yy48n19 wrote:I think he or she is dead on with this one. One of the things I have noticed post-patch is that you never hear of anyone even mentioning going to other civilizations anymore. Before patch one, that, along with getting into the prime roots, were the major things that the high-level players were doing. I think that that didn't fit into the vision that Nevrax has for the game; the meeting of the different civs and exploration of prime roots are supposed to come much, much later in their timeline. If you think of it in terms of the story, it pans out like this:
Homins were decimated by the kitins. Thousands died, and the few that were left were shepherded by the united efforts of Kami and Karavan to refugee lands. Each civilization spent three generations there. It was a long time--again, three generations--before things had settled down to the point where the Kami and Karavan felt it would be safe to return homins from isolation back to the surface of Atys. And this is where we, the players of SoR, find ourselves now--facing an overtly hostile new world, trying to survive and rebuild from the ground up.If you think about it like that, the fact that people were running around digging materials out of the prime roots and staging massive guild migrations between civilizations seems out of sync. I believe this is why the devs implemented patch one.
I can understand what you're saying... and I see why you are saying it but I tend to look at it from another perspective.
I am a fairly low level character. Low 80s in melee. In fact, my best skill is jungle forage at around 102. I am clearly not 'meant' to be travelling. But think about it from my perspective. There are no clear archetypes in this game of the 'fighter/mage/rogue/cleric and never the twain shall meet' variety. You are given open ended options for character creation.
Under the 'old' system (and I'm not going to call it the better one, I think there were better and much worse points under the old one) simply playing the game the way I was kept my character balanced. All of my skills in melee, forage, and craft were within ten points of each other up to level 80.
Half of the time, I wouldn't level anything for days and my team-mate and I would travel as far range as we could just in search of cool screen shots and interesting harvest. Heck, I have a bag full of cool forest forage, and I haven't even made it to Matis yet (unless you count the desert bit at the top). That, to me, was the reward for my effort... stuff I can't even use and neat pictures.
Along the way, I met some really cool people in Fyros and in Zora.
Along comes patch one.
Now, like you said, here comes the feeling that we were doing something wrong by exploring. This is somehow our fault (and this is not the impression your post gave me, it's the idea I personally am feeling) that we were exploring and we needed to be stopped.
What was once a wide open world has become closed in and claustrophobic. What was once an open-ended story because linear. You *will* stay in Cities of Intuition until you hit magical level... *ding*. You *will* stay in Maiden Grove until you hit magical level *ding*. You *will* join a guild. You *will* wait until you are magical level *ding* to travel in the roots.
Name me any disaster and then ask... did everyone huddle in their houses until they were military generals and university professors before attempting to rebuild? No. To the brave go the spoils. I never found anything we did 'easy'. We maxed DP for than once in a quest for a certain location. We have the Edmund Hilary 'because it's there' attitude. We'd be 'rangers' if there was such an archtype here.
We were in Havens of Purity foraging when I said 'you know, we've never been to Paramount Stock'. So we went. We threaded through herds of aggro, over hills, around najabs, blind ends and goo and we got there. Yay. We took a couple pictures and moved on.
Yesterday we tried to get some of that back...
Cutlers aggro us from 100m away. Seriously. We were in a pack of herbivores and there were a cluster of cutlers around a named cutler. We were sitting 80m from the closest one when two in the middle of the pack broke out running and killed us.
I took a look at a roots teleport spot I got. I really should have taken a screen shot. A solid, no gap line of voraxes. Behind that, a solid no gap line of jugula. Behind that, a solid no gap line of tyranchas. Behind that, a solid no gap line of kinchers. I waited 15 minutes and not one of them moved more than 5m.
We used to go looking for white resin in a town with a teleporter. So did a lot of other people because one day the kiban were replaced by kinchers. Kinchers... in a kami controlled tribal outpost. One actually permanently sat under the kami. To my way of thinking, this is completely counter to the established lore of the game. The karavan and the kami repelled the kitin... except for the one that sits by the black garbage bag and kills all livestock and visitors. Hmmm.
I've tried not to say anything on the board because I don't want to add to the negativity. I enjoy the game. Hey, I can make 20 craft levels a night. Woo. I don't intend to quit at this point. I think the GMs have a tough job, but they are doing the best they can. I question the logic of the patch, but I can't deny that they are trying to balance out the effects. I think that in the long run, it'll be a blip on the radar... at least I hope.
What I resent, and this is where your post comes in, is the heavy-handed and clumsy attempts to force a linear path on people. *If* the devs don't want us in the roots, block them off. Make it a cooperative effort where a group either has to kill a guard regiment to open it up, or mine an opening or open a guild post or something. Make it part of the storyline. Don't just say 'x numbers of mats were mined here today, toss a kincher in there'. Don't say 'a guild went through here, give everything 100m aggro'. Don't say 'people are mining here, we'll give boss mobs 120m aggro and allow them to hit through walls 50m away'. BG got killed several times by creatures who would kill him, wait for him to respawn, run 200-300m back to him and kill him again... or torbaks that were killing us when there wasn't a single thing within 50m... creatures that were standing on cliff tops above us, still managing to hit us.
I don't want it to be easy, all I want is a chance and, I want to play an open ended character in an open ended game. That, to me, is what the devs have been telling us all along is the way I *should* be playing.
Tin.
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