update we do.

[Hood]

literally was saying when i logged in the other day for the first time in almost 2 years:

"power sure doesnt seem like an issue anymore. I could probably drop a basic attack for another main skill."

then after I did that:

"lets drop both. im modded to regain power when i use 2 abilities."

then after I did that I saw I still didnt have any issues. without using Mentalism.

"...yea this isnt gonna last much longer."

[Silvonis]

Just a reminder, while we appreciate seeing the feedback here, don't forget to report your feedback/bugs in game as well! Thanks everyone.

[Mbaums]

Did do some reports on this in game buuuuut....

Lethargy Puck does not have a curse message. The mechanism where he spawns adds is great, but the re-spawn trigger timer is a little low. Like a group walked over tombstones and aggroed it without realizing the adds were a thing.

The jelly system at first seems horrid. My piles of council makes me think of, 'water water everywhere but not an ounce to drink', and I know people with jellies and no council thinking similar things. Not sure what the balance is, but if I think paying ~4x jelly price for a nearly free skill might be a good option for those who are not great at earning council.
quick edit, with added idea: the cheap council, expensive jelly option would be best if it was just for combat/trade skill level increases, and the cost of jellies increased per skill unlock, regardless if you used it or not.

The hives are the best way to get jellies, I'm not sure if its good or bad that we're all bumping heads to get them. I think it was smart to not add a dungeon in yet because way less people would be testing the hives! Some of the elite mobs from the hive instantly despawn after they die. There is enough time for the nearest person to open the body and see loot, but not enough time for anyone to loot. I hope the hive's niche is, groups that can't quite do the dungeon that does not exist yet. It's a good option as long as it's not the only option.


Midge is a major jerk. I can't get his 2nd quest because I said hi with fairy wings on me and my favor is forever 99/100. I can't give him items to favor him up either.

When you add more NPCs to the area, I think more solo quest might be helpful. Some people I know who don't love grouping are saying they are having a hard time earning jellies.

A lot changed with shield! I think the changes look great. It'll probably be ~6 months before I actually test it.

[Coglin]

Is there any gameplay value to the fairy chimes? My first impression was that it would be a bard bonus level. When I look at the skill in the skills and abilities window, it literally shows now bonus to anything at all and no stats increase of any kind.

Is there any value outside of the pure entertainment of playing them as far as gameplay goes?

[Niph]

Is there any gameplay value to the fairy chimes? My first impression was that it would be a bard bonus level. When I look at the skill in the skills and abilities window, it literally shows now bonus to anything at all and no stats increase of any kind.

Is there any value outside of the pure entertainment of playing them as far as gameplay goes?

I guess it's at least one more instrument you can play in a band, for another % of gardening bonus.

[Okeephe]

My problem with the new zone, which is a product of it being new to an existing world, is that I get nothing in the way of xp for endurance, or any weapons skills until AFTER I can favor the npcs.

With the rarity in drop items, and the constant deaths, I am going to be completely bored with this zone before I can actually get my favor up to train.

This would not be an issue to newer players as they can come to the new zone, early, and start to work on favor before their xp meters stop.

The power drain is ridiculous. What it essentially means is, as a trained high level warrior I can shoot 3 arrows before I an winded, 4 wheezing and 5 I basically pass out from exertion (then of course, die). What happens is, I get attacked by a troll, hit hi with 3-4 shots, he evades 2 of them, I am out of power. Now while I scramble to regen he heals fully, and now there is no way I can kill him because my power bar is at the bottom.
Sounds like this world needs a major fitness program.

[Lasc]

My problem with the new zone, which is a product of it being new to an existing world, is that I get nothing in the way of xp for endurance, or any weapons skills until AFTER I can favor the npcs.

With the rarity in drop items, and the constant deaths, I am going to be completely bored with this zone before I can actually get my favor up to train.

This would not be an issue to newer players as they can come to the new zone, early, and start to work on favor before their xp meters stop.

The power drain is ridiculous. What it essentially means is, as a trained high level warrior I can shoot 3 arrows before I an winded, 4 wheezing and 5 I basically pass out from exertion (then of course, die). What happens is, I get attacked by a troll, hit hi with 3-4 shots, he evades 2 of them, I am out of power. Now while I scramble to regen he heals fully, and now there is no way I can kill him because my power bar is at the bottom.
Sounds like this world needs a major fitness program.

While I agree that everything feels a little, ‘brutal’ the right word right now?
But I think it’s by design

Yes, I agree this new area is tough, and I understand the ‘no benefit right now’ problem, but I liken it to the game when you arrive on the newbie island, there’s a bit of ‘earn your right of passage’ about things

There are things that need addressing, if you look at the wiki, perhaps skills that fall under ‘other skills’ should have the jelly requirement removed or relaxed.

All that said, the content is new, and I think it’d be expected that things feel rough until players start to build a surplus of ‘barter drops’

I’m loving the mix between solo and group content this zone offers, and the difference offered in player progress between the two modes feels about right

I do think some favor requirements are a bit rough though

[Coglin]

Personally I love the power change. As a battery built bard/druid, now the power regen from the song of resurgence and healing sanctuary with the power mods give me greater group value. As well as mentalism and other battery potential classes have more value. Perhaps you might try to seek those out in your group dynamics.

[poulter]

I agree that the new zone is 'brutal', but if you prepare and adapt for it, then it becomes much easier.


(Please note: I use a max geared and level 70+ toon, so my experiences may not match yours)

There are 3 main things I have had to address:

Damage type
Use Fire (with a healing secondary skill) - I have used Fire /Druid, Fire /BC and Archery /Druid mostly so far.
e.g. Use Fire Arrow if you use Archery
With Fire /Druid, I have soloed up to 5 non-elite mobs at once and can easily kill single non-elite mobs
Without fire in my build (e.g. Archery without Fire Arrow), I usually die to a single troll
Note: A Priest /Mentalism (fire build) worked, but was marginal whilst UA /Psychology (with fire Headbutt mods) got me killed in most fights


Mana
By using top level food, snacks and flower buffs + mana regeneration spells, I have very few mana issues even when fighting multiple mobs at once

Flying:
Flight makes the zone so much easier as you get to pick when and where you fight


Note on elite mobs:
Currently these are too tough for me to solo and require a group - which is good as it indicates that the difficulty is about right.

[Celler]

Pretty much agree with much of the above, I've been off work this week so have spent a lot of time here.

At first I felt the new skills were over priced to be honest but I'm slowly picking off a few. Not been able to afford any actual combat skill upgrades yet, it just seems better to get the trade skills and combat skill abilities first.
Where like many I have bonus lvls in some cases even beyond lvl 80 you can in effect have almost all the combat skills abilities upgraded before you unlock the actual skill to raise it's lvls. By my understanding the actual Combat skillls provide very little extra especially if your already at 80 and can get in the new gear.
This feels a little weird but it helps greatly to get a foothold in the area.

At times whilst in raven in my travel build which is only pockets and generic on shirt and pants, I have had some real nice scraps including soloing 3 different mobs at once a few times. This build is Shield Ment which doesn't offer fire really so is not enough for the trolls (except honey ones) but the other stufff with rage management via mods is doable. Slow and no where near efficient but fun none the less. I like the mob diversity greatly.

As Poulter says above the fact there is group content out there is good, those areas offer greater reward but are way beyond me in any set up.

I've been lucky enough to run all the hives many times now, and there variety is great I think the fact there is a few that are far easier is helpful. Though with a solid group and decent planning there all pretty comfortable doing with only the odd casualties. Often those are via the travel between the hives and the arrival of a train of followers.
I was concerned at first also because of the hr cooldown and no visible timer. But even after a few days now the hive runs are slowing down and even 1 group being out on them is rarer let alone 2 trying to keep civil something that's frustrating for both groups no doubt.
Thankfully the little community also helps, we know each other so tend not to get too pissy with one another normally, banter excluded of course. Though if the community was larger where you could survive without caring about others I'm not sure it would be a great model to be honest.

I have to say I still think the passage ways of WN are hellish for a lvl 50 dungeon though. I can still run that route and get to portal just about. I suppose it's the mix of pierce and fire needed to get an upper hand that's troubling for me solo there.
Perhaps that long ago before the many changes there, the fact that you could solo the both floors with lvl 50 gear and abilities is what makes me feel that. Used to be a real challenge there solo, now it's not about ability it's just shear mob density I feel.

Overall I was not expecting any where near as much content as this update provided, well done.

I have mentioned before in a bug report and it may just be where I'm on for a much longer time currently. But when I start playing windowsplayer exe starts off at just over 2G but after 5hrs of playing this can climb to as much as 7G , at which point my 8G memory machine is pretty much done.
A simple restart of the game fixes this fine.

[Leodane]

I'm curious if there has been any analysis done of the projected playtime requirements needed to achieve certain things in this game. I know it would be soft data, as there isn't really any way to estimate guildies hooking you up, or getting lucky with a valuable drop. I'm just wondering what was envisioned in terms of progress and content access vs. play time.

[Ranperre]

Archery's aimed shot fixes most evasion issues. Seriously, if for some reason you werent using this before, do it now. Similarly, a flower brings me to around pre patch power levels. Though pound to slag requiring 162ish power is rough.

The variety of hive mobs is interesting. The toughest hives have electric and fire droaches, so if you're running a fire build, you're near worthless on the toughest mobs. Physical damage appears to reign supreme for hives.

Without a speed set, I would be toast. It depends on how you decide to implement mounts (as in, if the CD is too high for hives), but I might have to become a fucking filthy druid, which would be unfortunate.

We are dangerously close to the unfair territory of getting one shot. As in, it's starting to feel like GK troopers again. We aren't there yet, but I doubt another 50-60 armor will change that when I upgrade.

[Golliathe]

I am 100% positive I will get downvoted to oblivion for saying so... but you might want to consider resetting all crating skills due to the changes with xp penalties on spamming low level recipes. Before I continue with that thought I want to counter propose that you offer bonus xp for higher level recipes AND allow first time xp to stack with xp bonuses. I don't actually think you should reset skills but I think you might want to reinvent the xp curve for tradeskills.


To make a long story short there was a real problem with making the lowest level recipe that you can spam that gives the most xp for the cost of the materials. When you combine this with xp bonuses to crafting you could do absurd things with an hour's worth of buffs - such as grinding tailoring from 0 to 40 the first time and 40 to 60 the second time. Spamming the same recipe with bonuses made xp cheap and in some cases nearly free by vendoring the spam (or you could make absurd profits if you had an alt or three with industry).

The end result was that you could hoard materials that you got for free or purchased dirt cheap and turned them directly into xp. Combining this with work orders made the gain of skills like tailoring/leatherworking/carpentry/etc by far the most absurd way to gain money in this game (if you are willing to level up industry on alts or even better have a large guild who is interested in splitting profits from crafting). Now before we get out the pitchforks you have to remember that trade skills are expensive and annoying to learn so the money printing aspect is balanced by limited work orders per month.

But it seems unfair to change spamming now on the low end without greatly increasing the mid to high end xp combines. Previously you could for very easily raise tailor/leather/smithing/etc without bothering to learn most of the 30-60 recipes until you were going to make some of those for work orders later.
It just wasn't worth the money to buy a new recipe for 100k for a one time xp combine bonus. But maybe those recipes should have been worth far more for each combine?

If the goal is to make people spend more time on trade craft you have done that with the spam xp nerf. They can still spam low level recipes with mats they get for near net cost and sell the resulting products to vendors they rarely use.

If the goal was to make people spend more money on leveling trade craft you could make mid-end tier recipes much more rewarding. What if for example recipes over 50 got a 50% crafting bonus for the second time you make that item? Combine this with a slight bump to mid tier crafting and suddenly crafting mid tier items becomes worth the increased price of materials. And this creates a speed bump effect where you have to have money to buy the recipe and the payout is being able to get a lot more xp for it.

Without a bit of balance you will just have people keep spamming because it is cheaper. Many of the mid/end tier recipes are not very spam friendly but most of the low tier recipes are. This to me also reflects that mid/end tier recipes should be worth more per combine.

