Cultural Changes - Proposed Change Examples

[Veril]

The one thing I am convinced about, is that the developers will make their decisions for what the see is best for EQ, not for any one particular player.

Their vision and execution may not agree with ours as players and tradeskillers, but their intentions are for the best.

[mofrackey]

Again, I do not have enough time atm to do a full and thorough evaluation of GROUP armor from Tier 2, 3, and 4 group gear from SoF to compare with Cultural. All I am saying is that the Elegant + Sublime was presented as being comparable to Tier 3 group armor. Then there is a Crystallos quest/tradeskill drop that can be used to create a Type 12 GROUP augment that is designed as the bridge to bring Elegant + Sublime in line with the rest of the T4 group armor.

The issue now facing cultural changes, and this I think is part of the problem is differing opinions on this, should T4 SoF group armor be better than cultural with an OLD raid aug?

That is a nice item you have. I do not know if the type 12 group augment from Crystallos has a focus effect or not. I am not even sure it has been found yet. Again, the developers look at cultural in 2 different ways. It should be balanced as GROUP armor as armor+symbol and then it needs to be balanced as RAID armor as armor+symbol+seal. Juggling these 2 things is where the decision to make a change to cultural is coming from, as best I can understand what the developers are thinking/looking at.

Again, I am not 100% sure what you mean, but yes, this nerf that is currently proposed, in my opinion is stomachable by some tanks in that they are not losing any ac, but will lose hp and is devastating to casters/priests and anyone else that does not care about ac.

sry man wasnt trying to pick at yea honesty just trying to list one here so people could see what a peice looks like and post an opinion quoted your post so it could be loooked at togeather.

[Roanne]

First, most of these posts probably belong on the official SOE forum as the board owner made it pretty clear the discussion isnt welcome here. I agree even tho Im passionate about this topic. The topic has little to do with tradeskilling specifically even though the items are coupled to tradeskillers.

Second, Im in the camp of quitting the game if this change happens. Not because of the specific math. Because the gear is over 2 years old and we were assured early on there would be no change. I cannot reclaim my time, pp, and DKP. The overwhelming majority of respondents made it clear no change is the favored action. If the devs decide to ignore the overwhelming majority and make this change anyway there is no doubt left in my mind who the devs are "working" for and I dont want to contribute to that system.

[rasi]

The one thing I am convinced about, is that the developers will make their decisions for what the see is best for EQ, not for any one particular player.

Their vision and execution may not agree with ours as players and tradeskillers, but their intentions are for the best.

Yeah sure Veril.... and what did santa claus bring you last year?

rasi

[Nolrog]

I know Ngreth posted an update to some of the numbers. I'm sorry I haven't had the chance ot make the corrections here yet. I will have time this afternoon to do that, and get everything fixed up all good again.

EDIT: OK, I made the corrections. I don't think I mixed anything up, but if I did, PM me and I'll make the correction. Thanks for your patience.

[solithan]

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.

Well if this were to be a factor it would just be a matter of "loose little or loose big". However if you figure the vocal minority that want the change are arguing a position from near the top, aka the "change it" folks, they arn't going anywhere. So by changing it you stand to loose the most folks.

Now here's the amazing thing, that folks that stand to be affected the greatest are actually the ones that are sympathetic to the dev's plight on this issue and we're not likely to go away crying over a small change. That being said from what I can tell the change is not small and at the end of the day doesn't address the 1 thing the 'change folks' want which is the AC. If these changes go in those folks will continue to complain and now all the other folks will be upset. This seems like a Loose Loose situation. So why not leave the stats alone and address the AC issue. How about moveing the AC off the augs to the armor where it belonged in the first place? You could still keep the "set" concept in tac but moving the raid aug ac part to the armor, this way there is still a reason to upgrade and the combo doesn't "break" when people move the last bloods to the newest armor. You still might want to address the fact that Faycite and Last Bloods have the same ac but why not increase the ac rather then lower it on the last bloods.

Isolate and target 1 small change, the root of this issue appears to be AC and AC alone, yet the proposed change doesn't address it and is now making more folks upset. *sigh*

[Catamander]

Good points, Solithan.

At this point, though, I just hope the devs are thinking as much about the community and culture of EQ, player morale, dev-player relations, etc. as they are about gear balance.

It is really easy to get sucked into the number comparisons and stats on the gear and lose sight of the fact that this issue is as much about culture and trust and community as about anything else. Ultimately, those things probably matter a lot more to EQ these days than gear. A game as mature as EQ really needs to keep player morale and trust up and encourage the kind of community and relations that bind players together.

My fear is how the changes will play into those dimensions, far more than what the raw stats one way or another might be. I'm just going to keep praying that the devs are thinking about those variables at least as much as they are thinking about the numbers on the gear.

[Greeznok]

The cultural armor is fine as it is. The huge increase over the old cultural sets has helped close the gap between casual and hard core, thus allowing people to have more choices when trying to put together a group or even raid.

