Tell us what you think of the February event!

[Ibn]

Use this space to tell us what you think of the February event: The Madness of Men.

[scunanick]

If you start rebalancing treasure based about character level, mid level toons will get insufficient goods to kill harder level monsters to get the exp. People will be either at mercy of the highest level characters for goods, or they will just shuffle goods from their existing high level toons to their low level toons anyway. Either way, the treasure system is fine because people know what monsters drop what kinds of goods and hunt them right now. The only thing you could do is change drop rates of special goods (so that I don't kill a ton of diamond golems and only get one diamond heart - not even a diamond powder).

[kgober]

iirc, Ye Te is the Nanto bowyer and Wah Chon is the barkeep.

since the bowyer is pretty much at the lowest point in town, I'm very curious to find out what this small statue is that's to be found 'downhill'.

Wah Chon is just up the hill to the west, which would make downhill either directly towards Ye Te's shop, or perhaps towards the north. but Ye Te wouldn't be able to see anything to the north, with the grocer's shop in the way. and if it's south rather than north, I have to wonder how Wah Chon can see anything with the jeweler's shop in the way.

and you have to keep in mind, they're close enough to chat, but it's snowing too much for them to see any reasonable distance (but not snowing so hard that Ye Te can't see Wah Chon heading down the hill).

my guess is that the statue is somewhere between their two shops, probably right across the path from the grocer's shop.

yes, I'm very curious indeed.

-ken

[HeXt]

That PK/PKL dungeon isn't really all that fun. It seems rather out of the way too. I doubt many PK's will use it.

[Ibn]

Which entrance do you refer to as being "out of the way"? There are several...

[Versace]

I'm sure there was a terribly good reason for changing the color of the allegiance chat, but the choice of color was a bad one. I tend to scroll up to read a tell if one passes through my chat quickly, but with the allegiance chat being ALMOST the same color, they're easy to miss.

[Bruiserk]

Yeah, I'd have to say I don't understand the thought behind the treasure changes either. Sounds like a hidden nerf to me. Loot will be averaged down.

Not that any of this matters. You asked for opinions concerning the XP changes, and still implemented them regardless of the fact that the majority of posts didn't want them.

[Kilmor]

The "items of incomparable worth" that we DT's receive as a compensation for the rollback are utterly useless. Betweem my chars I got 2 death items, 2 salvagable items and alot of stuff to sell. Nothing that I couldn't loot within 15 minutes of hunting. Thank you. Not that this wasn't expected though.

[Peter]

Why was the cabalists and peerless' loot profiles nerfed?

[ABushDT]

Nevermind gonna kill people on VN boards

[Sizlunt DT]

I posted this on another thread, but I want to be certaint hat a dev reads it, so I'm posting it here as well. Mod's, feel free to delete one of them:

This is the biggest disspointment I have ever seen. The levels are nice, however the loot that the crier gives you is absolutely worthless. Best I got on all 5 of my characters yielded a minor flame bane shield (the only minor I got, no majors period). Minor banes are worthless, and to boot the shield was value 12k al 96. Every single other item the crier gave was a death item at the very best.

You know, generally I am pretty forgiving when it comes to this type of thing; I understand that glitches occur. I also understand that aplying a fix can be very difficult, and the dev's have a tough job. That being said, however, if the dev's are going to introdice a fix or compensation it should MAKE SENSE. If you are going to do something, do it PROPERLY. This "solution" that Turbine enacted in regards the the loss of loot falls short of even my lowest expectations. Does Turbine think that all we had stored in our chests were death items? This fix doesnt make even the least bit of sense. The least valuable thing in my chest was worth far more than all of the items I got from the town crier combined, and probably more than several accounts worth of loot combined. How can you people sit there and call this compensation and keep a straight face? Were the admins sitting invisible near the criers laughing as they observed us getting this worthless junk? This is positively PATHETIC and it in NO WAY addresses the problem. I was only disspointed before when I lost my gear, but now I am actually insulted. "High quality loot" my a**. It is readily apparant to me now that the developers do not play this game, much less play it on Darktide. There is no possible way that they would consider this **** to be "high quality loot" if they did.

[TheWraiths]

There is a bug in the darktide reward

Characters with around 4.2 billion xp saved up, use the town crier and the town crier will not reward you with your xp since you have too much unassigned So you get enough xp to get you to 4.2 billion and you are never flagged for receiving your reward.

Most people are untraining a max skill and leveling up very rapidly using this bug.

I'll prolly get in **** for this but I hate exploiting and this needs to be fixed ASAP.

[Illusi]

BUG: (not sure but just incase)
:confused:

You can now learn scrolls for schools you have NOT learn/trained???

Could have sworn you could not do that before....am I wrong??

Ex:

I learned 3 creature spells of level 2 just now at level 3 (just started a character) and only have Item Magic trained....

[Ibn]

Originally posted by TheWraiths
There is a bug in the darktide reward

Characters with around 4.2 billion xp saved up, use the town crier and the town crier will not reward you with your xp since you have too much unassigned So you get enough xp to get you to 4.2 billion and you are never flagged for receiving your reward.

Most people are untraining a max skill and leveling up very rapidly using this bug.

I'll prolly get in **** for this but I hate exploiting and this needs to be fixed ASAP.

Investigating this now, thank you.

[Bruiserk]

Hmmm.....complaints about thier idea of "High Quality" loot, and they are rebalancing the treasure system. Most definitely sounds like the rebalancing will end up being a nerf if they don't have any idea what real "High Quality" loot is.

I've seen nothing but positive posts about how good the treasure system in AC1 is, but they're rebalancing it. This will probably end up FUBAR'd just like the XP changes this month. They seem to know "High Quality" loot about as well as leveling a trade mule.

Makes me wonder now if they actually play the game.

[HeXt]

Originally posted by Ibn
Which entrance do you refer to as being "out of the way"? There are several...


So far I've seen 2, One in yaraq and one in Plateau. Not too traveled.


PK's mainly go to places that are IN the way because thats where other pks go be it by accident or on purpose...

:/

And the whole stam thing, I dunno, it sounds like InstaOG macro love that they gotta fight for lol

[Rim]

Rebalancing = nerf.

You folks are slow if you've not caught on to that after 4+ years :)

[HeXt]

Frore Robe isn't Ivoryable, is this by design (GOOD WORK On the hammer/robe/helmet, Scenario)

[bobjava]

Rebalancing = nerf.

LOL, I have only played 2 years and figured that out.

[Bar]

I've killed about 12 feral carenzis(level 70) and I'm level 52...and this is typical of the loot I received:

Level 3 war spell
Linen Gloves w/ level 2-3 spell on them

crude healing kit
leather leggins - al 30
studded leather tasslets


Thats typical..if the loot is supposed to be equal to my level I think theres a flaw here. No level 50+ char should be using leather stuff, and using crude healing kits?

Before the patch, these mobs dropped plenty of items over 10k in value, including covenant gear, and weapons that actually have requirements over 250.

[SpeedFreak]

WHERE IS THE PVP CHANGES!!!???

[Futile-Effort]

What is happening to this game?

I really cannot understand some of the changes going on here.

1st it was the 2.5 click fellowship thing outdoors (mind you, hunting at distance in dungeons is still OK).
This just shoves people towards dungeons and VoD. (not that a full outdoor hunting fellow could touch a full XP dungeon fellow in gains in the first place)


2nd we have loot nerfs in the Dires, and reported nerfing of Singularity chests.
Same thing here, do we now have to go to VoD and use chests or hope for a nice drop off Lugian if we want to search for good loot? Sorry, I haven't been to VoD since the 2nd or 3rd month it was out, I don't plan on going back.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Please keep this in mind in the coming months. I'll be checking on the state of AC during that time to see if it's worth picking up again.

So basically some of things I enjoyed most about this game have been "fixed" lately.

[rschroe]

Seems to be that all these changes are geared toward the new server.
With the nerf of treasure generated loot, it will be hard to get good armor and weapons at low lvls on this new server.
With the nerf of allegiance xp it will be hard to lvl more than 2 players at a time.
With the nerf of Fellowship distance it makes it hard for newbies to spread out in beginner towns to draw in more xp.

Correct me if i am wrong, but it just seems like you are trying to nerf as much stuff now so when the new server comes out it will be your perfect world.

[Cpl_Punishment]

Probably going to quit because of this patch, simply because this rewards everyone who exploited to get 126 by completely shutting down the xp-chain machine and consequently completely nerfing any chance the non-exploiters could use chains to reach 126. Now non-exploiters will never be able to catch up.

Please put a level cap of 125 in your next expansion to level the playing field for exploiters and casual gamers.

[Illuminator]

Ack level 6 scrolls in Singularity Troves? :mad:

[Death_Dealer]

The high quality loot was whack, i got 2 3k items that did lvl 2 spells... hmmm, so i check my n00b and he gets 1 10k item and 1 5k item that cast lvl 3 spells uber~!

olthoi nobles used to drop ok things, but now they drop something an olthoi soldier would drop 1k and less items. meh, i knew this would happen.

[Bar]

Could we please have a comment by the devs if this loot 'rebalance' *cough*NERF*cough* was intentional or an oversight.

Just a simple yes or no will suffice. Thanks.

[Kilmor]

That would be intentional. From the Dev Notes:

The first phase of creature and chest treasure revisions has been implemented. Please see the Letter to the Players and the Rollout Article for details.

[Bar]

Oh I knew they were rebalancing the treasure and loot, but I was wondering if they intended the loot to be this extremely poor, or if this was a mistake.

[MoonglowHG]

The new loot profiles suck ... I hope it wasn't intended that way and that it'll be fixed.

People are finding nothing higher than W7 items and no majors at all on things like Peerless and Cabs; level 6 scrolls in sing chests. If those are typical examples ... they speak for themselves.

[the-dark-one]

If this is the new loot gen...

words cannot express the horror.

Seriously, just give us the old one back. This one blows. BIG TIME.

[zuizide]

With one swoop of the code it seems all the servers (except FF of course) have had their sing based economys blow to smithereens. At least for this month (and that's counting on troves being "upgraded" next month).

Seriously, if these loot changes are intended and permanent... man oh man, you're gonna have a LOT of angry players on your hands guys.

-Z

[the-dark-one]

I know 11 accounts between me and my friends that'll be lost.

Honestly, when there's hardly any challenge left in the game besides leveling low level chara's, the game itself becomes about finding items/trading items/tinking items.


I think i'm gonna go take a nap now, and when I wake up and log back in, I really really hope that everythings back to normal.


You know what, I disliked the idea of the xp chain changes. But I learned to deal with that, after all there was warning. But wth is this ****? Seriously, you say you're going to redo the loot to make stuff more useful. And then it all ends up being useless? On creatures with 8000 health that chain-drain/war and gang up on you, you guys believe its justified to get 2 gold peas and some 4k leather bracers??

[Robz]

Copied from my VNBoards post:

Topic: Allegiance XP Changes and how they're affecting me.

I usually hunt with 2 active vassals in a fellowship (we're all 126+).

Both vassals had 220+ base loyalty (they're mages) before patch. My character had/has untrained leadership (a melee).

Before patch, when they were making 9 mil/hr, I would make 13-14 or so.

Now, after patch, they only have ~140 base loyalty, and I have 0 base leaderership, but as they're making 9 mil/hr, I'm making 18 mil/hr.

So, XP passed up to me directly went from 25% to 50%, or thereabouts.

Within 5 days, I'm going to untrain healing (I have a *very* extreme template) and train leadership.


-Rob

P.S. Obviously the bad part is that we would also pass up millions of XP per day to a 15 char chain we have above us, but that's gone now.

[sollo]

I hope the loot gen 'rebalancing' is a bug.

The loot AC offered was the only reason I really played anymore, now that is gone. If it is here to stay you will be losing alot of subscribers.

[ABushDT]

After getting junk stuff at the town crier...the only way you can compensate what people have lost during rollback is to let darktide macro in peace...we dont need you guys banning us when we can police our own server

[TimetoDie_WE]

I really enjoyed going PK for the first time in about 2 weeks (RED)... and actually got the chance to own 3 pks :)

I actually looted a lot of nice stuff off the one guy who was sitting around in AB waiting to go white... so thanks for inserting the new PK quest :)

Also, props on the Bone Crown thing, reminds me of the energy crown :)

GJ overall... and getting the patch up with plenty of time to play :) lol

[Rak -=KoC=-]

Originally posted by TheWraiths
There is a bug in the darktide reward

Characters with around 4.2 billion xp saved up, use the town crier and the town crier will not reward you with your xp since you have too much unassigned So you get enough xp to get you to 4.2 billion and you are never flagged for receiving your reward.

Most people are untraining a max skill and leveling up very rapidly using this bug.

I'll prolly get in **** for this but I hate exploiting and this needs to be fixed ASAP.

Creative scam.

I just tried it on a level 240 which had nothing to loose since he cant assign anymore xp and it didn't let me get the xp twice.

So don't do it with your chars cause the only thing you'll gain is loosing the surplus of xp :)

[TimetoDie_WE]

^^ lol

I'm actually reactivating an old AC account I had since you guys are very generous and are adding the DM content to include the AC accounts :)

I'm going to enjoy this game until it's done most likely, or until I don't have time to play anymore :D

[Bruiserk]

Loot is what I've always played for. 4 years, and my highest toon is a level 90. I rarely(few times on AL)went hunting exclusively for XP. It was almost always about the loot. XP was just what came along with the killing things for their loot.


Never chained, just a little thing to pump up trade mules with the XP I earned myself. In this one single patch, they've taken the reasons I play the game away.


All I can say is, wow.

[Kreamater]

These are my feelings on this game in general, as well as the direction the patches seem to be heading in:

I have been playing AC for about 3 years now, and have always found it enjoyable. I am also an avid gamer, so i spend a lot of time playing other games. I love taking in all the things in games that make them great, such as gameplay, replay value, and all the minute details that make them fun to play. Turbine has always made sure that AC offers a LOT of gameplay, replay value, and they are extremely good at making sure the game is fun down to the small nitty gritty details.

But now, the game has been slowing down in terms of excitement, and playability. My main character is now level 75, and i have been playing him for about 2 1/2 years now. I have always had fun tinkering around with cooking, alchemy, and running around, sampling all the quests and dungeons the game has to offer. My character has always been at a level where there are new challenges, like raising my UA skill to 325 base, or trying to figure out how i can get Creature Enchantment by level 70, etc.

My main complaint is that there are too few things i can do now besides fight creatures. The lack of a varied trades system (the rules for alchemy, cooking, and tinkering are very rigid, and don’t change much as your skill increases), which is very unfortunate for a person like me, who likes doing mundane tasks, like running for hours just to find an ingredient so I can make chocolate ice cream or whatnot. One of my other favorite games now is Morrowind, which is extremely similar to AC. In Morrowind, skills like alchemy and tinkering are based around the player’s skill level, and formulas are not rigid. For example, if a player has a high alchemy skill, he can make a higher level healing potion than a character with a lower alchemy skill can, unlike AC (for example, a healing potion made by a character with a 100 alchemy skill will restore 50 points of health, while a healing potion made by a character with a 90 alchemy skill will restore 45 points of health. In AC, both players would be limited to a potion that restores 75 health). AC would be way more interesting to me if I had more control over what my character can do in terms of making potions, items, etc., and if I had a more vast array of items and ingredients in which to tinker with.

I have also gotten bored with the combat system. I know that most everyone else is fine with this system, but I feel the need to have more control over how my character fights, instead of being limited to weak/medium/strong attacks and low/medium/high attacks. I would love to be able to attack in a more smooth fashion, like attacking once every time a click the attack button or something. The change doesn’t have to be huge, it could be a very subtle thing, but as long as it allowed me to have more control over my character, I would be happy.

I like the fact that the loot system is being changed, but I really wish that the loot would be better than before, not worse. I was ticked when the loot from sing troves was worsened, but I got over it. I was more ticked when the loot from Reedshark Slashers, Crystal Golems, and other rare, hard to hunt creatures were worsened, but I got over it. Now, the loot from Plate Armoradillos, Olthoi, Drudges, Skeletons, and all the other creatures I have always fought solely for loot, has been MONSTROUSLY decreased. This change is one that I will not get over. The creatures that I have depended on for their high loot quality have all been nerfed, and I am quite outraged by this change. Treasure is supposed to be getting better, right? or am I just confused? Please, tell me!

One of my other complaints, which has led me to actually stop playing AC for a long period of time, is the fact that I am being forced to conform to a game society where i need to fight in one spot in one dungeon for 10 hours a day is the only way I can really see improvement in my character. I would love for Turbine to find a way to make the game more enjoyable for someone like me, who loves taking in the game, collecting the oddities of the game world, and just having fun while playing a game I pay $10 a month for.

I love AC, and I love the overall game, but now, there are so many annoyances, whether they be lag, loot from my favorite creatures (olthoi, for example) declining in value, no more quests for my character, the enormous gap between archers, mages, and melees, etc., that i have found precious few moments where i actually thoroughly enjoy playing AC.

I hope you guys can take my thoughts into consideration, and answer my concerns.

Kreamater the Stealthy, level 75 UA/Alch char on Thisledown

[archer of sjet]

Horrible loot profile.

AND GOD WISHES YOU TO CHANGE THE COLOR SYSTEM OF THE CHAT INGAME! ADD BLUE OR SOMETHING! GET AWAY FROM THE SAME DULL YELLOW!

Hint: don't pick a color near a current one ingame.


Great patch. . .makes me glad I have all the armor and weapons tinkered out so I don't need to buy the krap that is there now.

[nofeir]

So far, I think the "rebalancing" of the loot is awful. I went to the Shallow Hive, where there are mostly Olthoi Warriors at level 110, and got absolutely JUNK for loot. Yesterday I was getting magical items worth over 10k, silver and copper scarab peas. Today you kill a level 110 bug and get a silk hat worth 500p and a LEAD pea! Are you trying to "save money" on the loot Turbine? A "game" is supposed to be fun. It's no fun when you can't even make enough to buy comps to play the game. Worst patch ever, including the alegiance changes. :mad:

[HeXt]

Ibn, can we get a list of the new weapon stats? I'm sure many of us who went through hell tinkering long go would love to know since we'll probably want to do it over again. hehehe




Anyway, if you guys could show us a list of what is maxed now? You guys showed us a letter to players about it when 325ers were introduced...

[Robz]

***Ibn*** You also removed the ability to put "Envoy" in fellowship names =(.

-Rob

[TimetoDie_WE]

Try killing some VOD monsters... then come back here and complain about the loot... if you must :)

They did a great job evening out what drops what, and if you actually hunted some higher level, harder to kill monsters, you'd know as well :D

[Escanor]

Over the last two patches, more things have been introduced into the game that are based upon the LEVEL of the character to use them rather than any one skill or combination of skills. Personally, I find this a rather foolish thing to do as it removes any flexibility on how the game is played.

For example, when weild weapons were introduced, it allowed for the VARIED play styles of either leveling and keeping skills balanced (withing the character, not talking about the ever-present "balance" debate) or leveling and concentraing one one or two skills in order to use these items sooner. I considered this a good thing; it provided choice.

Now, the actual level number is of greater importance; this coming at the same time that leveling by traditional means has been removed.

Several people have posted that these changes are targeting the future new server, and one other person has posted the simple math of "bean counting" the financial situation.

Turbine has to run itself as a business, of course, and it makes perfect sense that everything they do is with the future of their company in mind. Sadly, we are the PRESENT not the future, and as Turnibe prepares for their new "beginning" we are no longer their target audience. A few people will leave AC because of this, but more people will stay, which is where the bean counting comes in; taking into account the expected new wave of players and the price increase, nothing those who are unhappy can do will make any difference, since no financial impact will occurr in the big picture.

I am personally utterly unhappy with Turbine, as much as I understand and accept that they run as a business, and I have not yet figured out what MY future in AC will be. I know it makes no difference at all what we say here, and I am certainly not trying to persuade anyone on my point of view. This is how I perosnally feel, and this post of more for therapeutic resaons than anything else :) I basically needed to rant.

