View Full Forums : Racial Armor changes inc!


Fenier
12-07-2007, 07:15 PM
From EQlive

I will start off with changes that we already said would be happening.

We will be evaluating the set of 70 armor + 75 Symbol + Serpent or Sunshard. Those overall stats are higher than our goal.

The intent of Cultural armor is to work in certain sets.

These sets are:

70 armor 70 symbol 70 seal (last blood) let's call this the "Last Blood Set"
70 armor 75 symbol 75 seal(TSS) (Serpent) let's call this the "Serpent Set"
70 armor 75 symbol 75 seal(TBS) (Sunshard) let's call this the "Sunshard Set"
80 armor 80 symbol 80 seal (Faycite) let's call this the "Faycite Set"

We are happy with the Last Blood SET and the Faycite SET, and we feel that the Serpent and Sunshard SET only need a slight adjustment.

BUT some issues are coming about because of the large increase in what we are giving to group level equipment that is making the 75 symbol, 80 armor and 80 symbol artificially inflate the value of the 70 seal (and to a lesser but still there extent, the 75 seal)

We have two options we are looking at, though we have fairly much decided on one. I will go over the one that we are likely to do first.

Overall (with the exception of the slight overdo of the 75 seals) we are satisfied with the way the sets work. The overall stats they give as a complete set fit where we want them too.

What we are going to do is move some of the stats from the seals into the symbol and armor of the set and out of the seals of the set. Overall the SET will be the same, but less of it will be concentrated in the seal. Additionally in some cases some of the stats from the Symbol will be moved to the Armor.

Additionally I am likely to implement a level 75 armor set, so that we can adjust the stats in the 75 symbol and seals to make it not so huge a jump from the 70 (though it will still be a large jump since we are improving group equipment so much overall)

With this adjustment, that does mean that the level 70 GROUP set of armor and symbol will see a large improvement. It should be equivalent to level 70 group armor from TBS when we are done. By moving these stats from the Seal to the symbol that will make the effect of "hanging onto" the level 70 seal less attractive and encourage it to be upgraded as we wish it to be. Additionally it will reduce the effect of the 70 + 75 + LB and 80 + 80 + LB. While they still may exceed some sets of equipment, it will definitely be a step in adjusting the large effect of it.

In some way this will be seen as an "Adjustment Down" of the Last Blood Seals. And well it is, but it is NOT an adjustment down of the Last Blood *SET* of armor. that whole SET will be the same as it is now.

The second option, which we do not like as much (but would be less work for us...) is to enforce an Idea of "sets" using item scripting (which brings a whole other set of issues). A sort of "Set affinity"

For this option the seals would loose value if they are not in there "SET" the stats would decrease the further away from their "set" they are. So if a Last Blood Seal was put in a 80 armor + 80 Symbol set, it would have its stats reduced by a percentage.

The main issue with this is that we would have to wait for a code change (that we are waiting on for jewelry) so that we would not be stuck with even more items that show no stats until they are equipped. So this issue we are having would be in the game longer than we like.

Neither of these changes will be happening until January or later, but the second could take even longer to happen since we need the code change first.

So with that information, our decision is to go with the first choice of just moving the stats around within the set, (and though it was not directly part of it, I think we will have to add a 75 armor set) because with this if we still find that mixing and matching outside of sets is still too much of an issue we can still go with the "set affinity" idea and the adjustments for being out of set could be smaller.

This is all still subject to change, but it is the direction we are going at this point. I will be starting on the research necessary to make the changes very shortly after I send this post.

Fenier
12-07-2007, 07:39 PM
Maddoc writes:

The information that Ngreth posted about our plans for the cultural armor is simply to let everyone know that the thousands of posts on the subject have not gone unread, not gone unnoticed, and not gone ignored by the development team.

The information contained in all those posts was taken into account when we began evaluating the validity of the concerns and determining what (if any) course of action was necessary to correct these concerns. The course of action that we have chosen has been posted so that you are aware of the changes coming down the lines.

The actual numbers behind the changes to the armor are not yet fully fleshed out and not ready for public consumption, but rest assured they will be posted and pushed to the Test Server as soon as they are ready.

serinity_inny
12-07-2007, 07:42 PM
Yep the elitist whiners from the high end guilds screamed loud enough because their current gear was getting passed up by others with cultural yet they will have 300 MORE hps/mana etc when they beat the SoF raids.