Why bother farming rare mobs and trying for rare drops when I can just farm low level mats? There is no reason to craft 8 items at 1000 each if in the same time I can gather enough to make 1000 combines at 8 xp each. In theory they come out with the same result but there are a few things to consider.

1. Low level mats can often be bought off a vendor and the xp combine makes the initial farm price irrelevant
2. If option A had you farm mobs for an hour to make 8 combines then option B would leave you with 50 minutes of grind mobs for 6 combines after you bought everything off the vendor.

[Celler]

I think it's a change for the better, an alchemist that's lvl 50 and can only grind bones is frankly somewhat lame.

Using 3 alts to hand in work orders completed using another character seems to be currently allowed. Personally I wouldn't do it and doubt many would it feels to me the whole mechanic is being bypassed to gain extra profit. I assume if dev's felt it was an issue it would at sometime get addressed.

With the exception of combat skills I tend not to overly grind the skills, unless there is a recipe or something I want higher up or I'm trying to make a little coin.
So to be honest much of the above post seems somewhat moot to me.
It seems a little odd to spend hours making stuff I don't need now to reach a level cap, only to next week need something making and then get no exp for it.
Each to there own.

[poulter]

Personally, I welcome the change to crafting XP as it feels to me that whilst it was a valid strategy, crafting low level items repeatedly, didn't align with the 'spirit of the game'. This change forces crafters to be more inventive.

Admittedly, that is very much a personal opinion and everyone is entitled to her /his own position.

(I also feel the same way about the Staff spell 'Blocking Stance' that makes you immune to physical damage for 10 seconds.
It is 'legal' in game, but makes things very boring if you can 2 or 3 shot kill mobs in under 10 seconds)

[Illmaster]

Will Lycanthropy ever have the option to raise skill to 80 through Norala tokens?

[Yaffy]

Just a question I wanna ask everyone here, but how do you guys feel about the elite's damage in the new zone? I know a lot of people don't have their level 80 gear/food/etc yet, but I wanted to ask anyways. (I also don't know if the elites were intended for level 80 players or well geared 70 players)

I have personally found it very hard to sustain damage with my tank build dedicated to reducing damage. Usually it's very risky for me to face-tank anything for longer than a few seconds, because the risk of a crit can kill me even from half health and even if I'm reducing incoming damage by half. That's not to say that I feel like my tanking set isn't doing anything, because I notice that non-tanky characters tend to die LUDICROUSLY fast (Usually 2 or 3 attacks to the stronger elites) so at least my tank set gives me a moment to realize I'm dying.

Do you guys think the damage in the new zone is a bit too high? My tanking set is definitely still very useful but... I feel a lot more like a distraction rather than a real tank because damage is so high that I usually have to kite more than I actually face enemies since I can't take too many attacks unless if I cheat with an immunity skill like elemental ward. Not only that, but I have found it incredibly dangerous to stay close to enemies because their rage attacks are so strong that even if I can tank them, my party members caught in the AoEs take massive damage.

I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm not necessarily saying elite damage should be lowered as much as it would be nicer to have more mitigation available to players. One issue with some of the elites is that you can't really reduce their damage. Reducing the damage of fire mobs is pretty difficult but possible (My tank set is basically dedicated to it at this point), but the lightning mobs on the other hand are basically doing unmitigatable damage. Players still have the fire/lightning meditations but you can only pick one and it might just give you one extra hit before you die.

[Lasc]

Just a question I wanna ask everyone here, but how do you guys feel about the elite's damage in the new zone? I know a lot of people don't have their level 80 gear/food/etc yet, but I wanted to ask anyways. (I also don't know if the elites were intended for level 80 players or well geared 70 players)

I have personally found it very hard to sustain damage with my tank build dedicated to reducing damage. Usually it's very risky for me to face-tank anything for longer than a few seconds, because the risk of a crit can kill me even from half health and even if I'm reducing incoming damage by half. That's not to say that I feel like my tanking set isn't doing anything, because I notice that non-tanky characters tend to die LUDICROUSLY fast (Usually 2 or 3 attacks to the stronger elites) so at least my tank set gives me a moment to realize I'm dying.

Do you guys think the damage in the new zone is a bit too high? My tanking set is definitely still very useful but... I feel a lot more like a distraction rather than a real tank because damage is so high that I usually have to kite more than I actually face enemies since I can't take too many attacks unless if I cheat with an immunity skill like elemental ward. Not only that, but I have found it incredibly dangerous to stay close to enemies because their rage attacks are so strong that even if I can tank them, my party members caught in the AoEs take massive damage.

I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm not necessarily saying elite damage should be lowered as much as it would be nicer to have more mitigation available to players. One issue with some of the elites is that you can't really reduce their damage. Reducing the damage of fire mobs is pretty difficult but possible (My tank set is basically dedicated to it at this point), but the lightning mobs on the other hand are basically doing unmitigatable damage. Players still have the fire/lightning meditations but you can only pick one and it might just give you one extra hit before you die.

I think while gear will make a difference, another big part is simply awareness and organisation by the party as a single unit.
Not just individual efforts.

I consider this patch more an expansion style content more so than just a cap increase.
Think of past mmos where the initial ‘break through’ is tough, then as gear, level, consumables and all become more widespread and common, things will settle

I’d say stuff is tuned for lvls higher than 70.... not sure if it’s 80 though

People have been overgeared in lvl70 yellows so long now, FR arrives and it’s kind of a soft reset on things.

I have to admit I kind of like it.... I must be a little twisted :p

Has it been tried going with a stun heavy group? BC skins? Snares and ranged burns?
I think there’s options, tuning may well come into it too, but too early to know yet

[ErDrick]

Just a question I wanna ask everyone here, but how do you guys feel about the elite's damage in the new zone?

The same way I feel about all Elite mob damage ( and it's actually bleeding into non-elites in some places) in all zones atm, It is extremely high for a tab target game, you can literally be killed faster then you can react, in a lot of cases even reacting instantly won't save you. ( obviously being a tank gives you some buffer buuut). Example that has literally happened vs a non-elite in fae realm: I get hit twice and see that I need to heal, click heal, heal goes on cooldown and gets activated, die before it actually heals me... so 3 hits from a non-elite in this case, that's about 4-5 seconds vs approximately 700 health and 800 armor ( and thickskin with 7 modifiers on top of that), which is much higher then the average person is going to have. Other random things have killed me in 2 hits, but it might as well be one hit because the same thing happens, I get chunked, hit heal, die before the heal actually takes effect. The elites are fully capable of 1 shotting me and so is general prask still.

No instant kills are acceptable at any level unless it's some special mechanic like a face of death simply because there is no way to actively dodge or block such mechanics, and to be honest those are way too prolific.

A level 45 troll+ level 45 worg can combo instantkill ( and even if it isn't actually "instant" that's pretty irrelevant since you can't do anything the entire time you are prone) just about anyone in level 70 gear.

The wolves in kur cave or the ratkins in rahu sewars can stun you once and chain that into a 8 second stun, so that might as well also be an instant kill since all you can do is watch yourself die.

The guys on rahu plateau will stack movement speed reduction on you to about 90% reduced in approximately 2 seconds if you accidentally aggro more then one and he chain aggroes more... this is essentially also an instant kill because you are just plain fucked, and you know it. ( Prask also has this ability btw and can still rage 100% you!)

Some random skeleton swordsman on the ground aggroes you as you fly 30m over his head in birdform, your power drains to zero in about 6 seconds and you sit there and die, because you cant run or fly away even though you never initiated a fight and this guy basically said "BIIIIIIRD!".. same basic situation. ( for added fun you are not allowed to transform out of bird form in-combat because...well I don't know, maybe they find it amusing! )

Multiple respawns happening at once.... you are dead, go directly to the afterlife of your choosing, do not pass go or collect $200.

Mobs being packed in like sardines so pulling one really = pulling 10...same thing, instant kill with a different graphic.

I love Citan, I love this community.. the new content and level caps don't have me very excited though ( though the zone is beautiful), because combat is still in a fairly fucked place atm, at least that's my opinion. I don't mind an excessive grind if the combat is good, but this grind really is EXCESSIVE and the combat ( in my opinion, you are welcome to have a different one!) just Is more frustrating then it is fun, by a wide margin. It has been getting more and more frustrating since you implemented the multi-respawn mechanic right after dark chapel came out.

Increasing mob damage in any way shape or form is the opposite direction to go, you wanted to extend fights so you lowered our damage but left the mobs exactly the same, knowing that we were already forced into pure damage builds because you can die so quickly if you give anything a chance to actually hit you a few times. Since then we have lamias mixed in with packs of deadly mobs, ae disables, ae stuns, ratkins that are as annoying with chain stuns as wolves already were, faster respawns, multiple mobs respawning at once, mobs critical hit capabilities, more mobs, stronger mobs, mobs that summon reinforcements.

I know some people won't like this but it's true regardless, you people speccing as healers are mostly wasting your time because no self-respecting tank is going to trust you to heal them in the 2 second time window in which they can die, all of them have set up's for self-sustain. Even if they do trust your competence when you add channeling times into the mix it's still pretty much a random dice roll to see if your heal lands before 1 more hit does. I say mostly, because it does still have some uses ( group resurrects are tits, so is unfetter and the bard version of both ), and if you enjoy it you aren't wasting your time either way. I mean this as another example of just how out of control incoming damage is.

Another possible solution to this btw could be in messing with player health and armor bars, can keep damage down but just extend survivability past 5 seconds. But by that I mean by a large margin, like at least double what we have currently.

We have always in this game as players, built around as much damage and cc in as short a timeframe as possible ( or as a tanky self-sustaining type for the trailblazers ) because getting hit has always been too penalizing compared to our tiny health bars, speaking of... I can survive just fine in fae realm with archery/battlechem, just crowd controlling stuff to death ( which is the same thing as building for pure raw damage from a solo standpoint, same basic concept: kill them before they can 3 shot you, in this case you're just delaying the 3 shot for long enough to kill them first.)

EDIT: Just wanted to add a P.S.
Grouping does not solve any of these issues since resurrects are limited due to timers ( and materials or special restrictions ) and any one party member is capable of being dead within 1-4 seconds in level appropriate content. That is just ludicrously fast for a game where you cannot hold up a shield and block it for as long as you need to ( presumably waiting for a 2 second channeled heal to actually fire and land), or roll out of the way. A 4 second death in level appropriate content would be bad even in an action combat game like rift, tera, dcuo, wildstar..etc etc etc... for a tab-target game it's just completely insane mechanically.

[Dibbuk]

Just about ANY creature I fight in Fae realm, if I click First Aid 7 with about 1/4 or less of my health bar, I am insta-deathed. For me, this is a repeatable bug.

[Erthiel]

I have to completely agree with ErDrick. The entirety of combat seems to have been built / converged to killing a mob as fast as possible. Getting hit more than couple times (depending on particular mob) is likely fatal.

On personal note, Hammer skill, which has number of mods on actually inducing much higher rage, which is required for more dmg from other mods makes me very uneasy. The monster rage bars can be filled within 3 seconds. Usually not enough time for me to notice at all what the "percentage" of their rage they are at. Difficult to watch my health, click on my abilities, watch monster health, watch my character and pay attention to debuff as little icons with no time to read their description, and no time to watch actual monster's rage bar and armour bar. Surviving more than one rage attack is highly unlikely I can totally see myself clicking on the side bar first aid and it not activating in time. Happens all the time. The entire fight is just too fast.

I remember Citan mentioning a very long time ago somewhere in a comment, what his expectation and calculation on the length of fight were. Feel like it was somewhere in range on 40secs. Maybe someone can find it. Never timed my fights, but certainly does not feel like my fights last more than 10-20 secs on normal mob.

[poulter]

Elite damage feels very heavy at the moment, but it is too early to comment as still in level 70 gear. Electricity damage mobs are particularly nasty.

With a well-geared and organised group everything has been 'doable' and most elites farmable - though this does require a dedicated healer, supported by secondary AOE healer builds plus plenty of resses (due to frequently being 2 or 3 shot killed)

With less geared or organised groups, multiple /continuous wipes have been experienced and farming elites has not been viable

Farming elites, currently is dependent on organisation, preparation and using synergistic builds within the group plus excellent gear - which is a very good position for the game to be in at this point in the level 80 cycle.

