Ryzom

borg9 wrote:The idea behind the post was to balance against the 'constant nerf' comment earlier, the majority of things added over the patches have been buffs not nerfs. Yes some things have stayed the same

Ok, I partially agree you on that. Since patch 1 it's mostly been tweaks - not buffs - rather than outright nerfs. The problem is most of the nerfs introduced in patch 1 haven't been touched by the tweaks, and the longstanding bugs haven't been addressed either. That just gets really frustrating for those of us who don't want to go the PL elemental/healing route.

Incidentally, my main objection to patch 1 (that I've had since it was on ATS and I was one of the few who raised a stink) was not the increased mob damage or the exploit fixes. Besides the crafting issues, it was that relative balance went out the window. If you're going to massively change balance by tweaking mob damage up 10 fold as they did, you should be tweaking armor for higher protection, increase DPM of other trees so you kill the even level mob before it kills you, and reassessing your healing/defense powers to make sure everything stayed equal the way it roughly was (ex-exploits) pre-patch 1.

Instead, the devs were lazy, and only elemental/healing got adjusted upwards to reflect the change. Guess what PL'ers now focus on. If you had told me six months ago that an elemental mage in light armor would work just as well as a heavy armor tank in 95% of groups...

Couple other comments on where I maintain my points.

borg9 wrote:As a crafter I make enough money selling direct to the NPC to completely bypass the need for missions. Shop mats prices are silly and when the player base realises that marking there mats up to 12k each is shoot themselves in the foot

Two problems. You and I make more than enough money crafting to the point where both of us now prefer mats vs money. That's cause we're mid to high level and frankly there aren't a lot of 100+ crafters versus 100+ consumers. Lower level crafters don't have that option given how competitive the marketplace is, and those are the people who need the missions to buy grind mats, especially since rate 2/speed 2/low focus = a whole lot less mats.

Second, even if you bought the 2000% markup mats there will never be enough for grind purposes. I've been testing this by running welcomer missions for race fame so I can access encyclopedia missions - I can find q20-q50 amber, but jewel settings? Cleared out all four lands! Same in any other tree. Relying on the player base to provide grind mats given how much you need to level just doesn't work. Heck, even relying on harvesting fails after a while when if you compare the mats provided by leveling all 5 harvest lines 10 levels using the max ql allowed by the skill, it only gives you about 100-110 total equal ql craft levels. (Yes, I've tested this.)

Oh, also...regarding jewels...if you grind earrings/rings you can't sell more than a few as part of that nicely marked up 500k set. (And ain't much jewelry going for 500K a set.) Because...there's an item limit and you simply can't stockpile more than roughly 50 full sets of jewelry total between mektoubs and apartment, let alone 1000 earrings. Thus, you're stuck with a choice of either selling to the vendor for less than you'd get selling the raw mats or just not doing low mat lines at all.

borg9 wrote:AFAIK - I mark up for 300% I get 3 times the money - how is this broken?

Check the threads on fame and pricing. Sell in a land where you don't have 100 fame and its russian roulette what the item lists for and what you get paid. Also means that even if it was working correctly if you want to sell a jewel set for 500k you get to have fun trying to tweak individual prices, which is just annoying.

And when players have stored large amount of mats for grinding only to wake up one day and discover that their low qual (not just med and high qual plans changed) plans have different requirements than they used to, weren't tested on ATS, and weren't announced, that's a stealth nerf.

borg9 wrote:Auto launchers, in a group of 5 people using these things... you can drop a group of 3k mob instantly by firing all at once....after lvl 100 most of the tree require teaming/group work to avoid huge down time and reduce risk.

Or you could simply get 2-3 mages with double and bomb and have the same effect. Difference is that ranged requires some sort of help all the way through, not just from level 100...which is wrong. I agree with you that some year I hope it becomes a better line.

borg9 wrote:I avoid the 'chain killing' XP farming methods.

As do I. I actually applaud people who've figured out a way - 5 autolaunchers for instance, or playing accurate attack tank to a much higher level group - around various gaping holes in the game. But the problem is the holes remain, waiting for patching for those of us who want to play fair. Its just frustrating when we keep seeing the shrubbery on the side of the road trimmed rather than watching a hole get even slightly patched.

Although what actually amuses me is a number of the PL'ers who were content to burn through the quick trees are the ones leaving the game because they're 'bored' and 'there's nothing to do'. This after they spent months saying what a great game it is and how nothing needed fixing. Heh heh.

I thought you weren't meant to gain xp from killing using an autolauncher?