[Kreamater]

I am quite sure that the vod loot is better, but please, explain to me how a level 75 melee character is supposed to kill ANYTHING in vod....

i have been traveling all over the dires hunting critters, and havent found any loot over 10k...even in the "uber" areas...

[edwar368]

I also am not happy with the "Try hunting in VOD" statement. I am 126 but as I am a melee who's magic sucks I cannot hunt in VOD solo. I thought this game was about variety. Having areas like VOD where fellows are essential is fine, because thats just "one part of the game". But if you have taken all the decent loot/major items away from other areas and made it almost impossible to find decent stuff anywhere else then I fail to see how this can be called, balanced.

On a slightly smaller but picky point, where is the attention to detail? Surely a critter that is casting level 7 spells on you should be able to drop level 7 spells. Well not any more obviously.

I am not a long playing diehard to the game, only having played for a year now, much of the stuff that others have been doing for years, such as trading Majors back and forth, accumulating wealth through uber loot, tinking with high salvage etc I have only just discovered and I loved it. Now after such a short time it is taken away. I wont be cancelling my account immediately, I will wait a few months, but I am eying up other MMRPG games coming on the scene.

Bad Patch Turbine

[boneyard]

should a lvl 75 character have access to the best loot available? i think that is something turbine is changing also.

if one of the above posters is right and vod creatures not also drop the best loot then that might cause problems. now vod was mainly a very good xp and mainly expensive loot place. for good loot you hunted drudges or other things for salvage. if all that has to happen in vod now it might get very busy.

[williamohms]

Sorry I think the loot changes so far have been fine. Noting I have not spent A LOT of time in game yet since patch was just today however I've checked a few areas of the game and found the loot to be on par with the critters they are being dropped by.

Although the items given on DT for the loss of a week was trivial it was at least a nice move on Turbine's part to say they were sorry. The XP although I am sure many would have gotten more in a week was again a nice way to appologize for the bad happenings on DT.

All in all not a terrible patch at all and I'm looking forward to more improvements in the future.

[Kreamater]

with my level 75 char, i have gone on most of my clans vod hunts, and dont get killed by most critters out there (virindi and olthoi primordials still kick my butt, but they kill everyone else also). I can stand vod....i just dont think its fair that i have to go to vod every time i want loot higher than 10k...if they kept the loot the same everywhere else and just uberized vod loot more, i would be completely content, because i feel the same way, that a char level 100+ should have access to better loot than my 75 char, but i am just angry that all the loot i used to get is now GONE

[the-dark-one]

personally I hunted VoD all the time on my main (dark) ... usually I'd pass someone *every now and then*..

Oh, and the major drops out there aren't what they're all cracked up to be. I assume the Hog chests drop a lot, but I open a ton of em, typically pulling a wk 9 major strength or something.

I just hunt for the salvage.

[Davidge]

New Chat bug:

(Note, Decal is NOT running)

When I highlight a character standing next to me, I used to be able to use the Chat button to begin sending tells to that person.

The option is still listed, but it won't "stick". I highlight that person, hit the chat button, select "Tell to <name>" but the button reverts back to white chat immediatly and any message I typed is sent in white chat.

Most embarrasing . . . :(

[Lill]

Is 127 the highest damage on bows now??

[AC-Vet]

It's sad to say but the best loot I got after patch was off somones decaying bodies lol..Yup thats Right...Death Items....I have some major questions here....this so called loot balancing? ok Peerless and Cablist Drudges, Titan Lugi's....they are Level 135ish.....and they are dropping, plain heal kits and stam potions? ws7+ items and basically junk!!...were is the balance? Do I need to go to Vod to hunt? because the loot system u got going totally sux.....what you have done was killed the trade economy totally....thanks....and so far it looks like you are killing tinkering too.....high ws items aren't worth the time to tinker...thanks again....now sing troves that were once uber loot troves giving junk? wow!!! can this be your way of just killing the entire economy? why not just make pyreal heavy again and limit what ppl even can hold again......ok as for Caul.....I'm sorry but I don't need any more peas and potions.....were is the real loot?

So now that you killed experience pass up.
So now that you killed economy.
So now that you killed Loot Drop.
So now that you killed tinkering.
So now that you fixed all those lil perks that nobody cared about like spelling of names.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Hmmm let's see...Buff bots, trade bots and decal all together? Seems your concentrating on Smerfing this game totally...You know whats sad..is 3rd party programmers do alot better job at pleasing your customers than you do. They provide something useful in the game... except for macroing exp or loot....I'll give you that....but not all plugins are bad!!

Seems your stance on UMC's policing take priority over making this game fun.....I understand its MS til March 1....we'll have to wait and see how you guys handle it.

Its funny, you want to control this game and make it so solo players can't have much fun and you encourage Allegiences but what draws ppl to Allegiences is Buff Bots, Exp chains, loot hand outs from guild and having to do questing as a group because of design of dungs. So were is the balancing there? You create a server for Pking...fine....then you allow it here too...fine...then you create pklite...so nobody looses items....All it has done is turned social areas into foul mouthed areas with this lil so called add on option.....I don't enjoy letting my kids....see this kind of attitude and cuss words being displayed in a role playing game....what is PK anyhow? the ability to be a thug and foul mouth lil pervert that has a inflated ego about killing players.....if they used the intended pk areana's then only themselves would see the attitudes trown around along with thier words.....You go PK/PK lite...you sould automatically be thrown in the areana...and out of public view....let then fight as gladiators and not street thugs.

[Bowdee]

I happen to love the XP I am making in this new patch for my patron, a friend's mule. Double what I was doing before, easily. Boo hoo? Too many posters are lamenting. Look at the GOOD in these changes. I can share a pincer for 3mil or SoLH blood for 10mil from my main with my mule's vassal and still get 50% of his cut. Wash, rinse, repeat on 3 more playable characters.

Many people are going to produce much more XP for each other in our monarchy. The lightning bolt of XP from the old linear chains is going to spread out and fill up the ranks. Not shoot straight to the top.

Good patch, so far.

And quick. Thanks, Turbine!
p.s. Glad M$ logo is gone.
Bowdee -SC
Birth: 01:33 12/23/2001

[Bar]

The value of loot items is very IMPORTANT to us Darktiders...because we need DIs you on white dot servers do not need them to play but we do.

Turbine you tried introducing balances in AC2 a month at a time and it caused nothing but trouble..why WHY wouldn't you fix all the so-called problems with the loot, which most say there wasn't one to begin with, at the same time. As of now, this game is almost unplayable.

[lashmage]

Very boring patch. Over all, very disapointing. Only thing I like is the /mr.

When are you going to address the more serious things in the game, and quit messing with that which already works fine?

[Bruiserk]

Originally posted by Bowdee
I happen to love the XP I am making in this new patch for my patron, a friend's mule. Double what I was doing before, easily. Boo hoo? Too many posters are lamenting. Look at the GOOD in these changes. I can share a pincer for 3mil or SoLH blood for 10mil from my main with my mule's vassal and still get 50% of his cut. Wash, rinse, repeat on 3 more playable characters.

Many people are going to produce much more XP for each other in our monarchy. The lightning bolt of XP from the old linear chains is going to spread out and fill up the ranks. Not shoot straight to the top.

Good patch, so far.

And quick. Thanks, Turbine!
p.s. Glad M$ logo is gone.
Bowdee -SC
Birth: 01:33 12/23/2001




Still doesn't do a thing for my trade mules. They're stuck where they are.

[Julian's Touch]

Except the chat is fubar....

The new Zharalim dungeon is AMAZING ! very nice job on it

[obie]

I think this will go down as wort patch ever. Even worse than when the worlds had to rolled back.

I really had high hopes when Turbine took over from Microsoft. But, so far the only things you have shown you know how to do is swing the ban-stick and the nerfing-rod.

The XP passup change, took me from 5 accounts to two. I realized I no longer had a chance of building the mules on the other accounts.

The nerfing of loot this months patch I realized that last month I was tossing better loot that I would ever hope of find this month. I am going temporary cancel my last two acccounts and save a month of charges to see what you do from here.

Meanwhile I will check out some other games FFXI and Horizons and check whats going on there. Check back with you in 30 days. AC is a great game, I hope it stays that way or gets better.

[Qlus]

This is one dose of realism I do not want in my games.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. For anyone late to the game, or who is trying to get back into it after months or years of absence- these changes basically leave us scrounging to catch up to the majority of the playerbase which got fat off better loot profiles and allegiance chains (not everyone, but quite a few).



To put it simply, I am pissed, I cannot fathom the timing of these changes.

They would have been more apropriate on the release of a expansion of some sort, with alot more content and fresh players. Instead the patch downloaded in under 20 seconds and and progressing on the older servers has gotten alot more difficult.

Did I mention my pissiness?

[Qlus]

Originally posted by boneyard
should a lvl 75 character have access to the best loot available? i think that is something turbine is changing also.

if one of the above posters is right and vod creatures not also drop the best loot then that might cause problems. now vod was mainly a very good xp and mainly expensive loot place. for good loot you hunted drudges or other things for salvage. if all that has to happen in vod now it might get very busy.

Probably not, but considering the **** I am finding on level 135 Mutilators he will not be seeing any decent equiptment for a long time.

Infact he should resign himself hunting for Government Cheeze in the next patch because Turbine is in effect putting alot of sub level 115 characters on welfare.

[shidenkai]

Well,

Caul is somehow easier now, and I dont feel as threatened when running around there with my L117 BOG mage. That's a bad thing, I actually enjoyed feeling fear again.

I would agree with the current assessment of loot by most individuals, it's the greatest display of incompetence I think I've seen in a long time. Turbine has a penchant for saying they're going to 'improve' the game and then introducing something that runs totally contrary to that. The removal of the spell economy system comes to mind.

I'll probably shelf the game for a month and play something else, and see what happens next month. If there's a further decline in the direction of the game, it'll be time for a switch. The XP changes are a non-issue to me, but the ramifications of the changes on the loot and economy system are just too tremendous.

SK of FF

[HeXt]

Periapt of Endless Sight cast Finesse on you, surpassing Major Coordination


Oops??








And as far as that new quest goes, Thank's Zyrca for savin me when I got stuck in a wall.

Scenario, devs, there's a section of that dungeon that catches players and sticks them in place, right at that lil window/cubby you can see the 3 bosses of the tower from the middle of the dungeon. I think Zyrca has the /loc I sent when I got stuck. If you can add that to your things to fix or there will be alot of players stuck by the end of the day. :/

[Yan_HG]

I think something may be wrong with the /filter -allegiance command. I tried filtering and unfiltering several times, but no matter what, I was still getting the allegiance chat through. Is there a new command?

Oh, and the loot changes hurt. My mutilators are dropping more loot now, but that means I need to check more loot (I don't use decal), and the loot tends to be of lesser value to me. I also have yet to see an SSK on them. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a higher level olthoi I could hunt in large groups, but killing swarms of mutilators is about the highest expression of pure melee power right now.

[Kachina]

I'm going to say it in plain English. :mad: This is the worst patch I have seen in 4 years, I absolutely hate it.
1. Loot has been nerfed in every place I am capable of hunting any of my characters. The price of things I need to keep going sure did not go down.
My cooks leadership skill went from 200 to 160. thats the big thanks I get for doing it the right way, spec leadership and a lot of hard earned xp from my archer.

I would not recommend this game to anyone at this time. If some one asks, I will say try Ever Quest.

Kachina the Angry

[DracheDesAngst]

Dear Turbine,

I’ve watched this game evolve from an enjoyable experience to a frustratingly painful session. This is mainly due to the shortsighted management of the game designers constantly causing imbalance in the dynamic of the game. The latest nerf to the value of loot and hence the availability of platinum scarabs is simply outrageous to the slowest of the slow, the common folk. You know, us player morons! This isn’t a small tweak to the game dynamics, but more of an earthquake. Here’s what the player community is saying in game:

1. How am I supposed to earn money now?
2. How do I find DI’s to protect all my goods?
3. If I’m a mage it sure seems like everything is hitting harder now!
4. You haven’t detected the latest version of gear like software.

Turbines dev notes are filled with minor fixes to visual effects or non-important issues the players give nary wit about. Have you addressed one issue of concern to the player community? No! How many times do your customers have to tell you what makes an enjoyable experience? Please get your fingers out of your ears while you’re saying you can’t hear us.

Give us a test server where we can play test your changes and you will know the result before making any more egregious errors like the current fiasco.

Frankly, my poor mage is tired of seeing his abilities whittled down every few months and the balance between character types seesawing wildly like a paraplegic on a carnival ride.

Give us a balance selection of loot so we can afford our comps or bring the value of comps down in keeping with the new economy.

Spend time actually testing the dynamics of PK for lag, timing and removing the worthless spells that have no use.

Provide interesting spell effects from both the visual and physical effect that isn’t the same tired boring ****. A mage isn’t all that different from an archer, which is so useless on the Darktide world that we have effectively retired them from play.

The only characters you’re seeing in abundance are swordsmen. Everyone is always chasing the superior template because you guys at Turbine do not do your homework and determine the effects of your actions before hand.

I’ve been a developer/architect for UNIX based system for over some 18 years and I’m not impressed with the quality of your technical management. For example, why do I need to waste ten minutes throwing some 103 spells to fully buff and bane? If I didn’t have the use of decal and other third party tools your game would have hit the bit bucket ages ago. As it stands my 168 level mage is a non-issue on Darktide, mainly due to the nerfs and lack of good judgment from your management, i.e., for example here’s the short list:

Over reaction from melees complaints brought about constraints on spell movement, resulting in our beloved fizzle dance.

Over reaction to life spells made the offensive capacity of life spells virtually worthless from heart rend being a joke and martyr spells only useful at a drop. Not to mention life transfer spells are a joke given they can’t keep you alive in a fight or have enough offense to slow down an attacking Pker.

The inclusion of weeping weapons was completely out of scope with the idea of tinkering and ruined the game for non-shield using characters. Our warded baned GSC is like tissue paper to a weeping weapon and is utterly proven by the number of mages who are converting to sword characters or build new templates.

Frankly, I’m getting tired of building characters to keep up with this endless litany of poor game management on your part. Perhaps I should go play bejeweled, at least that have a common interface that some hack isn’t using for a game of player ping-pong.

Whoever wrote that targetting routine for war spells should be stoned and hide his head in shame.


Sincerely Yours,

A completely disgusted customer.

[Morcroft]

4 words come to mind

delete credit card info!

[FreezingInferno]

I'm very interested and excited in seeing what rebalances this new patch brings. I know a lot of people are upset about it, but I haven't been upset with any of Turbine's decisions yet.

I think people are way too used to being spoon fed. If some of you think back a while, you'll remember a more fun and more exciting Asheron's Call where decal was not common, and leveling was an achievement.

The game has reached a point where hitting level 126 is just another stage in a character's life-- not the huge accomplishment that it was meant to be.

You have to keep in mind that Turbine has also promised us a new expansion, and with that comes new subscribers. I think that might be something that Turbine is keeping in mind, because when someone buys AC, hits 126 after, and can kill every monster at 2 months old, what reason do they have to keep paying their 13 dollars?

I think this is an opportunity for all of us to regain the fun that Asheron's Call once held. If we let Turbine do what they need to do, I'm sure we'll all see an improvement in the game we all know and love.

Besides, if I know Asheron's Call, all of this stuff will be obsolete in a year.

[ancient]

FreezingInferno I think you are missing the point

Its beyond the fact of oo I can't get majors from drops


If one cannot make enough money to fund himself for compburn/manastone burns... How can they survive?


THEY CANNOT...

With the current changes, its impossible to come out on the plus side.

[TimetoDie_WE]

Turbine fixed the loot, so that level 70-100 characters wouldn't be running around with majors and AL: 440 base Amuli... (unless they have higher mains)

The game is meant to be played in fazes, if you don't agree with that, go play a game where you start out the same as everyone else.

[Bar]

You say fix, I say broke. They broke the loot system. You cannot find decent armor, weapons, sellables at lower levels.

I strongly disagree with you that this game should be played in phases. When I pay my monthly fee, I do not pay this money as a beta tester. I want to play a complete game, changes are part of the game, half-worked changes should not be seen by us on the live servers. This is what I SIGNED up for...and this is what I WANT to play.

[Jet-eye-nite]

Although a short time span to get a full impact on loot changes ,I don't like them for my higher lvls, that had good fortune in extreme areas .My low lvls (50ish) are killing lvl 100+ and the loot is o.k. for them. Salvage ws seems low unless I am killing 130+ mobs ,I also noticed far too many items with rank regs on them ?:confused:

[Yusuki]

I'm usually one of Turbine's biggest cheerleaders, and I have been for almost five years now. Even the worst patches, I can usually find something good about, and this one is no different. It does have something good about it: From levels 1-7, this patch kicks major ass. Too much ass. Here's a little sample of the stuff I found tonight alone:

Studded Leather Breastplate: AL 61, W3, Impen 3, Flame 3, Frost 2--off a Drudge Slinker. Leather Leggings: AL 57, W3, Impen 3, Blade 2, Acid 3, Pierce 3, diff 101--off an Old Bones. Pine Acid Morning Star, 12.6-18 Acid, W2, Defender 3 BD2--off a Gnawer Shreth. Off a single Drudge Slinker: AL 74 leather boots, AL 51 Leather Shirt, 5-10 4d 2a rapier, AL 61 leather bracers. Another Drudge Skulker dropped a 7.8-13 W3 1d 1a morningstar. Another Old Bones dropped a 130 mod light xbow. At level 6, my test reroll has 86,629 pyreals.

Maybe she can restock my L98 main with plats, who's getting worse loot off Olthoi Nobles and Mutilators. Well, she can next month, because this month y'all ain't gettin a dime from me. I've just posted this after paying my house maintenance and non-renewing all four of my accounts. I'll renew them after y'all fix this ****. If you do.

As for the low-end loot, yeah, it needed a tweak, but this is ridiculous. Cut the item quantity to 1-3 and maybe it'll make sense. But this is just dumb, dumb, dumb. At first, yeah, I was thinking, "Whee, finally can equip a lowbie off stuff they get themselves!" But kill after kill, multi-item drop after multi-item drop, it's just... sick. Way out of whack. Too much reward for too little risk. Not challenging. Not fun.

Just sign me,

Extremely disappointed, but saving 52 bucks this month.

[TimetoDie_WE]

So basically you want to be level 50, be able to loot majors on the same level as, let's say a level 150,... and be able to sell those items for sings so that you can ruin the economy?

This is definitely a FIX... look at all the n00bs that were looting majors, and flooding the market with them... so that most majors are going for a lot less... now people who are holding those majors will actually have a decent value to back them with.

A level 50 should be hunting monsters that are for level 50... they shouldn't be able to head into VOD as a brave soldier and gain 1337 xp and 1337 loot. Be patient... most people that hunt VOD in fellows (even people 126+) will appreciate the work that they need to do to get the good items in the game.

[God D O A]

The loot needs to be bumped back up some, now its nearly impossible to make money, find any decent weapons or armor, or any way to make money. and if the items prices can not be raised again, then the costs of plats/comps should be knocked down some...buying 1 plat could take quite a while of hunting and burning more than you can make.

[Corpysan]

I'm not sure if this is where I report this, but I had logged my toon out yesterday wearing my rendeath coat and when I logged on today I can not remove it.

Please advise.

Corpy

[Lumpus]

Another vote for either a Hot-Fix or a Rollback.

Hunted for 2 hours this afternoon with my 92nd Archer main character near AB and found loot comparable to pre-update 60-80th level critters. No salvage, no keepers, nothing even sellable.

Hunted for 2 hours this evening with my 83rd ClaW Mage in Phyntos Menace which used to provide my mage with Peas to pay for comps and good imbue salvage. White Wasps (an 85th level critter) now only drop single Silver Scarabs and Lead Peas, level III/IV scrolls and junk 20-40th level loot (pre-update) that is utterly inappropriate for their level. Oh, and no more gem imbue salvage. Lead Peas? Shouldn't those be on the Drudge Robbers and not on moderate-high level critters?

From what I can tell from listening to others on our Allegiance chat, my situation appears to be the norm. Virtually every medium-high level hunting area seems to have been loot nerfed to the extent that even the toughest monsters in the game are dropping material suited really only to sub-60th level character.