[poulter]

Regarding Erdricks & others comments on damage - I recognise and in general, support them, but there are ways in the game to minimise them plus for example, should mini-bosses be soloable?

From memory, Citan's design approach for an 'average' geared player (c. 30 mods) was a 12 second fight with no more than 2 mobs soloable. Geared players can do much better than that.

Since DC, we have been 'forced' (rewarded) for max-gearing, crowd-control (especially stun or rage reduction) builds that can 2 or 3 shot kill mobs in less than 10 seconds.
From what I have experienced in FR, this trend will continue. Whether this is good or bad for the game is Citan's concern - I'll continue to adapt, survive and overcome.

[Mbaums]

FR zone design thoughts:
As you head south the FR the mobs get harder. I think there should be more stuff at the very north of the zone, so that players have more to kill before they move onto trolls. Heck and push all the trolls south!

The day-night spawn cycle makes good use of space for diverse mobs.

I think the zone having hard mobs is appropriate. This is the first good-climate outdoor zone in ages. The risk of the zone not having awful weather should be awful mobs. I think if/when more outdoor 80 zones come, the mobs shouldn’t be as rough as in the FR.

The day-night spawn cycle makes good use of space for diverse mobs

Elite mob damage is really high, but I think I'm okay with it. I am managing it with a group, but that group has a pig more so than not. Some of those pig group mitigation buffs are sweet. I like the idea of ranged attacks being high, so that the tank has an option to lower damage by closing some distance vs running away. The range of the really devastating electric attacks and the lack of walls for line-of-sighting to get into melee range makes life hard. Freebie request of mine: I think the fae armor could probably have some mitigation vs cold/electric added. I don't think that would be an absolute game-changer but more the merrier. There is also a lot of death and I think being given diamonds with some jellies would be nice. It’ll kind of push new players to realize they gotta rez.


Solo mobs are tricky. Bear + an add instantly becomes very deadly. I really think you can double the solo bears rage bar because players do play AOE setups and safe pulling spots aren’t obvious. The troll knock down is bad, but the silly trick is just not getting touched. I think more melee skills could use more CC mods just tacked onto existing mods. Like, sword and knife receiving some ‘% knock down resistance’ mod added to something else would help. Staff and unarmed technically already have options, and shield was recently buffed to the big leagues. As far as other skill+abilities, the psych skill sooth should make the mobs CC abilities miss more, because I don’t know of anyone who uses that trashy skill on their bar!

More Skills:
I think it would be interesting if “Field Prophylactic” stacked and was expanded a bit resistance wise. Maybe as a whole different ability. The idea of an entire group buffing a dedicated tank with an hour long buff sounds interesting.

The AH pet level increasing with max level is a nice QoL. Maybe allow for a hang out to level the non-max pets off line (not bond level tho)? Because a pet that was at 68 totally misses the free 10 levels the AH player gets as he grinds to 80. Not totally needed tho! This thought came up after realizing I’m beyond 75 and want a new bee.
Reported this one, the blinding wasp has a small bug. Posting partly because AH people should be aware and I find it hard to explain. Every AH skill has two 2-second basic attacks. This wasp has 1 and its melee only. I think you forgot the ranged attack. The wasp has a debuff to ranged abilities via sic ‘em however it’s a melee ability. If its intended, there is no point to the pet. Why on earth would I pick a melee bee with a melee debuff that effects ranged attacks? It does have a ranged burst attack I guess. I’m only using him to bond it up in hopes that these are all mistakes. I have checked all the other bees/wasp clever trick/sick em attacks via the json parser: every single attack is ranged except the blinding wasps debuff to range.

MOLLUSC SLIME:
I get it, animals lack hands and need to live a harder life. But animals like to tailor! I mean have you seen their hats? Can’t Backfat give a non-stat slime sucking helmet for animals to wear to suck slime out of snails? I’d be okay with it spilling 20% of the time. I understand the argument that if you want to do tailoring and are an animal you just need to buy the slime from players and be done with it. That argument does not work with the games population. Whats going to happen is people are going to simply drop animal form for a month+ and finish tailoring themselves and return to animal-life afterwards if at all. Or I’m sure they’ll level an alt who can live in FR, and just log in hourly and milk. That’s actually less of a time commitment than buying it from players.

And lastly – I’m eager for mounts! The zone feels huge and I feel like a slow poke crawling through it. So much walking…

[Okeephe]

While I agree that everything feels a little, ‘brutal’ the right word right now?
But I think it’s by design

Yes, I agree this new area is tough, and I understand the ‘no benefit right now’ problem, but I liken it to the game when you arrive on the newbie island, there’s a bit of ‘earn your right of passage’ about things

There are things that need addressing, if you look at the wiki, perhaps skills that fall under ‘other skills’ should have the jelly requirement removed or relaxed.

All that said, the content is new, and I think it’d be expected that things feel rough until players start to build a surplus of ‘barter drops’

I’m loving the mix between solo and group content this zone offers, and the difference offered in player progress between the two modes feels about right

I do think some favor requirements are a bit rough though

At least when you came off the learner island you were still earning xp etc.

I get nothing out of the Fae Realm. I can't earn xp on maxxed skills, the mobs don't drop loot that will generate enough cash in the my lifetime and everything kills me.

I find myself standing there wondering what to do, and most people I talk to are just going back to GK.

Eventually we can generate the cash needed to up some of those skills. We aren't all like Greenberg, Wemedge, etc with 20M+ in the bank.

It was a nice try to require a new item (royal jelly) to stop people from just buying all the skills right off, but that lasted about a day and people were selling 20 royal jelly for 50K each. I've got 4 so far.

Anyone who started in the last year likely had less than 500K when this patch came out, and a dozen skills needeing to be trained.

I understand, that in the normal course of the game, this all would not be an issue, it was the
drop in a whole new world for the rich people' part that is nasty.

[Celerity]

I like the new update, the zone and new enemies both look cool and I think the day/night cycle affecting the foragables, mobs that spawn and the lighting is a really interesting idea.

The combat is a lot more challenging than previous zones, even accounting for not using lvl 80 gear as I currently have all my abilities unlocked with max-enchanted yellow lvl 70 gear and I'm finding it harder than I found the gazluk caves at lvl 60 using much worse quality gear. This is partly due to the aggro range of the mobs and partly due to their damage/hp, and the fact that the fae realm mobs have much nastier rage attacks (stuns and bear damage) as well as a mix of ranged and melee attacks of all different types, whereas amaluk valley cave for example was all physical melee which was fairly easy to counter. However I think this a good thing as honestly I found the content in gazluk to be a bit trivial once you unlocked all your abilities and got actual good crafted gear.

The power change is really rough on hammer, I understand why it was changed because power was basically never an issue for any skillset other than fire magic, archery or hammer but hammer already had power problems which have now just been made twofold. I essentially can't use the skill anymore without minimum running double cheese food against even trash mobs and against elites in groups I have to use dig deep pretty much every single fight even with bouquets + digestif + double cheese. If it's the intention that hammer is now completely unusable to noobs or anyone who just doesn't want to spend a lot of money on food then that intention has been filled. Just as a sidenote, my other main build ice/bc I can still use effectively while running no food whatsoever so that hasn't been affected at all.

The royal jellies are easy to farm if you have a good group that is able to do the honeycombs but they seem quite difficult to get if you can't manage to do them. I would imagine this would be balanced out by people selling their extra, but I imagine also that if you aren't good enough to group for them you also wouldn't have the money to buy them. I also find it a bit irritating that you can't gift to midge before reaching friends. Maybe it's just because I already did a lot of barters before the change was implemented which gave you favour for doing them but I'm already at the point where for the most part I don't even need the jelly anymore but I want the storage from higher favour levels, which I can't get to until I've done more barters I don't need or want.

I also can not for the life of me find any of the new leatherworking/tailoring/jewelry crafting recipes. They don't seem to drop in the new zone which I already found strange but even from farming faces of death and the rakkies in rahu for a couple hours I still haven't managed to find a single one, which leads me to believe the drop table of recipes from each mob is just way too large or I'm somehow looking in the wrong place and these lvl 80+ recipes drop in lower level zones? Which if it is the case doesn't make much sense to me.

The elites overall are also much more challenging than gk for example, and I expect I will still find this to be true even when I've finished rerolling my lvl 80 max-enchanted gear. Again due to aggro range but they also have ridiculous damage. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing as I actually find it more enjoyable than gk was at lvl 70 because of how easy it was, but as ErDrick and others have mentioned it does mean the 'meta' or in this case perhaps the only effective tactic available is just to burst dps down each elite while stunning/slowing/rooting it in order to not die while mezzing the others. Using this, it is certainly possible to do the honeycombs and in fact I've been in a few groups where I would even describe it as relatively straightforward, despite the fact that we didn't have all of our abilities at that point nor lvl 80 gear. I will say though the reason for this is just like Yaffy said, there just isn't much damage mitigation for the types that the mobs use; fire and electricity from the fire droaches, shocking droaches and phoenixes especially. The reason that tanking gk was (very) effective was because they were almost all physical damage mobs which has a lot of ways to mitigate it. Extra skin with mods alone mitigates something like 80 of all physical damage but crushing, and cow, unarmed and shield all have lots of mitigation for it. Electricty and fire on the other hand only have the meditations and the electricity mitigation dancing buff plus some minor pots and elemental ward from shield. The pots are not near enough to actually achieve anything, you can't reliably get the dancing buff and you can only have 1 meditation buff at a time, which also while it helps tremendulously, is not enough on its own. That leaves you mostly just with elemental ward, which while good, is essentially the exact same thing as the "cc and burst dps the mob down before it leaves cc or you die" meta except it's "elemental ward and burst dps the mob down before elemental ward runs out or you die"

Overall I think it's a great update with a lot of very nice things to do. I actually enjoy the non-combat parts of the game more than the combat so I'm glad to be able to level skills such as flower arrangement and cheesemaking again, as well as the new skill jewelry crafting.

[Yaffy]

Elite damage feels very heavy at the moment, but it is too early to comment as still in level 70 gear. Electricity damage mobs are particularly nasty.

With a well-geared and organised group everything has been 'doable' and most elites farmable - though this does require a dedicated healer, supported by secondary AOE healer builds plus plenty of resses (due to frequently being 2 or 3 shot killed)

With less geared or organised groups, multiple /continuous wipes have been experienced and farming elites has not been viable

Farming elites, currently is dependent on organisation, preparation and using synergistic builds within the group plus excellent gear - which is a very good position for the game to be in at this point in the level 80 cycle.

It's not just about whether it's doable or not, it's just that it doesn't feel like I'm playing the game the way it should be. I am perfectly capable of doing the hives even with a fairly rag-tag team, and usually the only deaths are when someone messes up and/or gets insta-killed by a rage AoE. If I have a good group I can do all the hives with 0 deaths and I can contribute a lot whether my group is super geared or not.

That's why I want to specify what I mean. I know I'm helping a lot with my tanking set, so I heavily disagree with the idea that the meta is "100% DPS builds only". I also don't believe the hives are "Impossible", as much as the way to handle efficiently doesn't feel like proper gameplay.

The reason why I bring up the mob damage is that it makes me play in a way that I don't think is intended or terribly fun (At least to do repeatedly). Currently the best strategy for me to do hives is run in, use an immunity skill (Ex. Elemental ward) so I don't die, taunt the enemies, and then run away. Then while the mobs are busy chasing me, my team can attack them safely. This doesn't feel intentional because I'm just running around in circles rather than fighting. I'm not tanking by mitigating their damage or sustaining myself, I'm tanking by minimizing the monster's ability to hit me at all.

I WANT to stay near the enemies and fight them, but I can't. First because the mobs do too much sustained damage so I can't handle the damage for long even with a ton of resist. Secondly, if I stay near the enemies, they start doing rage attacks, which can potentially be so strong that they destroy my team mates because they aren't running tank builds. This means that even if I have a lot of healing support from another player, I'll probably get them killed if I stay near them so I can get healed. Because of that for the safety of both myself and my team mates, it's better to just run away so the enemies can't fight at all.