Tobynn
12-07-2007, 08:14 PM
the thousands of posts on the subject
As the development team collectively caves to the desires of the vocal minority... very disappointing.


Apparently, there has not yet been enough thousands of posts on the subject regarding server/zone stabillity to warrant any changes in those areas. Priorities.

Fenier
12-07-2007, 08:15 PM
Different teams, heh.

Code is vastly different then changing values in a database.

Khauruk
12-07-2007, 09:20 PM
As much as I would like a code team who does things as systematically (and documented!) as Ngreth...that ain't his gig.

Good to see though...we'll have to see the numbers they end up with, but sounds like they're not going to simply do an Absor smash and nerf the heck out of everything.

Fenier
12-07-2007, 09:45 PM
The insanely long thread had no bearing apart from drawing attention to a potential problem. As Nodyin mentioned, now that the systems team is mostly back in the office after the launch, we had a several hour meeting yesterday where we discussed the situation to see if there was even a real problem or if it was just another case of jealousy as often happens on these forums.



We poured over the different armor sets to see where equivalencies actually fell and then looked for potentially mitigating factors that would balance out the very high stats on the gears. Mods ended up being mostly capped, so the lesser amount ended up being functionally equivalent in most cases. Focus effects make the gear a bit less desireable for casters, but the main problem with the gear is tanks, not casters. The items required to get the gear are readily available, so difficulty of obtaining it is also largely irrelevant. You can purchase the majority of it in the bazaar and the only dropped piece is incredibly common...and if you don't have them now, you can get them easily enough with a couple groups in 4 expansion old content.



After the review, it became apparent that there really was a problem that the potential mitigating factors just didn't address. Compounding things, the newly introduced level 75 seal actually grants even better armor, higher than Solteris level gear, without having done raiding at anywhere near Solteris level.


It's not the kind of change you want to have to make, but in the end the gear is simply too good for what goes into getting it and its not fair to the players who have struggled through the difficult content to earn the rewards for someone else to be able to come in with a 4 expansion old item and instantly purchase their way into equivalent gear.



As outlined in Ngreth's post, the change is structured to have as small an impact as possible while rectifying the problem. The full armor sets will remain largely unchanged, just with stats shifted from one piece to another. Anyone with the new cultural and old seal will still see a large upgrade over the old, just not as extreme as they do currently, and the new cultural will continue to be able to be upgraded to higher tier raid-equivalent gear as the players actually earn the higher raid-equivalent seals.


I asked that we get a post out ASAP, even though the changes aren't likely to occur until sometime in January, so people have plenty of warning that this is coming.



Rashere
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Tobynn
12-08-2007, 11:53 AM
A 40-page thread containing cut-n-paste whines from vocal minority made tradeskilled armor a prevalent issue that resulted in many green-name posts and eventually a day long meeting of the entire team to immediately resolve the 'problem.' Oh, by the way, on a multitude of occasions it had been vehemently stated that there was no problem and TS armor was working exactly and undoubtedly as intended. The sudden 180 flip regarding what was "intended" is appalling.

A similar vocal outcry on the issue of hardware performance and server/zone stability has barely been acknowlegded.

Priorities.

I didn't say stabillity was Ngreth's gig. In fact, I quoted Maddoc on the issue of thread post count getting attention. Perhaps when the post count on the stability threads exceed 40 pages that issue will also warrant some attention.

Until then, reading comprehension ftw ~

I'm sure the incoming revamp of the revamp wasn't Ngreth's idea. Unless of course the result of that day long meeting was to inform Ngreth what his new ideas are going to be.

Khauruk
12-08-2007, 05:42 PM
A similar vocal outcry on the issue of hardware performance and server/zone stability has barely been acknowlegded.

Priorities.


That would be Jourdian's gig though, and he's on baby leave currently.

Shruella
12-08-2007, 05:54 PM
/shrug

I actually like the idea of the nerf. Pretty clearly, to me anyway, it was never the intention of the devs to offer up massive amounts of 550/550 base hp/mana gear (pre- type 7 or type 8 aug) available to any guild that could farm Demiplane and had a few master tailors and smiths willing to do the new symbol quest.