Also the stealth Bow nerf was not appreciated either - we don't want or need 290 wield requirement Bows that are 121-125% (especially since Xbow got nice new 155%'s).

Conventional Wisdom in Monarchy chat appears to be that since XP got nerfed and now ALL loot has been nerfed, then what is the point of hunting or even bothering to log-in - many were opening discussing playing other MMORPG's until this is fixed.

Yes, this is just first month of the loot readjustment - but it has NOT be readjusted, it has been utterly BROKEN. Patch this first - do not make folks wait a full month to see if it will ever be worth checking on a corpse again.

[Kellin]

Honestly, I'm trying to decide how many of my accounts to unsubscribe. If I have to either play low level rerolls or group in VoD, I simply have no interest anymore. I feel nerfed for the first time in the game in years and years and I play crossbow (my first character, back when it was only slightly above TW), dagger and staff, for heaven's sake.

Three cheers for the high level folks getting great loot in VoD and on the Caul. Yay for the ape Tankers who get real loot instead of **** to offset the easy experience. I'd like to know who I and my bug hunting melee and tank vassals were hurting beating Olthoi to death in dark dingy dungeons that we are basically being told to adapt, starve or leave.

Right now, it's looking a lot like hiatus until this "phase" process completes.

[God D O A]

I agree with pountius, kinda uncool...I like the xp chain nerf tho..hated starting before ppl and there 10x my level in weeks. but loot must change or costs need to. Much <3 for the devs

[MachineOfMt]

I love the new chat replies and that the trade window no longer drops until you get rid of it yourself. I hate absolutely everything else and think it's the worst patch I've ever seen. You've very quickly quashed many of the things I found fun about this game so more than likely I'll be cancelling my 3 accounts. I've been trying to keep an open mind and see what you guys do but so far you're just making this into a game that is utterly pointless and no longer fun to play. You should care a little more about what your players think about your changes before you go around making these broad changes. There were reasons we played this game the way it was.

[Griftwic]

well after playing all the way through a long campaign with a sword character i decide to start a mage .so two years later i am hunting today and all of a sudden im picking up loot that i found at level 30 with my sword guy cmon people what gives? how am i suppoesed to feed my mage armor mana stones and buy spell comps with that junk i found today.and god forbid i have those vassals around to take care of with my new and improved passup what do i say to them when i am broke ?

[ABushDT]

IBN can we get a response on loot please ...Please with sugar on top....please with everything on top

[-Arlyn-]

Wow!
After 4 years I have never seen a patch that was complaint worthy, until now.

I'm happily killing Pandemonium Shadows (Level 85) as I had found them to be fairly decent for getting salvage, and would net me at least enough money to pay for plat burn.
Now, nothing even worth salvaging, and loot my level 30-ish characters have already outgrown.

I can certainly understand wanting to alter the loot profile of creatures, but at least be realistic about it.
I don't know of any level 30 somethings that can even hit Pandemoniums, much less take a war spell from them.

[justindz]

The quote for this month was "from now on, there should always be a reason to check a corpse." I disagree. Now, I barely have any reason to check a corpse.

My level 67 mage will not be coming out to play this month, because I can barely afford purning prismatic tapers alone with the loot I find. Maybe if we all had 500 more item slots and everything weighed 10 bdu we could carry enough workmanship 3 leather leggings to pay for one plat per 24 hour period.

Basically, if this is anything other than a bug that gets patched tomorrow, I'm going to be seriously chapped. I mean, what's this about drudge slinkers having equal loot to the OHN critters now? Should we all flood newbie dungeons in hopes of paying for our spells?

Please please please, Ibn, tell us this will be repaired. This is the only patch I haven't liked in my entire AC career, and unless I'm missing something REALLY big here, I am not a happy camper.

[MachineOfMt]

There were few monsters I used to hunt in this game because most were not worth it to me. Some I hunted for copper and silver peas to get money so I could do everything else in the game. All those are completely nerfed so no idea where I'll get money now. All the other stuff that used to drop good loot now drops complete ****. Maybe something else out there is good now...I don't really know. But everyone I've talked to can't seem to find anything worth hunting any more. Keep in mind this is from the perspective of a high lvl char but shouldn't there be some stuff in the game for everyone? This patch totally blows so far and if something isn't done about it ASAP, I'm serious, I really don't even want to play this game anymore. Maybe Turbine doesn't really care if they run off some players but the rest stay. Who knows. But from the perspective if a very high lvl player, Turbine really has come close to completely ruining the game for me.

[smpat04]

when they said loot rebalancing i was expecting that by means of 'nerf' that i wouldnt be able to farm anniahlators for lead scarabs, rather for pyreal scarabs instead... but now i find that only about 1 in 10 olthoi warriros drops something of more than 6k value. Last night i make 900k in an hour and today i'm struggling to make 100k (which by the way i gave up after 20 minutes and finding 4 thigns worth of 6k... and im hunting lvl 95+ mobs). And what is this with a 105 mod bow with a 250 weild requirment? when AC came out 113% mod was the best you could get and it was used to deal with the toughest monsters... such as tusker guards. Now our level 20s are dealing with tusker guards and we dont even have access to what the predecessors have had since time on dereth began... our trusty 113s... we dont even have 105s for gods sake. Was there a particular reason for this? Sure archers did wickid damage, thats the point of them.... they have no shield they get hit hard, tanks do less damage but have a shield geth it for less... mages can vuln (and land) .... with all 3 working together we got a crack team but now with archers having their damage nerfed, who's gunna be able to help the group take down a 20k hp mob in under 2 hours? I do however agree with the xp change (good job, more xp for me cuz in ever been in a chain). There's my thoughts on patch... an aweful lot of bad, but there's a bit of good in there. hey also, i heard they raised spell difficulties again? my lvl 74 mage is having some trouble with 322 skill... 3/5 success rate just isnt enough to buff peopels.

[sandman]

I'm going to agree with the vast majority here. Your loot rebalancing is disasterous at best. Honestly, I'm ok with the cash value nerf. It's the change in loot profiles such as the level of spells on items and level of scarabs dropped by mobs that has me steamed. At level 48 I'm casting level 6 spells. Prior to patch, it was reasonably easy for me to find pyreal scarabs off mobs that I should be expected to solo. Since patch, the best scarab I've seen is a gold off a mercenary. What's even more obscene is seeing loot with level 2 spells dropping off level 70 Feral Carenzi.

Alex, I came back to this game because I was sick and tired of the constant nerfage that is ac2. If this is your intention I'll just retire again.

[Jin Saotome]

Only weird thing I'm wondering is why I'm finding 2-3 pieces of regular loot on Olthio Mutilators. Weren't they suppose to drop Sing loot? Or is this what sing loot has become?

Not complaining, I get enough cash to finance 3 level 100+ characters easy. Just wondering what drops what now.

[Imor]

I am going to hold judgement on the new loot system until I have tried different characters and looted more things. From reading this forum I figured I wouldn't be able to find any high value loot. However, my 160ish level sword was at least able to find death items and also found some weapons that are actually usefull on darktide (high damge, lowish craft, lowish value). I have also heard of people finding low craft high al armor. The biggest disappointment so far is the 2 items awarded for the DT rollback. The Al 90 craft 9 leather leggings and one 15k DI I received could not be considered high-level loot (I believe the town crier said items of incomparable value or something like that, lol) in anyone's book.

[Havo]

Ok first to the people saying a 90th level mage should not get "high quality loot". I thought that all the macroing and chaining was not supposed to effect me? Now my level 90 is a noob? Sorry but my level 90 has done more and been more places than you average 200th level chain/macroer.

Now I am supposed to be stuck with al 120 armor and junk weapons? No thanks...


Tubine if your idea is to only give good items to level 126 macro chainers then I am out. I can find other games to play until WOW comes out. One of the fun parts of the game was loot. In fact it was the one area that AC had up on other games.

If you are going to make AC just a 126 game then please just add a "Add 1 billion XP button" to all the starter towns

[Staff]

i agree with a poster miles up somewhere suggesting that these changes are all setting the scene for the new server.


-i remember days LONG gone where i used to -struggle- to afford stamina elixirs to go and hunt OHN. The workers and soldiers did not like to drop 1k+ items, let alone 5k+. However, i battled through it. the reason i got thru these difficult levels (38-45ish) were my vassals. at the time i was an avid vassal hunter, there were plenty of people who knew even less than i did about the game (and i was only just figuring out banes and s2m-revit).


However:
Existing servers have a wealth of top quality items. Back at level 40, I couldn't have dreamt of AL 424 Major Invuln Leggings. Of course, majors didn't exist and armor didn't go above AL 180. The point is, imposing this rebalancing now and in this manner is completely useless on the current servers. Playing numbers are fairly stable. Everyone has reasonable items. People want better ones, sure, that is natural. This rebalance has currently removed any incentive to hunt for (top-end) loot. majors are evidently nigh unobtainable again: i have hunted caul for an hour+half and Vod for three since the patch, not even a sniff. This removes a dynamic and addictive component from gameplay on current servers.

I can see how this might be beneficial in a new server. People will have to work hard for xp there, and for money, and for loot items. It will be very traditional, and similar to my early experiences on WE. However, i am not convinced that it is the best resolution for the existing servers.

[Moondancer]

After nearly two and a half years, I have to say this is the first time I've been utterly disappointed with patch. I understand some rebalancing needed to be done with the loot system, but what has been done is going too far. I don't mind working for my levels, I don't mind working to get a nice set of armor or a good weapon, I work hard to earn what little wealth I have. But this makes it a chore, not the least bit enjoyable. Before patch, I always looked forward to opening a corpse, hoping I might find something useful, be it a nice bit of salvage or a pea or just a bit of coinage. Now there seems to be no reason to open kills, not when repeatedly all you find is loot I would catagorize as 'beginner' loot.

I'm waiting to see what happens with all this, but my general feeling is you guys really messed up. You didn't just adjust the loot system, you flat out nerfed it, ticking off a good many of your players, some of which are now threatening to quit. Yeah, it's easy to say 'go ahead and leave', but I dont' think Turbine should be pushing people away at this point.

[Phil the Archer]

the loot changes are HORRID.. What happend to there should be no reason to not open a corpse..

Heck now there isnt any reason *TO* open a corpse.

Just think, I hvae 4 accounts and have been looking forward to this game improving. Not taking massive steps to making it a way for me to want to go elsewhere. Change this back, and change it bakc in a hurry. dont wait until next patch.

[D X Mage]

This patch has introduced a FEW too many nerfs for my taste. I'll just macro fishing for now as I haven't seen any posts that it has been nerfed yet.

Complaints are going to be ingnored but remembered and silent grudges will be held against you. These guys have obviously read all the Dilbert books and have seen every episode so all our *****en and moaning is going to get us no where.

I think they could have EASED us in to phase one just a little bit here and told us exactly what to expect. Kinda like jumping into a cold lake, you know its cold and you brace yourself for it, unlike being in the shower and someone runs hot watter in the kitchen so that water thats barely above 32 degrees hits you in the face compleatly unexpected.

[Askani]

Major disappointment in this patch.

Tax season is not a good time to be playing April Fools jokes so early. (If you didn't understand, this patch is a joke, a very bad joke.)

[Havo]

Well since I have seen not a hint of a reply from Turbine I suspect that this was what they planned. All I can guess is that Turbine is trying to get all the current players off the servers so they can start with new players....

Well I think that it will work. I know right now I am no longer that interested in playing. I was working ot level 95 so I could spec creature but now I am not sure I want to bother.

Oh and just so you know with the exception of one quest item I do not have a single major on my main. I have never been that lucky. I have a few on my trade mule and a few that I have given to friends but my mage is without. I also do not have al 400+ armor. Its not like I am asking for multiple majors or dual and tripple majors. I would be happy with a major ward that I could use!

[BoomerHG]

Ok, I'm a pretty cool guy and was SOO looking forward to this patch. The log in looked better, I'm thinkin OHH BABY! Enter with my main.. do a quick buff up and hit the ol' Nexus. Still I am thinking, they said they are going to change the loot system so there is an actual point to hunting and killing; SWEET! A pack of peerless and cabaltist Drudgies go down, loot-- and Crapola. Ok I'm thinking, I mow down another pack, more ****, ohh but i found some spiffy slippers i DONT want to wear! My thoughts are pretty much the same as I've been reading. I constantly say I miss the good ol' days.. but I also miss some past family members and I will never see them again. Gettin **** loot does NOT intice players to want to PLAY! Normally to make money a business would do what the customers want, I'm starting to wonder if some of the Turbinites know this yet:eek: :confused: :eek: :confused:
I really dont mind the XP change, I am a guild man my self and i love all my Froggies, but I am also a very solo hunter. There is no friggin way I can hit VOD, i have just enough life magic buff up with 7! now i read this may be taken away too???
Over all i know you guys have a lot to do and I sure do hope you have some plans for the future that dont suck (like this patch). Its just a matter of common sense, think before you do something.. please. or at least tell us it WILL get better.. quickly i might add (and hopefully not 5 one day fixes this month to make up for the ****) before more people run off.. Me likes me fello play mates and i think you all know how ticked we all become.. rant off sry was a lil let down:(

[edumakated]

okay... ALL of my money in the near-past of this game came from vas amounts of copper and silver peas off of Olthoi.
...along comes patch...

OOPS! Now I'm broke. I'm just glad I have some cash saved up to buy any plats I'll need.

When you said you would be rebalancing the loot system I was very excited. I thought the value would go down a bit, which it has. I thought majors would be thrown off a little bit, but didn't think they'd end up being impossible to find save VOD. I ALSO thought that you would actually let the monsters drop loot which was useful to the average lvl that kills that type of monster. But it looks like you dropped that down quite a bit. You said you have plans to fix the lvl 80+ stuff here in the following months. I just hope all of the fixes will be like this.

Give me loot that I can tink and actually use for myself, give me salvage, and give me copper/silver/pyreal peas for $$ after I kill something that my lvl range can kill and we'll be fine.

one final word...

sigh

[Flynn]

On a semi-related note; by my reckoning, the March patch is due in only two weeks, if you're able to get back on schedule. Is this still likely to happen?

[MachineOfMt]

Just another thought after all the recent changes....WHY DO YOU KEEP TRYING TO FIX STUFF THAT'S NOT BROKEN?!?! Give us some NEW content and new features and stop making things that we are happy with and rely upon completely suck for us.

[Sizlunt DT]

Had I gone hunting after I hit up a crier I would have been waaaaay more irritated in my first post. WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING? This is your idea of balance? Jesus, if I was so incredulous at the notion I would be in hysterics. You say that there should always be a reason to loot a corpse? What the hell are you talking about? Now, there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to loot a corpse! NONE, not unless you call the fact that you've pinched the money supply so tightly that one has to loot 100p **** loot in order just to break even on the cost of buffs a reason. You all really screwed it up this time.

What really sucks is that I was really looking forward to this patch. I had got a friend of mine involved in the game specifically because I genuinely thought that this was going to be a really good time to be getting into the game. I hope he didn't buy the game yet.

[Lilkinsly]

While I understand that you feel the loot changes are needed and maybe they are, I ask that you keep this in mind.

Some people kill monsters for XP, others kill monsters for loot. There are people who play AC just for the rush of opening a corpse to see what "goodie" may be inside.

Using a chest or trove will never compare to finding good loot on a monsters.

While some may feel that Majors were to easy to find, "good" majors were not to easy to find. Now your casual or moderate player will have little chance at finding their Majors, they will now need to trade for it from the hardcore player.

Thank you.

[Dravun]

I really dont know how seriously you guys take these posts.

I hope you look at how many people who have been with you since the start. Since the good old days when Ac first started. Just think of how many chars who have been with you since beta are about 99% sure they are leaving this game for good if things stay the same. Those of us who have loved this game. I myself have tried every other mmorpg out there and AC was always the game I loved.

Why are you doing this? With the extreme nerf. Nothing to do with Majors. I want to be able to make money and pay for comps/mana stones and yes aquire wealth so I can save up to buy better items.

Thats one of the main things I enjoyed about this game. The fact that I could go out, make good cash, find nice items, and have fun. You have created such a extreme gap. It seems only those who have exploited / macroed are the ones who have nothing to fear from this patch. They have plenty of plats / cash saved up and now the hard to come by items that they have for sale just sky rockted in value. Its ludicrious.

The way things were, were imo perfect. And I am not talking about Majors. IMO there is nothing wrong with someone by their eighties being well on there way to a ok set of majors. Not perfect no, but decent. Esepcially considering the so called max level is 126. When someone is 2/3 of the there they should be doing pretty well.

It should not be that you hit 126 is the only time you are allowed to have do anything. Thats just ignorant.

You claim this patch is a stage? A stage of what? Next month things get even worse. Thats what we can expect.

As it stands this is the absolute worst patch you could of ever done. I would rather start over than deal with this horrible patch. And honestly just leveling to me is utterly boring. Finding cool items is over half the fun. Builing a cool fortune, becoming a hero, becoming powerful, its all part of it. Now we can loot lead peas all day.

Thanks Turbine for trying your best to destroy such a amazing game. I did not think it was possible. I dislike this patch so much that if things do not change severly I will be leaving, deleting my chars, destroying my cds, and never returning. Its just cruel to do this.

I honestly used to think you guys realized that games should be fun. Obviously I was very very wrong.

[Vehementi]

Letter to the Players came out of the closet to say:
Creatures in a particular level range should drop loot that is useful to characters in that level range.

More creatures should drop items that have been modified in some way by the treasure system. There should always be a reason to check a creature’s corpse.

Ibn came out of the closet to say:
It is important to remember that we are not done... this is only phase one.

If you remember, phase one of the creature rebalancing also had some weirdness to it. :)

DOES NOT COMPUTE

You have done the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you were trying to do! *NO* corpses are worth looting (except in hopes of special drops like SIKs) and *NOTHING* of one's level is useful.

[Phil the Archer]

hey.. I got a WS 3 +5mc wand from a reedshark slasher.

Ive been playing for 2.5 hrs nonstop, pretty hard core..

Ive not yet made a single bag of salvage, and thats my specialization in the game.. 4 hours i used to be able to make an entire bag (24) of usefull salvage.

[Vehementi]

Impressive. Incidentally, I logged into my level 36 bow/melee spec archer that was my main 4 years ago when I quit and went to DT, and I punched mobs around GMG naked until I got armor and a weapon (2-8 bd3 hs3 fire katar, gg drudge slaves)... I was able to make a bag of WS 3 steel after clearing out GMG fully once (doing the quest.) Now he has str3, coord3, quick3 and sprint3 jewelry plus the uber katar of death I mentioned above! Fear! Incidentally, I think that stuff might be useful for level 8s and stuff (I found a 100% bd2 bow too!)

But yeah. You know, they could have, like, fixed the low level loot (which was fine??) and, like, not gone out of their way to destroy everything else in the process.

[MissMae]

I love it so far. Thank you for trying to do something for the good of the game. The economy and the lewt drops were way over the top.

I am really happy to see some difficulty coming back in the game. Having huge weapons and majors drop off just about everything in site was pretty timid.

I think big lewt should be harder to get and that the craftable weapons should be what the lower/mid level toons are using.

Thanks for an awesome patch no matter what else. It's evident you are all trying hard to do interesting things to shake it up a bit.

:)

[Yan_HG]

I was wrong in my previous post- mutilators are dropping SSKs. Swarm mutilators, however drop SIKs still.

It has become exceedingly hard to pay for the mana charges I burn through constantly (I estimate a burn rate of 3000 mana per hour online.) The best way I can think of to make a profit is to find creatures I can fight buffless, and just use my olthoi armor/shield and a rending weapon I let the mana run out on.

I have not seen a single piece of WS 10 loot or any cantrips since patch, and I have been hunting the bottom of olthoi arcade, west dires, obs plains, 80+ Asheron's undies dungy, and VoD. It would seem as though all creatures are dropping roughly the same loot right now- save for the level of spells on items. There is no uber loot creatures. Slashers are dropping roughly the same loot tuskers are. I'm frightened to see what a crystal lord would drop.