It takes much longer to raise your tradeskills, collect the components or plat to buy them from the ... resellers, then it does to raid constantly and obtain your upgrades from raids. If you can spend the time to obtain cultural, and are lucky enough to be able to raid for seals to put in them, then you deserve the upgrades as they are, because AC/HP/Mana isn't everything, that raid gear has much better Focus effects, Mod2's, Purity etc.

[Sylphan]

Re: Question about charts of cultural changes

Ngreth fixed math errors in his post, but is still comparing 70/75 to 75/75, it's still apples to oranges. And after reviewing the spreadsheet, I find it's become an important distinction, so I think the locked post is worth responding to.

From the spreadsheet I find that upgrades go roughly like this:

New 70/0 to New 75/0: +1 stats, +3 saves, +2 AC +25 hp/m/e
New 75/0 to New 80/0: +1 stats, +3 saves, +21 AC, +40 hp/m/e

Basically, he's giving the new 75 armor practically the same AC as the new 70 armor. I suspect the reason is that he's trying to make the Old 70/75 match up with the New 75/75 in his charts.

If the charts could be fixed to compare Old 70/75 with New 70/75, then there would be more room to give the new 75 armors an AC about halfway between the 70 and 80 versions.

[solithan]

Well the "big" issue most folks are having isn't even with the armor itself, its with the fact that all the seal from last blood and up have exactly the same AC. So from an AC point of view, a LB is as good as a faycite.

"but there are so many other factors out there"

yeah yeah sure sure unless your a warrior, and now you know who is complaining that it needs to be "fixed". Where the intresting /slant/ comes from is, normally when people see this they say "hey increase my ..." but this crew is saying "hey decrease their ..."

Its weird. To make an apparent break and seperation of new gear vs old gear they have no opted to increase the stats of the new stuff but are looking into a way to decrease stats of an old thing. Sure they are just going to jumble it all around and hope we can't figure out what they've done.

hey look a dog with a fluffy tail..woohoo!

[Vel]

Thanks for sharing the numbers; here are my numbers...as best as i can tell:

Questing and making six level 75 cultural augs added about 900 HP/mana to my pre-SoF cultural (chain) gear with a mixed set of Last Blood and Bazu augs.

Quickly looking at the spreadsheet figures provided--it seems the proposed formula will:

* delete about 638 hp/mana from my raided augs
* add about 420 hp/mana to my level 70 cultural gear
* delete 480 from my already made level 75 cultural augs

...so for questing and tradeskilling thus far i will have received an upgrade of 202 hp/mana across 6 pieces of gear. Oh, and it will [inconceivably] raise my AC a little.

Is my calculator broken; is this the new "working as intended"?? Tell me it isn't so.

[Bobaten]

Ngreth fixed math errors in his post, but is still comparing 70/75 to 75/75, it's still apples to oranges. And after reviewing the spreadsheet, I find it's become an important distinction, so I think the locked post is worth responding to.

From the spreadsheet I find that upgrades go roughly like this:

New 70/0 to New 75/0: +1 stats, +3 saves, +2 AC +25 hp/m/e
New 75/0 to New 80/0: +1 stats, +3 saves, +21 AC, +40 hp/m/e

Basically, he's giving the new 75 armor practically the same AC as the new 70 armor. I suspect the reason is that he's trying to make the Old 70/75 match up with the New 75/75 in his charts.

If the charts could be fixed to compare Old 70/75 with New 70/75, then there would be more room to give the new 75 armors an AC about halfway between the 70 and 80 versions.

The original intention of exalted symbols was that the level 75 set consisted of elaborate+exalted+(serpent or sunshard). Level 75 armor is being added, but the idea is for the new 75+exalted+(serpent or sunshard) to match up with the current.

[Sylphan]

Yeah, I can see that they're aiming for particular numbers, but I still appreciate the general concept of 'level 75 stuff is about halfway between level 70 stuff and level 80 stuff'.

When I look in the bazaar right now, the level 70 and 75 components are practically the same price, and I doubt that's intended. I should expect, in general, to find prices scaling up gradually as levels go up. But that will only happen if armor stats scale up gradually as levels go up.

[Zacatac]

When I look in the bazaar right now, the level 70 and 75 components are practically the same price.

I find that very strange. 70 stuff is dirt cheap to buy right now. I've been selling finished 70 armor for 15k.

Prices to buy the single rare piece to make 75 aug (and someday armor), are over 50k on my server. And 80 stuff is 350k or more.

[Hsgames]

Curious as to if the changes to the cultural gear have already happened or not. I have tried to follow along but being deployed can't get to this website everday. I have noticed that on Magelo and EQPlayers that still showing cultural can be 700+ hps/mana/end with just the LastBlood aug part being the only raid loot item. Will continue to reread all the posts to get more current on the issue. Thanks for the guidance and helping hand.