I also want to add that while the difficulty does encourage some form of organization and planning which is good, I believe you're over stating it. Usually the only organization needed is to tell people to not stand near the hive when it activates so they don't end up surrounded and pulling everything on themselves. If everyone is to the side when the mobs spawn, I can taunt the mobs and run in circles, which doesn't need any sort of planning from the rest of my team aside from "Focus and kill as fast as possible".

Basically what I'm complaining about aren't the difficulty of the hives as much as it is the design of the enemies in them and perhaps the design behind player survivability in general. I don't believe the devs intended this silly run around and kite strategy, but I'm forced into it because of how much damage the enemies do. I don't feel like I'm playing the game properly and while I this "Tanking" is very effective, it isn't how I want to be playing. I'm heavily reliant on skills that simply make me immune to damage like Elemental ward rather than a lot of my build, which makes me feel like I wasted a lot of time trying to get a good gear set if an unmodded ability outweighs a lot of it.

Another thing I believe it does is that it pigeon holes a lot of players into specific items. For example, I believe right now the best in slot items for tank characters are actually a mishmash of lower level equipment. A level 60 hat, a level 50 chest plate, a level 30 pair of gloves and a level 50 shield are better for reducing damage than any level 80 equipment currently simply because they have fire resistance on them. That's not to say it isn't interesting that lower level items can still be useful, but there's basically no contest between an item that cuts down damage by 100+ per hit versus something that only gives you 30-100 more armor which will vanish as soon as you get hit once, at least for tanking (Since higher level mods are less important for tanks). If players were forced to fight enemies face to face without kiting, then I believe what it would mean is that non-tank players will be forced into building exactly like a tank just to survive the AoE attacks (Just with damage mods rather than taunt mods), which would limit the equipment they can use heavily. Every DPS would be forced to equip nimble boots and tank gear just to tank AoEs, or play ranged and run away whenever the enemy is going to get full rage to try and dodge it (Which is good interactivity for ranged players, but it means melee players are screwed.)

I believe it's an issue with how elite monster damage scales vs mitigation options for players, as well as the design behind "Tanking" in general. I've brought up issues regarding it in the past, but I believe this is probably the worst it has ever been, due to the damage typng in the Fey realm, the strength of AoE attacks and how crits scale the enemy's damage. It's catching up to the fact that the game has very few viable options for reducing damage, as the new content also doesn't offer many options to lower damage for players.

I wanted to bring this up because I think it's an issue that will get worse if it isn't' addressed before higher level content comes out, and I want to hear what other people think about it. I don't believe it should just be dismissed as "It's ok because we want difficulty but it's still doable", I believe it's important because it makes the game less enjoyable and pigeonholes players into very specific builds and items and it will become a bigger problem later on. I know a lot of players don't play tank so perhaps all my "Tank talk" is going over people's heads, but I hope some people can understand what I mean and why I think all of this is an issue.

[Lasc]

At least when you came off the learner island you were still earning xp etc.

I get nothing out of the Fae Realm. I can't earn xp on maxxed skills, the mobs don't drop loot that will generate enough cash in the my lifetime and everything kills me.

I find myself standing there wondering what to do, and most people I talk to are just going back to GK.

Eventually we can generate the cash needed to up some of those skills. We aren't all like Greenberg, Wemedge, etc with 20M+ in the bank.

It was a nice try to require a new item (royal jelly) to stop people from just buying all the skills right off, but that lasted about a day and people were selling 20 royal jelly for 50K each. I've got 4 so far.

Anyone who started in the last year likely had less than 500K when this patch came out, and a dozen skills needeing to be trained.

I understand, that in the normal course of the game, this all would not be an issue, it was the
drop in a whole new world for the rich people' part that is nasty.

I sympathise with the scenario you put forth, I’m also a more casual player.
I agree things would be rough on someone. With a 500k balance at patch launch

BUT..... (this isn’t an attack, just stating fact), I’d average 2-3 hours a day, I realise I will not progress as fast as others, I accept this. So, much like my journey to lvl 70, I shift the goals to small increments

Sell your. Skins, even if you intend to leatherwork, you won’t be crafting that gear for a bit at your balance and pace, and you’ll turn over stocks of skins very fast in the current climate

Given time, you’ll likely end up in the position where your earning jelly faster then coin, without coin, the jelly looses its value, so sell some

Foraging, skinning should be primary crafts to prioritise..... all the usual tricks used after leaving the island come back into play.... you see what I mean I’m sure

If you like, I’d be happy to help out with a few farm cycles I do, and again, I do so casually and while not flush with coin, I’m doing well now on the jelly front, so much so that coin, not jelly is my problem (new work order board Citan? :D)

Anyway, if you need a hand, feel free to lookup Warhaz online (gmt +10 Australian Eastern)

There are ways forward, it will be slower, but casuals can make it work

[Coglin]

The same way I feel about all Elite mob damage ( and it's actually bleeding into non-elites in some places) in all zones atm, It is extremely high for a tab target game, you can literally be killed faster then you can react, in a lot of cases even reacting instantly won't save you. ( obviously being a tank gives you some buffer buuut). Example that has literally happened vs a non-elite in fae realm: I get hit twice and see that I need to heal, click heal, heal goes on cooldown and gets activated, die before it actually heals me... so 3 hits from a non-elite in this case, that's about 4-5 seconds vs approximately 700 health and 800 armor ( and thickskin with 7 modifiers on top of that), which is much higher then the average person is going to have. Other random things have killed me in 2 hits, but it might as well be one hit because the same thing happens, I get chunked, hit heal, die before the heal actually takes effect. The elites are fully capable of 1 shotting me and so is general prask still.

No instant kills are acceptable at any level unless it's some special mechanic like a face of death simply because there is no way to actively dodge or block such mechanics, and to be honest those are way too prolific.[/QUOTE]

I cannot say i agree with you here. As I have spent a great deal of time in the realm and I have not experienced being 'insta-killed" in any manner you have. Particularly with non-elites. It makes me curious, what kind of groups are you running with? what build or class combo are you playing? I have 640ish health and 730ish armor playing bard/druid and I have won several fights solo against 3-5 mobs at a time. I admit i had to pull many tricks out of my sleeve to survive in those rare instances, but none the less, I feel like the difference is made by maintaining great awareness of any mobs near me and having a mentality of always being prepared for anything.

Typically when I die, I can almost immediately identify what I could have done to either has won the particular fight or not have gotten myself in a bad situation, to begin with.

[ErDrick]

You don't have to agree, you can feel completely differently and that's fine and dandy. To be fair the bees, panthers and plant creatures are complete pushovers... the fae didn't seem all that deadly either besides the Lethargy Puck who can 2 shot ( we did kill him though, but plenty of party members got 2 shotted by him.. his rage could be a potential one-shot I'd imagine although offhand I can't remember if his rage is even an attack or not, but I didn't test that ).

Let me know how it goes vs 3-5 bears or trolls though, or any elite.. yea, your group will most likely defeat the elite but someone is going to die unless you are running with the 5-10 most competent players in the game. Also if you are grouping for non-elites with said people of course it's going to be easy, I generally don't group for outdoor zones/non-elites unless it's just for socialization or to help someone else that is struggling.

Also the point isn't that it's impossible to defeat them, it's entirely possible.. it just isn't much fun. It's like fighting manticores, I can kill them solo but it isn't fun because the time to kill is 5 seconds vs 45 seconds ( as in if I let them, they will kill me in under 5 seconds, but if I don't let them I can kill them in 45). When you group for manticores you can kill them in 7 or 8 seconds but some random person can and will still die in 5 unless they are chain stunned or rooted / feared etc. I guess they are still fun as a "lets see if I can do this" but that wears out pretty quick.

The skillsets I played around with there though were bard/chemistry ( 95-100% optimized), fire/chem ( 90%ish optimized), fire/shield ( fire is 90% or so, shield 50-60% but you don't use shield solo with optimal mods generally ), bard/shield ( bard 100% shield 50-60% again) and then archery/chem ( 100% optimized). I'll admit I only played for maybe 4-6 hours because the combat wasn't much fun for me, and also the wall of councils I was looking at needing was just too daunting to give a crap about actually putting in the effort. It also doesn't help that I'm unsure what skills I actually want to stick with and level ( after a long break), and just to try one is going to be a million councils... except I can't just vendor everything either because I also will need several thousand phlogs.

For a more complete rundown of my experiences: bard song of discord does less damage even at max stacks then most basic attacks ( combat refresh attacks) do for other skillsets vs a single target and the ae aspect was severely nerfed. ( if you are in a group and not being hit constantly forget about doing decent damage with that whatsoever... which would be completely acceptable if the support role was strong, but it isn't except for group rez and moment of resolve ) also it is impossible to kill a troll ( just ONE non-elite troll) using either of those skill combs aka bard/shield or bard/chem, unless you also modified your chembombs to ignite ( P.S "fire shield" didn't seem to effect trolls regeneration capabilities whatsoever). Fire was fine until I ran into things that were 100% immune to fire damage. Obviously archery/chem was fine in a fully optimized gearset... you can mesmerize problematic or ranged mobs, and ae root melee mobs. I personally hate playing archery even though it is still a strong skill, because it's such a pain in the ass. I also turned mob health bars to "always show" because otherwise you can't see potential adds through the foliage ( previously I had it set to show the bars for my target only).

At the end of the day I gave away all my jellies and logged out. I will check back if combat gets some sort of rework that will make it enjoyable again, and I'll still read the forums because I still care about the game even though I don't really feel like playing it as is.

I am curious what you and others think about all the other examples I gave where you are either killed instantly or unable to act for so long you might as well have been killed instantly, though. For example a 5 second ae disable is completely nuts when you can potentially die from 3 hits. I don't want things to be easier btw, I just want to have time to actually react, if I wanted to play an "avoid the red circles or die instantly" game, I'd play one. In fact I actually want it to be a lot harder but less stupid, as in mobs with much larger health pools, but not 10 at once, and them not being able to kill you in 1-4 hits.

There is no solution that will please everyone though, and never has been.. so I don't know what to say at this point.

[Okeephe]

I sympathise with the scenario you put forth, I’m also a more casual player.
I agree things would be rough on someone. With a 500k balance at patch launch

BUT..... (this isn’t an attack, just stating fact), I’d average 2-3 hours a day, I realise I will not progress as fast as others, I accept this. So, much like my journey to lvl 70, I shift the goals to small increments

Sell your. Skins, even if you intend to leatherwork, you won’t be crafting that gear for a bit at your balance and pace, and you’ll turn over stocks of skins very fast in the current climate

Given time, you’ll likely end up in the position where your earning jelly faster then coin, without coin, the jelly looses its value, so sell some

Foraging, skinning should be primary crafts to prioritise..... all the usual tricks used after leaving the island come back into play.... you see what I mean I’m sure

If you like, I’d be happy to help out with a few farm cycles I do, and again, I do so casually and while not flush with coin, I’m doing well now on the jelly front, so much so that coin, not jelly is my problem (new work order board Citan? :D)

Anyway, if you need a hand, feel free to lookup Warhaz online (gmt +10 Australian Eastern)

There are ways forward, it will be slower, but casuals can make it work


That's not the point. The point is that for a long period players like me are not moving forward. It's like running dungeons in the game 50 times before you are allowed to loot the bosses.

Everyone with cash, trained, and starting working towards 80 (90) right away. I have to go out and do 5 levels (or more) of farming just to get the privelege of actually earning the xp to get those 5 levels, i.e. doing everything twice

I plan out what I am going to do each session by what skills I need to level, and if I can't level any, then I find it hard to play.

[Clip]

I know FR is far from complete, and what's there is REALLY cool, but please don't lose sight of solo-preference players completely. Things were pretty bad at 70 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2185-Some-Meaningful-Level-70-Solo-Content-Please) and are significantly worse at 80 with Fae Realm being chock full of elite and group-only content. After a few madcap frenetic group-running-everywhere experiences, I've mostly not played since the update.


While grouping should be the most efficient way to get gear, I want soloing to be viable at all levels and I agree that it's too slow to get gear while soloing at some level ranges. We'll be working on this in the future...


