Cultural Changes - Proposed Change Examples

[Bobaten]

There is one part of this that I find really funny.

1. High end tanks complain about the AC of 80/80/LB
2. Devs examine the armor sets after many player complaints.
3. Devs announce they are going to change the stats on armor sets.
4. Players complain Devs are giving in to high end raiders.
5. Devs say, no, the complaints did prompt us to reconsider the stats, but the decision to change was based on what WE felt was unbalanced.
6. Devs release preliminary stats of changed armor
7. High end tanks say "HEY, you didn't change the AC like we asked"

8. I am now waiting for the dev response of "We DID tell you that the changes were not because you asked"

Personally, I am wearing 6 Bazus, so the changes will mean I lose 600 hp (and will fall further behind my guildmates who are wearing full Crystallos group gear). It doesn't bother me though, 600 hp is only 3% of my buffed hp total, and if I really wanted them back I could just take general sturdiness.

[Catamander]

There was a really fantastic and strong analysis and comparison of the new cultural armors to the T4 SoF groupable armors over on The Steel Warrior boards (done by Yakk, who is wicked smart).

Anyway, here's the upshot of Yakk's analysis:

The 80/80/empty cultural is roughly on par with the Martial Steel set, as designed.

80/80/LB is slightly better than the Chromasteel set.

In theory, 80/80/GroupType12 should be roughly on par with G4 level gear (of which Chromasteel is the top-end), but less "customized" for each class. Which would place the HP of a hypothetical GroupType12 at about 100 to 200, and the AC about 30 to 40.

(Remember -- Chromasteel has the emblem (whose stats should be considered "spread" over the entire set), has a type 13 aug slot, and is infuseable 50 to start. I'll ignore the type 13 aug slot -- it only makes it better for the Chromasteel, but they are rather expensive...)

50 infuse is worth about 37 hp and 4 AC.
Emblem of the Fang Breakers is 30 AC 300 hp over 8 slots, or 3.75 AC and 37.5 hp per slot.

That's 7.75 AC 74.5 HP per slot from emblem/power source.

The Chromasteel Breastplate (Bard -- warrior will be better) is 159 AC 555 HP base.

+Emblem/Powersouce=
166.75 AC and 629.5 HP

80/80/empty is 130 AC 410 HP/Mana/End

Delta: 36.75 AC 219.5 HP

So that's our "Group Type 12" aug target -- 36.75 AC 219.5 HP.

LB in comparison is +8.25 AC -9.5 HP. That's an upgrade, but not a ridiculously huge one. And anyone who claims that the Crystallos flagging + Killing is harder than the Demiplane flagging+killing is, quite honestly, on crack.

And here are the links directly to his two posts:

http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...240#post263240
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...331#post263331

[rasi]

proposed changes to the cultural armor

This is a slap in the face of any tradeskiller. I can only hope a lot of people are getting the message and leave this game. Then Rashere and the other so-called devs can nerf their own wallet.

rasi

[Ngreth Thergn]

Threats to leave at this point have little point.

People are threatening to leave if we make NO change
People are threatening to leave if we make a change

So the fact that we put this in the game at ALL made people leave (assuming all the people making a threat leave) So at this point we can't pay attention to the people threatening to leave because it is already to late. We already screwed up and that is the fact of the matter and nothing can change the fact that we screwed up in the first place. People are leaving the game because of this no matter what we do.

That is not saying that we are paying no attention to players feedback, we are paying attention, but the "I quit / I will quit" bit is not factoring into it because that is already water under the bridge with nothing at all we can do about it.

[rasi]

proposed changes to the cultural armor

You didn t screw up Ngreth by making the armor. Your < team> screwed up the moment they gave in to 5 warriors ... that felt they were stepped on ... and found Rashere to believe them. That brings us to the heart of the problem : the dev's are way to close to the top end guilds and 2000 posts don t seem to be able to make them change their minds.
The proposed changes to the cultural armor are totally out of wack... ac should be upgraded and hp /mana could stand a minor downgrade ( 40hp/mana max) while some focus effects need to be added... that way you would close the crevasse that exists between the high end raider and the grouper/mid tier guilds.
Anyway... you really believe anyone still believes anything a dev says ?

rasi

[Woland]

Catamander,

There are all kinds of flaws that arise when you try to use RvR arguments.

