Originally Posted by
Dolloway
I was thinking about this the other day while talking to a friend of mine. The market for levels 1-84 items has completely dipped because of the pvp level restriction change, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The thing is though, those items are still not being bought and used by players because of the little demand for them.
To add to this, as you said, very few experienced players will level in old maps, so the newer players will have to go on their own and often alone. This means that players most likely won't develop and hone skills for the class they decide to play, whether that's mage with proper healing, revs and aoe dmg, bears with aggro, crowd control, debuffs, and so forth. Some players will even quit before unlocking all skills, purely out of frustration because maps are often empty compared to the higher end maps (and even then, those are becoming empty because of the tediousness).
There are plenty of guides on forums that explain all this in detail. I wish they would again utilize the info section where they've put links to past community contest winners and such and just replace some of these links with guides, even if your idea is implemented and it's just an in-depth guide on how to level from 1-85 in the most efficient way after leveling is made much easier for the newer players.
The searching tool is pretty bad, especially for pvp games. I have to go to the 'All' section to find all pvp rooms because they don't show up on the 'Pvp' section outside of a 5 level range. There are a lot of other players who don't know to do this as well. I imagine this is very similar for PVE games as well.
I wouldn't be opposed to this idea, although I think a much better idea is this one below:
Adding xp orbs to all dungeons below 80 would be great. People wouldn't need Prison access until it's the best map for their character to level in (around 75-80). The older maps could use this addition, since they're sort of outdated ever since the orbs were implemented into the game. This could also revitalize the activity in these maps, if people want to farm a particular item or set but also want to level in the quickest ways possible.
I agree. Either give things like platinum rings a purpose or delete them from the store entirely. They serve no purpose in the game as of right now. There's a lot of other useless items in the store like these rings.
The way the Swamps maps work is just bad. First off, you can just equip a pet and wear any gear you want after that because the pet gives insane stats and whatever gear you wear doesn't matter after that. If you equip an aoe weapon that can shoot all mobs at once while you have the pet equipped, you're all set. Doesn't matter the level of the weapon, even if it's a level 30 brain freeze staff. The fact that level 30 brain freeze staves are better to deal with Swamps mobs than a level 85 Rysac staff (single target shooting) to me means that this wasn't thought through enough. I see mostly every class going int just to equip an aoe weapon for the easiest way of clearing these maps (pulling all and then hitting all with aoe weapon). The higher tier items (85) or at least the new items (90 or 95) perhaps should have been aoe.
As to your point that leveling and questing isn't rewarding, I would have to agree. What people wanted before this cap was even implemented were elite quests with elite rewards, similar to that of the Dragonet quest rewards. What was great about that quest was that you could farm a map for Black Dragon (which was going to be discontinued) and also get your quest done while you farm. And of course, each quest reward had a cool and unique proc that suited each class well.
The current rewards are sort of lackluster. The 90 shield can be worn by any class, the 95 reward is just a ring that is used to complete the 100 sets, and the 100 reward is just a non-statted pet that you have to spend 15-20m on before it gives you any use. Even after leveling all the way to 100, you still have to spend 15-20m to craft it just to get any use out of your 'reward'.
As for the style and shape of the maps, this definitely needs work. The maps are not in a close and narrow shape where a bear can pull all mobs to a corner or wall while the rest of the team finishes. Long gone are the days where a melee bear is actually useful to the team in the way that it was originally designed to be in PVE. Nowadays I'd take a ranged bear over a melee bear any day on my team. Even if a melee bear does decide to do pull mobs on Swamps maps, 1) the bear would get stunned to death for trying to hit the mobs with a melee weapon in close range 2) it's more advantageous to pull the entire map for faster clearing and to run in circles rather than wall mobs for a potential scattering of mobs/beckon being dodged and then mobs not being all bunched up. The player producing the most dmg will likely gain aggro anyway and completely mess this up and further scatter/spread mobs anyway while your poor bear gets his beckon dodged by half the mobs like usual.
The mobs need a huge dodge reduction. There's no real reason one third or half the mobs should be dodging beckon every time the bear casts the skill (well, depending on which map you do, I suppose). They also need a stun reduction. The stuns are honestly tedious after a while.
To add onto this point, the same goes for the Warlord boss on Asylum Earth maps. The boss dodges blast/barrels way too much, to the point where you're just sitting there falling asleep while either your blast gets charged up again (if you're a bird), or a barrel respawns. Also, and this is a huge point, the bosses for the last two (maybe you can say three) caps have been hugely favored towards birds. If you don't have a bird on your team, you're at a major disadvantage, but if you don't have any of the other classes on your team, you won't lose any major advantage like you would with a lack of a bird. After 2-3 caps, this just seems overdone and too much favored towards birds rather than even distribution.
There should be elite maps where each class utilizes a certain skill to help the team complete the map. Perhaps there are a lot of mobs in the map and the mobs do 2-3x dmg than they do to a bear (or maybe rhino even), making it so that a tank is necessary for proper mob control and clearing in a narrow path. Perhaps there is a toxic chemical or acid that is sprayed onto the team which can only be healed by a mage/rhino. If the chemical is not healed away, it will slowly chip your health to death. Perhaps there is a switch that needs to be hit in a certain amount of time (in order to open up a gate to the boss, or avoid a big bomb going off and killing you all) on the other end of a path but the only class that can hit the switch in that amount of time is a fox or rhino with charge/dash ability. Perhaps there is a winged boss that flies in the air and can only be touched by birds (also able to fly) and birds must use roots in order to ground the boss so that the rest of the team can kill it.
Of course, we can also make it more challenging by disabling potions or elixirs on this map entirely. And to make it rewarding, the map could drop gear or vanities that would either be very rare to drop or discontinued in the future and a quest reward that is actually useful (like a new weapon that gives a unique proc, White Dragon vanity that can be used to get a ring and craft it with Green Gimmel to give even better stats, or a pet that gives a unique buff or also attacks mobs with a unique attack).
I don't know, I'm just shooting ideas. The current cap just feels like it sort of damaged the hope of longevity.