I actually thought most of those Gazluk caves were full of level 70 monsters already. .... I'll plan on making some changes there for the update after.

I hope those changes are aimed at tuning for 80s, which is where we'll be probably be spending most of our lives for the next year or so.

There's a wide spectrum between "I want soloing to be viable at all levels" and "solo players are not welcome here, go play a different game," but even from our friendly community, I hear a lot more "go play a different game" than I hear suggestions on how to make soloing viable. (For the obvious reasons that soloing for Royal Jelly is a foolish decision right now, and in-game money sources haven't scaled with the increased uncap costs.)

It seems like the implementation decisions are moving farther away from solo viability. Citan's posts were a big driver in my first and subsequent decisions to spend money on the game, and the war caches were awesome, so I'm looking forward to seeing things start to swing back from the the "group or GTFO" extreme.

Thanks!

[Lasc]

That's not the point. The point is that for a long period players like me are not moving forward. It's like running dungeons in the game 50 times before you are allowed to loot the bosses.

Everyone with cash, trained, and starting working towards 80 (90) right away. I have to go out and do 5 levels (or more) of farming just to get the privelege of actually earning the xp to get those 5 levels, i.e. doing everything twice

I plan out what I am going to do each session by what skills I need to level, and if I can't level any, then I find it hard to play.

I do see what your saying, you want reward for your effort in the content/context of what your doing.
So i take it youd rather no jelly requirement and increased coin requirement? (Jellies purpose was intended to ease the cost burden), Yet yes, it also introduces a gate to people who cant gather these at the required rate, ok, point taken.

People with Cash find it easier, yes. This game loosely equates to cash = levels. Even before the new content this was the case. Buy whatever, gain player power, game difficulty decreases. (eg, buy leather & gems, craft better gear, game becomes easier due to the players increased power)

I dont know how to answer your concern. Save that my experience was not the same.

My experience was:
I only had 2.2m councils by launch, enough to open 5 abilities (once i had the jelly), and skill them. (2x Combat abilities, fletching, skinning, leatherworking)
I ran (and still do) all the Rahu, Casino, and Sunvale work order boards.
I had skills in my build to cover trolls, and high evasion mobs, as well as 1-2 stuns, and some aoe when needed.
I died alot learning aggro radius of mobs, socials of mobs, and where to find good farm spots. Uriana's quests are invaluable, and hoarding every "rubbish" drop/harvest does wonders with Midge (i agree with Mbaums was it, midge is a bastard :P )
And i still do die frequently when i miss-judge pulls or aggro radius.

Barring 90mins or so on day 1 doing honeycombs, All my efforts have been solo.
Initially things were very slow, and my levelling pace outstripped my rate of gaining jelly. By CA level ~75 on each, that all changed, and i just seemed to be building barter drops faster and keeping on top of Uriana's quests better.
Im now 80/80 on my combat, and filling out the remainder slowly while i turn my focus back to farming for coin.
Coin, not jelly is now my issue. And i've all but depleted key resource to fill work orders (leather, slabs, gems)

Yes, once i get the coin, i will go back and have to unlock and re-do content for first aid, armor patching, endurance, etc.
But this was my same experience at the previous teir unlocks also, and im fine with that.

The 'specials' that mobs have can be an issue, as im geared to handle things, many wont be. Especially given the mixed population across FR.


I know FR is far from complete, and what's there is REALLY cool, but please don't lose sight of solo-preference players completely. Things were pretty bad at 70 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2185-Some-Meaningful-Level-70-Solo-Content-Please) and are significantly worse at 80 with Fae Realm being chock full of elite and group-only content. After a few madcap frenetic group-running-everywhere experiences, I've mostly not played since the update.

I hope those changes are aimed at tuning for 80s, which is where we'll be probably be spending most of our lives for the next year or so.

There's a wide spectrum between "I want soloing to be viable at all levels" and "solo players are not welcome here, go play a different game," but even from our friendly community, I hear a lot more "go play a different game" than I hear suggestions on how to make soloing viable. (For the obvious reasons that soloing for Royal Jelly is a foolish decision right now, and in-game money sources haven't scaled with the increased uncap costs.)

It seems like the implementation decisions are moving farther away from solo viability. Citan's posts were a big driver in my first and subsequent decisions to spend money on the game, and the war caches were awesome, so I'm looking forward to seeing things start to swing back from the the "group or GTFO" extreme.

Thanks!

I agree Clip. Though, After learning 2 or 3 farm spots, im finding things easier.

Im loathe to give it away, its been good to me, but.....
The eastern side of the map, theres a 'ruins' area in amongst the trees.
Its an excellent farm/grind spot for the soloer. Be sure to have foraging and skinning/butchering available. You'll be killing bears, panthers, the odd wasp/bee, and if you wander out of the ruins to the hilly brush/scrub areas youll get all the plant styled mobs and pixies. At fill pop theres alot of mobs, but once you start to 'break' the location and get ontop of it, you do hit a nice groove.


I find income an issue. The sooner we get the ability to complete 'Amazing' tier work orders the better. Someone mentioned the economies of the zone. Some of the in-zone drops could use an increase in vendor value to assist in income gains perhaps.... Havent thought that through, but it feels like alot of the income sources to support the new tier are outside of FR..... maybe thats good and bad.... In two minds....

[Ranperre]

I had Jewelry done (level 78 with bonus levels) last Thursday and have had some time to think about it. It was designed by a sadist. You need several thousand slabs and ores, but the slab motherlodes you need to do don't drop the ores you need when leveling. Then, after you piss away a million+ on materials, the only way to get the slabs for the current content is as a bonus off of the currently highest level slab motherlodes. That's a dictionary definition of masochism right there. Loved it, give me more please (no /s).

Special notes on Jewelry:
- The terminology is 10 levels off from the rest of armor crafting. "Nice" leather/cloth is level 40, but "Nice" jewelry is level 50. "Amazing" is level 70 armor, but level 80 jewelry. I would appreciate more consistency in this realm.
- On max enchanted, Nice & Quality jewelry (level 50 and 60) require a vervadium while the Great jewelry (level 70) requires a single glowy yellow crystal. A piece of vervadium is worth 2.5 glowy yellow crystals, as in verv is worth more than a glowy yellow crystal. This seems off to me, if using items that can be directly compared to each other, higher level gear should require "more". For reference, Amazing (level 80) requires 1 verv & 1 glowy yellow crystal. If you switch nice/quality jewelry's verv with great's glowy yellow crystal for max enchanted pieces, it would make more sense.
- Love the priest piece and the ring is pretty much best in slot for any dps. That said, priest healers get nothing out of the white stats of the priest piece, it'd be nice if you could install a priest gem into the normal neck piece. This is a little specific and pedantic compared to the other notes though.


On flower arrangement: I certainly hope that tulips and fae mystosis or whatever drop in the new dungeon. Even if they're supposed to be rare, the day/night cycle has made them super rare right now.

[Tagamogi]

I haven't made it to the new zone yet, so take my opinions for what they are worth:

I'm concerned with the price tag for the new unlocks. 300K plus is large enough that percentage discounts become very significant. (At least to me.) One of my first thoughts when seeing the new prices was that there is no way I'd ever be silly enough to uncap any skill past 70 if there wasn't an NPC training discount event happening. I forget whether the weekend training events are usually 10% off or 20%, but even at 10%, that's going to be 30K+ I can save by waiting for a weekend event, aka the profits from 3-4 good work orders. So, it makes a lot of sense to just wait for a weekend event and remain capped until then, but it's not a mechanic I'd consider fun.

Rubbing a little bit of salt into the discount wounds is that notoriety now gives reduced training costs past level 50 too, so obviously the most efficient way for me to train skills is to do a bunch of group dungeons I don't enjoy first in order to collect notoriety so I can train cheaper. if I don't do that, let's say I miss out on a 5% discount every time I train, that's 30K needlessly spent just when unlocking 2 combat skills, never mind their abilities. ( FWIW, my main is at 72 notoriety now, missing primarily Dark Chapel and Gazluk Keep since I did run the other group dungeons at times. My alts are a both a little bit past 50, through about 95% pure solo effort.)

My suggestion for the NPC training discounts would probably be to cap them - make it so you can at most get a 20% or other fixed number discount, either from an event or from a combination of notoriety + civic pride + whatever. I think that might feel like less of a race to collect as many discounts as possible.

My other concern about the price tags for the new skills is that they make lower level content progressively less relevant. I understand the idea is that higher levels costs more so that not everyone gets level 100 in everything, but that also means that higher level drops need to be worth a lot more to support the higher level skills. So, the most efficient way for someone to level multiple skills is to get to max level asap, farm at max level for cash, and then speed-raise any other combat skills to max level asap too, so they can do the well-paying content. As someone who likes both efficiency and puttering around in lower level content at level, that makes me a bit sad. I'm not sure what the best way of scaling this is. The level 61-70 combat unlocks still feel painfully expensive to me ( in an "ok, so this takes effort" kind of way). The level 71-80 unlocks sound more like "haha, no way" to me right now.

Edit, on a totally different topic:


I am curious what you and others think about all the other examples I gave where you are either killed instantly or unable to act for so long you might as well have been killed instantly, though. For example a 5 second ae disable is completely nuts when you can potentially die from 3 hits. I don't want things to be easier btw, I just want to have time to actually react, if I wanted to play an "avoid the red circles or die instantly" game, I'd play one. In fact I actually want it to be a lot harder but less stupid, as in mobs with much larger health pools, but not 10 at once, and them not being able to kill you in 1-4 hits.
Yes, that. I don't normally play group content, but even solo, I'd like fewer stuns and less spike damage and overall slower combat that takes a little bit longer to resolve.

[Clip]

I have a lot of sympathy for the dev team. They are trying to entertain people who are in-game 40-60 hours/week or more, constantly grouping and taking down elites and dailies. (Not hyperbole; many of my guildies have that number clearly visible in their Steam stats, and I've had my weeks, too.) These uberplayers are generally friendly, helpful, fun, and by virtue of being online so much, by far the most visible and available players.

These are exactly the kind of people you really want to keep playing the game, because they form the core of an active, healthy online community. But it takes one heck of a treadmill to give them something to do during their Project Gorgon full time job.

Where I think it breaks down is when you get some aspect of the game that's effectively impossible unless you're constantly grouped. Gear farming at level 70 was an example, where GK elite runs were the only feasible way. (by a factor of 100x or more time investment). Grouping elites, the biggest problem is decomposing/phlogging and shoving stuff in crates as fast as piles up. If there was a way to advance solo at 20% the rate of groups, that'd be just fine, but this update probably takes bit of a step in the opposite direction.


do a bunch of group dungeons I don't enjoy first in order to collect notoriety so I can train cheaper.

How do you feel about only having to do the dungeon once, as opposed to having to run it repeatedly? If you can get the notoriety by joining a zerg run or good group, and then never have to repeat it, does that make it less bad than having it be a mandatory part of your daily play?

[Cev]

[QUOTE=Clip;16432]I have a lot of sympathy for the dev team. They are trying to entertain people who are in-game 40-60 hours/week or more, constantly grouping and taking down elites and dailies. (Not hyperbole; many of my guildies have that number clearly visible in their Steam stats, and I've had my weeks, too.) These uberplayers are generally friendly, helpful, fun, and by virtue of being online so much, by far the most visible and available players.

These are exactly the kind of people you really want to keep playing the game, because they form the core of an active, healthy online community. But it takes one heck of a treadmill to give them something to do during their Project Gorgon full time job.

Where I think it breaks down is when you get some aspect of the game that's effectively impossible unless you're constantly grouped. Gear farming at level 70 was an example, where GK elite runs were the only feasible way. (by a factor of 100x or more time investment). Grouping elites, the biggest problem is decomposing/phlogging and shoving stuff in crates as fast as piles up. If there was a way to advance solo at 20% the rate of groups, that'd be just fine, but this update probably takes bit of a step in the opposite direction.