Not to mention 530/530 gear available to any single group that could farm Bazu augs.

And to think, others and I were thinking that the big giveaway was going to be the 500/500 tier 3 groupable SoF gear that has proven much more difficult to obtain (so far).

caminrya
12-10-2007, 12:18 AM
I am not sure how to feel about this yet. I can understand that the "upper"guilds that worked hard would be upset about some one matching there gear in the bazaar on the other hand tradeskills have worked there butt off for a nice reward thats the devs said its how they wanted it to be. I know or least think lastblood aug was the issue never the less that still reflex time dkp and pp. I have had this issue effect lot of my friends.I spent 3 hours reading soe forms last night and i can tell you its getting out of hand.I hope eveyone takes a deep breath and calms down and start on solving this issue in a fair way.

Khauruk
12-10-2007, 12:59 AM
Deep breath? Calm down? How can you calm down at a time like this after being repeatedly slapped in the face by the SoE dev team ring-of-doom?!?!?! You're apparently not playing the game I play, Caminrya!

Xarra
12-10-2007, 08:47 AM
It's not the kind of change you want to have to make, but in the end the gear is simply too good for what goes into getting it and its not fair to the players who have struggled through the difficult content to earn the rewards for someone else to be able to come in with a 4 expansion old item and instantly purchase their way into equivalent gear.
Amen. Made me disgusted so much quitting became an option. /cringe

Good to know they plan to fix their mistake. Group content drops shouldn't be > or = the previous expansions end zone. Previous grp drops were in the 225 range, now they are all the way at 500 WTF. Crystalos gear drops need to get a good 100 hps knocked offa them. Flagging is a pita but still it shouldnt drop gear with 6 people that less than 3 months ago 54 were required to collect. Foci effect's asside.

Have them look at the AC on SoF dropping armor too. Druid T2 tunic is 132 AC and 540 hp/mana. Solteris tunic is 89 AC and 575 hps. That is a 43 AC increase on a 89 AC tunic at a downgrade of hps/mana. 150% more AC than Solteris cant be calculated correctly. If not then the T4 armor will give druids an almost 200 AC tunic im willing to bet.

caminrya
12-10-2007, 11:14 AM
Ok

all post read

I tryed to look at it on both sidebut no matter how you look at it, this nerf is in poor taste . Its more of an issue of trust to me in the end. I may be silly but i belive the very good post ( not the rants) will win the day =P

serinity_inny
12-10-2007, 01:26 PM
group drops in tbs was 260+ powersource not 220.

Dodh had 220 range....your information is a little outdated there.

And the idea behind the steps is decent it is 310hps/mana then upgrades each tier you break into.

Crystallos from what I have been told is that only 4k+ac tanks are surviving in there.....Our group pally is 3kac so we won't be seeing that zone anytime soon.

There are two of us with scattered raid gear but the couple that plays is pure group gear and we did the tss progression and then tbs gear...once we get a little bit more ac on him we will move to the SoF gear.

Back to the nerf of cultural I will just wait and see what my 70/80/70 combo turns out to be if it is better to do 75/75/70 (I only have bazu's but might get last bloods in 4-6months) then I will do that.

I just don't like the idea that Ngreth was sure everything was in line and was confident nothing was over powered then the high end raiders start whining like babies and now they are reevaluating it. Poor Form on SoE part.

Khauruk
12-11-2007, 12:27 AM
I just don't like the idea that Ngreth was sure everything was in line and was confident nothing was over powered then the high end raiders start whining like babies and now they are reevaluating it. Poor Form on SoE part.
From looking at those previous comments of his that were posted around, they appeared to mostly consider the foci rather than the whole package. The AC/HPs are just insane on tanks, and that's what is imo causing the re-balancing of the armor. The "whiners" may have brought it to their attention, but it's not getting changed from their whining.

Poor form? Yeah...but Grayhelm said it best on TSW imo:
Quote:
<table border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td style="border: 1px inset ;" class="alt2"> Originally Posted by Boheman http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/images/dark_vb_v2/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?p=260733#post260733)
Higher than the goal? How is this even possible, coming from the very folks who design, test, approve, and implement new gear such as the cultural?
</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
Lack of staff and time, leading to no peer review, on a large complex intermixed system of things.

