NO stat changes being made on Cultural Armor!

[Maevenniia]

The verdict is in folks!

Post on EQLive forum

The decision has been made to make no changes to the stats on cultural. We believe the armor to be unbalanced in its current state, but we are opting to take the "wait it out" approach rather than making changes to the armor. We will just let them become obsolete over time.

There are consequences to not making any changes. We do consider this armor and the combinations that it can make to be too powerful so we will not be able to continue cultural the way it is in the future. We have multiple options that we are considering for smithing and tailoring but it is likely that we will not include cultural armor in the future of either of these.

We will be making a few changes, but these are all minor upgrades that benefit some classes that were left out. We will be adding a set of seals with a chromatic focus, and adding bard instrument mods to some of the melee centric focus. We have no eta on either of these changes, though the chromatic focus is likely to go in sooner because it has been prepared already. We cannot put it in now though because it would not be able to be tested for the patch. The bard instrument mods will need some extra time and are likely to be a while.

Thank goodness, and thanks Ngreth!

[Woland]

At this point in time this was the only correct decision. It is good to put this issue behind us.

[Aldier]

I think that after this much time the only choice really was to do nothing.

I disagree with the idea of completely discontinuing cultural armor in future expansions. The purpose of having the item get power from multiple augments was to provide some flexibility in allowing one part to be upgraded at a time and still create an improved item.

I think the cause of the problem was the huge increase in stats on ALL items with SOF and because of that, the future of smithing and tailoring is in jeapordy. The errors in the drop rates of the parts simply propogated the problem through the player base at a much quicker rate than anticipated. If the mass influx of drops that were supposed to be only in tier 3/4 zones did not exist, the problem would not have occurred.

The cultural armor was not the sole cause of this problem, yet it is going to receive the entire blame and thus is being discontinued.

[Maevenniia]

well, as I posted over on the EQlive thread, in order to continute with cultural, it could be as simple a change as changing the Aug slot # from 12 to something new, to prevent the old seals from being used in new sets...

expanding on this a little...say new slot # is 16...maybe the next 2 "sets" (85 and 90 armor) would allow slots 16 Seals...then the next 2 sets (95 & 100 armors) would change to Slot 17....and so on. This would allow the continuation of Cultural, but a better control on what the stats of a "complete set" + Seal should look like.

[Leighah]

Thank you, Ngreth both for this decision, and for the periodic updates (as allowed) on this. I hope the "Den Mum" makes you a nice ogre sized dinner of all your favorites, and that she has her Rolling Pin of Doom ready to bash anyone that tries to give you any grief.

[danille]

Ngreth,

Thanks for your patience and dealing with everyone's passions for the game, regardless of which way they leaned.

[TSingAndLost]

Good point, making a new slot 17 or whatever will get around the issue of new cultural using old seals and lets it be continued nicely. Not given up hope yet it has life in it yet.
Very happy the right decision after this time has been made.

[Zolina]

Yay, my armor won't stink until the next expansion, thanks Ngreth.

[Konjure]

I never understood what the fuss was about in the first place, but nice for people who using it it's over.

Gear consists of 21+21 = 42 slots. (Regular + Augs but it could be argued that augs are only 1/4 of a regular slot due to them being weaker, so... 26 slots.)
If 7 of them happens to be "easy to attain" it will not throw everything out of balance since the other ones will still need to be filled to match in order to get to the level you happen to compare the 7 items to.

Nevermind the fact that the amount of Loams/Spinneret/etc doesn't drop like candy so getting a full set made (that requires 14 with 0 failures) and I'm confident it was never game breaking in any way.

Sure you could buy it in bazaar... (but lacking slot 12 augs I found the stats to be pretty moderate) but so can you with phosphenes used to buy Solteris armor and nobody seems to argue they should be made nodrop or complain that Solteris armor can be "bought in the bazaar".

[Eleena Transient]

Do we know if the armor / symbol totals will be balanced (ie lvl 80 is currently 80 hp BP + 330 symbol = 410, balancing to make like 190 and 220 instead)?

Also, do we know if their will be a lvl 75 armor addeded (stats averaged between 70 and 80)?