Covenant armor drops have been laughable. All the pieces I have found so far don't buff above 400 AL, and the best creature spell I've found was a level V. I'm looking forward to the covenant upgrades.

Although I appreciate the increased value of the pyreal in the economy, I'm afraid it won't take long for Yan's funds to run out. I'm hoping most of these issues with the loot on higher end creatures is just an oddity that must be worked out.

[Madman_Lc]

I've been playing this game for 6 months and i have just got my guy to a level where he can go hunt around Ayan for loot only for the loot to be taken away. So what now? Back to the level treadmill? No thanks, i have not macro'd or chained to my level but i sure as hell wish i had now, i'd probably be past 126 instead of almost 100!
And as far as the game being too easy, hey I may just suck but when a pack of Peerless/Cabbies come after me I either run or die lol.
I'm just hoping for an explanation from Turbine for the reasons behind these changes and where my poor char fits in to it.

Pretty please, with cherries and ice cream on?

:)

[Bake_Neko]

I LOVE this patch.

I mean it.

Before patch, I was content to hunt L95 monsters for ALL my needs; money, salvage, loot, xp (tho not much xp, but I am really not that interested in those), sings.

What I didn't get from them, I traded for it. Since I got such an abandace of money, salvage, sings, it was no real chore to spam a few lines at MP to get what I needed.

All I did for hours in the end was aim, shoot, aim, shoot.. then loot when there are no more of them around. Could even do that un-buffed at 130% burden albeit it gets a bit intereseting then. I knew the game offered more, but it was too easy just sit there and kill.

For those people who might think this is so because I macro, I do not. I don't even do ACM.

NOW, I found myself looking for new place to go hunt (I ended up going to visit my old hangout, but it did get some rebumping while I was gone, so it might as well be a new place) Hunting monsters that actually can hit me (Even died once.. my 1000th Death, here I come WI-flag)

I did get 1 1/2 pack of good salvage, half a dozen seller to cover the cost of arrows/comps, few sings. Didn't get any keepers, but that's not really expected for an hour of hunting.

When everything was said and done, I came a little ahead (2 plats more than I started with everything restocked)

I will have to wait and see what will happen on the trading, but I think it will all balance out since low work weapons/armor seems to be dropping.

It's a good change to see that money actually mean something again. It's worth opening every corpse now, since that's the only way you will keep yourself ahead on money.

THANK YOU for good work on much needed loot re-balancing.

P.S.

I hear the sing trove's loot is not exactly the best, but you did mention that they need to be worked on, so I will be looking forward to what the "best" loot source in the game will be like in couple of month.

[Jasaana]

I often don't contribute my two cents, but here's a penny for your thoughts Turbine (someone's making a penny off this deal..it isn't me)....

I've been actively in and out of AC1 since 10/00. Having played a little bit of everything, hence I have no character that is even sitting over the +75 mark at the moment.

I am trying to understand something and I am hoping that someone can perhaps make it all clear for me...

Regarding the most recent patch and the changes in loot... say I happen to be an Archer fighting around the LS in VoD... yesterday I pick up a bow that I had successfully applied pierce rend to... its (lets for sake of argument) say a +130% bow that I cannot only wield and use, but also activate the magic....

So today I'm fighting in the same area, and I find another bow, with a lower WS... but it is a 117% mod, that I can't wield.... I don't meet the min req...

How does this work?

I've concentrated primarily around the VoD LS lately for the majority of salvage I have... needless to say when I'm not finding anything over a WS 6, is this worth it anymore?

It is worth it that I've sold more 'better armor' in the last week then I can ever hope to find now?

I find myself being uber at lvl 75... with a base AL amuli coat at 299, and pants at base AL 245... why? Because the best I have found is al 160 something in the areas I know I can fight in without dying....

Was this balance done for the "good" of Turbine? or The "good" of the players?

I've read through the forum posts...many people are not pleased. My 140% xbows are now a hot commodity....

Perhaps it is time to pack my bags once again and take a break from AC until things balance out again.

I (probably like the majority of posters) feel pretty much at a loss. What can we say or do as vocal members of the player base to make things go back to "the old way"....

I was happy when I was FINDING things worth keeping, most of my finds in loot were salvage.... now I get excited if I find a piece of steel over WS 7....

tis a sad day...

[Snorungen]

Besides the small bugs hidden in the chat-system I like the patch so far..ok, I dont get as much money from my loot, and I dont find über-stuff from every monkey/bug/drudge/golem I kill.....but I like it that you actually have to do something to obtain those py's. Before the patch the reward system was inflated, now it seems better. I guess the next patch will be another step forward. Keep up the good work!

[agnari]

Ok I've spent 3 hours searching for the elusive special drop item to get in.

Which sucks as the reward isn't anything that is really useable to any of my chars. I just want to wander around doing the quest.

But no make it a rare item drop on an almost non-existent monster in the area and OH BOY DOES THAT SPELL FUN spelled N O T.

Also that 2 drop to get down also sucks swamp water. Took me over 10 minutes to get down the first time (now I'm still looking for the needed item) and dreading the return trip once found.


FYI that 3 hours is around the dungeon area, Spent an additional 2 hours up on Aerlinthe Isle killing > 200 malus sherths and not one token. So I'm assuming it's only in the immediate area on the non-existent monster that this rare drop is found.

Take these extremely rare drops on almost non existent monsters and as the saying goes STICK em WHERE THE SUN DON"T SHINE.


One other really annoyinig point, after running around for an hour and finding two spawns last night I camped one of them and after killing the initial group it took 35 minutes for the respawn. Oh yeah this quest gets more and more fun as I go, NOT.

Thanks for listening, NOW FIX SOMETHING to make this a bit more enjoyable.

[God D O A]

Well, incase the devs dont wanna read all the posts, ill put it in short terms for ya. *clear throat*

8.75/9 pages of post....your customers....complaining about the crappy update. and to Timetodie of WE, nice to see you chainwhored to 240 and have all majors, but I havent, nor has many of my other fellow AC players. Im sure if you dont change this in a hurry, youll need to up the price to 23.00 instead of 13.00 in order to make keeping the AC franchise worthwhile. Played the game since Nov. 99 and havent began to ever once despise it till it "began" falling back into turbines hands. This patch needs to be rethought by your staff and actions need to be taken immediately before you start losing your monthly payment from the players, of Asherons Call.

[Totally-Sober]

and we dont want no crappy 'patch' next month bringing everything back to the way it was with the excuse of this being Phase: 2, if your gonna fix it do it now

[Dom on TD]

WOW!!! I didn't even bother hunting after logging in and hearing about your "rebalancing". I came here and read through 9 pages of digruntled AC players' posts. And what was IBN's response? after 9 pages, I didn't see one. Kinda make me feel like you guys are just hopng we'll forget that loot used to be good. Well, it may or may not happen, but one thing's for sure. You guys know how to turn people off of a video game. I just wanna say "thanks". I've been needing to do stuff around the house for a while, but have been too busy on the game to do it. You gave me a month to get things done. BTW, I'm not going to pay for this game anymore if you guys give me a reason to take 2 months off. I'm already WAY behind the chainers and macroers on levels, and only have 2 majors to my name. So what's MY reward for paying you faithfully and on time for almost 3 years? You gave us NO way of catching up. we just have to be content with what little we have? Thanks but no thanks, I get that enough IRL.

[God D O A]

IBN? any last words before this game goes up in smoke?

[Totally-Sober]

wonder if their even at work yet :/

[Flynn]

About the persitent @day in the character options- love it, but it's kind of jargony. If you're opening up the game to new blood, you might want to have someone check the interface and make sure it's easy to understand for someone who's never played AC before. 'You must restart your client' when you use the /font command is another classic example of this- not everyone knows what a 'client' is.

Oh, and guys.. before you complain about a dev not replying yet, think about it; right now it's 09:30 where Turbine's office is, the day after the patch, and poor Ibn's got to read ALL of this first.

[justindz]

Amen on that. I know how long it took me last night to filter through the angry posts here, and that was after I got off work for the day. Poor Ibn has the job now of absorbing and responding to what amounts to a great deal of disgusted players, through no fault of his own.

The only thing that will make a difference for me now, and might go a long way to redirecting the traffic from hate mail to people getting excited again is if a) Ibn tells us whether or not the loot system is bugged or permanent and b) people start a thread reporting where they have a found a way to cover the cost of their plats so we can start getting a handle on the new environment and at least play until next patch.

Ibn, best of luck. I don't envy your situation now, but make sure to drink plenty of water, and I'd heavily suggest looking into pranayama. I certainly think everyone, including myself, is overreacting right now. However, that is academic at this point. It's still a mess, and hopefully Mr. Beckers survives without a stroke.

[Madgic]

Hiya,

This is the first time ive felt the need to post here. So you will not have noticed me before. However i have played the game since release logging on DAILY. I am an alegiance monarch and alot of people in game will know of me and will know that im not a flamer or griefer.

I am posting to warn turbine that they are really really close to the edge on this latest patch.

For some time now I have noticed that mages by far out power melees in the game, i couldnt care less about the Credit cost to train war magic etc as this is outweighed by the fact that mages obtain their skills solo an archer for instance needs Bow, Fletching and Alchemy to obtain the same levelish of damage due to having to make and fletch the deadly heads. So working out specialising the skills on both mage and melee WE ARE Close to eqaul on that. (I understand that most have mules to make the heads but thats not the point in sure you Undestand what im geting at).

OK my beef.

Normally this balence problem doesnt bother me I assume there is a good reason for this as maybe mages attract people to play more or something like that, the reason it didnt worry me to much was because. Mages fight monsters that produce majors and or singularity keys, in turn these majors and or sings create sings. Melees however hunt for cash and salvage they then trade this cash or salvage with the mages for sings and then use the sings to obtain the majors they need. seemed fair to me balence was happeneing.

Now with the new loot changes a melee has to go out and fight the stuff they would normally avoid, and all of a sudden Olthoi a melees main meal drop a load of rubbish, and to top it off the stuff mages were hunting drop even better loot. So what will happen now? There will either be a massive economy loss and melees wil have to stop playing the game and have to start 24/7 hunting just to survive, or melees will become a thing of the past and again the OG mage style game that you spent alot of thought and energy on getting rid of will return to haunt us again.

Just a friendly heads up maybe you could look into this as it WILL cause problems.



Love the game still and you will never get me to quit no matter how hard you try.

Madgic

[shidenkai]

I figured out what you need to do - go to OP, ML, or the western Dires and destroy every Virindi Executor you can and stock up on yellow jewels. At least you can still get pyreal peas for them..

SK

[TimetoDie_WE]

Think of it this way... former macros that have hoarded majors will no longer be finding as many... and the true hunters of Dereth will be rewarded for actually moving around while hunting, and not hoarding one spot.

I don't hunt much, but maybe i'll start hunting monsters this patch and maybe i'll actually use some Sturdy Steel Keys or VOD Chests :)

[Nephi_ac]

As many have mentioned already.... the new loot system sucks. When I play the game, I solo hunt with my BM four school mage (lvl 96). With four foci, a comp pack and a DI pack, there's not much room left for loot and salvage. Prior to this patch I relied on high value items to fill those few remaining spots while looking for the occasional major that might drop to give some excitement. After playing last night, I'm left with the feeling of not really knowing what activity in game is worth my time. I would strongly suggest you revisit this nerf of the loot system that was sprung on the players. This is not a good time to alienate more of the player base.

Nephi - MT - ACer since 7/99.

[D X Mage]

It is clear that the only option we have is to fish this patch if we want loot and salvage this patch.

[Flynn]

Personally, I still don't see why people can justify complaining about getting less cash when they hunt. 10M notes an hour was easily achievable before, and nobody really needs that much.

Yes, the value of loot has dropped, but not so much that it's crippling. And, there are other options if you want cash- Gloom Drudge Charms, Vapor Golem Hearts, Shendolain Keys, Olthoi Ichor and Dark Revenant Thighbones all give you a D note when you hand them into the correct collector, in addition to the pyreal peas you get for Yellow Virindi Jewels. Looks a lot better balanced than it was before, although some people might need to adjust their hunting practices a little, trying different critters than what they're used to & so on. Careful, you might even put some challenge back in the game, and you KNOW how much players hate that!

One thing you might need to reconsider though, is rebalancing the casinos- they were a little on the expensive side before, now they're ridiculous. Just don't nerf the mnemosyne returns, that's still one of the best ways to get craft mules xp.

On that subject, love the changes to handing in stacks, but just one gripe- When you're using the 'give selected item' hotkey, it selects the NPC you're giving to when you give them an item from the stack. Your stack is no longer selected, so you have to go back and select it with the mouse to continue, if you're handing in multiple. Ideally, it shouldn't change my selection to the NPC. That way (for example), I could just gamble by hitting the give key over and over again, without reaching for the mouse every time I hand in a token.

[Hugo Rune]

I implore the devs to seriously consider hotfixing the loot profiles back to the previous ones.

After re-reading the articles on the proposed changes I don't think that the changes made bear any resemblance to the intentions stated in those articles.

To quote the LttP:

"February will also see the beginning of a rebalancing of the Asheron’s Call treasure system, similar to the monster rebalancing that was done last year. Some of our goals for the treasure system include:

Creatures in a particular level range should drop loot that is useful to characters in that level range.

More creatures should drop items that have been modified in some way by the treasure system. There should always be a reason to check a creature’s corpse.

As with the monster rebalancing, this is a process that will take several months. This month, you will see small to moderate changes in the loot dropped by almost every creature, as well as that found in many special chests."

Most players have found a drop in loot quality across many level ranges. I have been finding excellent healing kits on Cabalists and Peerless Drudges, something I would have previously found on a Lithos Lugian. None of the loot I've found in the 80+ areas has been anything other than junk.

Nothing I have seen is useful to me and I now have even less reason than before to check monsters' corpses.

How this can be described as "small to moderate changes"? It is more a case of total demolition.

Ibn, you stated on a thread on the discussion forum that we should keep in mind that this was only stage 1 and that there were problems with monster rebalancing also. I put it to you that the changes made have in no way made any progress towards the goals stated, they are quite the opposite. Also, I don't recall a time during monster rebalancing when every monsters xp dropped to 1k. If that had happened you would have fixed it there and then.

Please fix this mistake asap.

[Lycentia]

Absolutely terrible.... Where is the content? I don't even see how the patch got pushed back so late with so little content.

New quests? yeah a couple of old ones updated and a couple of new ones but all for low levels.....

New loot? umm nope all the good loot is gone, all we get is healing kits, lockpicks and peas.

New monsters? a few...all lower level.

New items? thats about the only thing we did get was a couple good quest items.


I don't have the urge to hunt at all this month because of the loot problems. There is now no reward for the monsters you kill. XP you say? I really could care less about xp. I like hunting for loot and items, thats one of the funnest things to do!

Sure I don't always get uber stuff, I'm not all that lucky, but I like the thrill of maybe finding something really good. And I can always use the non-uber stuff to sell for cash so I can buy components and mana stones. I have fun hunting this way, and now I can't do that. You can't even make good money for components off of the stuff that's being dropped now.

When I read the loot system was going to be updated it sounded really really good in your letters to us. I was excited! I thought it was going to get better, not worse. More loot on monsters. Less worthless stuff like healing kits and lockpicks......More stuff with majors and minors on them perhaps, or maybe even level 7 jewelry. But we got totally the opposite.

Now I know you say this is only step one. But I honestly see no reason for healing kits and lockpicks to even be dropped. I figured that junk would finally stop dropping, you can buy it in a shop anyways. So I don't understand how this step 1 could possibly help the loot system. How could it possible help for the monsters to only drop junk?

And yah know the one good thing with loot that I saw people like was the one thing I didn't think would happen, and really don't care for. And that's higher damage on weapons. Personally I thought most of them were high enough, with the exception of the racial weapons which did need work.

Well at least there are a couple of quests I can do. And the items from the quest are usable and not junk. But they're all lower level quests so they're not really going to be much of a challenge and I doubt they will hold me over for the month.

I really hope that next month we will be seeing good loot on the monsters again. Nothing being dropped now is useful to me. None of it is even useful to my lower level characters. I wish there would just be a hotfix. A lot of my friends don't even want to log on and play now.... this is going to be such a dull and boring month for AC. :(

[Mars-Hill]

I think your going to get a lot of greif from folks for changing the leadership and grandpatron dynamic - but not for reasons you think..

You see, traditionally folks have not trained leadership because they were able to max out their effective leadership with vassals, buffs and majors. Now folks that have attuned their characters to make the most of the old system are left behind either because they lack the skill points to adjust to the new dynamic or because they have "not yet" optimized their characters to take advantage of the new system.

My recommendations are to insert some extra skill points into the game so that folks can train leadership. You can do this either by inserting a quest or by raising the ceiling on level 126 - and giving high level players some additional reasons to play with their vassals again.

I would like to see an adjustment that raises grandpatron vassal passup, but not enough to make a chain viable.

Regards

Mars-Hill
Level 194 swordsman / life mage
Morningthaw

[Mars-Hill]

Distribution and advertising issues have seen to it that there are no "real" new players in game. With that said, why would an accomplished player wish to revisit a dungeon to obtain a quest item that isnt competative with what they already have?

Established players are asking for new quests, not old quests revisited.

Regards,

Mars-Hill
Level 194 Swordsman
http://www.applepuppy.com/ac

[Lycentia]

Oh there is a bug where you can no longer use the check boxes in the chat button to chat to a particular person or channel.

[sylphia]

OK This post is strictly for the feedback Turbine has requested; I have NOT takenthe time to go through the 10 pages of this thread, and this post is not in response to anything anyone else has said so far. Now that the disclaimers are out of the way :)

I recently started a few new toons on MT (my normal server is TD), with the explicit intent of checking out the lower level content from a real newbie's perspective. My toons recently graduated into mid 20's and have been hunting in the Olthoi Arcade and now in the 20+ Matron Hive. Loot on Gardeners and Harversters was WAY better than I expected (prior to this patch) to see, considering their level and the level of toons they were designed for. I mean, a lvl 18 mob dropping AL 200+ armor, lvl 5 scrolls, and equipment with lvl 4's, and many of the items I found were worth 10-20K apiece? That was a tad much. When I moved to the Hive for more XP, the loot went to pot by comparison, but it was more in line wth the level of toons that "should" be hunting those mobs.

After the patch, I went to the Hive, and the loot on swarm olthoi has taken another apparent drop. All spell levels (scrolls AND equipment) have dropped at least one or 2 levels, depending which mob. Now they are more in line with the low end lvl of toons they are designed for. Bugs have always been a lucrative hunting resource in AC, generally the best way to earn fast cash and decent items if you can kill them with any speed. I am having no problems funding my toons if I loot alittle, but my concern is that the bugs are no longer droping the "next level" of loot for the toons that shoudl be fighting there. The lvl 20+ toons should pretty much already be casting and using lvl 3 spells, so these mobs shoudl be dropping lvl 4 spells and items to prepare the toon for the next step up in hunting. Now, dont get me wrong, they DO drop lvl 4s...but they are extremely rare now. It was my intention to level my sword toon solely on bugs for a large protion of his career, since it means very few protects are needed, and Magic Def is unnecessary. If this is an indication of how the loot system is going to progres through the tiers of bugs, I am concerned about finding the things I will need for him.

Cash isnt a problem, but the mobs DO need to drop the items and spells for the NEXT lvl of hunting for their target lvl toons. If a mob "requires" the toon to have lvl 3 spells and gear to hunt it, it should drop lvl 4's. If it requires lvl 4s, it should drop lvl 5's, with a progression all the way up. The loot generators dont have to be set to Monty Haul, but they should provide what you need to progress to the next level, rather than making you jump up to the next elevl without the supplies you need, and hope your new lvl of mobs will drop it.

Obviously, my observations are based on a small sampling of the overall bug population, and an even smaller sample of the entire mob populations. Srand, I have read your comments about how the prfiles have ACTUALLY changed, so I will reserve judgement until I have had a chance to take your advice. But I do hope you guys kept the level progression of mobs vs toons vs items in mind during this "rebalance".