Let me ask you a simple question, from RvR perspective, how do you compare 70/70/LB with 80/80/LB.

You have a huge problem.

[Zaltak]

Getting emotional over pixels is never a good idear:-)

[MareeTP]

I'm not leaving over it and I dont personally know anyone who is, for what that's worth. I wear an elegant/sublime/sunshard bracer and will review once we have the high level cores dropping. At this point I am undecided if I will switch out to hardened or add the faycite.

I still maintain the other benefits to the game as a whole are worth far more than the minor difference in stats on the gear will wreck and that the armor should not be changed.

The whole leaderboard issue is just nonsense in my opinion. The real approach should be to see if this unnerfed armor will actually make game content too easy or not. I dont think it will - other than to provide a pool of better geared players for the raiding guilds to recruit from - and that is already a sore need in the game.

[Frango Mint]

Threats to leave at this point have little point.

People are threatening to leave if we make NO change
People are threatening to leave if we make a change

So the fact that we put this in the game at ALL made people leave (assuming all the people making a threat leave) So at this point we can't pay attention to the people threatening to leave because it is already to late. We already screwed up and that is the fact of the matter and nothing can change the fact that we screwed up in the first place. People are leaving the game because of this no matter what we do.

That is not saying that we are paying no attention to players feedback, we are paying attention, but the "I quit / I will quit" bit is not factoring into it because that is already water under the bridge with nothing at all we can do about it.

To me, there is the range of 10 or so guilds that are at the "top of the game" across all servers. These are guilds that are really pushing the envelope, and are seeing the best drops in the game today.

Now if we assume that those 10 guilds have, say, 80 characters each who make up their main raid force, that gives us a total of 800 characters across all of Everquest who see that everyone else's cultural armor is too close to their Solteris armor....

800 toons... EQ has what, lets imagine 250,000 subscribers today. 0.32% of the population of the game is saying "if you don't change the cultural, I am LEAVING".

And you are responding by nerfing the cultural armor, and then allowing something along the order of 99.68% of your population to swing in the breeze.

Maybe my numbers are a bit off. But are they so far off that it changes the picture I am painting for you? How many people are being effected by us non uber peons having descent stats on gear in such a way that it takes away their feeling of power in a world of pixels?

Now, I am not asking for the game to be turned into a Fischer Price product and have it dumbed down to a pure Monty Hall game. But with the rarity of drops for the sublime augments, along with the rarity of the drops for the Elegant armor makes it almost seem like the controls on who can have the most uber cultural armor are in place.

But what the heck do I know. This is only like my 9th post or something silly, so clearly I am not a squeeky enough wheel.

[Iliyanya]

Just my opinions

Good Day Devs,

I am sure my feelings duplicate others, but maybe some of my counter-ideas will be different. I am a very casual player that raids two to three times a week. My guild has not even broken into Last Bloods, but we are able to hunt some Bazu Stones. It is the small numbers that limit us. I am guessing this puts me on the low end of things. Occasionally, I hop in on an Anguish raid with midtier friends. This info is only so you know where my point of view comes from.

First, I do not understand why there is a need to revamp components that are over three expansions old. If it was not broken for the previous 3ish years, why is it broken now? If the combination of it and something new is broken, shouldn't the "new" aspect be considered broken? There is a huge jump from eminent symbols to exalted symbols and a lesser jump from exalted to sublime. Since these are the new components, why not scale these back if something must be changed?

