Thu Jun 26 17:35:18 2014

At 10 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 8th of the Month of the Long Shadows
on the Theran calendar Beulobub perished, never to return.

I decided to try out the new wand system as well as just accept what forms I was given. I was grossly disappointed
on all fronts. The balance of power for forms is dramatic, even within the same focus and same tier. My second
tier crab form was more powerful than most 3rd tier forms across the board. The orca paled in comparsion
to every other water form. Its lagging technique was a one round headbutt. Every other water form except shark
and walrus has a substantial lagging technique. It was the ram, with a much more limited functioning area. Those other two have either damage or massive DR to compensate. The orca sucked balls. Also sitting on the water to use my form I had to type where over, and over, and over, and over and over, and over, just to maybe catch someone crossing in time. Why the hell not give alertness to all 4th tier water forms so we don't have to do this? The terrain is so limited anyway, by the time I see them and get the name in my alias they are across the water unless they are stupid.

Now with that behind me, what made me just cut loose this character and not "try to make it work" was strangely enough the new wand system. At the beginning I thought it was a great idea, but as time went on it became more and more of a drag (and huge time sink). First, waiting to get the "right tip" was more than frustrating. I would sometimes get the same tip for that stupid shield wand I don't need 7, 8, or 9 times in a row. As the game goes on around me, I don't have a barrier to play with to try to take on that gank squad running around. So I'm forced to fetch that stupid shield rod just so I can have a chance at my other. Doh wait, now its my aura rod hint I get 2, 3, 4 times in a row, yay! Uh oh, got to log off now. Well that was fun I guess.

Last, I enjoy playing interesting combinations that are sub-optimal. This setup with wands guarantees you will get stuck on a wand that is in all purposes impossible now for you to get. So I ended up getting stuck on wands which I could never ever get with my sub-optimal form setup. It would take me as much as 2 to 3 hours to get one rod. Now you say, "But this would be the same previously if you got that location." That is correct, but I could take the barrier attunement to get another whole new and possibly easier location (for life). Now, I get barrier attunement and I will again be stuck on another abnormally hard location. Ultimately barrier attunement would just let me collect a few more wands before getting screwed again. Now shifters especially, have to be aligned to handle almost every situation. I pity the defense/defense shifter who gets the underwater mob. I greatly pity the water/water guy who is doing something unique, in all regards. Good luck taking down that level 57 PWK'ing necromancer. Yes you could get lucky with a water form in offense, but if you don't, you are resigning yourself to offensive wanding that barrier'ed mob down for 3 hours.The worst thing about it is that the location you just had does not guarantee that your next location won't be the exact same stupid location. I really enjoyed getting Darsylon 3 times in a row for my wand as a dark elf. Awesome.

All in all, I thought this system was awesome on paper. But getting into the details of it, it just drained my creative juices and felt I had to be power-gamey to compete. Now forms are even more important than they were previously. At least if you got a somewhat easy location for barrier, you could make your sub-optimal forms compete. Now, you don't get a substantial regen form, a water going form, a high defense form, and a high offense form, you will run into wand locations that are impossible for you. With the lower playerbase, good luck finding someone willing to help that makes sense from an RP standpoint.

This doesn't even consider the fact that now I have to search out locations which I don't know, or hints are vague enough to be multiple spots. Adding up all these factors, the time sink was grossly larger than it was previously. At least with the previous setup, I knew what I was getting into (a big ONE TIME search). Now its endless searching without a lot of fighting. Not my cup of tea. My precious time is no longer going to be blown trying to get a sleek black rod for 3 hours only to burn through it in 25 minutes in fighting. I want to be in the fray, not watching it from the sidelines or being insta-killed by gank squads and watching as a ghost.

nt

Basically the source of his frustration seems to stem from the assumption that a mage should by default assume they always gather their wands solo.

If you are open to leveraging allies to break through the tougher spots or locate the ones you don't know then you don't have these particular frustrations.

In fact having to face and overcome a series of challenges is what makes the game interesting to some people. I know I felt pretty good when I figured out how to get through most of the area explores at level 30 or how to take out the kuo-tao king reliably with only 3 people. This system presents you with more challenges that give you more reasons to group up and do stuff with other people after you have exhausted gathering gear.