Other than the loot, this patch is prety much the same as normal for me. As predicted, the allegiance XP changes hasnt had much of an impact on my toons one way or another, but again I am already set up as a fat cat so XP for my toons can be earned on their own..except my mules, but I am finding ways around that :) I hit the casinos for the first time in a couple years..belated kudos on the changes there :D Got a few bugs and quirks with the patch as usual, but nothing game breaking I have seen so far. If we can get past this loot thing, I think we will survive. :)

[Vehementi]

Yup, this is The Test.

I've read the thread and it seems that every single player, except three, vehemently hates these changes. These people are paying you. Vision or no (this is moot since what you did is objectively contrary to your "vision" and what you said you were trying to do), make the players happy or you lose.

I played beta, I played retail. I quit after a year mostly because it was hard to stay afloat. It wasn't fun hunting around and barely being able to pay for all your comps and staying afloat. I came back about two weeks ago and to my amazement you'd fixed the loot system - it was possible for my characters to survive off loot alone. My first char in three years, an og mage that will never get war, was able to profit and buy his own scrolls (keeping up with his level) all the way up to where I am now, lvl 40. Everything was good. Now I've fought for 3 buff sessions killing level 61 olthoi, who are now dropping level II-III scrolls and I made a grand total of 80k profit, after selling all the bags of useless salvage I'd collected before the patch.

This is broken. The test is whether you're smart enough to hot fix it.

[God D O A]

Flynn, the 10 M notes an hour, fine, but when MS increased the burn rate of plats, uncool. I play as a mage and a melee on DT, my poor mage burns 30+ plats on a GOOD day of fighting. Thats just insane. The cost of comps needs to go down and or mobs need to begin dropping real items again. and again, after 4 years of playing this is the first time that I acually didnt enjoy playing the game.

[Flynn]

According to some sources, there approximately 80,000 subscribers to AC at present. I'd be interested to know what that figure really is, but for the moment, let's assume we're not going to find out any time soon. Now, assuming that many players have multiple accounts, and allowing a fairly large margin for error, I'd say there's probably around 10,000 people with one or more subscriptions, and less than 150 players have posted feedback here so far. That's a fairly small percentage.

Those that posted against the loot changes probably believe their opinion is the majority based on the posts they see here, but the simple fact is, there are a LOT more people who are more or less indifferent to the changes, and quite a few that are in favor of them. There's no doubting that Turbine have upset quite a few people with the loot changes, but I believe it would upset far more to roll back these changes, and would hurt the game far more.

[God D O A]

not all people are involved in posting on boards, they rant and rave on VN boards.

[ACVeteran]

Well, there's your answers, IBN.

Is Turbine going to ignore the feedback they've requested from players as per usual? Or will they react to and fix the ridiculus 'rebalancing'.

If ruining the game and chasing paying subscribers out the door is your goal, then I digress ... you're doing a fantastic job. If not, you'd better re-evaluate and take action quickly.

[Hugo Rune]

So Flynn, because only a small minority of people post on this forums that makes a (overwhelming) majority opinion here a minority opinion?

That is utter nonsense.

With that logic, because I haven't seen more than 3 people here praising Turbine for the new loot profiles I could assume they are the only 3 people on the planet who like the change.

You cannot assume people hold a particular point of view, you must wait for them to express it. I think its clear what the majority of people who have expressed their opinions think of the changes.

I suggest you go and take a look on other AC forums and look at the posts there, talk to people in game and see how big the "minority" that hate the loot changes really is.

[ACVeteran]

"This is broken. The test is whether you're smart enough to hot fix it."

Don't hold your breathe.

[ACVeteran]

People posting that they were apalled at the changes: 100ish
People posting that they thought the changes positive: 2ish

I see your point, Flynn. Clearly the majority think the changes were positive. And clearly someone has been abusing the paint chips again.

[kfin]

I know the Dev's like to think that only the complainers post on these boards and most of the masses are happy with (the patch) not repling.
DO NOT DISSCOUNT your opinions! I am one of the unheard masses as you can tell by my number of posts. I signed up just so I could post today.
The people that do not post here are the people who agree with what the majority of people say on these boards. They do not post because it is redundant to say what has already been said.
Human nature is to argue a point that you disagree with. In other words if people were in total agreement with this patch you would see more posts stating just that.
I signed up today just so I could argue that the unheard masses are not HAPPY, not at all.
If you are like me and do not post much and just read to get a idea of the direction of the game, PLEASE I beg you activate an account and post against this patch. TURBINES view was made apperant with AC2. I do not like their idea of game balance. I do not think that 90% of the people out there want a AC/AC2 game rebalancing.

[MissBusan]

i dont like what you done whith this patch but ill get over it sooner or later ...

*loot drops =no good
* this months quests=fun if your at a lower level... btw stop upgrading old quests and give us new stuff

*componets to be casting spells dosent add up in what you make in cash ... a plat scarab coasts to much when you barly make 3 d-notes in a full buff and burns 5-8 plat scarabs when you buff...
and restocking in general takes a lot more then 3 d-notes after every buff manacharges and tapers + plat scarabs + stammina food + trade health elixirs is needed to keep any of my chars alive and this far i cant see how that is possible whith the new loot system ... mayby i should go back to playing low level chars just to be able to get cash for my chars i actully enjoy hunting whith ... does that sound rigth ?

not all players have a lot of cash stuffed on mules ...

im done ranting now have fun ...

[Yusuki]

Originally posted by Flynn
Now, assuming that many players have multiple accounts, and allowing a fairly large margin for error, I'd say there's probably around 10,000 people with one or more subscriptions, and less than 150 players have posted feedback here so far. That's a fairly small percentage.If you've ever worked any kind of upper-level customer service position, you'll know that the "silent majority" ratio is about 6 to 1. That is, for every customer that complains about something, six more have the same viewpoint and opinion, but they don't say anything. They just cancel, or stop using the product, or otherwise vanish.

If ten percent of my customers didn't like something I'd done, and didn't like it enough that they were going to stop giving me money, I would fix it pretty quickly. But then, I don't work for an MMOG; clearly the rules are different there.

[thomas144]

I've been playing AC since 1999, with two accounts for a year now, and only learned about these message boards this month.

[ACVeteran]

It seems that the game designers are pushing toward the same type of boring, uninspiring loot system in AC2. For whatever reason, they wish to repeat the same failure in AC1. Somehow, in the course of their group-think dominated design sessions, they determined that players don't like having a wide array of creatures that are profitable to hunt, with some being more profitable than others. Either that, or they believed that players enjoy having to work harder to maintain the same resource levels that they've enjoyed.

If I were in charge, the first step I'd take is to fire or reprimand the individual that came up with this idea in the first place. Incompetence at its finest.

[Hugo Rune]

Flynn, do not try to insult my intelligence with your flawed logic.

You assume that because people have not expressed an opinion that they do not support a particular point of view.

You have no clue whatsoever what their point of view is. But from your "logic" you are quite happy to assume that if they haven't said otherwise here (or in another public forum) then they must be content or happy with the changes.

Your last post says "We'll never know for sure just what percentage of the population really hates these changes"

But you assume that is a minority and use flawed logic to back up that assumption.

Since when does a 150-3 split put the 150 in the minority? When someone decides theres another 6 billion people on the planet we didn't consult so lets add that to the 3 people.

As I said before, nonsense.

[Pureblade]

I am part of one of the older allegiances on TD, The Todoshi Matsudaira Clan (aka Defenders of Justice). We're known to be pretty laid back, conservative and old school. We don't and never did chain, never UCM (or ACM for that matter) and tend to have a very positive, supportive attitude toward Turbine and AC.

I know I speak for a number of our members when I say that we are absolutely apalled by these changes. People who have played for 3 or more years are seriously talking about moving on, finding other games, deleting/canceling accounts. Nothing before (not even the huge rollback) has prompted this sort of reaction.

Those people that are saying that this attitude is not the attitude of the majority may be correct, I cannot speak for the tens of thousands of people who subscribe to this game. I cannot even speak for a majority of the people in my own clan. I can only speak for myself and a small number of my close in-game friends that are outraged at this. If it is on purpose, Turbine has obviously lost its collective mind. If this is a mistake I strongly suggest you rectify it, and quickly, or server performance is going to get much better in the next month. They run much faster when go one is playing.

[daminion]

I haven't been a paying member since December, but I still follow the fan sites, patch news, and ACVault.

I have to honestly say that while Turbine has put some really nice improvements into the game over time, you also have never learned when to leave well enough alone.

As a software developer myself I know a little about expected behavior. Once a user knows how something works they get comfortable with it... but AC has always been a moving animal. As soon as the userbase gets comfortable with certain features, they change.

Instead of nerfing loot, why not add something new that makes current stuff less valuable. People don't like it when you take their stuff and make it worthless... but if you lessen it's value by adding something new and improved then people will continue to play, and you've just given them something else to play for.

You've gotten it right a few times... but it's the times that you stumble when you lose customers in waves.

I can't think of any other game where they continue to change the rules as much as AC... and i've played all of the ones worth playing.

[Mousey_LC]

Ok I have been a player since 1999........................ Have 5 well 6 counting my sons account active at the moment, not sure how many I will cancel yet. I was never in an xp chain so that is here nor there to me, tho as monarch I will miss the xp. I have never logged into just 660 k xp after sleeping all night.

My main concern here is LOOT. My followers have always known they could come to me for a note or 2.... plats when needed... Whatever was needed. Now I will be lucky to support myself much less my allegiance. I get to pay 1mil a month for mansion rent on top of that. Also what is the point of having lockpick to carve sings? Just grab an SIK and move straight to level 7's since troves now spawn level 6 scrolls where is the advantage? Something has to give... I have been loyal to AC for so long to be thanked like this... use vaseline next time please.. or a little KY cause this hurts.... Dunno how long my allegiance buffbot will survive either... makes me wish I had taken advantage of the plat macro many months ago. Right now you have taken alot of the fun outta the game for me... this was not a rebalance but a punishment for those that do not take advantage of exploits in this game.

[Lycentia]

Well I read everyone's post and can see that there are a lot of unhappy players. I already posted about the loot which was horribly unsatisfying. But I figured I'd post what I thought about the other things added this patch since only a few people have and the loot is causing people to overlook them.


XP changes - What I have seen so far has been really good. I'm not in an XP chain and never have been. I don't macro. I play liek a normal player and I have real vassels that have been with me awhile I give loot to, have taken on quests, chat with and pass up xp to with my lower characters. I am curently level 126 but it took 4 years of hard work to get there.

I noticed last night when I logged off for maybe 2 seconds then back on my main that I made 1.9 mil pass up from an active vassel that was currently hunting in VOD with some allegiance friends. That's a nice bit of xp pass up! I can't wait to see what the vassel that has been with me since I was around level 60 passes up.

The xp changes are nice from what I have seen so far.


Chat changes - I was really dissapointed in the yellow color on the allegiance chat. Now it's not really noticable liek it used to be. I understand that pink was confusing for the melees because of the damage they do on monsters so it needed to be changed.

But isn't there some way you could impliment some new colors? Purple maybe? a really bright more orangy orange that stands out? How about just plain ol' black, I haven't seen any form of chat or damage that uses black yet. I get really confused with all the variations of yellow.

The bug with the checkboxes is annoying, since I use them a whole lot. But I am sure that will be fixed right away.

Most people liked the /r changed. It will take me a little getting used to but I probably will like them after some practice.



Quests-Sure it's fun to have so old quests updated, and yeah it's nice. But we really want new quests! New places to explore! New items to get!

A couple new ones were added this month but they are pretty low-mid level. The items are great that you get, but it isn't really much of a challenge for a huge part of the player base that has stayed with you for so may years. And yeah we need low an dmid level quests too, of course. But it's really dissapointing when there isn't much for you in a patch.

I really enjoy patched that have a new quest for each level range so that everyone gets a little something.

The cantrip quest items are a really great though. They are actually useful for all level ranges! Even though the quests have been a bit easy, I am happy to say at least the items are very useful to all of my characters. Keep adding more stuff like this! Stuff that is really useful!




Well with the really disspaoitning loot chages I hope that things will be fixed fast and loot will get better. From how i understand it, it looks like you got rid of all the uber loot on all level ranges, then tweaked the lowest level range to the appropriate place. But you left the other level ranges with nothing until they get tweaked in the comming months. IMO it was a really unwise way to impliment your chages. I think it would have been better to just tweak each level range one at a time, but leave the others the way they are while you do so. Either that or make all the changes all at once in one single patch...

This patch is very lacking in high level content and even mid level content. Which the majority of you player base is levels 50 - 126. I know you plan on getting new players soon when you start to market ac again, but I think it would have been better to start from the top and work down rather then from the bottom and work up. I mean you still have a ways to go before expansion adn marketing AC for new people to join. The current players should be your first concern, then the new people that you expect to have soon.

[Shuten Runn]

I am new to these boards as of today. I have played AC for the past 4 years. Never have I been so upset about the direction of this game.

At first I was excited about the treasure rebalance. This is what I read on the AC web site:

As we mentioned in the Letter to the Players, we are in the process of rebalancing treasure in much the same way that we rebalanced creature difficulty and experience last year. Our goals are twofold: we want treasure to be 1) useful and 2) interesting.

I find the new treasure neither useful nor interesting. Lvl 100+ critters dropping loot not good enough for level 20's is absurd. As I read in the letter to the players:

Creatures in a particular level range should drop loot that is useful to characters in that level range.

More creatures should drop items that have been modified in some way by the treasure system. There should always be a reason to check a creature’s corpse.

The reason to check every corpse now is that you have to take everything to pay for comps. Too bad you run out of pack space or get overburdended after a several of minutes of fighting

Change it back or Fix it!

[God D O A]

Hmm...well...lets see here. In society, the bosses tell the employees what to do, correct? and in part, those employees get paid by the bosses. now lets convert this to AC terms, shall we? We, the players, in this situation, are the bosses. We pay 10-13$ monthly for entertainment. Therefore...turbine works for us. See where im going? bosses pay employees players pay turbine. what happens when the employees **** the bosses off? they get FIRED! no more money, poof. Listen and do as the players request. You have about 170 posts hating the change in loot, and about 3....maybe 4... that are all for it. so...upset the minority that enjoy new loot changes, or multiply up 10-13 dollars a month, times how many people leave, times how many accounts they drop. Turbines decision, but they better become super "employees" real quick before some of the bosses quit payin em.

[SegZavier]

Originally posted by Illusi
BUG: (not sure but just incase)
:confused:

You can now learn scrolls for schools you have NOT learn/trained???

Could have sworn you could not do that before....am I wrong??

Ex:

I learned 3 creature spells of level 2 just now at level 3 (just started a character) and only have Item Magic trained....

Not sure if Ibn has come back on this, but this has been possible for level 1 and level 2 scrolls for quite sometime. (Don't remember if I learned them with just some buffs on or if I was even buffed.

[Ibn]

I apologize for the delay in responding -- I want to make sure I read everything before I jump in.

The most important thing that I see folks forgetting is that the treasure changes are not done yet. This is very similar to the creature rebalancing -- many players were upset to find that their traditional hunting grounds were no longer profitable, XP-wise. Then they found other, new, hunting grounds that made them happy.

When the treasure changes are complete, this will likely happen again. There are a number of things that are VERY wonky in their current state, because the changes are incomplete.

All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month.

In the meantime, try hunting in new areas, and checking out different monsters -- you may be pleasantly surprised.

[God D O A]

so..while your doing all these changes, are you going to feed our charachters the components and such they cannot afford? its not the uber majors and garbage that im worried about, its trying to feed my charachters, and my vassals and their vassals that im worried about.

[rschroe]

Yes can u loan me 150 plats and roughly 80,000 tapers to get my allegiance bots through this change.
How long before you are done with changes, is it next month or another 6 months that we have to endure your changes.
I have changed my hunting places and scouted around last night to find i was dissappointed with the places i could hunt. I even tried to solo hunt in VOD. Evisc Lair was a total joke, was in there for about 30 min and found 1 item over 5k, i did find several around 1k. Went to Caul and hunted and didn't find much better. Hunted in Olthoi Matron Hive 60+ and got about 1/4 of the money that i got the night before patch.
Maybe I am not looking in the right spots, can you please tell me where i can solo hunt a lvl 131 mage with no melee D where i can get enough loot to support my bots and myself.

Thank you ahead of time for your advice on my situation and for taking the time to answer me.

[kfin]

Turbine!

Do you see that flashing red light in the upper corner of your eye?

That is your career dissipation light........

and it just went into overdrive


quote from backdraft

[ACVeteran]

IBN,

The first step in making the loot system 'useful' and 'interesting' is not to nerf the portions of that system that players liked and relied upon to keep their characters running.

You're asking the player base that pays your check each month to struggle for at least a month (based on a promise that anyone who's been around Turbine long enough knows not to trust) because someone over there made a bad decision.

Please explain the logic in that.

[Flynn]

Ibn, about these changes not being complete yet- I know there's probably a very good reason why these changes weren't implemented in one month instead of spreading them across a few, but given the negative feedback from so many people, perhaps it might be worthwhile explaining what this reason is?

Incidentally, if memory serves, patches are due on the second week of the month now. Is this still the case for March, i.e. will the March prop be in a mere two weeks?

[Jj-Mage]

Why was the cabalists and peerless' loot profiles nerfed?

this is a question I would like to see answered! I am one of those people that go out at least once a night for a buff to hunt kitty's hoping for majors to improve my Char. I think it is owed to us to know why the nerf?

[Vehementi]

I don't know how much simpler we can make this for you, Ibn.

Example scenario: A game consists of mobs of levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70. All mobs are balanced to the players' satisfaction, only the level 20 mobs happen to be dropping too much loot, and the level 60 mobs aren't dropping enough.

Logical "partial" fix: Nerf the loot on the level 20 mobs.
Logical "next part" fix: Add extra loot to the level 60 mobs.

Turbine "partial" fix: Nerf loot on level 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 mobs
Turbine "next part" fix: Raise the loot on level 30, 40, 50, and 60 mobs.

Do you not see how unbelievably stupid this is?

Edit: "incomplete changes" is not synonymous nor an excuse for breaking a system, and then fixing it later.

[agnari]

Ok IBN not much more of a response then expected.


OH, that sounds negative, but really if we understood it would take months to readjust loot we knew things would be bolaxed-up for a while. So your response just stated the obvious.


How about some guesstimations: 1) reloot overhaul may take 2 or 3 more patchs. 2) we started on the lower monsters profiles and will be slowly working our way up the level ladder.

As for this hunt elsewehre and you may be pleasantly suprised. Well my toon hasn't level in 8 or 9 months so I can really only hunt Dires, Caul or VoD. Where else would you suggest I go hunt to be suprised? It should be a place where every 5 minutes I don't hear at your level you shouldn't be here remarks!


Now how about answering some of the burning issued presented with this Borked up quest. Lets rustle up some sherths and get them multiplying like mad and get the emblem we need for the quest dropping. I've run into dozens of toons that have been out seraching for hours and not found either. Is is one of the areas we should be trying to be pleasantly suprised in? I think NOT.

[ACVeteran]

Speak with your wallets. Turbine has proven over and over that feedback of any other kind is meaningless to them. They've been swamped with negative feedback today and all they can say is "oh we're not done and its not so bad".

Fine.

2 of my 3 accounts will be cancelled today.

I'll give them a week on the final one. As a customer, I can't believe that this is how they do business.

[Toxeus]

I've been thinking about this for a few hours and to be honest, the most baffling part is why you've nerfed the Olthoi loot profile, particularly for those melees and archers who do a lot of hunting in the Matron Hives. The income from Copper and Silver Peas may have been a bit too high, but to remove them altogether rather than simply reducing the drop rate by 30-50% is just bad for the players who like to hunt in there. Let me explain:

The Matron Hives are:
1) One of the best social areas of the game. Other than my allegiance mansion, this is one of the few places my melee can meet and interact with people, particularly new people.
2) Fun to play in because of the risk/reward of hunting in there.
3) (WAS) A great combination of two of the most important rewards in the game: Loot and Experience.
4) Impossible to macro efficiently and thus a haven for folks like me who don't want to compete with bots.