Second, the proposed change hinders the low and mid tier guilds much more than anyone else. I thought one of the ideas from SoF was to lessen the gap between low and high end. I remember posts from devs saying this expansion will give the more casual player a chance to see more and do more. This was a great selling point for myself and most my friends, because we do want to experience more BUT our numbers are so small it is difficult to gear up to handle more content. The current way cultural works does allow for the more casual players to gear up to be able to handle things without joining a large guild with time constraints that cannot be met.

Third, I have worked my tradeskills up over many years. I had 200 smithing when banded got you to 188 and there was much more than one click to the combine. Only recently have I maxed all the tradeskills possible on my main toon. While the effectiveness of the tradeskill items alone goes up (admittedly that will help some), the overall use goes down. Dropping so much hp/mana/end off the tradeskill items combined with Bazu/LB seals means buying the attuneable drops from SoF (that I could not group for if the proposed changes go into effect) is my best way to gear up. What is the difference between spending plat on tradeskilling for the items and spending plat to buy the attuneable items from SoF? For me, it is a sense of accomplishment! I made these items and I raided to get the seal. Yes, the cultural items can be bought in the baz the same as the attuneable SoF drops - but the seals that are being cut badly are not. These only come from raiding unless you are very high end to one group the easiest mobs for them (which if you are, you are far ahead in gear - why do you care about what a lowbie like me has?). When the Artisan charm came out, I thought it was a great reward for tradeskillers as it was almost the best charm in the game. Several months later, the serpent spine charm was significantly upgraded. I was annoyed since there was less reason to work on completing my remaining tradskill chains. However, at least, the Artisan Charm was NOT modified! Instead another item was deemed more valuable. Is that possibly what the case really should be here? Should other items be deemed more valuable rather than devaluing the effect of Bazu/LB seals?

Fourth, IF a change MUST happen that requires revamping the entire cultural system, why not put more effort into it so that classes are affected at least somewhat equally? The proposed change adds AC overall and lowers hp/mana/end. My understanding of tanks (I don't play one and never will) leads me to believe this may not be a bad change. For the rest of us, I believe it hurts much more. If it all must be revamped, why not make the changes affect the different material (plate, chain, leather, cloth) more reasonably. You are talking about moving stats from symbols and seals into the armor (as of now the only difference is AC). This is not necessarily a bad idea as it could allow for more variety between plate, chain, leather, cloth to match the needs of the classes using them better. The proposed change of raising AC and lowering hp/mana only hurts cloth wearers. Afterall, the foci from Bazu/LB seals are rather out of date by 80 but still there and the mana is needed. As a cloth wearer, I would gladly take a reasonable AC drop to keep hp/mana the same. That of course would only hurt tanks. Maybe chain wearers would rather have a lesser AC increase and lesser hp/mana drop. Maybe leather wearers would like no AC change, a little hp/mana increase. I don't play every type so I cannot say, but an AC increase and hp/mana/end decrease does not fix any balancing issue but creates more of an imbalance.

[Zacatac]

Just to put these things side-by-side:

Player (A), a higher end raid warrior ( http://eq.magelo.com/profile/1340237 )
AC - 4086
HP - 21740

Player (B), a tradeskiller and DemiPlane level raider who made himself 7 pieces of the new armor, and had 7 lastbloods to put in them. ( http://eq.magelo.com/profile/51361 )
AC - 4153
HP - 18258

Now if you look closer, you'll notice that Player A has a bunch of 90/90 HP augs, while Player B has nearly every aug slot with an AC aug in it. So the difference isn't just the armor, but the choice of augs. Player B also has more AAs than Player A, showing he has put in quite a bit of time into this game.

But the fact remains Player A wants to nerf Player B, because there is no way he should be at his level of AC while raiding DPoB when he is raiding Soltaris.

You'll notice Player A already has 3400 more HP than Player B. Do you really think that removing 800 HP from Player B will be the end of the discussion? No, because Player B will still have more AC.

[hiyawathadan]

I will say this though, I am very glad to see Ngreth reading here. I have tried looking through the threads on the Sony forums, and it's just too much to weed through. I would need DAYS to do it.