[Bedazzlerr]

Being somewhat of a casual player in a very low end guild that raids 2 days a week i feel that the new cultural made it possible for me to move forward. I have played for 6 years nwo and always casually,. I tried a raiding guild but the demands on my time and everythig else were to great and the game lost its appeal so i moved on to a lower end play style. We are just now moving into the end of PoP progression and that plus being able to tank in other zones was only made possible thru the armor. My Warriors is level 80 has 3100 ac and fully buffed 19.6k hp. I am cectainly very low for those fo my peers. That too was only made possible thru the new cuturaled armor and I have Zero type 12 augs as doubt I will ever see a last blood aug. I took up smiting to make my armor and augs as certainly cant afford th 8 million plat it woudl have taked otherwise. So I fail to see why there should be no cultural armor and or armor that allows us casual players a monercoum (ap) of a chance to get better, as I was under them impression this was a chance for us to gain some benifit. Sure the high end guys yelled and screamed as now we got better and they felt threatened. Guess what guys we wont take over you jobs, we wont move further into the expansions and will certainly fall further behind inthe upcommig expanisons I am sure.

What I find interesting is that I read a survey somewhere that at one time 70% plus were raiders so everythign was catered to them but now the numbers are changed andit is the mid/low end/casual player that dominate the game. Does this change mean we will stop playing probably not, does it mean we still wont want better stuff probably not. So all in all its a game and SOE has to make a decision and appease the majority not the minority of people. While you have made tradeskills hard enough and and drops hard enough lets be realistic and make somethign wehre tradeskillers can benifit lile we have from this latest expansion.

I was pleased that afer having a GM jeweler that FINALLY i coudld make Jewelry that a player would want to wear. something that could compete. I took up smithing to make my armor and stuff for my guild and to possible catch up but best so far I can make is elaborate adn revered augs. The drops are horundus to try and acheive but keep pluging away as it is a goal for long term. Prior opnyl chance to make plat from TS ws my chanter doing mana products and my alchemist. I doubut anyone has made a living from selling arrows or bows. Food give some boost in stats but most dont buy anymore as too much hasle.

So in the end give us somethig to work with, dont nerf BS and Tayloring to point it is once again a useless skill like pottery or to where JC was.

[Dvinn]

The whole thing is just ridicuous. I can just see Rashere behind the whole thing, all red in the face as he doesn't want anything to compete with his precious raid loot.

Let me tell you something. I have 6 characters raging from 55-76, one of them being 250+ in all trades. Guess how much cultural they are wearing? Zero. That's right zero, and I am not in a guild, so I don't have raid gear.

One of my high level characters has made 3 peices of DoN cultural gear back when metallic drake scales were still usable, but I couldn't get material to make the new augs and I still can't, so the pieces just sit in the bank.

My cleric just dinged 55 and I was really looking forward to tinkering him up a new set of level 55 cultural armor. Guess what...I can't do it. Why? Because I can't get a group willing to go do Dragon Necropolis to complete the book.

There are so many barriers to making good, usable cultural gear. To the casual player, the idea that cultural armor is overpowered is laughable, because it's so hard to make any.

[Bobaten]

Do we know if the armor / symbol totals will be balanced (ie lvl 80 is currently 80 hp BP + 330 symbol = 410, balancing to make like 190 and 220 instead)?

Also, do we know if their will be a lvl 75 armor addeded (stats averaged between 70 and 80)?

There will not be level 75 armor, and the stats between symbol and armor are not going to be balanced.
Both of those plans were tied to moving stats from the seals. Without the extra stats from the seals, changing the armor and symbols would result in very large nerfs to people who only upgraded to Exalted or Sublime, but were still using Elaborate.

[Woland]

The whole issue has very little to do with casual players without Seals.

It is clear that SoE has focused a lot more attention to non-raiders. I see no reason that will change near term. Ngreth made a mistake in designing Cultural armor because he tried to give non-raiders as good armor as possible.

I cannot see why any casual player would be upset.

[Eclapton]

Issue

I agree that the issue was NOT about casual players, but I believe it was about "Lesser" raiders. Those that, in the eyes of the 'Better' raiders, were getting gear better than them because they still raided mobs that drop LB augs.

The 'Better' raiders, as they considered themselves, were raiding other higher lvl bosses and some few ppl felt that their gear should be 'better' than gear worn by 'lesser' raiders.

Thats what it was all about. A perception of self-worth based not on your own accomplishments, but based on how better you are than your peers, and your attempt to prevent them from being 'better' than you.