QUOTE]

Is there still a place for the solo player in the future of this game ?
My playing style is pure solo and I like crafting more then fighting.
So my tailoring/leatherworking are 70+ and my fighting skills only 50+. Until this last update this was perfectly possible to play this way so good points for the dev team :)
Now I need other things then crédits to unlock my crafting skills ... Maybe build in the choice to pay all crédits instead of the new items ?

[Lasc]

Before i get shouted down, this is just an idea, the game is beta, so throwing this out there....

The goal of this is to (initially) ease the casual into the new content, and ease the INITIAL cost burden of entering any new tier
Somewhat a radical re-think of things

* "Tier" unlocks on all skills and abilities removed altogether (ie, the unlock for the right to continue earning experience) - this allows people to experience what they want, when they want, without risk of taking the hit to the pocket for the privilege

* The cost that was associated with the tier unlock, is re-distributed (added and spread evenly) to all abilites/recipies associated to that skill, within that tier. So if an unlock was 400k, and a skill had 10 new/upgraded abilities through that teir, each ability and/or skill has its own cost increased by 40k. The net cost for progressing fully through the tier is the same upon completion. This suits the casual as they can plan for more incremental upgrades, go at a slower pace, etc while still progressing through said tier, and the more involved player, perhaps one with bigger balances, doesnt feel any impact either, its all the same to them, just the cost spread over time rather than sudden lump sums.
This means ability costs for 1-50 would be unchanged, and jump considerably there after.

* Wider expansion of exp penalties. The reason for this is with the removal of the tier unlocks, there needs to be some form of "hand break", sorry a better term escapes me, to stop someone thats say, level 75 Combat, going back to say Rahu sewers, or similar, owning the content there as a way to progress with considerably reduced risk, and at the same time potentially spoiling the game experience of others in the zone who are appropriate tier.
Note this would just take form of an exp penalty, opportunity for drops etc remains unchanged, no EQ style "Trivial Loot" BS. This point is only intended to attempt to say to people "If you want to experience leveing in Fay Realm - Level in fay realm, or Gazluk. Dont expect to see full reward below level 60 content".

Anyway, just a thought, It would solve the Tier gate of people moving forward, but ultimately mean the burden of progress is the same, as you'll need the skill upgrades.

[Tagamogi]

I have a lot of sympathy for the dev team. They are trying to entertain people ...
Yes, and then they have us whining on the forums about how we aren't entertained enough. :D

Just to be clear, I'm not unhappy with the game or the devs. I debated whether I should jump into this discussion at all since I haven't actually done the new content but well, I like talking and maybe I can add some viewpoints. The reason I haven't done the new content is that I checked my skills (capped, very near capped or around 50) and my money (can't afford a single 70+ skill unlock). It's largely a temporary problem - I drifted out of the game after an NPC training weekend and I'm just now trying to get back into it and haven't had time to restock money yet. Still, my enthusiasm for finally having the fae realm available is dampened somewhat by the idea of needing 4 times more effort to level past 70 than it took to get past 60, and I find myself increasingly planning my playtime for the weekend events that give me more cash or require me to spend less cash. Which, really, were a heavy part of my game planning before this latest patch already, and it kind of feels they shouldn't be.



Where I think it breaks down is when you get some aspect of the game that's effectively impossible unless you're constantly grouped. Gear farming at level 70 was an example, where GK elite runs were the only feasible way. (by a factor of 100x or more time investment). Grouping elites, the biggest problem is decomposing/phlogging and shoving stuff in crates as fast as piles up. If there was a way to advance solo at 20% the rate of groups, that'd be just fine, but this update probably takes bit of a step in the opposite direction.

I thought that was ok - I was able to do non-group content fine with the gear I had, so there wasn't really any need for me to worry about max-efficient gear. What frustrated me about GK is that I really wanted to learn Orcish and couldn't ( no, 5xp per rare drop from solo orcs doesn't count) , so I still can't talk to the orcs in New Prestonbule, and I know there's at least one NPC inside GK that I'm missing out on too. So, I'm really looking forward to getting to 80 because then I can maybe finally talk to those people.



How do you feel about only having to do the dungeon once, as opposed to having to run it repeatedly? If you can get the notoriety by joining a zerg run or good group, and then never have to repeat it, does that make it less bad than having it be a mandatory part of your daily play?
Well, that's rather the current system. :) I just don't like zergs or feeling like I'm being carried, so my personal choice has always been to wait to do group content until I can do it myself or with a group of 1-2 friends. (Possibly solution there could be just that I need to make new friends but I like setting my own play schedule and not having other people rely on me.) Anyway, I'm ok'ish waiting, it's just that it feels this patch added a new penalty to my wait and I don't really like that since there isn't any alternate way for me to get the training buff except to suck it up and zerg, and until I do that, I'll just be paying more than other people.

(Yes, yes, I'm a shameless mercenary and a glass half empty person, why do you ask? ;) )



Now I need other things then crédits to unlock my crafting skills ... Maybe build in the choice to pay all crédits instead of the new items ?
I'd expect the royal jelly to be offered for sale by other players, so you can buy it from them instead of farming it yourself. Right now, the prices are probably a bit crazy but once the update's been out for a while, it hopefully shouldn't be too bad.

That being said, I'm not sure I'm fond of the royal jelly idea myself - I found the bargain aspect of fire and ice magic to be somewhat annoying at times, and I don't really like the idea of all skills requiring a special item instead of just councils now. Still, I'm hoping that since it's just single item used for all skills, it won't be too rare or hard to get.



* "Tier" unlocks on all skills and abilities removed altogether (ie, the unlock for the right to continue earning experience) - this allows people to experience what they want, when they want, without risk of taking the hit to the pocket for the privilege

* The cost that was associated with the tier unlock, is re-distributed (added and spread evenly) to all abilites/recipies associated to that skill, within that tier. So if an unlock was 400k, and a skill had 10 new/upgraded abilities through that teir, each ability and/or skill has its own cost increased by 40k. The net cost for progressing fully through the tier is the same upon completion. This suits the casual as they can plan for more incremental upgrades, go at a slower pace, etc while still progressing through said tier, and the more involved player, perhaps one with bigger balances, doesnt feel any impact either, its all the same to them, just the cost spread over time rather than sudden lump sums.
This means ability costs for 1-50 would be unchanged, and jump considerably there after.

I like this. It would help my playstyle - I basically tend to lose interest in a skill once I can no longer level it. The current unlock system doesn't particularly bother me - I usually switch to another skill or alt once I'm capped, but I think I'd slightly prefer a capless system.



* Wider expansion of exp penalties. The reason for this is with the removal of the tier unlocks, there needs to be some form of "hand break", sorry a better term escapes me, to stop someone thats say, level 75 Combat, going back to say Rahu sewers, or similar, owning the content there as a way to progress with considerably reduced risk, and at the same time potentially spoiling the game experience of others in the zone who are appropriate tier.
Note this would just take form of an exp penalty, opportunity for drops etc remains unchanged, no EQ style "Trivial Loot" BS. This point is only intended to attempt to say to people "If you want to experience leveing in Fay Realm - Level in fay realm, or Gazluk. Dont expect to see full reward below level 60 content".

Mmm. This would be similar to the current crafting xp penalties. I'm on the fence about this - I feel the existing system is set up so that each level takes lots more xp to get, so while you could get full xp for lower levels, it doesn't really make sense to do that because doing the higher tier recipes ( or killing the higher tier mobs) is just more efficient. Adding a low-level xp penalty on top of that feels a bit weird. I'll see how the crafting xp shakes out - I don't really have an objection to the xp penalty system, it just seems a bit odd.

[Yaffy]

As a quick comment about the cost of uncaps. I've always been under the impression that the current exponential scaling of costs is too high, but only exists because end-game players have saved up way too much money. Training costs are basically one of the only money sinks this game has, so that's why the costs are so high.

I'm not sure at what level of content the economic wipe is planned, but I would hope that if it happens, it would be a good excuse to cut down on training costs so newer players don't have to deal with such ridiculous prices, since everyone will have lost their money and presumably all the older players will have already bought whatever training they cared about.

[Coglin]

Let us trim the fat of these talks. We ALL KNOW the most pressing issue at hand. The travesty that is truly a detriment to the morale of the ENTIRE community. THE ABSOLUTE LACK OF LEVEL 80 LEATHERWORKING BARD ARMOR RECIPIES. As Coglin, Master Bard, I am forced to resign myself to the second rate look that is the new astounding leather armor in order to upgrade my states and mods along with my level 74 bard/75 druid, as it has progressed to 84 bard/85 druid.

I expect a solution to this lampoonery that is the look of the new tier of leather is resolved immediately. NAY, I DEMAND it. I have seen these changes obviously and directly harm the spirit of the community to its core. EACH and EVERY player, old and new, displays a clear lessening of cheer in-game due to this mockery of leather.

It is in EVERYONE's best interest that a level 80 version of the bard armor look be implemented or the ability to remove the appearance skin of it to apply to new gear. Elseways the entire communities resolve is in danger of spiraling toward a disastrous level


Please take my language in the fun it is intended.
Coglin, Master Bard, subsequent druid.

[DamageIncorp]

I love the new area and have no problem with it taking considerable time to level skills up to 80+.
I am trying to focus on a few select skills at a time.
I would love to see more mobs in the 7 to 12k health range, which would be challenging but more solo friendly.
Could we get an icon that shows how long trollbane oil will burn for?
It says it lasts long, but the elite war trolls definitely regen up while on fire.
The amount of time that went into the area was considerable and the effort shows.
I am having a very hard time finding mushrooms, especially fly amantia...so maybe increasing spawn density would help.
Might also need to increase the drop rate slightly of new combat scrolls .
After close to 70 hours in the new area, I have found none.
I am enjoying the area immensely overall and always open to grouping or helping others complete quests.
Hit me up or wave if you see me.

[Tagamogi]

At the risk of beating a dead horse: I hopped over to the fae realm yesterday and checked out the trainers myself. My price tag for unlocking pig 71+ was 356K, as compared to the 332K for Yaffy in the screenshot posted earlier in this thread. So, that's a 24K difference for one single skill unlock. If I consider all the skills and abilities I have trained or could train right now, that's going to be what? A million councils penalty for not maxing my discounts? Two?

A nicer way of looking at this might be that people who've played a lot are getting a nice discount on the exhausting task of farming up all those councils. However, I have a less nice personality and I'm just interpreting this as every time I train, I'm getting ripped off.

In all fairness, I checked the training prices on an alt with 63 notoriety and a mere 16 civic pride since I apparently ran out of fuel oil or the desire to use it. Still, it seems that the most cost-efficient path through the game is to max notoriety and civic pride before doing anything else. Both of those are done best as a group zerg. Civic pride can also be leveled solo of course but as someone who's done that to 49 on my main, I wouldn't really recommend it.

Anyway, now that I finally made it over to the fae realm, at least I can add something else to this post: I think the fae realm's pretty and I love the pixie model. I proudly discovered the way in the Gazluk Caves myself, and I went "oooh" as soon as I saw the pixie standing there. I loved the conversation with it and I really enjoyed meeting everyone in the fae realm so far. In the initial area, I was able to kill 1-2 mobs at a time by myself ( level 58/59, in level 40 purples with a couple yellow 55 pieces), and I was really pleased by that. It looks like in the future, this is a place someone could start exploring in their mid/late 60s and make friends with the level 70 trainers before reaching the level 70 cap which I think is nice design.

I haven't done anything noteworthy in the fae realm yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to coming back with a friend. Did I mention it's pretty? :)

[Celerity]

Both of those are done best as a group zerg. Civic pride can also be leveled solo of course but as someone who's done that to 49 on my main, I wouldn't really recommend it.
I'm really interested how you would group zerg civic pride considering only 1 person can fill, light and extinguish the lamps/torches and get exp per in game day.

[Tagamogi]

I'm really interested how you would group zerg civic pride considering only 1 person can fill, light and extinguish the lamps/torches and get exp per in game day.

At least one of the weekend events in the recent months gave civic pride xp and required grouping ( https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2235-Event-weekend-7-26-2019&highlight=civic+pride ). I didn't participate, so I don't know the amount of xp given and may be vastly overestimating the impact. It just feels that about anything's likely to be more efficient than refilling lamps. ;)

So, yeah, since it's a weekend event that ran twice afaik, I don't know if it was fair of me to say that civic pride xp can be zerged. It's just that I know I could have more civic pride xp right now if I didn't mind grouping, and I'm going to assume there will be more events like this in this future. ( I don't mind that the events favor groups, it's just that right now it feels like it combines with notoriety to give me a double penalty.)

