I got banned for making this thread [Suggestion] The only way to make KA content viable for grinding

Sorry to hear that Feldon as you have given a great deal to the player community. As I have pointed out there is a great deal of shoot the messenger going on at the moment and doing that will bring it own consequences.

I personally don't think that discord is the way to conduct player communications anyway and I only use it when patches are applied so I am aware of the latest bugs that have been introduced.

 

So you believe its the upper management that is instructing gninja to act like a petulant child? Just take a look at his responses, his quips and his passive aggressive nature when talking with the players. Its saddening, because you know if you stand up and say "hey, why are you acting like a dick?" - you'll be banned.

The choices that the devs have made over this expansion / release if anything, have given a clear indication that we, you, me, and everyone else aren't considered players - we're considered marks. Bilking us for every last penny, and creating in-game scenarios that are a clear waste of time prove it out.

Our feedback continually falls on deaf ears and since the devs prefer to take an adversarial stance rather than listen to constructive criticism regarding the path they're pushing the game down, then there aren't many other alternatives: suck it up, or move on to a different venue.

If you need any further proof, just look at how they respond to criticism. Banned. Blocked. This whole "you don't like it, tough ****" attitude isn't indicative of a dev team that's willing to listen and learn. I mean hell, they've only been running this show for 12 years now, you'd think they'd have a handle on it.

 

I have 0 idea who you are responding to, but I'll bite.

1) I have friends I play with, we have 3 to 4 of us on at any given time.

2) We used to be able to 3 man the easier zones all the way up to ToT when it was current. And we were happy with that.

3) I have yet to have gone into a KA T1 Heroic that can be 3 manned in a acceptable amount of time with people in solo / AS gear from KA who have around 10k potency. The mobs aren't hard, they just have too many hit points.

4) Hard to get your epic 2.0 when you can't even finish a t1.

5) Ascension grinding - other than it now being a pain in the ass, is doable. But since its now a job, a lot of people aren't going to bother especially the people who only play on the weekends.

6) Expert heroic zone are a stupid idea. They should of made expert AS zones instead and let 3 people go into them.

And when you get to 500-600 million dps playing a tank let me know.

 

I am responding to you, Wurm (and your original thread on the official forum). Yes, I have friends I play with too.

While I agree that some zones in KA have huge hitpoint pools for their bosses, most of them don't. I'm interested to know what an acceptable amount of time it is for you to complete a T1 heroic. Of course, if you're going to three man this with 10k potency, it's inevitably going to take a very long time. Group content is designed for six players. If you don't have enough people to fill a group, you can ask for others to join you so it won't take as long.

The epic 2.0 doesn't require a large amount of KA heroics to be completed, except maybe the fighter and scout collectible portions, which are later in the questlines. If you can do just the few needed to get quests finished, it will go a long way for increasing your potency and dps output.

I agree that ascension grinding is now a pain in the ass. But yes, it's doable. Even when you're running KA heroics to first get experience, ascension abilities aren't required to make it run smoothly. Some players near the beginning of the expansion, when everyone's ascension levels were still super low, were still doing 200-300 million dps.

I think expert zones are a decent update. They are a more decent challenge for raid-tier and high-end-heroic players, and keep the dungeons interesting. I still wish the line between gear progression was more clear-cut, however.

At the end of the day, even before I got my epic and really got used to using ascension abilities, I was doing 200-350 million dps as a brigand in decent heroic gear, with relatively few tithe points. I didn't start out that way in this expansion - I just got progressively better with better gear. If I had had the really good solo gear when I began doing KA heroics I probably would've began doing 75-90 mil at least, which is a decent starting point. Potency is not the only critical stat - so is resolve, of course, ability modifier (which can be jump-started with the new purple adornments), and crit bonus - which has a much larger effect on your dps output per point than potency does. If you aren't already, I recommend you use the heartbound fervor buff, which helps a lot.

I've seen tanks do 500-600 million. Heck, I've seen a defiler (healer) do 4.2 billion dps. It's crazy. Of course these numbers are much harder to reach for these classes.

Anyways, I'm just trying to tell you that heroics can be done in a reasonable amount of time, especially when you have a full group. This was true even around the start of the expansion when people still didn't have the best gear.

 

None and I mean none of the KA non armor gear should have less than 400 potency. period. 100 potency gear either needs a buff or to be removed.

All of the KA zones have too many hit points. Even the starting ones. Like I said we have been 3 manning this game since 2004 and done really well at it including ToT.

Heroic Fabled Zek is where our devs first went nuts, and its been all downhill from there.