There is no doubt that changing the nature of wand availability is going to affect in a huge way how many people play mages. But there have been plenty of people under the old system that managed to find success without any access to some or all of their sleek rods so mechanically speaking the same stuff is possible but individuals might need to use a deeper bag of tactics instead of leaning on perma-ABS.

scion water shifter being one of them. there's a lot of times in the day/week where even a cabal'd character won't be able to find an ally to help bust down some tough mob to get a wand.

CF with 60 players on is a very different game than CF with 20.

But there have been plenty of people under the old system that managed to find success without any access to some or all of their sleek rods so mechanically speaking the same stuff is possible but individuals might need to use a deeper bag of tactics instead of leaning on perma-ABS.

One major difference is that I literally haven't been able to find a hero-ish mage who hasn't retrieved all available sleek wand types at least once. It's possible they exist-- I'm just spot checking. But I haven't seen one.

Previously, you had a caste system-- there were some mages who more or less had as many wands as they could carry because they found all their spots and lucked into two or three easy ones. There were others who basically only had a wand if someone handed them one. We've all seen previous Battlefield posts from long-term players who retired mages having never found one or more of their spots under the old system.

It's probable, and part of the design goals, that the high end (a few mages who had all wands all the time) has come down while the low end has come up.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

If you did not like your wand you got another chance. The new system now just says you have to have barrier attunement that will eventually get you the spots you use to use barrier attunement against.

Or is that questy?

You keep referring to it as a way to change wands but I've no idea what you are talking about.

nt

Isn't this useless for barrier getting until level 47?

If so, how did you know that your wand was there during the old system?

I was very sceptical when this change arrived (ooooo, change ) but I'm seeing a lot of good things with this 'new' system. You get around Thera and learn 'new' spots, you try new things in order to gain a certain wand (making you think about your class abilities), you ask around to go on an adventure (which can lead to another adventure after gaining the wand), it gives you something to do in 'dead' hours, you're definitely not immediately stuck, the riddles are riddle enough to be fun, and clear enough to be 'solvable', and if I think somewhat harder I'm sure I can think of some more advantages. I agree with the 'high end' coming down, and the 'low end' coming up.

I see two areas for improvement.
Ultimately, both ends (high and low) will 'come down'. The frustration of not finding the wand from the very beginning (remarks like, I have looked everywhere and cannot find my wand), will now still be there, but only start after some time (remarks like, I know where it is, but it's just not attainable). This mostly counts for people who are forced to look for their wands on their own (for instance, because playing in the 'lower' hours), or having to constitute a group which for some reason is not doable (because the right class is not available for them to group up). I'm sure there's other examples like that. I'd add a long enough timer that resets the wand slot. What about a week RL - that seems long enough to be a hassle but not a show stopper? Or an ingame timer of 400hours (so you avoid having people not logging in during a week). In the end, one of the drivers to change the wand system was also to have less frustration? (not that you will ever be able to have NO frustration, but still)

Ultimately (also), it will be more time consuming. It is true that (at least, thats my point of view) the riddles are specific enough that with some (non-elite)knowledge of Thera, you could solve all of them (or have an inkling and start looking in the whereabouts). The time spent looking in the beginning (while ticking of locations on a list during what, 4 hours) with the former system, is now spent throughout the life of the mage. The longer lived, the more time spent. Isn't it somehow possible to add some kind of timer (how about 250 RL-hour timer) that puts the wand in a relatively easy spot (and for which you get a somewhat more difficult riddle)?

Grz,
Gorach

"might need to use a deeper bag of tactics instead of leaning on perma-ABS".

I just have to laugh at that statement.

My post was a mix of frustration from my own build and the wand system. I'll parse them out into two piles.

One: Shapeshifter "power"
There has always been and will always be "good" forms and "bad" forms. As the goal for the immortal staff is to have people vest in characters and not "power rank to forms and delete if not get one of the goodies" I am providing feedback. I did this already on other forms and the forms were improved. Orca sucks. It is a replica of the ram with a much more limited area of operations. Frustration amount high.

Two: Wands
I want to say first that I thought the system on paper was quite good. And this is from now my second involvement with the new system.

It takes time to get a hint.
It takes time to puzzle the hint out.
It takes time to get the right hint. (This one was the most frustrating)
It takes time to find the area.
It takes time to find the wand itself (in object or on mob)
It takes a crap ton of time to get the rod, especially black ones, in a host of locations you have setup from the previous wand system.