By nerfing the loot profile on Olthoi so hard, you've hurt the best thing you had going as far as a dungeon goes. I won't go near 85% of the experience dungeons in AC because they are either heavily macroed or too far out of the way to make me even bother. You should be leaving olthoi alone and adding more hives, rather than taking them away.

I can live without majors, and though unhappy about less salvage, I can live without tinkering so much (I'm not so sure that this has been nerfed anyway.), and I'll reserve judgement about the weapons drops, but why the heck did you nerf the Olthoi Pea drop so drastically?? It just makes no sense from an actual player's persepective? If you thought that an MMD note an hour was too high, then cut in half, or a quarter, but not by 95%!!!

[pacesetter]

Originally posted by Ibn
I apologize for the delay in responding -- I want to make sure I read everything before I jump in.

The most important thing that I see folks forgetting is that the treasure changes are not done yet. This is very similar to the creature rebalancing -- many players were upset to find that their traditional hunting grounds were no longer profitable, XP-wise. Then they found other, new, hunting grounds that made them happy.

When the treasure changes are complete, this will likely happen again. There are a number of things that are VERY wonky in their current state, because the changes are incomplete.

All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month.

In the meantime, try hunting in new areas, and checking out different monsters -- you may be pleasantly surprised.


hmmmm no surprises yet. same trash everywhere and on everything I have hunted.

think I have kept or given away 5 pieces now and picked up to sell bout 1/3 of the usual.


still looking tho : ( think I'll try skulkers this time, the big baddies aren't any good.
*sarcasm*

[EddyIsaac]

Originally posted by Qlus
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. For anyone late to the game, or who is trying to get back into it after months or years of absence- these changes basically leave us scrounging to catch up to the majority of the playerbase which got fat off better loot profiles and allegiance chains (not everyone, but quite a few).


I agree 100%.

I just started a char on DT and although I get spanked every other hour by some 126+ i take it in stride, it's part of the world I play in. Now that the loot profile has been changed it takes 3 times as long to afford my lvl 6 scrolls. I'm a lvl 60 char and I basically hunted Nobles, Evis, Warriors, Lancers, Bandies, and Drudges for loot. I went from pulling in a decent wage to not being able to afford DIs, let alone even think about buying my lvl 6 scrolls.

Please restore the loot system to its former health.

[Toxeus]

Originally posted by EddyIsaac
Please restore the loot system to its former health.
This is the most accurate statement I've read so far because it implies that most of the playerbase was happy with the loot profiles as they were before.

I'll get off the thread and not troll, but I was struck by the Eddy's description. Why fix it if it ain't broke?

[Hugo Rune]

Ibn, this doesnt compare to the monster changes. The equivalent of this loot change if it had happened with monsters would have been to remove high level monsters altogether or to nerf the xp of every monster.

I can accept that the changes need to be done over a few months but did it require such a radical change in loot profiles? Everything is dropping junk, its not a case of stop killing drudges and start killing bandies. These aren't the small to moderate changes that the LttP mentioned.

Was there any need to completely destroy the loot system, then add bits back in piece by piece and tell your customers that they have to wait a few months until its back together again?

Improvements to the treasure system? Stage one has been 100 steps in the wrong direction :(

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by Hugo Rune
Ibn, this doesnt compare to the monster changes. The equivalent of this loot change if it had happened with monsters would have been to remove high level monsters altogether or to nerf the xp of every monster.

I can accept that the changes need to be done over a few months but did it require such a radical change in loot profiles? Everything is dropping junk, its not a case of stop killing drudges and start killing bandies. These aren't the small to moderate changes that the LttP mentioned.

Was there any need to completely destroy the loot system, then add bits back in piece by piece and tell your customers that they have to wait a few months until its back together again?

Improvements to the treasure system? Stage one has been 100 steps in the wrong direction :(

Quoted for emphasis.

[MachineOfMt]

I did like Ibn suggested and hunted some other critters and I have to say I am surprised! It's waaay worse than I thought. Maybe some hints for what critters don't suck now would help us all out a lot. Cause I admit I haven't tried bunnies and some other things yet. Maybe if we all switched to a completely different game, not only would we be suprised, but maybe all the people at Turbine would too. I mean, what's there to lose really at this point? You're crafting this into a whole new game anyways.

Always the one to like to use real life analogies, think of it this way. Say it was announced that salaries at Turbine were going to be rebalanced and you got your paycheck and it was about 10-20% of what it was before. So you complain about it and they tell you they're not done rebalancing yet. Meanwhile you've got a family to feed, bills to pay etc. So you bring this up to management and they say, well, perhaps you should just switch jobs here at Turbine...you may be surprised! Gonna stick around? Getting the picture? AC was one of the best games around but with you guys just hacking at it as you see fit without thinking through your consequences it's very quickly become the worst game out there. Think about your changes before you make them and for goodness sake talk to your players and LISTEN to them.

Yes, I'm pissed.

[nofeir]

"All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month.

In the meantime, try hunting in new areas, and checking out different monsters -- you may be pleasantly surprised."

IBN

Ok, I usually hunt warriors but now they're giving **** for loot. So I went out to Ayan and dang near got killed taking on a Peerless mob... and STILL got **** for loot. I was surprised . . . that the critters seemed harder to kill (I have been out there before; I'm stoned there) and very surprised that even level 135 critters drop such poor quality trash for loot. It's "VERY wonky", as you said.

So, we're supposed to "make due" without funds to support our hunting characters because the economy has been seriously nerfed, and somehow come up with enough cash to go gambling at the casino to level our trade mules by turning in the hearts and wings and other stuff they give you.

Where's all this money supposed to come from? You can barely make enough now to hunt a melee character, let alone a mage. It takes about 5 million pyreals to get a million xp from gambling . . . about . . . roughly. My trade mule is 99. It takes over 66 million xp to make 100. That's 330 MILLION pyreals of gambling. She wouldn't have been able to make 100 in this century and that was BEFORE you nerfed the loot. NOW what?

Yes, indeed, very VERY wonky. I do hope the next patch will correct these problems and that it will NOT be delayed... again.

Waiting for positive developments with finger on the "delete credit card information" button for two accounts,

[DeathWalker]

I dont think ive ever been more dissapointed in a patch.

The fact that you nerfed the most perfered hunting creatures into extinction was bad enough. Then you nerfed Sing Chests which makes Sing Keys worthless, which was the main economy of the game on all servers except Darktide. The XP chain nerf was acceptable, even though the way it was presented, made it seem like the Devs had something out for the players who used their own system. You basicly replaced an old flawed system, that everyone was accustom to and most liked, with a new even more flawed system which favors the few, screws the monarchs, and alienated a large percent of your player base to make the few happy.

That was bad enough, BUT.....


Heres what got me the most, the fact that within all this nerfing you gave us, you failed to actually give us ANY content this month. You whipped up "2" pathetic quests, one which has no new dynamics and will be used by VERY few people, or even done by VERY few people (the +8 bow/coord quest), and then the other one couldent even be called a quest, its just a castle where you go and kill X creature and get X item, which takes anyone over level 40 maybe 15 seconds once he actually gets there. (1-2 min run there max) You updated frore, but thats just rehashing an old useless quest with new useless quest items.



Quite frankly as was said before by many people. We will be putting our money where our mouth is.


I have 5 Active accounts. All will be canceled, eaither the game will improve by next patch, or they will remain canceled.

1 Account is a buffbot for a large monarchy, effecting many players.

1 is a 126 Tinker char for a major monarchy.

1 is a monarch of over 5000 people, nearing 6000.

The other 2 are mule accounts.


Maybe this wont make much diffrence to you what they are now, but it will make a diffrence to over 5000 characters when the accounts run out.


Your loot system isnt complete, you've said, but are you going to re-balance what you already balanced? If it requires that, then it seems half-baked, and put in before it was ready. If your not, and your balanceing the creatures that havent been balanced yet, then thats not going to fix the issues we have now.

You should of had the full system in place, and gotten player response before you ever put it ingame.



Now what you have is a game that you just spent ALOT of money on, that hasnt had new subscribers on any real scale in years, and your upsetting 75%+ of your player base. Not only the fact that if they leave you, you have nothing, but their going to be the people writing reviews when your expansion comes out and new people may look at the game. Do you really want all the negativity when that hits?



This patch was quite frankly a bigger dissapointment than AC2, and you know EXACTLY what I mean by that.

[DeathWalker]

"All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month."



Do you REALLY think people want to wait 4-5 months to see the final results and decide if they like it or not? Do you REALLY think you can hold your player base when they have basicly no reason to hunt what they have enjoyed hunting for the past 6 months? What you have is a player base thats getting VERY bored with the patch, and thats after a day and a half, in 4-5 months they will of found new games.

Thats like saying "Yeah we know your not happy, we know the game is broken, but 6 months from now, the game will be great! So keep paying us, and cross your fingers and hope you like it!"

You didnt even give us any content this month to hold us over and keep us busy doing something else while you nerfed the heck outta what we used to do for fun.

Waiting ISNT an option for a paying customer. Take it from someone who has worked retail for years, people dont like to wait for what they pay for.

[Havo]

Ok I can be patient, unlike most of the others here. From the hour of hunting I did last night you can make more than enough money to support any character you want. People claiming they can not get enough money either are full of it or can not figure out how to get Eltank to loot correctly. I will also spend some time hunting other areas. There is more to this game than Drudges, VOD, and Olthoi. On that note I think it is a good thing that they nerfed the loot in the Olthoi lairs. I am not against the Loot/Points trade off.

Now that said PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE provide more details UP FRONT when you make major changes. If you had said “We are going to change the way loot works. Please expect to see loot for higher level monsters drop in quality until this is done” instead of saying “We are starting to improve the loot distribution. We know 80+ level is a problem” there would be less outcry.

Just please do not fall into the trap of giving out details about where to hunt or rushing it.

[Vehementi]

Heh, you aren't bringing any new players to the game here Turbine... you're just driving them away, and causing them to complain on the forums and to their friends, which just drives more people away... you could, of course, fix this situation and restore our confidence in you (well, some of it...) by unbreaking the system with a hotfix.

[Escanor]

Originally posted by Ibn
I apologize for the delay in responding -- I want to make sure I read everything before I jump in.

The most important thing that I see folks forgetting is that the treasure changes are not done yet. This is very similar to the creature rebalancing -- many players were upset to find that their traditional hunting grounds were no longer profitable, XP-wise. Then they found other, new, hunting grounds that made them happy.

When the treasure changes are complete, this will likely happen again. There are a number of things that are VERY wonky in their current state, because the changes are incomplete.

All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month.

In the meantime, try hunting in new areas, and checking out different monsters -- you may be pleasantly surprised.

1. I really think Turbine needs to get a better spokesperson. I am sorry if this is taken as an insult, but I just don't believe Ibn has the language skills necessary to be the voice of this company, and more often than not, he causes more trouble by his "responses" than he fixes. Again, I am sorry if that is insulting; it is my opinion.

2. Can we get Jessica to please answer some of the questions in a direct way?

If Turbine knew things would be "wonky" why not, 1) SAY SO ahead of time, and 2) wait until you did have everything ready before implementing the changes?

Why does the letter to players on this issue directly contradict the actual loot profile in place at the moment?


Thanks

[instigater]

well how to begin sigh mouse lagg is so huge i canot play guess thats how it will end good luck on your new venture hope it all works out for yah if there is no fix for the horrible lagg your gonna lose a bunch of very loyal folk who in my opinion you cannot do without. i will not quit yet, i will hold on for a while to see if you folks can fix the lagg issues if not well what would be the point of paying to play something i cannot play p 3 800 proccessor
win 98 second editon all updates current
all updates to drivers current
all hope----well still hoping:(

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by Escanor
Why does the letter to players on this issue directly contradict the actual loot profile in place at the moment?

YES!

[EddyIsaac]

Meh, It seems like this is a good time to take a break. Turbine, can you please send me an email or even drop me a phone call when you're done retooling?

In the mean time I'll focus on my studies, I was kind of falling behind anyways.

Thanks,
Eddy

[obie]

I am thinking judging from Ibn Turbine response is that the developer do no know that have the loot system FUBAR. Majors dropping less on more creatures but less often is not the problem. I always thought of majors as a rare item any way.

It the general quality of the loot. I cleared the 60-80 area arround my villa and nout pretty much the same assourtment of creatures I did before, Liberators (the drop stuff now, but level 2 stuff), Banderling Maulers dropped stuff, level 3 nothing what they used to. All in all I found items from 3-7 workmanship, one items that had level 4 spell on, the rest had a level 3 or 2.

So I went to subway. I killed the Miners, A level 1 item wand. The lich dropped a level 2 wand. Finally The Ravener dropped a level 3 scroll and a 10-20 Hand Axe (250 wield).

There seems to no consistancy on what items are found on what. Zyphurs dropping hauberks and wisps and crystals droping loot.

It was nice to know that different monsters dropped different loot, Golems dropped gems, Crystals droped only shards, etc. They seemed to have "balanced" the monster loot like the vendor buy rates a year or so back. Make them all the same. It doesn't matter what monster you fight, the drops are all the same.

Boring. See you in a month (maybe)

[Qlus]

How much more would I have to pay to gain some consideration for my time?

This isn't a little unpleasant, for players who did not exploit their way to the top, this is damn nigh unplayable.

We are not beta testers. We pay to play.

It is unreasonable not to mention ethically suspect to blow away useability for God knows how long while policy is set to match what future players might want.

I do not want to hear its not that bad. Do not tell me its going to get worse, tell me when it will be done, give me a timeline, give me a cheat sheet of changes because this mess cannot be chalked up to new lore, say something of use, something of value, because right now, my 2 subscriptions are worthless.


And just a reminder, to whomever is willing to force unreasonably timed and badly tested changes on paying customers.

Asheron's Call 2 is a FAILURE for these very same reasons.

[jobul]

OK...I'll tell you..It SUCKS! Put the old loot system back.

You guys should have a test server to test these patches before they go LIVE.

[smpat04]

Account cancled. make it playable and i'll re-subscribe, that simple. until then, Anarchy Online is a lot like AC but futuristic and PLAYABLE. yall should check it out.

you all should cancel your accounts too. re-subscribe if they fix it. clear and simple.


and here's some ranting:

i can't believe that they can even somehow believe that with this kind of outcry it is OK to wait until they're done with their schedules. hotfix us, give us all a level or 2, and why dont you make a beta server like every other successful game.

[KPD157]

I would just like to say I beleive Turbine is on the right track and making changes that hurt are part of that :) I like to look at the possitive aspects since so many look only at the Negative :) First of all I love the fact that now every monster drops some loot Even the frags :) I hardly hunt the VOD or Olthoi but I have seen the way that you can make money on low level Olthoi and I do think fixing that is a plus for when the new server gets online :)

Decal managed to get together very well and I appreciate the fact that I can use my plugin to enjoy the game quicker than 4 days :)

So Turbine I want you to know that I respect your bravery in the face of those who don't understand your cause. Its this Bravery that has kept me in the game cause I know you will do what is nescessary to make this a better game for the rest of the time I play here :) Even if it might only be another 20 years I don't mind ;) hehehehe :)

Thanks for a Great Start and Great update :)

[ACVeteran]

"I hardly hunt the VOD or Olthoi but I have seen the way that you can make money on low level Olthoi and I do think fixing that is a plus for when the new server gets online "

That's great. What a great benefit. Oh wait... nobody posting here plays on the new server. Now, how do the current paying subscribers benefit?

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by ACVeteran
"I hardly hunt the VOD or Olthoi but I have seen the way that you can make money on low level Olthoi and I do think fixing that is a plus for when the new server gets online "

That's great. What a great benefit. Oh wait... nobody posting here plays on the new server. Now, how do the current paying subscribers benefit?

Duh! The silent majority who is in favor of these changes isn't posting on the board! They're playing on the new server!

O wai

[krack]

I think this patch is a blunder.
Regardless of whether or not loot sucks beyond recognition...you guys practically removed all pea drops.

Out of 3 hours hunting I've barely looted 10 copper peas and 5 lead peas.And that's hunting anything and everytihng in the extreme areas.

Please tell me this is a mistake.I can't go carrying 50 hauberks into the smithy for money when,as a mage I have to carry 2000+ tapers.

[Jyiiga]

Originally posted by Ibn

All I can ask is that you reserve final judgment until you have seen the final results. Changes this large cannot be done all in one month.

[/B]


Ahem, Delayed patch. You had 6+ weeks not a month.

You should have saved the loot changes too do all at once next month. Instead of forcing the unfinished product on us.

[KPD157]

New Server would benifit because those of us who know the best hunting grounds will be on a fair footing with those that don't since most hunting grounds will be "level based" not "knowing where they are" based :)

[MachineOfMt]

Well, I've been playing AC religiously since beta but I just cancelled my accounts. It probably won't make a difference, but I think that's the only thing that I can do to show my severe unhappiness with what Turbine has done the past few months. We have no control over what Turbine does directly but we do have control over our subscriptions so I'm doing what I can. I'd encourage others who really are unhappy with this to do the same.

Machine of Morningthaw

[LaD_HG]

People claiming they can not get enough money either are full of it or can not figure out how to get Eltank to loot correctly.

Oh...so those of us that do not use plug ins to loot are screwed...ok..that make TONS of sense.

There are few things I look for when I hunt.....Peas(silver/copper), salvage that is 7+, and high value armor i can sell. While I do not have a plugin to loot for me...I actually look on the corpses...ID everything...and pick and choose what I want to pick up.....but now it really does not matter what I want to pick up...cause its all ****.

I cannot go hunt different critters, cause they all sux....if you want me to go solo VoD, as a lv 80 melee......then I hope you are gonna give me some armor that makes me impervious to EVERYTHING....if you want me to try to take on huge mobs of 161+ creatures, hell....even lv 116 Banderlings....then you must think I am a fool....I do not like dieing....cause then I have to go back IN THAT MOB to get all of my DI's back....weak.

Just change it back....give us better content....and stop makeing the mistakes you made with AC2......that game bombed in like.....a week......don't let us think you were planning on a 5 year slow shallow dive with AC1.

[Bruiserk]

Going to give them a week to soak up all of the complaints before I cancel. I'm holding out hope that they'll put in a hotfix before then. If not, I'm gone.

[ACVeteran]

"New Server would benifit because those of us who know the best hunting grounds will be on a fair footing with those that don't since most hunting grounds will be "level based" not "knowing where they are" based "

Super. Now I ask you again. How does it benefit those of us who are playing NOW?

[KPD157]

It doesn't Benifit anyone Hunting in those areas or those Creatures :)

[MachineOfMt]

Bruiserk, I'd recommend you check your subscription and if you've still got a decent amount of time, go ahead and cancel it now. You can still play until your subscription is up. It just won't automatically renew next time. That's the only way they are going to be able to accurately guage how these changes are going to affect them and thus decide what the appropriate course of action should be.

[bonejacker]

I have a question about the bows.

I got one that is

123%

+4 Melee

290 Wield

Am I assuming that the 130% 290 wields are now considered pre-patch?

[LaD_HG]

Yesterday...after the patch...I picked up a Xbow off a Diamond Lord......WS 7, +153 mod, endurance self 6, BD5, SK 6,...290 wield,
but it is also alleg rank 7 activation...something else to...i forget...I have a Dagger toon with Xbow trained...not even at 240 yet.....but that is the only good piece of loot I have found...and I started playing as soon as I was able to log onto HG untill at least midnight.....then I played again for about 5 hours this morning.....if that is the best loot I am going to be able to find...after 12+ hours of game play...then it is boned

[Rauth]

I am still reserving most judgement on the new loot changes but if the low-mid level loot profiles are any indication, I have to think I will be liking these changes when they are all completed.

I figured the first end that I would see the most change in was low - mid levelled mobs so I played a low level character I created a couple weeks ago (and intentionally left below 20). I was right. I noticed that low level drudges are no longer dropping AL 100+ armor items. I also like that most of the useless store-generated items appear to be gone. More (appropriate level) scrolls loading on low to lower-mid-levelled mobs (yay!) and the occasional "uber" newbie loot item with either low work, high dam mod, dual-spelled casters (with more useful creature buffs), or higher value loot (3k+). All in all, it was worth going through each corpse for my little guy. I especially like the 3+ spells on magical armor items. Very nice. Dual spelled jewelry in useful Arcane requirements is also much appreciated. I did notice some of that jewelry is still spawning with insanely high Allegiance Rank requirements though (Level I and II spells shouldnt require rank 4 or 5 - even if there are 2 or more on a single bracelet, IMO). Overall though, very nice on that end.