And your dps examples are including ascension abilities are they not?

 

With 10k potency, everyone quits before the zone is done, either due to boredom or spouse/child aggro.

 

I was having fun doing my own thing running older 100 content solo and still earning tithe and ascension xp.

That is pretty much over since the patch.

I'd quit but I talked my two friends into coming back for KA... so I guess I'll stick it out till they get sick of it.

 

In General chat and on the other forums, the big thing now is to tell people to do the Thalumbra heroics for XP. Lots of "stop complaining" and "it's not a big deal, just do the ToT zones". Except one of the reasons for the XP change was to allow folks to grind and get XP in current content, so telling people to do zones from the last expansion is a frustrating answer.

I know the devs have said they'll be bumping up solo/advsolo XP, but they've also said their goal is getting your daily ascension XP, not making it easier to grind tithe. I honestly don't think they anticipated how people would grind (and grind and grind) for tithe...I feel like they meant it to be a neat way to keep getting a benefit while playing at max level (similar to Diablo 3's paragon points), and didn't realize it would be such a major way to power up. It's now become an interesting (and difficult) problem to address. I'm not sure how to put the toothpaste back in the tube...

 

The ToT heroics have been nerfed as well, so it goes to show that we have a lot of idiots in general chat on our server.

 

The quests in the them still give good XP (for now), so they are still viable for 3-6m XP or so.

 

Oh yeah, doing quests for loot no one wants... no thanks.

 

I doubt upper management is instructing devs to speak that way to players, but upper management is 100% responsible for the atmosphere of the company. If their decisions put devs in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation, is it any surprise to see devs snapping at the constant complaints? Keep in mind the devs are stuck between upper management not giving them the resources to properly do their jobs, and an onslaught of complaints from players that they're not doing their jobs.

So you're complaining that you can't run zones designed for 6 people with a group of 3? I'd say they've finally fixed current content to make it properly challenging.

 

Temple of the Ill-Seen in Tot gives about 200K xp for the daily and about 100K xp for the zone. So far I can solo/3 man that and Rise to Power, Howling Gateway (event heroic), still working on what others we can do. Note that Masters Chosen doesn't seem possible given my current group setup.

Once you complete your first ascension class this becomes very important as the developers choose to give you more xp per scroll rather that reduce the xp requirements. So on my second ascension class I get 1.1M xp to try and burn away per scroll. If you think this seems a little insane wait to you get onto your 3rd and 4th ascension class. I personally think some of the developers of this game need counselling.

Tithe; well if you get one point per instance in Tot you are going well.

 

Finally was able to log in to read why I was banned.

Hello,

We have removed one of your posts due to violating the forum guidelines with the following text:

„Goes to show that Kander has lost complete touch with his player base. Hey Kander... we play your game to have fun... something you and your team seem intent on removing lately!" (non-constructive)

Please make sure to double check our guidelines.

Regards,
- Mod-1

 

Classy.

I'm gone for a couple of weeks and all this happens? It makes me worry about the future of this game. Also I'm sorry, Feldon. Hopefully things will patch up. Maybe.

 

Though I agree with the mid-hundred - reaching the billions is only possible for those who paid money to max their spells (or were lucky enough to have enough DBC stored up). That is where this game has gone, pay to win.

 

I want to help fix things!

 

But... this is a game. A virtual world. Other than time, what more could a developer need to make a suitable change to this 12 year old game other than a paycheck, and a few hours of time? Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, or am misinformed - the changes just seem petty and not well thought out.

I honestly doubt that upper management decided that the XP points in HKC needed to be changed... I doubt that upper management cares that the drop rate on items is all out of whack. And I seriously doubt that upper management decided to give 100 pot stats to items that drop in heroic / expert zones.

I'd imagine upper management was more responsible for the initial upgrade paths of ascension spells, only allowing for DBC to be used to grandmaster them. I'd also imagine upper management needs some tangible numbers in regards to how long people are playing - thereby creating this time sink / time gated progression. "Look, everyone's is now playing the game longer and is spending more DBC, so we must be OK"... /shrug

Globally changing XP rates for level 100 toons only accomplished one thing: making us stay in game longer grinding / looking for XP to burn ascension / tithe. People are still using HKC / etc - just due to mob density and respawn rates.

I personally have taken to completing missions (solo / heroic) all the way back to AoM. A couple missions in Rum Cellar awarded somewhere close to 500k status (heroic) for its completion - so that's now on my "rotation" when I don't have an extra hour to burn trying to form a group in KA...

 

For those not banned from Discord, has there been any talk about fixing this collossus mistake?