This is not a one-time time sink, this is a rinse and repeat thing. And even with my vast area knowledge, and my stupidly extensive wand list, it was still a time sink. And an endless, continued, always the rest of your character's life, time sink. In this day and age, time is precious. I ask that there be some evaluation of the time sink really happening here. The many small things piled up into, "Holy crap, I have done nothing this login for 3 hours but try to get this stupid ass wand."

And that is the point. If I had more optimal forms, probably certain steps would be easier. I personally don't like that. That I have to have a certain setup with my forms to compete in this new setup. In Carrionfields, everything is a grayscale of "difficulty". Which allows people to hide behind the argument. You can always get others to help you, you can always do this, you can always get the limited versions of ABS, you can always get this edge or that, etc.

That is not an argument of a system which creates impossibilities. The system designed should be designed around a stated goal. If you design the system around others helping to gain them, etc., then you are excluding a certain subset of loner players (and also lower playerbase). You are also excluding the set of players who are the ones trying to be the underdog. Of which I am one. I don't need more difficulties in doing that. This was one additional difficulty that just was too much frustration and time. If this was intentional, to design it this way, so be it.

I am of the opinion of giving protections on a stick with timers to allow the player to manage when and if they are to get involved. I am also a fan of creating a 4th protection of extreme power which should be placed on stupidly difficult mobs of which groups are required to take down. Those are 1 or 2 charge items that give massive damage reduction and are of a setup that are impossible to farm (can only hold one of these artifacts). You satisfy the explorer, the power gamer, the social guy, and the guy who just wants to mix it up and change the pendulum. You also create an interesting surprise element where impossible situations suddenly become not impossible. Like raiding to get back that item from 4 camping ragers, I'm going to use this and possibly make it possible.

Take it as you see fit.

The issue is finding what you want. Under the old system I could choose which rod I gathered and when (assuming I knew where they were). New rod system is completely random. I don't want to spend an hour hoping to get a black hint, I want to go gather my black rod. Again: Please consider allowing folks to choose which rod type they get a hint for

Thanks.

I'm not in favor of a "rich get richer" type of system. CF is already like that to such an extent that it's constant "flip-flopping" of a dominant side with no opposition and 'skilled PKers' really boils down to finding the weak links and killing them over and over. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but having aura, barrier and shield work under this system (and combine for a huge amount of DR) seems like it's putting all your eggs into one basket.

I'd prefer to see a system where the time sink yields 15-20% DR and you have a reasonable amount of innate DR (like a transmuter for instance) for doing most of what you want to do.

As such - it truly would be optional and perhaps we could alleviate the 99.99% DR scion invokers and et al.

The beauty of this is that the new system would work fine here - just make the wands aura *or* shield, make them non-stackable and give a weaker version of barrier as a casted spell with a cooldown slightly longer than the duration.

Sounds like some contradictions in there. I like to be underpowered but I need abs etc.

Why not play something not "underpowered" without barrier?

Sometimes I wonder what scion has become. But then I realise that the underlying problem is not just that some players can't cope without abs on a stick, but also big ganks.

NT

Move along citizen, nothing to see here...everything is working as intended which is to say its perfect, and without flaw.

Anyone can scroll down and see that there are plenty of posts around with constructive criticism. (Well, that and comparing forum moderation to Nazi Germany is the Internet's oldest self-negating statement.)

The website is to promote discussion. If you (or TMNS) are just here be obnoxious, take it somewhere else that embraces trolling. We want more signal and less noise.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I can understand form frustration as a reason to delete.

The wands I cannot understand.

There are SO many non-sleek aura, shield, and barrier wands I have no idea why people complain.

I have played 400 hour characters that never once gathered their sleek abs source.

There is a good chance with the low player base that when you find an non-sleek barrier source, you can always have it.

If people would just explore and keep a list of non-sleek wands it is not that hard.

Anyone that is complaining about ABS is just lazy and does not want to put the time in.

On a similar note, I find the hints and the finding of sleek ABS sources fun. Like little puzzles to solve.

I'm guessing that you tend not to play aps, who aren't as good at taking down tough mobs relative to other magi. Conjie and Necro can access many more places, are less vulnerable while they do so, etc. Muter can just walk to some. Most shifters are good at mob beat downs. Vokers can exploit shields. At hero, not such a difference but around level 40 a big one.

Also, I'm guessing that you play long log ins so can regather wands you've used more often than not.

I've had chars that went 100s of hours with no sight of limited barrier and others that had four or five sources they could use.

nt