As you go higher in the levels though, things are indeed wonky. Dark Revs dropping level III scrolls and herbs, wasps dropping between 6 and 8 items (strong wasp!) and I'm not so sure about crystal fragments, duals, and broken frags loading armor items like hauberks, healing kits, etc... I do like the lower work, lower value, better dmg weapons so far though, particular for certain weapon-types. Might be worth playing certain templates again - not so gimped at the mid levels.

I have noticed some nice drops on certain higher levelled mobs, but mostly I have noticed that the really good stuff (high value, high work salvage, etc) is a little less regular and a lot more random seeming.

Don't have much to say yet about the allegiance changes but then I didn't feel they were going to affect most of my characters the way others have no doubt been affected, so I reserve comment on that til later.

Having hashed out a first impression on the loot profile changes, now I'm aching to put some of the quest info and rumors to use....

[Vehementi]

No, srand posted in another thread, there's just more damage values for 290 bows (123, 127, 130, etc.) with 130 still being the max, and 290 req bows being more common.

[Zeds]

my 2 accounts are now unsubscribed

if they fix this I MAY come back ,if not ...

well , Turbine ganked AC all by itself

[Retread]

Well this quite simple. I have 3 accounts and none will be renewed as they come up for renewal unless this loot issue is fixed. No, I will not wait several months for you to "rebalance".

If you have changes that take months, then you should write your code, test it on test servers and when it's all complete, check it in and serve it up to your customers. I played this game with you in AC2 and the game just got worse and worse until I became smart enough to cancel.

I don't have the "faith" in Turbine to trust you are doing something I will like and I refuse to pay for a bad game until you fix it. You are not upfront enough to tell your customers just what your plans are. You know what they are and the only reason you don't share them is you fear a mass reaction to them.

There are so many things that could be fixed and/or added to this game. The loot system was not broke. Certainly, it could have stood some tweaking. However, Turbine has a penchant for "rebalancing" the fun out of their games. I refuse to load up AC so that I can "work" for some money in order to "play" a couple hours. The "less play, more work" mantra that Turbine brought to AC2 is now coming to ac1. I'm not surprised given that the same person, Jessica Mulligan, is guiding both.

[Wind_Dance]

:( This patch as something for everyone, lol something to make everyone mad, that is.
I keep thinking, just where are you guys going with this.
I am normally easy to pleased. I have enjoyed my time in AC Ive played for 3 years now, and I have never seen so much upheaval in the game. The ex thing didnt bother me much wasnt in any ex chains anyway.But I did enjoy passing up a bit of ex to the trade mules. The loot thing has me bummed. I read the patch write ups. I guess I read it wrong, I thoug you were balancing it for the better, it does not look balanced to me, does it make sence when 100+ monsters drop lead peas? What diapoints me the most is 125% mod bows. Does that mean theres no more 130% mod bows??? that bugs me. I spent time trying to talk a few people out of quiting today. dont know if it did any good. Maybe you should let us in on. Where you are going with this. Maybe if we knew we wouldnt be so mad. And I cant remove my Rendeth Coat. So I cant play that char. If it not apparent to you that no one is happy about this patch. Maybe your ready to get rid of all us oldies. If we wanted a decorated chat room we would play sims. Maybe I will. at least untill I can get my Rendeth Shereth Coat buffed again

[srand]

Things have changed. That isn't neccesarily a bad thing, but it is something you need to be aware of if you are expecting things to be the same. We should have done a better job of preparing you for these changes. Honestly, with our knowledge of exactly what changed, we didn't expect such a negative reaction. We know exactly where things improved, after all. But you don't, and we should have better prepared you for that by sharing where things would be better, and where things would be different.

But hindsight is 20/20, and here we are now. So let's talk about some of these treasure changes.

The biggest thing we did was change what level of loot different creatures dropped. Before, most of the loot levels were concentrated at the lower levels (say, 1-50) and the higher levels had to get along with just a couple of loot levels. So we redistributed loot levels so that each character level range could have its own loot level, pretty much. This means that while a mid level creature may have been dropping loot level 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 before, depending on the creature, it will now most likely be dropping loot level 3.

By itself, that would have been a nerf to most treasure, so then we went back through and changed what the loot levels actually mean so as to reduce any negative impact on players and increase the benefits of the change.

In particular, we fixed up wield requirements on weapons. You can now find wield requirements that better match the intended target level of creatures. For instance, you won't be finding no-wield weapons in the highest levels of loot anymore.

We also fiddled with the spells that generate on items. Weapons and armor in general have more item enchantments, and the levels of all the spells they get (item, creature, and life) occur in a narrower band. In other words, where you might have found an item with level 3, 4, 5, or 6 spells before, you'll now be finding items with level 5 and 6 spells.

By the way, as we mentioned in the Rollout Article, we're not entirely satisfied with either wield requirements or spell levels at the highest levels of loot, and we'll be working on these more in the future. But even as they are right now, they are overall no worse and in several places a bit better than they were before these changes.

So, what else did we change? Well, those were really the only explicit changes. (I'm not including here the small bumps in max damage to a couple of weapons, by the way, but we did that as well.) Some other side effects you may notice, however, include the fact that average workmanship has decreased slightly, and that value may have increased or decreased slightly depending on what creatures you were hunting. Average loot value stayed about the same -- a little higher at low levels, a little lower at mid levels, the same at the highest levels -- but how much cash you can make off of loot is highly dependent on exactly what types of items a creature drops, and that has changed on a lot of creatures.

In addition, as we mentioned in the Rollout Article, the spell scrolls that you can find on creatures are badly out of whack. In truth, they have been for some time, but the changes this month really exacerbate that issue. We wanted to get them fixed up in February. but we ran out of time -- and they will be fixed up in March. Similarly, things like healing kits and potions are a bit out of whack -- they were in the past, and we didn't help them this month -- but we will be fixing them up soon.

Incidentally, this does bring up one point that one of the team made to me this morning. Players are used to judging their loot by certain indicators. That is, when you open a corpse and see a alevel 2 spell scroll or a poor healing kit, you "know" it's bad loot. When you see a level 6 scroll, you "know" it's not sing loot. It doesn't matter what the other items it the corpse actually are -- you're past experiences have taught you to "know" that these things are true.

But with the treasure changes this month, what you know is true may not actually be accurate anymore. So when you're looting this week, keep that in mind -- even if you see a mere good healing kit on a corpse, that doesn't neccesarily mean that the loot is terrible. Take a look at the other items -- you're going to find that the weapons and armor have on average more spells than they would have before, that those spells have a slightly tighter (more useful) level range, that the workmanship is on average slightly lower, that the wield reqs ranges are slightly narrower (more useful), etc.

And I've said this several time already today, and I'll be saying it some more: Things have changed. If you were in the habit of hunting creature X for a particular kind of loot, and you're not happy with what creature X is dropping, you may want to try hunting some other kinds of creatures.

We're watching your feedback about this quite carefully, and we'll be making adjustments as neccesary. Our goals for the treasure system are simple: loot that is 1) interesting and 2) useful. We're not there yet, but we are closer than we were last month, and we're going to be using your feedback to fine-tune our efforts as we work towards our goal.


Edit: I need to make one minor correction. Because hiltable daggers and shortswords cannot generate with wield requirements, you may still find no-wield versions of these weapons in high levels of loot. Sorry for that confusion.

[Toxeus]

Srand:

THANK YOU FOR A GOOD, DETAILED EXPLANATION!!

Finally....

You didn't address the big issue for most of us hower, and that is the loss of our income through Peas. As many have indicated here, we have developed a very specialized society on Asheron's Call with multiple character per player filling multiple roles such as Tinkering, Buffing, Melee, Archer, Mage, etc. This society we've built costs us a ton of money and now we can't find that money very easily.

It's not that there isn't valuable loot to be found, its that it is no longer portable loot that we can use to finance our continuing campaigns. Because we can't easily find the loot we need to maintain the economy that has developed over four years of evolution, it means less fun and more drudgery to finance our habits.

Please just put the Peas back in the loot profiles. I honestly don't play my character to make money, I play him to have fun, and looting 4 hauberks, 2 Orbs, and 3 leggings before having to return to town to sell of the burden is simply NOT fun.

[KPD157]

Thanks for the Info Srand It does help to know where things are going and it is interesting this month cause of all the changes ;) Having to redefine hunting grounds and or look at stuff again and see if you need it and all :) Its that kind of dedication I see in all of you that makes me think you as well as the solid part of the player base make AC the best Game out there in my Mind. :)

Keep up the Good work and I cannot wait to see what changes in the next 2 or 3 months that will be talked about with reverence like "Weightless Pyreals", "Housing" and such great changes of the past :)

[Bruiserk]

I can appreciate your response Srand, but the problem is, if we can't afford to test the new system, how can we give you feedback on it?

[MachineOfMt]

Like others have mentioned there were other things in the loot profiles that made the loot from last patch much more interesting than the loot from this patch. Specifically for me, some of the creatures I hunted last patch for peas and salvage now drop much fewer items, drop about 1/100th the number of peas as before, and no longer drop decent salvage. Others that I hunted for "sing" loot now no longer drop anything of interest. In general, I found that there were no monsters I was able to find that dropped anything of interest to me at all. This combined with the fact that I no longer feel any incentive to hunt and had no incentive to do any of the "new" content this patch made it the worst ever for me and was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. Maybe your intentions on changing loot profile's was good but I think most of us would agree you failed on this one and the timing couldn't have been worse. I agree with the person up above who stated the game is becoming more work and less play.

[Escanor]

Originally posted by srand
Things have changed. That isn't neccesarily a bad thing, but it is something you need to be aware of if you are expecting things to be the same. We should have done a better job of preparing you for these changes. Honestly, with our knowledge of exactly what changed, we didn't expect such a negative reaction. We know exactly where things improved, after all. But you don't, and we should have better prepared you for that by sharing where things would be better, and where things would be different.

But hindsight is 20/20, and here we are now. So let's talk about some of these treasure changes.



First of all, thank you for the reply.

Secondly, I do disagreed that this is a simple "hindsight is 20/20" issue. Between the last two months, there have been some serious complaints over the information given to us. You had to write a followup last time to the letter to the players just to "clarify" a few things. And WAY TOO OFTEN, the so-called responses on this boards by Turbine (not referring to this one) cause more problems because people get really mad at not getting a real and direct answer.

Since it appears that the game will be going through some extrmely drastic changes over the next few months, I really think it would be to Turbine's benefit (and to ours as well) to also drastically improve the quality of your communication with the public.

You all are thiking about the future of AC, and that is great. I hoe that in those thoughts you include plans to significantly increase the directness and thouroughness of explanations to the players.

Thanks a agin for the much more detailed reply.

[Peter]

Another thing that wasn't answered is, why do obliterators/crystal lords, also biakas drop less loot than before ?

[ACVeteran]

I said it before and I'll say it again, srand. The biggest issue is the lack of profitability. No more peas. Far less higher value items. Far less high salvage items.

Why do you continue to dance around this issue?

[Aztek]

Im sure you had the greatest intentions.

Your basically telling us this isnt changing except for healing kits and scrolls.

Folks this isnt looking any better then it did this morning.

I appreciate the responses as do all of us.

Something just tells me this dog isnt going to hunt.

[KPD157]

how much cash you can make off of loot is highly dependent on exactly what types of items a creature drops, and that has changed on a lot of creatures. - Srand

Thats why some people are not getting any of the profit they saw before :) Its not because its not out there :) its because its in a different place or in a different item ;) well According to Srand anyway :)

[Rags]

I'm sorry I went out last nite and was extremely disappointed
with the loot changes. It wasn't even worth my time or effort
to get all buffed up and go out and hunt! If this doesn't change
back it will definitely give me reasont to limit my time playing,
if i continue to play, just tired of nerf after nerf sheesh.
Ever hear of the old phrase, if it aint broke dont fix it!

[Pureblade]

I am curious as to why Turbine did not come out and just TELL US what you were planning to do. I think the times of super secret stuff should be over. You've stated that you have an interest in shaping and forming this game at least partly in the direction that the players hope it will go, and honestly I think you've been quite good about this in the recent past.

But you dropped the ball here. BIGTIME. You've upset a ton of people, myself included. And I don't normally get so out of whack.

Why did you not "run this by us" as you have other ideas? Did we want the loot situation to improve? Yes of course. Did we want you burning down the fields in order to plant a new crop? Probably not, but it would have been nice to be TOLD this. Not "we will be working on the loot for a few months" but "We are making sweeping changes to loot, and honestly things are going to be REALLY screwed up for a while. No, we mean REALLY screwed up. Please bear with us."

Srand is acting as though this is a normal way of doing business. Perhaps, as a proctologist. As what is essentially a customer service oriented company (you are selling us a service, after all) the way this was handled was, IMO, terrible.

This is not a flame, but a serious suggestion. Please send as many of your people as you can afford to Ouellette customer service training. Had you attended prior to this, I doubt it would have been handled in the way it has been.

And as a disclaimer, yes I have attended their service training myself. I believe it completely transformed the way I view the customer/service provider relationship.

I do appreciate (finally) a straight answer from Srand. Had the prop been led with honest knowledge of what was to come, I doubt you'd have seen the level of negativity that you have.

[Kreamater]

in response to srands message:

i have spent about 10 hours searching the entire direlands, killing every creature i could find, and really didnt find any loot over 10k in value, any scrolls over level 3, no weapons with good damage rating, attack or melee d %, no peas besides lead peas, no armor over 200 al. 10 hours!!! I hunted in all over the dires, even the "uber" areas, and found NOTHING of value. I have checked all the loot on all of my kills, and have found NOTHING of value. I have killed a great variety of creatures, and have found NOTHING of value. I am very glad that my character doesnt rely on tapers and plat scarabs, because the cost/income ratio is skewed heavily towards cost right now...and really the only things i buy are mana stones....

Frankly, the loot on all creatures level 100+ (besides the ones in vod, which 8 out of 10 of the players cant survive in alone) has been reduced to that of pre-patch drudge raveners... i know this because i trained 20 levels off of only raveners...so i know their loot. the current treasure i am getting off of direlands creatures has been reduced to drudge ravener level...

try sustaining a character below level 150 (that cant solo vod or upper caul) on the current treasure system, starting with a couple m notes...betcha cant for more than a week

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by srand
Our goals for the treasure system are simple: loot that is 1) interesting and 2) useful. We're not there yet, but we are closer than we were last month

Damnit, no you aren't! That's the point! Loot is junk across the board - we aren't just making this up, or saying, "Well damn, there's a level 2 scroll on this corpse, so I'll just ignore the suit of magical amuli here!" You are NOT closer than last month - you are further away! The lower level loot may be in tune now (though it isn't, and by inspection is ridiculously abundant), everything else has been nuked.

[Risen_FireTD]

Lets just get "bumps" replied to this so maybe they can put 1 and 2 together to get 3: All who oppose the loot specs, just put a ^ symbol on a reply. I have been playing since 1st Beta and NEVER have I seen such BS. You guys painte d apretty picture when you bought AC from Microsoft. Honestly, you need to resell it back to them, at least they know what the h*** they are doing. You wanted feedback, you just got your can for the day =)

[MagicMoonlight]

My toughts ?

I cancelled in January around the 15th because i was just bored.

I read the Devs notes about the Feb loot changes and i like what i saw. I was about to re-subscribe.

I read threads of what you really done in the Feb event. I will not re-subscribe.

Clear enough ?

[Pigroast]

I would say it is a good patch with the much much overdue xp changes but the drastic loot changes pretty much ruins it.

imo, you guys could have been more honest with us in the letter. mild to moderate was an extreme understatement.

[Risen_FireTD]

We might as well call AC quits, I am going to CANCEL right now, this **** where NO GOOD LOOT is to be found just sucks. IBN or Srand, Are you guys REALLY trying to get rid of the people that played for a new player base? And don't go into anydetails about the loot changes again, I have read enough, my question is, Do you guys plan to FIX this now? Do you guys plan to fix the loot and LEAVE it alone? I have a mage and an archer and a lvl 5 axeman, I deleted all my toons cause I was bored. Now you make it to where I can't level my mage or my archer with this crappy loot change. Turbine, Well done! May should have well have an ingame message that says when you log : "You got Nerfed!" Fix it and LEAVE IT ALONE!

[Alissa]

Srand,

I am glad you did explain these changes. However why were they even implemented?

I did not hear many complaints about looting and treasure found, except by those whose profession it seems to do such.

I do not hunt the areas set aside for those of my level due to social and well a**munch considerations, I am tired of dealing with the cutthroat activities in those areas.

So those of us who choose to hunt certian things, in certian areas or who like to wander and hunt are now forced to go where we do not wish to go to remain not only viable for ourselves but for our vassals and other characters.

Not many of us have the time or desire to go out and hunt what you consider premium spots. Many like out of the way unobtrusive places that are still a challenge due to sheer numbers against us.

However now for myself I am basically told I have to change my playstyle, my way of enjoying the game because you decided to make loot level based and in certian level areas.

If I had wanted such a changed I could have griped and moaned or sent emails etc. However I did not and many others did not.

Your phase one of the changes should have been left out and all of the phases put in at once, after testing, and prepare us for it.

As it is now you have angered a lot of people, myself included, who have had their play style forcibly changed due to this loot change.

Is there any wonder it is so divisive out there now? The haves and have nots yet again.

So many of us were proud and happy you got the game back from MS, now many are wondering of their judgement because this is an MS worthy goof if we ever saw one.

[Pigroast]

amen alissa.

turbine has really sporked this one. keep this up guys and all that venture money is going to burn baby burn.

[Risen_FireTD]

I wuvs you alisa, maybe Turbine will get a GOOD smack in the face for this patch. You tell Jessica Mulligan,"GO PKL and DIE!"

[Karem Darsun]

Ok i think i've gone through the gamut of reactions to the patch over the last couple of days. I think i accepted things finally about an hour ago.

Its clear that at least for now, loot on high level critters is way out of whack. Now i'm talking about lvl 120-135 western dires stuff here. I've never hunted one type of critter, i ttend to go for a 'if it moves blast it' approach. Enough drudges get caught in the crossfire that i get a major now and again.

The average value of loot is way down, as is the amount of decent armour. Cantrips are way down, especially majors.

I started out hunting using my normal criteria (majors, good weapons and armour, salvage, peas, and then fill up with ok burden 10K value items,). Doing this, i've come back from the field with my main pack half full, and barely covered my component costs (was making around 50k profit per buff cycle). This compares with me filling my pack in 40 mins and netting 12-15 plats on average before the patch.

Needless to say i logged off wondering if i would bother to play much this month, then saw the boards and realised that everyone is reacting the same way, with people not covering their expenses.

I figured that i'd give things another go tonight, and loosten my conditions for looting an item a bit. My last 2 buffs, i've filled up in 40 mins and netted around 10 plats each time, just by picking up items from 5k value instead of 10k. I figure i'm down to about 60-70% of what i could make before the patch, but i dont think i'll be in the poor house anytime soon.

I'm nowhere as near as angry as i was yesterday. I'd still love to know how the current system qualifies as having a reason to open every corpse, but i figure i can wait and see how things go. I just gotta hope that things get more interesting with the next patch. I play my main to quest and loot hunt. There weren't many new quests this patch, and loot hunting is going to be a chore rather than a pleasure for now.

[srand]

"I am curious as to why Turbine did not come out and just TELL US what you were planning to do. I think the times of super secret stuff should be over. "

The times of super secret stuff are over. We told you the broad outlines of what we were doing -- redistributing the loot levels in the same way we had redistributed monster levels -- and we told you where you were going to see particular issues -- for instance, spell scrolls -- and places where we were not yet satisfied and knew we would be making further changes -- like wield reqs at high levels. We didn't give explicit details on the changes because we didn't at the time feel that a point by point listing of each detailed change was neccesary. Now, in light of the confusion over the scope of the changes, we realized that we should have presented more details about the changes in order to better prepare you. Lesson learned.

