No djinns, no bosses, no loot, no fun
I just wanted to give my thoughts on the update, especially regarding the game play. It seems a lot of people talk about the market and how it made them rich, but very few comment on how the game now plays.
I played through the new shadow caves today and it seemed most of the djinns were no longer there. I know, this probably seems like a strange thing to complain about. But before today's update, I actually really enjoyed how the new maps played. For the first since the rebalance made the game really easy for level 50s, I was again seeing people think and talk about strategy, and it was mainly due to the clever placement of the djinns. Especially where there were 2 djinns in one place, I was hearing people talk about how to pull, saying "nice pull!" or "ouch bad pull" (words which I haven't heard in ages!), or doing things like having one person kite one djinn while the other was being dealt with, or similar neat strategic things.
I guess the djinns must now spawn randomly, because there were much fewer of them. And without them the whole map is just a mindless grind, much like that long corridor in Plasma Pyramid that I recall many players complained about. But at least there after the long grind you had the payoff of fighting several bosses. And I'm not just talking about the loot, but that excitement of "ok, here comes the boss room, everyone ready? here we go".
Which brings me to my next point. I understand why the drop rate had to be nerfed, but why make the bosses spawn only some of the time? It just seems cruel to fight through a very long map of mobs and not even get the chance to fight a boss at the end. A lot of people in the games today were quitting at the end of the level, saying things like this is not worth it, etc. And that's even though open cave games are much harder to find today. Yesterday there were plenty of games and yet I've seen very few people quit at the end of a level.
You've already made the portal a rare spawn, the maps impossible to rush, and pretty hard and grindy, and the drop rate terrible. Do we really need to have no boss at the end? Just because you can make bosses spawn randomly doesn't mean the feature should be used all the time. There's a time and place for it: Mynas and the swamp boss who drops fun hats are good ones. Making the only boss at the end of a long grindy map be a random spawn just makes one feel disappointed at the end of the game.
Finally, there's the loot. I can only hope the new loot tables are temporary, because after fighting through a long grind of a map and facing a hard boss that's not always even there, getting white AO2 loot feels like a slap in the face. I'm not gonna get into the argument about whether the all pink loot system was good (although I have to say, it seemed to get a lot of casual players into those dungeons, and instead of loot envy at the end of the game you would hear things like "yay just what I wanted" "gratz" and "hey can I swap my drop for yours" etc). But even if we don't get all pinks, it would be nice to see some loot, given how long and grindy the maps are. Maybe add some extra pink drops to the djinns if nothing else.
And incidentally, I have been farming the caves for the past 2 days non-stop and have gear for all my alts and plenty of extras. I have everything to gain financially from having the loot tables stay as they are - and still I think they should be changed. I just really, really enjoyed farming the caves, for both the loot and the strategy, and now suddenly I have nothing left to farm. I'm not asking for all pinks, but I think the current update took things too far into the other extreme.
Oh and by the way, thank you for the free extra maps. I really enjoyed playing them these past few days and I think a lot of my friends did too. I regret that I didn't post on forums about it sooner. It seems the people who hated the maps got a lot of the attention, but they don't represent everyone's opinion.
Originally Posted by noobmigo
IGN: Inching
Bookmarks