[Lasc]

On the subject of unlocks and pricing again....
Now this has been a few weeks, are people still thinking things are too steep on this front?

The use of 'jellies' i thought was a great idea and mitigated things rather well. A way to manage the initial player market it created would be what id like to see handled better if this idea is taken further (I dont want to suggest NO-TRADE items, but......)
Perhaps a 'neater' way, for future such content, could be to increase the favor-based training discounts in these scenarios, and, at the same time, giving npc's more, and repeatable 'favor' quests, then each tier of favor unlocked can have the 'cost adjustment' the equivalent of 1 jelly.


Also on difficulty, and again aimed at those casual/limited play styles - do you still consider the Fae Realm too punishing? or now that things are bedded in, you know/understand the geography, populations, etc are things better?

Im genuinely curious, as i consider myself a casual player, and my experiences within FR have honestly been great.... love the zone.
I really think once you establish where to find things, and where the good grind spots are, it becomes like any other zone.... Stay away from the mountains, and the Basilisk area and things are good to the soloer....

I think FR has been a great addition.

[Oxlazr]

The zone itself is fairly pretty, though in terms of variation it's rather lackluster, which is understandable for the time being.

I haven't really bothered unlocking skills - seems like more effort than it's worth right now, but it does highlight an issue that goes hand-in-hand with the overall combat difficulty that others have brought up - the game seems to be balanced around players who are, well, playing optimally. I never really enjoyed the augmentation system, so I.. simply don't use it. All these min/max buffs exist, like flowers, meditation, what have you, but again - it all comes off as tedious and temporary.

But when that stuff becomes sort of essential, min/maxing damage output to quickly kill monsters becomes more or less compulsory.. well, we run into problems. At the moment, from what I did play, I largely identified what monsters weren't worth killing and tried to avoid them (such as the bears, or the trolls that need to take fire damage); those monsters quickly become obstacles rather than content. Sure, some builds can adapt and overcome, but not everyone's going to look at a challenge and figure out how to beat it. They're going to stick with their current build, and if it doesn't work the content is simply nonviable to them - given the excessive cost of increasing level caps coupled with the increasingly large amount of time-investment required, there's.. very little room to adapt to monster types by yourself.

Much like some of the others, I still log-in to check chat or otherwise check the forums fairly frequently, but I just can't motivate myself to consistently play; I distinctly remember the level 1 - 50 content being "better" than the current set-up.

Whenever I bring up discussions in chat - regardless of the topic - there's always a huge array of opinions and none of them are conclusively right... I'm just hoping that things eventually fall into place.

[Tagamogi]

I only spent a few hours in the fae realm so far, and from what I've seen so far, the difficulty of non-elite mobs is spot-on. I had two duo groups - one with both of us around 58-62 fire/battle chemistry purple solo gear, and one with a 76 sword/79 shield in Gazluk Keep gear plus my wimpy alt at 59ish staff/battle chemistry. In the level 60ish group, we could kill most things fast and easily, without feeling it was too trivial. The mobs further south gave us more of a challenge - both of us could solo a winter soldier if needed but also die if we didn't pay attention, and the hippogryphs were better duo'd at our level.
The 70+ Gazluk Keep gear was definitely overpowered for the northern half of the zone - my chief contribution to that group consisted of watching him take down everything in a few hits. We still managed to die a few times to sheer stupidity - like ending up in fight with 5-6 spiders at once.

So, to me, it just seems like a pleasant zone to explore - not too easy, not too hard, and I like that you have to pay a bit of attention to avoid elites and not confuse winter soldiers with scouts.The only mildly negative thing I'd say about the mobs I've seen so far is that the speed debuff from the carnivines is really annoying as a melee - I'd love if the speed debuff was a bit less or lasted a shorter time, or maybe auto-disappeared once the carnivine is killed.

I like the size of the zone - it doesn't feel overcrowded and it feels like there's lots of stuff to explore. The zone landscaping seems fine to me - you got the trees and the ruins and the big fire hill, and it doesn't feel to me like it needs more variety. How far you can see is definitely fun - I like being able to see the orb from quite a way away.

I still think the overall atmosphere of the zone is great. My friend enjoyed the conversations with the fairies as much as I did, and got a huge kick out of Felmer asking him all kinds of weird questions about elves. I liked both the rakshasa and elf conversations, and I'm almost tempted to level up a human just to see what those fairies will say. My friend also promptly started leveling animal handling (from a previous level 25) because he was that inspired by the idea of a pet bee. My husband is less conversational, but seemed to enjoy the zone and commented that he liked how far away the fire mountain looked from a distance.

I think I like the royal jelly requirement. It seems they aren't too hard to come by but just rare enough that you have to think a bit about what you want to use them for next. I won 4 jellies in the casino (I like that the new fae items can show up there!), we got a couple from non-repeatable quests, plus the hourly pixie quest can reward jelly, so it didn't seem terribly hard to get started collecting them.I do like that they are tradable - we got to pool ours to get my husband uncapped sooner than he'd been able to manage on his own. Since it seems the jellies can be pretty reliably obtained solo, I don't think there's any need to restrict trading to control prices. If someone wants to pay exaggerated market prices to get 500 jellies RIGHT NOW, by all means let them.

The council cost of the training gets a "not interested" from me. My general feeling is that I can make money and making money can be fun, but I'm not interested in it currently and I'd rather play than worry about training costs. Worrying about affording the level 70+ training seems to much effort in general and then there is that discount...

The difference in the training discounts between players continues to have me sulking big time. It's possibly worth noting that I appear to be the only person thus affected, but it just makes me want to not train anything. I uncapped foraging 60+ for one character which I regret in hindsight. My current game plan mostly involves pretending high level training doesn't exist. Since it looks like we may finally get a semi-weekly trio group going, flat out not training may not be possible, but I intend to put all training off as long as possible and train as little as possible. Fortunately, I don't think the pace of our group will be very fast. I have zero motivation to level past 70 on my own currently.
I'm not sure what I'll do about my crafting skills - maybe in a few weeks, my sulk will recede far enough I'll be ok uncapping them slowly, but for now I'm putting on a one-person training strike to protest unfair pricing.

But hey, I picked up a piggy lemon yesterday and playing a baby pig does sound like fun...

[ErDrick]

The council cost of the training gets a "not interested" from me. My general feeling is that I can make money and making money can be fun, but I'm not interested in it currently and I'd rather play than worry about training costs. Worrying about affording the level 70+ training seems to much effort in general and then there is that discount...

The difference in the training discounts between players continues to have me sulking big time. It's possibly worth noting that I appear to be the only person thus affected, but it just makes me want to not train anything. I uncapped foraging 60+ for one character which I regret in hindsight. My current game plan mostly involves pretending high level training doesn't exist. Since it looks like we may finally get a semi-weekly trio group going, flat out not training may not be possible, but I intend to put all training off as long as possible and train as little as possible. Fortunately, I don't think the pace of our group will be very fast. I have zero motivation to level past 70 on my own currently.
I'm not sure what I'll do about my crafting skills - maybe in a few weeks, my sulk will recede far enough I'll be ok uncapping them slowly, but for now I'm putting on a one-person training strike to protest unfair pricing.



This is pretty much how I feel. I want to log in but every time I do I see those costs and it isn't worth the few hundred hour grind that I know is coming just to unlock 3 or 4 combat skills and 4 or 5 tradeskills ( and then grind more to level them). On top of that since transmutation and augmentation are almost 100% required I will need a different money source then dropped equipment since I'll be decomping that stuff for a long time.

The points I keep repeating about combat are sort of related to this, since if combat was satisfying I wouldn't care about the grind 1/2 as much ( but it would still be imo excessive).

To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it. I am decently high up the tree in most tradeskills atm but I'm not about to spend 10 8hour days farming materials to last me through the next few months, I'd MUCH rather be fighting shit. This of course doesn't apply to everyone, some people enjoy it and I wish them well of it, but not everyone does.

I actually said this on patch day in game to someone, but it would be a lot less frustrating if skills unlocked automatically when level caps were increased but you put more cost into individual abilities which you still need to pay for to learn. As in, I don't need you to teach me how to swing a sword better, practice teaches me that... I need you to teach me this more powerful version of a specific sword attack for money still, though.

[Oxlazr]

This is pretty much how I feel. I want to log in but every time I do I see those costs and it isn't worth the few hundred hour grind that I know is coming just to unlock 3 or 4 combat skills and 4 or 5 tradeskills ( and then grind more to level them). On top of that since transmutation and augmentation are almost 100% required I will need a different money source then dropped equipment since I'll be decomping that stuff for a long time.

The points I keep repeating about combat are sort of related to this, since if combat was satisfying I wouldn't care about the grind 1/2 as much ( but it would still be imo excessive).

To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it. I am decently high up the tree in most tradeskills atm but I'm not about to spend 10 8hour days farming materials to last me through the next few months, I'd MUCH rather be fighting shit. This of course doesn't apply to everyone, some people enjoy it and I wish them well of it, but not everyone does.

I actually said this on patch day in game to someone, but it would be a lot less frustrating if skills unlocked automatically when level caps were increased but you put more cost into individual abilities which you still need to pay for to learn. As in, I don't need you to teach me how to swing a sword better, practice teaches me that... I need you to teach me this more powerful version of a specific sword attack for money still, though.

I gotta agree with this on the whole as well. I'm really not into the crafting side of things - I don't mind paying others for things like food, but work orders have 0 appeal for me.

I just flashback a few years ago where I did the stuff I enjoyed and passed materials to others. Augmentation was sort of the tipping point for me - it came off as an essential crafting skill that was not only tedious to level (insofar as you had to go find older items to level it up), it was also very expensive.

Similarly, I could never really figure out why you'd need a hoard of councils to unlock animal abilities. I'm all for having to actually play the game to unlock things - but having to play the economy isn't the sort of experience I'm after.

Coupled with experience & effort essentially being nullified if your cap isn't appropriately raised, you're essentially looking to grind money *ahead* of time for everything you're trying to do. It's way too hard to just log on the game, murder some stuff, and look for some rare items (even rarity has gone to heck lately).

There's a lot to break down, and naturally I and many others all likely have their own (conflicting) ideas and opinions, but what it comes down to for me is pretty simple - I log on the game and there's just a huge barrier to do.. anything. The game isn't as flexible as it used to be.

[Leodane]

It's nice to know I'm not alone. Seeing the amount of cash required to be put into a single skill to unlock it is daunting. I've kinda resigned myself to capping at 70 for now, and have taken to leveling skills for fun, looking for interesting combos. At this point, ment, bard, ice, druid, psych, and necro are at 70, and fire, spider, and BC are over 50...I know I could have taken all those councils and just picked two of those skills to get to 80, but I think it has something to do with the psychology of investment and reward. Taking 50 hours worth of farmed councils and spreading it over 200 hours worth of advancement of 9 skills to 70 has given me a steady drip of achievement. Taking 50 hours of councils and sinking it into raising 2 skills from 70 to 80 (no idea, but lets say 15-20 hours of play) just doesn't appeal. It feels too much like work, and not enough like fun.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying collecting skills, rather than maxing them - I feel like I'm learning a ton about the interplay between skills. I just hope that we'll continue to develop fun things to do that are level-independent, rather than put the lion's share of development focus on the "end-game" (whatever that means.) Obviously, the game needs to be finished, and the unfinished part is upper level content...just don't forget about us folks who only play 10 hours a week and love the world which has been built =)

[Tagamogi]

I love crafting and I enjoy work orders, but I kind of feel I've done enough of them for the time being. I like using work orders to slowly level crafting skills but I'm much, much less excited about just grinding out a bunch of orders for maxed skills to make money.