[Risen_FireTD]

cough*rollback!*cough Do it....

[Pigroast]

"This month, you will see small to moderate changes in the loot dropped by almost every creature"

That comment in the letter to the players wasa gross understatement, the changes were too drastic.

[Risen_FireTD]

I agree Pigroast, and if you have noticed, they won't answer my questions hrm,? Are you guys really trying to get rid of us? Looks that way.

[Alissa]

Still wondering why it was done at all?

What prompted this? Was there some alarm bell? Too many ube folks crying they had too many majors that were rendered worthless?

As others pointed out Ibn and Srand, this is far worse then the monster rebalancing. We, meaning the vast majority, could still go out and hunt have fun and even make money.

You can not with this patch or this PHASE of your change. You would have been far better off doing them as a complete change.

If this is an indication of things to come, LEVEL BASED, then who is truly getting the benefit? Those like myself who have played the game day by day bit by bit or those whose playstyle, god bless them, decide to rocket to the upper levels?

If this is to become a LEVEL BASED game like your abortion of AC2 just tell us now so we can go elsewhere.

As it is now just reverse your mistake, do your entire chage in an upcoming patch and let us get ready for it.

This patch as is has caused playstyle, economic and social problems in your game you wanted to correct.

Well have to hunt where I hate now...
Hmmm can not afford to go hunt there no goo money to buff....
Sorry there vassal one can not recover yor corpse no comps left to buff, however I found some nice lockpicks you can have.

[srand]

Originally posted by Alissa
... However why were they even implemented?...

There are several reasons why we decided to implement these changes now.
1) Things were out of whack.
2) Things would only get worse.
3) The underlying work we did allows us to add some cool new features to treasure in the future.

I think I mentioned above, or possibly in another thread, that of our 6 loot levels, 4 of them were bunched up at the lowest character levels and the other two got strung out over the rest of the game. For various technical reasons, its extremely non-trivial for us to add new loot levels, so if we wanted to add any better higher level loot we had to redistribute the loot levels. Since we have a lot of high level players these days, adding cooler high level loot is going to be important for us in the near future.

In addition, the bunching of loot levels at lower character levels, as well certain irregularities in creatures at lower levels, made lower level loot really hit or miss (and generally miss) for actual newbies. With a downloadable client and an expansion pack in our future, we want to make sure that the AC experience is consistently fun, especially for true newbies. So this change made sense from that perspective as well.

[scrumpy_mt]

Lesson learned?

It is not my intention to show anyone on the Turbine team any disrespect, but if you are just now learning these kinds of lessons, we are in for a very rough transition.

I believe You took way too big of a bite with this patch.

To start with, you knew there was going to be major readjustment required for most of the current players just with the XP changes. Why did you not let the dust settle from that before you completely turned the loot system upside-down?

You obviously have a bigger plan that you have chosen not to share with your players.

Lesson Learned?

[Toxeus]

Originally posted by srand
In addition, the bunching of loot levels at lower character levels, as well certain irregularities in creatures at lower levels, made lower level loot really hit or miss (and generally miss) for actual newbies. With a downloadable client and an expansion pack in our future, we want to make sure that the AC experience is consistently fun, especially for true newbies. So this change made sense from that perspective as well.

There is no question that you are right about the low levels and the new players coming into the game, but why was the high level loot so drastically affected, and why was this put into place in a piecemeal fashion, thus alienating your veteran players?

It's a rhetorical question, but definitely my biggest problem with these changes. I'm sad that I felt no desire to log in to AC today...

[Jyiiga]

Just not as fun for the 3 year paying veterans for the next month.

I'm still a bit confused. No matter how it is justified.

This game is more or less a glorified diablo II for me.

I really like finding neat items.

In the long run, maybe this will benefit us all. However, it seems to have nullified my intrest in the game for this month.

Jyiiga the BORED.

[Hugo Rune]

Srand, maybe you should actually get in game and go and hunt 80+ monsters. You will see that what you say and what has been done are 2 very different things. It is nothing short of laughable to pretend that this is anything other than a nerf.

I've killed Shadows, Virindi, Drudges, Banderlings, Grievvers, Golems, Lugians, Olthoi, Crystals, Elementals, Wisps, Tumeroks, Shreths and Hollows. In 10+ hours of hunting since the patch I have found not one single item worth keeping. Before the patch I could at least count on finding 1 'keeper' per hour - a weapon to imbue, a dual 6 bracelet or if I was lucky a major.

I have taken your advice to look around and change my hunting habits. I used to hunt mainly Cabalists and Titans but have been killing everything in the 80+ zones since the patch (see above).

In the time where I may have found 10 items worth keeping before, I have found 0. Most other people I know have had the same experience.

Quite frankly the devs responses to this issue have added insult to injury. You tell us to change our hunting habits - we did that already. We have been looking EVERYWHERE for the type of loot we used to find - its not there anymore. How is it that almost every month people can find all the new content within 12 hours of the patch, but this month nobody can find any decent loot anywhere even though according to you its still there?

Instead of telling us to change our habits when we already have, or to wait several months until you finish your experiment I suggest you revert to the old loot profiles asap and take a good look at your "improvements" and "small to moderate" (more insults) changes in more detail.

Listen to what your customers are telling you Turbine. This is a problem for a lot of people and it was caused by something you changed. Fix it now or wave goodbye to a lot of your revenue.

[JakeTheMuss_HG]

I'm still very upset (so there may be some passionate words that follows - I make no apologies if that is the case)

I love the loot lottery - and I love this game.

I loathe this patch and I am left pondering as to why - I cannot accept the official responses. I have a contempt for any thing they say.

There has been a nasty trend of recent - ambigious at best, lies at worst
eg LIES
1) you'll want to open all corpses - for what, a lead pea, a 200py leather wk 3 al 10 helm and a level 4 scroll from a level 125 critter
2) chests will be affected next month - level 6 scrolls from a sing chest are being pulled now
3) Level appropriate

It looks as if they cannot compete with houseing bots selling villas on major trade boards so they've decided to cash in themselves.

By making it such that anyone who has not already capped stats to hunt in very high areas and/or have a mule full of majors will have no option with regard to majors or tinkerable weapons other than to do without or to puchase these.

Is this what you want! (of course the official answer will be no)

What are you doing - TELL US - not here - make a statement - outline your plans - and do not LIE this time!

How much will you charge for a fully tinkered al 350 Major Life Alumni Top?

Not impressed - you've got 3 weeks before this months subscription comes up for renewal.

[Spell_Bound]

My husband and I have cancelled 3 out of our 4 accounts. We will keep one account active for now. This will enable one of us to go in and check out what may have been fixed or not fixed. If enough of my guild leaves because of these changes, I will also unsubscribe that account.

I am a monarch of close to 2k followers. You took xp chains, and I can deal with that. You took every benefit a monarch had in the game. Tell me why a monarch would pay $$ for a website, pay for an extra account or 2 for a buff bot and tinker char for the guild, as well as put up with all the issues a monarch has to deal with on a daily basis. These issues would be planning events/quests, keeping the guild content, and responding to any negative issues that may come up revolving around your guild.
What is the purpose of being a leader anymore?

Now, how can you keep a guild content with no loot either? Many people in my guild play casually for the easter egg hunt of finding loot. Now it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

Today, along with my 3 accounts that are cancelled, I have a friend cancelling 2, my brother cancelling 2, my mother cancelling one, another friend cancelling 2, and his friend cancelling one.
Will they be back? Maybe...but the last time they all left, they didnt come back for 2 years.

[Trai]

Like many others, I'm not happy with the loot.

All my characters live off scarab and taper peas. They salvage or retain good loot for other characters. Anything that isn't salvaged or worth retaining remains on the monster corpse. Scarab peas (higher than lead) are currently almost gone and taper peas are completely gone from the loot generator regardless of what level spells I have to cast to hunt the monster and survive and regardless of what level spell the monster is casting.

My level 7 on LC fighting level 4-7 monsters around Yaraq is literally finding better items than my level 100 characters hunting level 85-115 monsters.

I'm not hunting in any one specific area with my high level characters. I've been hunting in a monouga dungeon near Plateau, on Aerlinthe, in the Northwestern Dires, and the Sing Caul. And nothing I've found has been worth picking up. Scarab pea drop has been significantly and harshly dropped in quantity expept for lead peas.

If someone suggests VOD, let me point out that I'm not going to fight in VOD to get loot because no one there understands the concept of sharing loot with the mage who debuffs everything and none of my other non-mage, lore-based characters have fun fighting things that cast so many level 7 debuffs and wars.

Also if this (http://www.cyclopeancat.com/sinzh/mutation.jpg) is the wand mutations that I was hoping for... I'm VERY disappointed.



On a non-loot related note, I like the allegiance text color but I seem to be getting a lot of lag for allegiance chat only that I was not experiencing prior to this patch.

[Peter]

I understand wanting to have loot levels put in order. But why couldn't the old level 6 (sing quality) loot dropping monsters stay that way through the whole thing?

[MachineOfMt]

I can certainly appreciate what you guys were trying to do but it didn't work. I don't know if it is currently working the way you guys think you have it implemented but either it's working way differently from how you intended or you just don't know what loot actually is interesting to your players. There are a few things I used to commonly hunt and here's the reasons:

Reapers -- They dropped about 10 items at a time. Often on a body I would find 2-3 good salvage items, 3-4 copper and silver peas, and potions of all types so that I didn't constantly have to run back to town. Additionally, level 6 scrolls were pretty common and every now and then I'd find something nice like a major, good tinkerable armor or weapon, dual lvl 6 prot item, etc.

Common Olthoi -- Easy to kill and plenty of salvage and SIKs.

Tuskers -- Good xp. Miserable loot...these could have really used some "rebalancing" to make them interesting. They have been bad from day one. With the exception of seeds there is no reason for me to loot these.

Drudge Cabalists, Lugian Titans, Falatacot, recent Olthoi Mutilators -- These dropped "sing" loot or higher quality loot. Some seemed to have very high drop rates for majors...they were thus a blast to hunt. Tinkerable weapons and armor, lvl 7 scrolls, and wms 10 salvage. This is the kind of loot we wanted to see more of on all kinds of critters.

VOD critters and some of the new caul critters -- Mainly hunted these for xp but also some loot even though it didn't seem like they ever dropped enough of it. lvl 7 scrolls again, and sing keys on the virindi were nice.

Virindi, hollow olthoi, hollow minions -- Mainly hunted these for sing keys and salvage on the olthoi. It would be nice to have more items like sing keys that have a real value and are somewhat rare. Would be nice if there were supplies of items like this without having to go to certain spots where they were always camped. Same goes for other good critters.

Anyways...those are some examples of things I hunted and why -- in other words the things that were interesting to me and I think to many other high lvl long time players. I would loved to have seen other creatures with some of the existing uber loot profiles like what Cabalists and Falatacot used and would love to see more places to find good supplies of creatures like this so I'm not always having to compete with other people camped at the few well known supplies of these.

Now the problem with this patch is I can't find any creatures that drop any of the interesting stuff. The new weapons and armor with lower wms is great in my opinion. It's nice to have those in the loot system a little more often. But all the normal stuff just appears to be wiped out, for example peas. Although there is supposedly more interesting stuff in the system now all any of us appear to be pulling is ****....so bad we're going to have to really work just to stay afloat. I didn't particularly like hunting peas and stuff like that before to make cash but now it's just really really bad. I don't even want to play cause it's just seeming like too much work.

The rebalancing most of us were expecting was to find better loot on creatures in general. This is not the case. We are finding that we need to open every creature now but not for the reasons we thought. We need to now because we need money so badly we can't afford to pass anything up. The rebalancing I think we'd like to have is more monsters dropping high end loot and more places where we can find them so we aren't always out bumping into one another.

As far as towns go might as well throw in my 2 cents there too. I go to town only to buy comps and potions now. That's it. Reason being..there's only ever junk in the vendors for all the other stuff. If you want to bring people back into town's one idea might be to make the vendors sell some generated stuff that's actually good. Not just the same old beginner store bought junk that probably almost no one ever uses. Give us a reason to check the towns for good items and we probably would.

Anyways, I think what a lot of people are looking for is recognition of how bad the loot drop is right now and an indication of the intention to fix it, because this can't be what was intended. It really is horrible across the boards. I have found a few weapons that were nicer than usual with better than normal damage and low wms...that's great. But in general, the rest is all borked up and needs to return back more to what it was in last patch.

I hope things drastically change for the better around here. If they do I'll consider resubscribing. If not, I think it will take some time for the fallout to percolate through the rest of the user base but I think the game will ultimately fail. You lose a few good players today. You'll lose a few of their friends over the coming months. Then eventually you'll lose a lot of people that relied on those people, etc. It may take time and you may not see it right away but I think it will happen. So I hope you guys do the right thing.

[pacesetter]

srand, what you say makes sense to a certain degree but lvl 3 and 4 stuff on lvl 95 baddies??? I'm on lvl 4 stuff by lvl 22 and surely cannot kill the lvl 95 baddies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

suggestion: make some chars of all levels and go out there.

it's broken.

I play newbs thru 126 all over dereth and again I say, it's broken.

[Seregil]

First off the boost that racial weapons got was very welcome. Staff has needed love for a LONG, LONG time.
Second, the screw up with the comms is a royal pain. You cant just click on someone to give them a tell, you have to type out the name.
Third, loot profiles are screwed up. Although it is welcome that monsters that were overlooked before got luv (i.e., tuskers, crystal shards, crystal moeity, et al), for the bigger part things have been lowered too much. Something is amiss when I can kill numerous Drudge Cabalists and cannot find an item over 4k.
Fourth, the @day on character screen is a welcomed addition.
Question-Why are there no plants around AB or in VoD?
Question-Why is the Runed Chests on a timer at all. I mean it is supposed to be for lockpickers, but once a day is quite frankly a waste of time. It isnt like they are a static spawn, you still have to find them.
Fifth, Workmanship on high level weapons almost always start at work 6. When was the last time anyone found a 130 bow/325 weapon with work 3 or 4 or less?
Sixth, Racial Helms, it is nice they got a boost, but where are the helms for the other weapons?

[LaD_HG]

Ibn, here is an idea....that would ensure these type of reactions do not overwhelm you again

Before you create the expansion............Create a test server.
Granted YOU may have a test server to use...but if you do not have one that we can use as well...and tell you what we think...then you will never have a clue as to what is "acceptable" to your players. A lot of ppl have been with you for 3+ years...some even just 1 or 2 years......but still....assuming what is good for the game...when you do not put the same amount of game play into it like us.....is like telling a football player how to run his plays when all you do is play golf.

A test server would deffinatley help all of these issues....as well as ensure the content you bring to the game will be enjoyed....or create hate and discontent. Maybe you should try it....seems to work well for other games.

[sandman]

I still don't buy this argument Srand. I rolled a new toon on LC when I came back 6 weeks ago. Granted I'm a veteran player, but so as to get the feeling of a noob a returned to a different server than what I had previously played on. In this way I made sure that my toon was untwinked. In fact until I hit level 35+ I had a total of one set of buffs from another player. I hunted on my own and had no problems finding level appropriate loot.

Yes, you needed to spread out the mid level loot a bit, but now what I'm finding is way below what a player my level (now level 50) would wield.

I'll repeat, level 70+ mobs should not be dropping loot with level 2 spells. That type of loot should be found on level 20-30 mobs at best. I remember my early days on SC. I used to hunt the Dungeon of Shadows near crag because the Mosswart Shamans tended to drop items with level 3 spells. Mind you, these were level 16 or so mobs.

I just spent the bulk of the day hunting the plateau. I need to kill level 79+ mobs just to have a chance of finding loot with level 5 spells. Unfortuneately I can't take the Hea Elder Shamans on a reliable basis yet. I'm hoping that there I can have a shot at finding something useful.

[Arch Soul]

I have been an avid follower of this game since the early days of beta and have always been upbeat and one of the first to defend unpopular changes you people have implemented.This patch is absolutley the worst pile of garbage ive ever seen. then after pages upon pages and post upon post all declaring what youve done is unacceptable to the majority of the player base you have the nerve to post that **** about 20/20 hindsight and dodge around the issue . I never have had thoughts about quitting a game that i truly loved to play but frankly i really dont see any other option right now as i will not be forced into group hunting sessions to enjoy loot profiles that i have become used to seeing solo.Please dont tell me to try other monstors ...ive hunted everything that i can kill solo and they all are dropping trash....things i was used to seeing 50 levels ago . So my responce to you ...if something isnt done very soon to change the big mistake you have made i am going to cancel my subscriptions and i promise you i wont return ...i will wait out the next month to see if you will correct this mistake after that i will not be back..thanks for your time

[MIdnightFire7]

Originally posted by srand
There are several reasons why we decided to implement these changes now.
1) Things were out of whack.
2) Things would only get worse.
3) The underlying work we did allows us to add some cool new features to treasure in the future.


1) Some things yes. But making the loot on higher lvl monsters that of what someone lvl 5 should pick up is not exactly making it better. Im an archer, and I don’t have the str to pick up everything. I was making a few mmd’s..and I mean a few..1 or if luck 2 but picking up the peas off the monsters in the 60+ matron hive. Now im not even making a mmd in hours of time there.

2) Not everyone is 126+ with a stack of mmd, plats, and sings. Not everyone used chains. Not everyone is where you assume.

3) cool new features to loot in the future...like next patch? Next year? That’s so vague. What are we to do for the money we burn casting spells. My archer burns tapers and pyreal's so much I can’t support casting magic and making arrows. It is no fun at all to play. It’s all work.

[Mat Icefalcon]

So Can we get a straight answer From Turbine please????

IS there going to be a hotfix for this loot or an update within this week???

[Kala Bon]

I hope to god that someone is listening.

I am a level 154 gimp, been in the game since beta, and am still a gimp.
Loot in this game has been one of the only, only, only features that separate it from all the other mmorpg's.
You can start to get rich at a relatlively young ( 30's ) age.

This not only keeps you in the game but gets you involved in the economy in however much of a fashion as you want to be.
I am not a merchant, ask anyone who has asked to do a trade with me, i tell em, I am not a merchant.

I like to get stuff to sell, to have the mmd notes to buy the plats i burn, to just loot for loot's sake.
If you look at the MAJORITY of the posts in the first 24 hours, you will see that people play this game FOR THIS FEATURE.

THIS TO US IS FUN.


Now, i want to commend you for ignoring the thrust of the majority of the posts and the complaints, and the utter horror that was felt by these players at the LOSS OF THE FUN.

I want to commend you on telling us what is fun. !!!!!!!!!!!

I want to commend you on being able to steer me and mostly all the others into more "fun " paths.

Thanks, ........ ........ ......... a lot.

The one other thing that I want to thank you for is having allegiance xp changes of such magnitude and the loot changes of such magnitude all at the same time like this, that it is not really a blindside to smaller clans that might lose rank and members to the point of mansion loss.
Thanks for not blindsiding people with that issue too.

once again , Thanks , a whole lot.

In an aside, I was on Maggie the Jackcat's site today trying to find ANY patch when she did not say "I think it is the best patch ever !"

I found it, but it turned out to be this months patch.
All in all, I have to say like Maggie said on her site, judge for yourself as to if this is a good patch or not.

Now I know that this small diatribe does not "mean" anything to all you smart people that use logic to refure arguments and all, because I am not really arguing any points here, I just want to say thanks.
And of course to all the people that get to the best parts of the world every month every month, then you do not really know what I mean either.

And this post really does not mean anything to the "purists" of the game that seem to have the ear of the developers at this time.

But it seems to me that simple basic "enjoyment" is a pure thing, and it does not harm anyone else's game experience. In fact, the pure "joy" of Asheron's Call is what keeps many many gimps into the game month after month, not trying to best the "pure" players or the "best" players.

In the final analysis, when in a couple months you see how people will vote with their credit cards, I hope that this listening to the "purists" and satisfying their needs, will have been worth it for you.

Kala Bon, Gimp of Thistledown, Order of Chaos