We all know it's the cause. If there were 3 people dedicated to doing tradeskill stuff, as a mini-team, and they had time and freedom, there would have been peer reviews at every stage, discussion about the feedback at every stage. However, I see it playing out with Ngreth making the stuff, a quick peer review because everyone's too busy, Ngreth getting the feedback and dismissing it as 'raider jealousy', without really digging into it because he was too busy revamping JC at the same time, and overworked. Perhaps asking Nod as he passed the office 'did that cultural stuff look ok?', Nod says 'yeh, looked fine' because he's up to his neck in AA work and thousands of posts of feedback.

They're all human, and they all make mistakes. The root cause of those mistakes in my view, is a lack of development staff with sufficient knowledge and experience an a lack of time.

Now, there's twelve months before the next expansion. Rashere has posted repeatedly stating the move to 12 months is a move to increase quality.

Let's see if it plays out that way.

Shruella
12-12-2007, 01:37 AM
I don't think it was lack of oversight that caused them to make the "mistake" of allowing level 80 cultural + level 80 symbol + last blood give armor that's 500+ hp/mana. I think it was feedback from the wrong players regarding the changes.

Obviously, if you had asked non-raiders if making 500+ hp/mana loot obtainable with a single group was a good idea, most would have replied with an enthusiastic hell yeah! At the other end of the spectrum, if you asked endgame raiders whether this giving away TSS level gear for a song was a good idea - most would have told you they liked the idea, since it would allow new raiders to gear up to a point where they could raid SoF content without having to slog through mid-tier raid content.

And that's the problem - I think those folks (the casuals and the endgame raiders) are the only ones SOE sought feedback from when itemizing this expansion. They want to keep the endgame raiders happy and busy so that they don't have another mass exodus as when FoH and Afterlife bailed for WoW and encouraged everyone else to do the same. They also want to keep newbies and casual players happy because they think that is the key to drawing new players into the game.

I seriously don't believe they ever sought feedback from the mid-level guilds - longstanding and well-established guilds who were raiding Demiplane through TSS content - to see if any of those thought this cultural giveaway would be a good idea. Pretty obviously, many mid-level raiders were concerned at the prospect of their current raid content being rendered obsolete. When the expansion was released, and the first wave of objections came from the mid-level raiding guilds, the devs chalked it up to jealousy on the part of guilds too weak to progress "properly".

One dev even commented that there were only two reasons a guild would be stuck prior to AG/FC - either they liked raiding older content, or they didn't have the gear/skill to overcome the TSS raids: a shortsighted comment that shows just how far out of touch SOE is with the concerns of any mid-level guild. He defended the cultural loot giveaway as an effort to push mid-level guilds through TSS more rapidly. Obviously, with that outlook from the devs - flawed as it was - the cultural armor remained unchanged.

It wasn't until the TSS and Solteris level equivalents of the last bloods were patched in that a new voice piped up complaining about the absurdly high quality of the cultural armors. All those Solteris raiders who had been happy to see raid gear up through DK level rendered obsolete by cultural gear with LB seals were suddenly pissed that cultural gear with TSS seals was now superior in most respects to their hard-won Solteris gear. That's understandable given how borked the zone has been, and how much they have had to suffer through that broken content to get their loot. However, I think it was more than a bit hypocritical for the same folks who scoffed at the mid-level guilds' complaints regarding cultural on the SOE forums to whine like it was the end of EQ when some of their own gear was threatened with obsolescence by cultural armor.

With complaints now coming fast and furious from the endgame crowd though, one can imagine how the devs and CS people just about choked on their coffee the next morning - and this is finally leading to the sort of changes that should have been implemented prior to release, if the devs had sought feedback from the entire playerbase.

cladari
12-12-2007, 03:01 AM
Well said and completely correct. The mid level raiding guilds are what keep this game going.

Again, well said.

Cladari

Little Rhunt
12-12-2007, 11:48 AM
A cleric freind of mine went from the mid-range up to #5 rank on his server in less than a week, as a result of upgrading his TS armor earlier this month (cleric class/mana). While I am happy for him, it concerns me how significant the jump was compared to the minimal effort.

Needless to say he is unimpressed with this announcement. What a mess!