This reminded me of a somewhat different topic: I'm not really a fan of the new crafting xp penalty. To me, it actually encourages grinding more than the old system since there is now a clear best path to leveling: Grind out lower recipes with easier mats until you get an xp penalty for them, and only then touch the shiny new recipes that you actually want to make. The old system was much more flexible since you didn't lose any xp when making recipes in a different order.

This may be a matter of personal playstyle, but largely I feel I have not been xp grinding on any crafting skills previously - I've just been making what I want and slowly leveling, and stopping lower level recipes when I thought they were no longer worthwile. My threshold for stopping lower level recipes is probably 20 levels or so, so bigger than the new xp penalty. For leatherworking, I will do lower recipes when I need money but don't really enjoy it because it's boring; for other skills, I don't find the hassle of gathering materials worth the councils and xp reward of doing a lower level work order.

The skills I did do some grinding for:
- Alchemy. I was 45ish when the new battle chemistry requirements were announced, so I made a bunch of some kind of potion to get to 50. For my 2 alts, however, I've been leveling up alchemy slowly with mushroom suspensions that I need anyway, and I'm maxed on one and one level away on the other. I don't think the xp penalty would make a difference for me there since I'd be doing the suspensions regardless, and mushroom farming and cheesemaking need so many suspenions I could still easily use them to level alchemy.

- Cooking. This one probably remains my least favorite crafting skill. It takes a lot of xp to level and I always want cool food that matches my combat skill levels long, long before my cooking skill catches up. It's definitely gotten better with more recipes and higher drop chances for Muntok peppercorns, but it still feels to me it takes forever to get to the next level, and many levels to actually be useful.The new xp penalty will affect me a little bit here, but I've mostly not been doing lower level recipes anyway because they give so little xp compared to what I need.

- Meditation. My grand strategy there is afk'ing with a pile of mushrooms until I hear the level ding. It's likewise not a skill I like much - it feels it's not something you could level naturally by doing meditations for unarmed since you are going to gain unarmed xp much faster than meditation xp if you only meditate when you need to. The main reason I've been bothering with meditation is that I need x levels in it for my battle chemistry haste concoction (and yes, I know there are resistance meditations, but again it's a grind to get to level x, rather than wanting to do the meditation at the level I'm currently at). Anyway, the xp penalty likewise doesn't affect my grinding here much - if the choice is getting less xp for a mushroom vs growing an expensive flower, I'll always pick the mushroom, probably right to the point where the mushroom gives zero xp.

So, I don't think the xp penalty is a big deal but I feel it doesn't really add anything to the game for me besides a sudden need to grind lower level recipes before I outlevel them.

Actually - if the purpose of the xp penalty is to discourage grinding, how about having an xp penalty for how many times you completed an item, rather than having the penalty be level-based? Afer the 200th time of making a recipe, it kind of makes sense you'd no longer get xp from it, regardless of your level...

My idea would introduce a problem if the level cap is raised since capped crafters could have been making the highest recipes they could for a while and then cannot gain xp from them if the cap changes.

[Ranperre]

So I didn't play EQ or AC, I spent 500+ days in FFXI. How does the actual leveling experience compare to those games? Because leveling in PG is easy, super easy, with a decent profit. I leveled two class combinations 70-80 grinding astounding skins. I got 1000 or so astounding skins through each iteration. This represents a 200-250k profit at a minimum and should pay for each of your ability unlocks. Frankly, the fact that you can make a significant amount of money while leveling is amazing.

If you don't enjoy any money making activities in this game (work orders, doing surveys, skin farming), and you don't really enjoy combat grinding (GK or elites in fae), I'm not sure what to tell you. All of these activities can make 30-60k/hr or more, consistently. Uncapping skinning from 60 to 80 is a big deal. Furthermore, I do not believe that a 10 hour money grind per unlock is unreasonable, with the money and jelly for specific abilities being made during the leveling process as noted above. The complaint that money making isn't scaling with unlock costs is valid. Unlocks will cost us 1-2mil at 90 and 3-4mil at 100 and I do agree that a 100 hour grind for uncap to 100 is unreasonable.

[Daguin]

Ramblings on new zone (Fae Realm):

Unlocks are expensive... Everyone has obviously noticed this and a lot of people seem to be raging. I was a little shocked at first too, but I have been able to unlock my two main combat skills (and some accessory stuff like flower arrangement, gardening, cooking, cheese). I didn't have a million councils saved up when the update hit, but I know how to make consistent money IG (work orders, skins, loot runs). It takes grinding like almost any MMORPG and this can all be done solo so I don't feel like it is too much trouble. People seem to be complaining because they can't get everything at once, but these players also complain about "not having mats", "not having time", "not having crafting skills", etc. and that seems to be the wrong way to look at the game as a whole. It's like saying, "Well this is what I like so I will just do this one thing until I hit a wall then complain that the game doesn't let me do this one thing easily anymore". The last update was the TOP TIER content in the game, and it is starting to force us to choose what we actually want/need and specialize in certain areas. There will always be jack-of-all-trade players, but it will get increasingly harder to do so at max levels. If you have reached lvl 80 without accessory skills, mats, or whatever then you have just skipped a lot of content in game. It really is about the journey sometimes! Go back, revisit stuff, and if you don't enjoy the process then you might be burnt out by rushing through. There is A LOT to do in the game so it's easy to get overwhelmed, and tunneling down on small goals is pretty rewarding in itself.

Mobs are hard... But the regular trash mobs seem perfect difficulty (bears, bees, wasps, carnivines/spriggans, pixies, rhinos, etc.) and I like how it gets harder as you go South so there is some kind of progression to the zone. The night/day spawns are really fun and really frustrating when you are trying to farm or completing quests and the mobs you need won't be back for a while. This causes groups to hang around a lot, but generally isn't a huge issue. The outworld bosses are cool (but they have strange immunity), and I like the daily/hourly quests that entice people to actually be in the zone and do things together. The Lethargy Puck should probably have rage tuned down so it doesn't curse passing travelers, but that is also hilarious, so..... Sometimes the damage dealt does seem to fluctuate wildly, when we can duo a couple elites and one of the same mob will then splat us in seconds even with mitigation (noticed this with Pheonixes and Droaches mostly).

Jelly is plentiful once you do a couple barters/quests, and I like the honey comb functionality as is. It really forces you to team up and utilize some advanced tactics to take down the harder spawns while the easier ones seem just right.

Final thought... Why do you hate Fire Magic users so much? :mad:

[Coglin]

. To people that say just do work orders: Not everyone likes crafting bullshit enough to want to sit there and do it as a money source, or has 8 alts to store all the materials needed for it.

So because you are either too lazy or too unwilling to utilize the tools available to you to earn a greater I come, you demand they lower the bar to meet your needs.

I feel the more Intelligent solution is to expect you to step up and put in the effort to earn the current designated amount rather then lower the bar to the level that meets your refusal to earn

[Oxlazr]

So because you are either too lazy or too unwilling to utilize the tools available to you to earn a greater I come, you demand they lower the bar to meet your needs.

I feel the more Intelligent solution is to expect you to step up and put in the effort to earn the current designated amount rather then lower the bar to the level that meets your refusal to earn

It's a game, not a job.

I want to enjoy the game, but I'm not looking to spend hours crafting to that end. Playing the game is optional >_>; if the means don't justify the ends people are just gonna do something else.

[Tagamogi]

It's a game, not a job.

I want to enjoy the game, but I'm not looking to spend hours crafting to that end. Playing the game is optional >_>; if the means don't justify the ends people are just gonna do something else.

Yes, that, thank you, Oxlazr.



I'm much more picky these days about what I consider enjoyable and what motivation I need in order to want to engage in less enjoyable game play. It's entirely possible that 99% of the player base disagrees with me on what constitutes enjoyable game play - all I can do is provide feedback on what I like and don't like, and why.

( And just to be clear, this is not intended as a "make the game exactly as I want or I'll quit" message - there are many, many things I love about PG and that I enjoy doing in it. As long as I can reasonably avoid the things I consider less fun, I'm fine, and I'm not in any danger of running out of stuff I'd like to try yet. )

[Coglin]

That's all fine and dandy, and my point is exactly that if you don't enjoy it it is probably wise for you to go play something else instead of suggesting changes that destroy it for the rest of us.



If you don't enjoy any money making activities in this game (work orders, doing surveys, skin farming), and you don't really enjoy combat grinding (GK or elites in fae), I'm not sure what to tell you.

Completely agree with you here Ranperre

[Oxlazr]

That's all fine and dandy, and my point is exactly that if you don't enjoy it it is probably wise for you to go play something else instead of suggesting changes that destroy it for the rest of us.



I don't mean to sound confrontational, by the by. It's a pretty heated subject, and if you enjoy something all the more power to you.

But how does a developer decide which path to take when the player-base is divided over what's essentially core game-play? Don't get me wrong - it is what it is right now, but in the distant past it was something else. It's not just the economy, work orders, or crafting - there's been debates over the years over various things and there's no blanket solution.

All the same, how can you quantify an issue if people don't speak out against it? Would you rather players simply accept everything a developer does even if it's detrimental to the game in the long run? If so, the game will inevitably end up a graveyard. I (and presumably others) aren't looking to ruin the experience for you, but when there's a will there's a way - there's got to be a happy medium, right?

I've been playing on and off for.. maybe 5 years now? PG is just something I desperately want to play, I'm just not entirely sure I like the direction it's going. If I'm a minority here, then whatever, but I'd be happier having at least said my part.

[Leodane]

If I'm a minority here...

You're not, or if you are, it's a large minority.

The "If you don't like it, hit the road" mentality is what kills good games in their infancy. You're not wrong in your assessment of how the gameplay changes in the first hundred hours to the hundred hours before you lose players.

The first hundred hours of this game are about discovering a world where you have freedom to experiment, exploring places where you might get wrecked because there are few artificial barriers, and chuckling at the game's quirky sense of humor. The last 100 hours are leveling pre-reqs you'll never use, checking vendors for the one skill book you're missing which is stopping your progress, and running work orders/dailies/your favorite dungeon over and over until you get so tired of it, you reinstall skyrim and go mod hunting.

The game's been on steam for a while now, and we're still only looking at 150 players peak. Nudging future content to be a little easier in terms of time investment might be a good idea at this point.

[Lasc]

Boy oh boy do we have a diverse bunch.....

I’ve always thought that PG does a pretty good job of balancing things out for several audiences.

I actually disagree that you must group and kill elites etc. There are other paths to success in this game.
That said, you choose to engage in co-op play and participate in grip content, you gain an advantage in reward, and that’s great, that’s as it should be.

BUT

I’m struggling to understand why people have issue unlocking things at a cost, why people are “discouraged” from having to do several things several times..... PG has been like this from the very start

Several abilities have pre-requisites
Battle chem needed unlocks
Augmentations.... priest.... etc etc

You had to go back and get other things done
I don’t see how Fae Realm is any different, simply the numbers are bigger.
It’s also not like this was unexpected or hidden costs. Each unlock is 5x the prior unlock
Everyone knew this was coming.
It was stated “be wise with what you unlock”.... again, it was stated people shouldn’t expect everything, certainly not right away.

Time will play out.
All councils are in project gorgon, is fuel for levelling XXXXXX
the more you have, the faster your able to push yourself through
Given time, you’ll still unlock a lot of things, just at a rate proportionate to your accrual of currency..
Which, boils down to time invested.

Finally, Mmo’s Have always had some form of gated content
Be it through levels, flags/keys, abilities earned etc
Continually evolving goals or targets. This is how all mmos function

The best thing about PG is that that evolving target, is what you want it to be, not “tier xxxxxx gear” or 2200aa’s needed

I think people shouldn’t loose sight of that

[DamageIncorp]

The above from Lasc are my sentiments as well.
Would be nice to see new scrolls dropping a bit more.
Over 100 hours in FR and not 1, but I guess that will make the one I eventually find extra special.

[Coglin]

The above from Lasc are my sentiments as well.
Would be nice to see new scrolls dropping a bit more.
Over 100 hours in FR and not 1, but I guess that will make the one I eventually find extra special.

I was under the impression that the lack of scrolls was a symptom of them not getting everything in the last update to the extent that they wanted and that changes to this were one of the issues to be resolved in the future update that gets the new dungeon.....