I for one will keep all of my posts productive, I hope everybody else will, because this seems like a great rational discussion here, and we all know that the more rational, the better chance of finding ground that will make everybody happy.

Or, at the very least, make the least number of people angry.

And Ngreth, anybody who is threatening to quit over this, be it the elite guys who will quit if you don't fix it, or the rest of the players who will quit if you continue with this nerf, I would ignore those posts too. Anybody who is going to quit over this was just looking for a reason to quit anyway and this was likely the final excuse.

[Catweazel]

There are no more productive or constructive things to say. If the vocal playerbase in 5000 posts cannot come up with alternate suggestions, then the world should probably end right now.

The issue is not about what could be done, the issue is about the impact of ten bad choices and which might have the least lasting implications on both players and game design.

Sadly we are missing some of the information vital to provide constructive comments (SOE's vision of balance for example) and so each of us is now moving through the Kubler-Ross model, each at his own pace...

The stages are:

1. Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
2. Anger: "Why nerf me? It's not fair."
3. Bargaining: "Just nerf the HP, or the AC, don't nerf it as much, nerf someone else."
4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything? - I'm going to quit"
5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."

Time heals all wounds.

[Sorkin]

Cultural really needs to be compared with Crystallos, not Solteris. Crystallos is very easy to get flagged for and farm in, even for toons in full TBS group gear (300 hp/mana ish). The only negative to it at all is it's just not as fun to farm a 20 minute spawn as it is to raid. Heck, I find Crys far easier to camp than T3 zones. With an invis you can go anywhere, and almost everything is single pullable by anyone.

If Cultural is nerfed to be inferior in hp/mana to Crystallos, the desire for it will plummet to nothingness outside of warriors and knights. The AC will keep those guys wanting it, but the rest of us are better off killing elders in Crys.

Crys armor should have been in the 360 hp/mana range, but it's not. SoF groupable gear is meant to be as good as Solteris raid gear. Nerfing cultural just screws those who invested a lot of plat and effort in tradeskill stuff in the last few months rather than just mindlessly farming crys gear.

Even in it's current form, many prefer Crys gear over cultural due to the focii, and ease of getting it (shelling out a million plat+ may be easy for some, but is impossible for many as well.)

Those warriors who are all upset about their leaderboard rankings will be just as upset in a month after a cultural nerf goes through, when those same "newbies in Demi" are sporting full Crys gear in all of their slots instead of just cultural in their visible slots.

Groupers WILL catch up easily to anyone raiding pre SoF in this expansion. Nerfing the HP/mana of cultural gear does absolutely nothing to prevent this, it just makes cultural worthless to casters and sends them all to Crystallos.

[Ratblaster]

I think at this point the best thing for SOE to do is to take their time and evaluate the posts/armor (even if they have already decided on what the final stats should be). Take a LONG time...several months to implement this...long enough for the higher end guilds to begin seeing more T3/T4 raid armor. I know on Maelin server Meldrath has been defeated and its just a matter of time before we start seeing the T4 raid armor in game also. Then there will no longer be any risk the AC rankings of top warriors.

Have you seen the stats on T3/T4 raid armor?

T3 raid BP: Raging Bloodletter's Hardened Breastplate:
195 AC, 795 HP, Purity 75, emblem slot.
The T3 BP has more AC and HP "UNAUGED" that than full aug'ed set of cultural armor (even if auged with Serpent seal instead of Last Blood). With aug, powersource, and emblem this will top out around 1400 hp.

T4 raid BP: Prismatic Decimator Breastplate
210 AC, 905 hp (plus more from +13 heroic STA), purity, emblem.

If anything was overinflated in this expansion it is the T3/T4 raid armors, not cultural seals. The gap between SoF raid armors and Solteris/Tss/Cultural armor is so large, that IMO, if there is any decrease in HP of seals, the T3/T4 raid armors should be reduced by at least the same amount. Perhaps that threat would be enough for everyone to agree a few months from now that it is best to just leave things at current value.